Speaker 1: Technology with Tuck Stuff from Stuff. Hey there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to tex Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, flying solo again.
Speaker 1: This is part one of what I expect will be
Speaker 1: a two part episode saga about one of my favorite companies,
Speaker 1: or at least a company that produces some of my
Speaker 1: favorite entertainment pis are I um decided to cover Pixar
Speaker 1: because I've been interested in this company for a while now,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know a whole lot about it apart
Speaker 1: from some general notes, and as I dug down into it,
Speaker 1: I found it much more interesting than I was already aware.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those places where when you
Speaker 1: see video of the Pixar campus and the amazing building
Speaker 1: and the way people work there, it's very inspiring. But
Speaker 1: to learn about the full history, it's pretty cool, and
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of amazing that it even happened, because
Speaker 1: the company, or the various entities that would eventually become
Speaker 1: Pixar didn't always have the smoothest ride. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of issues along the way, and the company could
Speaker 1: have easily disappeared and we might not have ever seen
Speaker 1: the films that Pixar created as a result. So the
Speaker 1: story will overlap with another episode of tech Stuff from
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, a good old classic episode. That
Speaker 1: episode is called tech Stuff looks at Industrial Light and Magic,
Speaker 1: So Pixar in Industrial Light and Magic actually have a
Speaker 1: shared history in some ways. Um, I'm gonna look at
Speaker 1: that innovation of of Pixar, but it's not just a
Speaker 1: story about computer animated films. Pixar has developed tons of
Speaker 1: technology in the field of computer graphics and image processing.
Speaker 1: When the company found out that there was no tech
Speaker 1: that could do what they wanted to do, they started
Speaker 1: building it and then selling it to other people. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that in this episode. Now, to talk about
Speaker 1: the history of Pixar, we first have to chat about
Speaker 1: some of its founders. But I'm not talking about John Lastner,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about George Lucas, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. They will all factor into this discussion, but
Speaker 1: those are not Those aren't the people who were there
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. Uh, At the very beginning was
Speaker 1: Dr edwind E Catmoll now Dr Catmull was born in
Speaker 1: nine in West Virginia, and as a child he dreamed
Speaker 1: of working for the Walt Disney Company, but eventually kind
Speaker 1: of gave up on that dream. He felt that he
Speaker 1: lacked artistic talent and felt that, you know, there's just
Speaker 1: no room for me at Disney, which is kind of funny.
Speaker 1: So he decided to study computer science and physics instead.
Speaker 1: You know, if you can't be an animator for Disney,
Speaker 1: going to co eater science in physics. He attended the
Speaker 1: University of Utah and that's where he earned a bachelor's
Speaker 1: degree in computer science. He earned another one in physics,
Speaker 1: and he got a PhD in computer science. So he's
Speaker 1: a smart dude, and he was granted his PhD in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. Now, in nineteen seventy two, while he
Speaker 1: was still in school, Dr Catmill created a computer animated
Speaker 1: version of his own left hand that was incorporated into
Speaker 1: the film Future World, and that marked the first full
Speaker 1: length feature film to have computer animation in it. Now,
Speaker 1: this was just a tiny little segment that was featured
Speaker 1: in part of the movie. It wasn't like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like they made a feature length movie about a guy's
Speaker 1: left hand. They've they've since done movies like that, but
Speaker 1: that was not what this one was about. And you
Speaker 1: can actually view the animation and how it was made
Speaker 1: on YouTube. There's the clip available right there. The title
Speaker 1: is called a Computer Animated Hand nineteen seven two, and
Speaker 1: then the video you see that they started with a
Speaker 1: physical model of Captain Bill's hand. I'm guessing they cast
Speaker 1: in his hand, so, in other words, they made a
Speaker 1: mold and then filled that mold with some sort of
Speaker 1: resin or something along those lines, and the finished product
Speaker 1: was a copy of Captain Mill's left hand. Then they
Speaker 1: drew polygons on the surface of the model hand, so
Speaker 1: they physically drew these polygon shapes so that it could
Speaker 1: be translated into a digital form. They digitized the model
Speaker 1: by scanning it with a tiny little scanner that was
Speaker 1: kind of a attached to an arm, so they could
Speaker 1: like a like a like a mechanical arm, not a
Speaker 1: not a human arm, but almost like one you would
Speaker 1: see on a lampstand, and they traced out the hand.
