Yikes! looks like I can't take pictures of this - No recording of any kind - highly sensitive info!

Toy Story, Bug's Life, Monster's Inc., Nemo, etc. - That is Pixar!

Pixar Philosophy - All about the people: Casting Casting Casting!

Art as a team sport.

Strong peer relationship between the creative & technical people.

Director Driven Studio vs. Hollywood's "Producer driven" model. Pixar has "the Brain Trust" a culture of constructive criticism.

Average time to make a movie = 4 years.

Story, Art, Editorial tend to last the entire 4 years. By year 3 the primary work starts and goes into year 4. (These are averages)

Making a movie in 3 easy steps:

1. Design a rich, believable world.

2. Create engaging characters that logically exist in that world.

3. Tell a compelling story about those characters in that world.

(1. research, research, research; 2. Character; 3. Story.)

"When you encounter a problem, refer to the previous step, and repeat until done."

Michael: "We had an entymologist complain once that the ants in Antz only had 4 appendages instead of 6. The long of it was

...they were creepy and the extra appendages didn't offer much in added storytelling. The short of it was - 'Ants don't talk...'"

If it doesn't work in story boarding - it won't work anywhere!

Joe Ranft, Head of Story, Pixar - "Remember, storyboarding is actually stor-re-boarding."

"What is a great story artist?"

-Draws fast

-Draws "well"

+good poses, +good composition, +good pacing.

-Always has another idea

51% is "plays well with others"

"The Editorial Department"

Where the film is actually edited.

(where it's physically cut)

Organized like live action.

A "carful what you wish for" department.

The spine of our film-making pipeline.

We make the movie twice, and they're there both times (storyboarding & 3D version)

"Voice Talent"

Yes we do record before we animate.

Scratch vocal - the "Pixar Players"

"Voice Casting"

Use existing movie dialogue to do tests

Bizzaro Buzz Lightyear?

"Story Reels"

The first version of the movie - temp dialogues, temp effects, etc. Very rough.

If you can't get it working here, it will never work.

Understanding that this part of the process *will* take years. They spend most of their time on this part of the process

"I want to fail as quickly as possible."

-Andrew Stanton, writer, Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., writer/director, Finding Nemo, Wall-E

The movies that stink are the ones where you say "yeah but we don't have any time."

Iterate and Criticize

"I don't know what to do!" -"Well do something so we can change it!" -Gower Champion film and theater director

love that quote about failing

Showing storyboards of the Incredibles with some versions that weren't in the movie - explaining why they didn't use them.

This is some really good stuff!!! SO wish I could be filming this!

Showing a scene where the incredibles were flying to the island and were shot down by those missles - in one version the pilot dies.

Explaining the problems with that scene and how they changed it and why.

The solution: Removed the pilot entirely - the Mom was flying the plane - no pilot dies, reinforces the mom as a super hero being a pilot.

Developer Lessons from Making Movies

Off the shelf tools such as wacom tablets.

Off the shelf software like maya

also custom software

Tools are about power - in the marketplace and in-house.

In the marketplace - consolidation: some tools move power/responsibility from many groups to one.

In-House - Redistribution: Most tools shift some portion of power from one group to another.

Review Sketch: "No, not that. That! urg...Why can't I just drwa on it?" "Take those two turtles out. Why is this so hard?"

Being able to draw is key in our business.

Anything you could see on the projector you could draw on top of with Review Sketch

Created a website that all these slides get aggregated on to.

Some great proprietary software here!!! Damn I wish we had some of this stuff!

Pitch Docter:

"Why are you making me look bad to the director?" "I'm a filmmaker, not a performance artist!" "Not my fault. It's not in the boards."

Story + Editorial: Old Skool

Story artist as performance artist

rtist gets notes

raws some more

elivers stack of paper boards to editorial

1. it goes well... now editorial can start working

2. it goes badly.. finger pointing ensues: "Not in the boards!"

everyone was making eachother look bad to the director.

"If people are getting angry at eachother, there's probably some sort of impedance in there that needs to be addressed."

Showing off this software: Story Artist

correction: Pitch Doctor

LOL telling a great story of internal usage - wish I could tell it as funny as he is.

Why did Pitch Doctor Work?

Redistributiojn of power that works (win/win)

Take a job that editorial doesn't like

assembly

Gave it to story, they want to time out their work

want to feel like filmmakers, not performance artists.

Over 150,000 drawings in Wall-E

What is a great developer?

Codes fast

Codes well

Always has another idea

51% is "plays well with others" - team members, customers.

Just like a great story artist...

Artists Adopting Technology

"I hate scanning."

"I'd love to do a comic book"

Drawing storyboards: analog on paper, digitally on a pressure sensitive display

How to teach photoshop to story artists?

most want to make their own comics and fine art catalogs

sell them back old Cintiqs cheap

Get them to teach eachother - hmm....

Want a movie - you need an inciting incident

took a great funny photo of an employee - and within hours the funny photo was photoshopped into all sorts of funny situations

"I think more Photoshop was learned in the last 3 hours than those 3 months of training we did with them." -Josh Moyer

"Know your users" "Have your users know you."

wow that was a great talk! Very funny and insightful!