Simba, possibly the dullest protagonist of the Disney renaissance, makes no profound mistakes and has nothing to repent of. With Pixar, though, this pattern of temptation and repentance happens all the time. In Toy Story 2 , Woody finds solace from the fear of losing Andy only by turning his back on Andy and his old friends and embracing an ego-gratifying new world in which he is a superstar.
The dynamic is complicated in Finding Nemo by the fact that father and son are almost co-protagonists, but little Nemo brings grief to himself and his father Marlin by openly defying his father in a stupid stunt, while Marlin must learn to relinquish his overprotective tendencies and let Nemo grow up. That was revolutionary. In The Incredibles , Dad is again the protagonist, and while Mr.
But in the works of Pixar, everything is far more subtle. In a lot of ways, Pixar tells a story just like how we learn our lessons. They're never expected. They never come easy. And we fail constantly in the process.
But at the end of it all, it becomes clear why the journey was worth taking. It all feels real and organic because we learn with these characters rather than from them. It's all really just beautiful storytelling. There's no doubt that Pixar has a perfect handle on how to tell a story. But beyond that, Pixar's greatest strength might lie in knowing what its story is about.
It might look like an abandoned robot, a family of superheroes, toys, or emotions. But in the end, it's really a story about us. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options.
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Written by Yuriy Polyashko. Tags: Animation , Creativity. Rate page:. The importance of voice-over in an animated video. Comments Their cartoons remind me of my childhood. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Send a request. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. Then George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, hired me to head a major initiative at Lucasfilm to bring computer graphics and other digital technology into films and, later, games.
It was thrilling to do research within a film company that was pushing the boundaries. This made it possible to attract some of the best people in the industry, including John Lasseter, then an animator from Disney, who was excited by the new possibilities of computer animation.
Steve gave backbone to our desire for excellence and helped us form a remarkable management team. A number of us have stuck together for decades, pursuing the dream of making computer-animated films, and we still have the pleasure of working together today. It was only when Pixar experienced a crisis during the production of Toy Story 2 that my views on how to structure and operate a creative organization began to crystallize.
So we had to form a new creative team of people who had never headed a movie production. We felt this was OK. We realized early on, however, that having two different standards of quality in the same studio was bad for our souls, and Disney readily agreed that the sequel should be a theatrical release.
The creative leadership, though, remained the same, which turned out to be a problem. In the early stage of making a movie, we draw storyboards a comic-book version of the story and then edit them together with dialogue and temporary music.
These are called story reels. The first versions are very rough, but they give a sense of what the problems are, which in the beginning of all productions are many. We then iterate, and each version typically gets better and better. In the case of Toy Story 2 , we had a good initial idea for a story, but the reels were not where they ought to have been by the time we started animation, and they were not improving.
Making matters worse, the directors and producers were not pulling together to rise to the challenge. Given where the production was at that point, 18 months would have been an aggressive schedule, but by then we had only eight left to deliver the film.
In the end, with the new leadership, they pulled it off. How did John and his team save the movie? The problem was not the original core concept, which they retained. The main character, a cowboy doll named Woody, is kidnapped by a toy collector who intends to ship him to a toy museum in Japan.
At a critical point in the story, Woody has to decide whether to go to Japan or try to escape and go back to Andy, the boy who owned him. So the challenge was to get the audience to believe that Woody might make a different choice. John, Andrew, Lee, and Joe solved that problem by adding several elements to show the fears toys might have that people could relate to. She wants to go, and she explains why to Woody.
The reality is kids do grow up, life does change, and sometimes you have to move on. Since the audience members know the truth of this, they can see that Woody has a real choice, and this is what grabs them.
Toy Story 2 was great and became a critical and commercial success—and it was the defining moment for Pixar. It taught us an important lesson about the primacy of people over ideas: If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works. Toy Story 2 also taught us another important lesson: There has to be one quality bar for every film we produce.
Everyone working at the studio at the time made tremendous personal sacrifices to fix Toy Story 2. We shut down all the other productions.
We asked our crew to work inhumane hours, and lots of people suffered repetitive stress injuries. But by rejecting mediocrity at great pain and personal sacrifice, we made a loud statement as a community that it was unacceptable to produce some good films and some mediocre films. As a result of Toy Story 2 , it became deeply ingrained in our culture that everything we touch needs to be excellent.
This goes beyond movies to the DVD production and extras, and to the toys and other consumer products associated with our characters. Of course, most executives would at least pay lip service to the notion that they need to get good people and should set their standards high. But how many understand the importance of creating an environment that supports great people and encourages them to support one another so the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts?
We believe the creative vision propelling each movie comes from one or two people and not from either corporate executives or a development department. Our philosophy is: You get great creative people, you bet big on them, you give them enormous leeway and support, and you provide them with an environment in which they can get honest feedback from everyone.
After Toy Story 2 we changed the mission of our development department. Each team typically consists of a director, a writer, some artists, and some storyboard people. Both the senior management and the development department are responsible for seeing to it that the teams function well. They form a strong partnership. They not only strive to make a great movie but also operate within time, budget, and people constraints. Good artists understand the value of limits. Indeed, even when a production runs into a problem, we do everything possible to provide support without undermining their authority.
What does it take for a director to be a successful leader in this environment? Of course, our directors have to be masters at knowing how to tell a story that will translate into the medium of film. This means that they must have a unifying vision—one that will give coherence to the thousands of ideas that go into a movie—and they must be able to turn that vision into clear directives that the staff can implement.
They must set people up for success by giving them all the information they need to do the job right without telling them how to do it. Each person on a film should be given creative ownership of even the smallest task. Good directors not only possess strong analytical skills themselves but also can harness the analytical power and life experiences of their staff members.
They are superb listeners and strive to understand the thinking behind every suggestion. They appreciate all contributions, regardless of where or from whom they originate, and use the best ones.
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