Speaker 1: This created the digital model, so they ended up with
Speaker 1: a wire model inside the computer. They then did a
Speaker 1: halftone sequence on top of this wire model, and then
Speaker 1: a smooth shading sequence, and that ended up creating a
Speaker 1: three D model of the hand, which they then could
Speaker 1: animate and make it do different gestures and rotated and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff and give it that sort of
Speaker 1: three dimensional appearance. Now, that and other projects that he
Speaker 1: was working on that Ketmol was working on got the
Speaker 1: attention of a somewhat eccentric, wealthy entrepreneur named Alexander Shure,
Speaker 1: and Sure had founded a technical college, the New York
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology, one of the first dedicated higher learning
Speaker 1: institutions that specifically looked at technology, and he ended up
Speaker 1: hiring Dr Katmull to come over and become the director
Speaker 1: of a brand new division called the Computer Graphics Lab.
Speaker 1: This was in nineteen so right after he got his PhD,
Speaker 1: Dr Cammel came over to New York and began to
Speaker 1: work at the New York Institute of Technology. At that
Speaker 1: Computer Graphics Lab, Ketmel met with other pioneers in computer
Speaker 1: graphics and one of those was ALV. Ray Smith. Now,
Speaker 1: Smith is also a name we have to mention when
Speaker 1: you talk about the beginnings of Pixar. Smith is is
Speaker 1: as important to those early days as cat'n Moll. He's
Speaker 1: a co founder of the company and he earned a
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree in nineteen sixty five and electrical engineering from
Speaker 1: New York. It's from New Mexico State University rather, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty uh he also earned his PhD in
Speaker 1: computer science from Stanford. He taught electrical engineering and computer
Speaker 1: science at New York University and the University of California
Speaker 1: at Berkeley before joining Xerox Park. Xerox Park, by the way,
Speaker 1: fascinating place. We mentioned it on a few previous episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff from way back. It's one of those
Speaker 1: R and D divisions that really shaped computers. Things like
Speaker 1: the graphical user interface and the mouse all came out
Speaker 1: of Xerox Park. They were not invented by Apple. It
Speaker 1: was actually a Xerox invention first and then eventually made
Speaker 1: its way into other devices and personal computers. Now, when
Speaker 1: he was at Park, uh Smith actually helped develop a
Speaker 1: computer graphics paint program, which he would continue to to
Speaker 1: uh you know, work in that field after moving over
Speaker 1: in the computer graphics lab at the n y I
Speaker 1: t Now, also that lab was another guy named David
Speaker 1: Di Francesco who graduated from the University of Wisconsin. He
Speaker 1: would become a founding member of Pixara as well, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven some other folks joined. Ralph Guggenheim,
Speaker 1: who had freshly graduated from Carnegie In University with a
Speaker 1: degree in communications, joined the lab and he also would
Speaker 1: become part of Pixart later on. So they start working
Speaker 1: in this graphics lab. They're working to UH TO to
Speaker 1: push the boundaries of computer graphics, which was a very
Speaker 1: very young discipline at that point. They were actually kind
Speaker 1: of defining the rules as they were going along. And
Speaker 1: this went for a couple of years until nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and that's when George Lucas was putting together Industrial Light
Speaker 1: and Magic. Lucas really wanted to push film editing and
Speaker 1: production technology forward. He felt that Hollywood had been relying
Speaker 1: upon the same tools for decades, and he felt that
Speaker 1: because of the rise of computers and other technologies, the
Speaker 1: industry was ripe for change. He just had to find
Speaker 1: the right people to do it. So he created UH
Speaker 1: Lucasfilm Computer Division in Industrial Light and Magic, and he
Speaker 1: recruited doctor ed Catmull from the New York Institute of
Speaker 1: Technology to head the new department. So here's cat Moll.
Speaker 1: He's been working at n y i T for a
Speaker 1: few years. He was named the director immediately upon being hired, Like,
Speaker 1: imagine this. Imagine going to college and then immediately after
Speaker 1: you get your bachelor's degree, imagine pursuing your post graduate
Speaker 1: work and getting your PhD. Then imagine you're immediately hired
Speaker 1: to be the head of a brand new department in
Speaker 1: the first Technical Institute of the United States of America.
Speaker 1: Then imagine that George Lucas wants you to go and
Speaker 1: work for him. Now, it's pretty charmed life if you
Speaker 1: ask me. At any rate. Uh, he recruited Dr ca'm
Speaker 1: moll and Camill came along, and then he brought along
Speaker 1: Alvi ray Smith, David D. Francesco, and Ralph Guggenheim from
Speaker 1: the Graphics Computer Lab to join the new departments. So,
Speaker 1: in a way, I'm not saying that he necessarily intended
Speaker 1: to do this, but Lucas raided the Graphics computer Lab
Speaker 1: at n y I T to create his own computer
Speaker 1: division and Industrial Light and Magic. So cat Will became
Speaker 1: vice president of the division and managed development and not
Speaker 1: just film editing, but also computer graphics, digital audio, and
Speaker 1: video games. One of his earliest projects it was actually
Speaker 1: coming up with a method to imitate motion blur with
Speaker 1: computer graphics so that looks more like a fast moving
Speaker 1: action that's usually cut on film, because if you're using
Speaker 1: film and things are moving quickly, you get this blur effect.
Speaker 1: And without that blur, the graphics would remain too sharp
Speaker 1: and then seem fake or unrealistic. If you've ever watched
Speaker 1: uh a television set that has a really high refresh
Speaker 1: rate and you just feel like things don't look right,
Speaker 1: even though everything's very clear and very sharp, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look right. That might be part of it. It's the
Speaker 1: removal of that blur. Well, that a camel was actually
Speaker 1: learning how to insert a blur so that things would
Speaker 1: look more natural when they were on screen. Over the
Speaker 1: next few years, Cammell's team pioneers computer graphics for film,
Speaker 1: and they published more than one hundred papers on the
Speaker 1: subject in various publications. So they continue doing this work,
Speaker 1: developing the technology necessary to do computer graphics, but they
Speaker 1: realized there's a big, big problem. Computer graphics requires a
Speaker 1: decent amount of processing and the technology just wasn't up
Speaker 1: to speed to do this in an efficient way. It
Speaker 1: was really expensive to produce computer animation and really difficult
Speaker 1: as well, very time consuming because processors just weren't fast
Speaker 1: enough to handle data at the speeds necessary to turn
Speaker 1: this stuff out quickly, and so there was actually real
Speaker 1: discussion about how Moore's Law would eventually solve this problem,
Speaker 1: but it would require them to wait a round a
Speaker 1: bit in order to get to it. So they kept
Speaker 1: on pushing against those barriers, but they acknowledged that there
Speaker 1: was only so much you could do without spending ridiculous
Speaker 1: amounts of money. And in fact, this entire department within
Speaker 1: Lucas's empire was a money losing proposition. It costs more
Speaker 1: money to develop and produce the computer animation than the
Speaker 1: division was generating, or at least you could argue that.
Speaker 1: In nine three, John Lastner joined Capt. Moll's team as
Speaker 1: a contract employee. Here's the thing about John Lastner. He
Speaker 1: had worked for Disney two times already, although that's kind
Speaker 1: of misleading. The first time John Lastner worked for Disney
Speaker 1: he was a skipper for the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever ridden the Jungle Cruise ride, you
Speaker 1: know who these people are. There, the folks who are
Speaker 1: your host as you get on the the boat, and
Speaker 1: they mostly pepper you with puns and really wacky jokes.
Speaker 1: As you go through the ride, so they might say
Speaker 1: things like, uh, you know, that's an African elephant. How
Speaker 1: can you tell? And the answer is because we're in Africa,
Speaker 1: instead of you know the ears or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Or you go behind the waterfalls, is everyone look here,
Speaker 1: it's the backside of water. A joke so old and
Speaker 1: repeated so frequently that weird Al Yankovic worked it into
Speaker 1: his song Skipper Dan. So John Laster was a skipper
Speaker 1: on the Jungle Cruise ride and uh, he you know,
Speaker 1: that was a job he had when he was a
Speaker 1: young man, like a teenager. Uh. And then later on
Speaker 1: John Lastner would join Disney as an animator. So he
Speaker 1: worked there for a while but was eventually let go
Speaker 1: or fired if you prefer. And they're different reasons that
Speaker 1: have been given for this, but the one that I
Speaker 1: see that seems to be repeated the most frequently is
Speaker 1: that he was so interested in computer animation. He was
Speaker 1: really pushing for Disney to start looking into computer animation
Speaker 1: as a means of telling stories, but the company wasn't interested,
Speaker 1: and eventually they just didn't have anything for him, so
Speaker 1: they let him go. But Captain Bull and Smith were
Speaker 1: frequent visitors to Disney. They would go to Disney to
Speaker 1: check things out, and they met John Lassen when they
Speaker 1: went to Disney Animation. So as soon as Laster was fired,
Speaker 1: cat Will said, Hey, you should come over here and
Speaker 1: work for us. So he joined the graphics group and
Speaker 1: worked on a short film titled The Adventures of Andre
Speaker 1: and Wally b. Now, at that time he was a
Speaker 1: contract employee. He was not a full time employee because
Speaker 1: cat Will only had certain amount of authority to do
Speaker 1: things like higher on new people. He would join as
Speaker 1: a full time employee the Computer division in nine and
Speaker 1: his title at that time became Interface designer. And the
Speaker 1: reason he was an interface designer is because Captain Will
Speaker 1: didn't have the authority to hire on an animator, so
Speaker 1: they made up the title, or they gave him a
Speaker 1: title that wasn't really what he did in order to
Speaker 1: be able to hire him. At the conference of the
Speaker 1: a c m S Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics
Speaker 1: better known as siggraph S I g g R A
Speaker 1: p H, seven of the thirty papers that were accepted
Speaker 1: for publication for that conference came from this Lucasfilm team
Speaker 1: headed by Captain Bill so. In other words, they were
Speaker 1: dominating the space. They were providing a lot of the
Speaker 1: uh most forward thinking ideas in computer graphics, and they
Speaker 1: were defining the process more than anyone else was at
Speaker 1: that time. So they were instrumental in getting computer animation
Speaker 1: and computer graphics integrated into entertainment. It was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: Some of the movies that the team worked on during
Speaker 1: their time there included Star Trek to the Wrath of Cohn.
Speaker 1: If you're familiar with the movie, you know there's a
Speaker 1: sequence in which, uh, the Genesis program, the Genesis device
Speaker 1: transforms a dead planet into one that's just teeming with
Speaker 1: life and you get this, um this interesting effect as
Speaker 1: you watch the plant kind of sprout life everywhere. That
Speaker 1: was one of the sequences that this group worked on.
Speaker 1: In fact, Alvi ray Smith himself directed that sequence. He
Speaker 1: was the one in charge of it. It was also
Speaker 1: used in some stuff in Return of the Jedi, and
Speaker 1: they provided a sequence in Young Sherlock Holmes that ended
Speaker 1: up being a first So Young Sherlock Holmes is the
Speaker 1: story of Sherlock Holmes when he's a young man. He's
Speaker 1: attending a school and John Watson ends up being put
Speaker 1: into the same school and the two of them have
Speaker 1: to try and solve a mystery, and at one point
Speaker 1: a character is hit with a dart that has a
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic on it, and the hallucinogenic makes these terrible things
Speaker 1: seem to happen to people, and it mostly drives them
Speaker 1: to do terrible things like jump in the way of
Speaker 1: a of a carriage that's racing down the street, and
Speaker 1: thus they end up dying. But it looks like they're
Speaker 1: committing suicide, but in reality they are trying to escape
Speaker 1: this freaky vision they have. In this case, the freaky
Speaker 1: vision was a figure in a stained glass window appears
Speaker 1: to come to life, jump free of the window and
Speaker 1: attack a person. And this marked the first time computer
Speaker 1: graphics were incorporated into a scene with live action actors
Speaker 1: and done in a convincing way. Before when you had
Speaker 1: computer graphics in movies, it was essentially the entire frame
Speaker 1: you're looking at a computer graphic. It's not something that's
Speaker 1: interacting with live action characters, or it might be something
Speaker 1: that's on a screen within a scene, but not something
Speaker 1: that's actually supposed to be in the physical space along
Speaker 1: with the actors. This marked the first time that happened
Speaker 1: uh if you have not seen Young Sherlock Holmes, I
Speaker 1: recommend it. It's not the best film, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting and it is entertaining. I think it gets a
Speaker 1: little um, maybe a little self satisfied, but it's worth watching.
Speaker 1: I actually saw it in the theater, So this is
Speaker 1: one of those moments where I think I witnessed history.
Speaker 1: I saw a movie in which the first computer generated
Speaker 1: character had an interaction with a live action actor. Didn't
Speaker 1: know that that at the time, but now it's true. Now,
Speaker 1: the technology that the team needed to produce these sorts
Speaker 1: of effects didn't really exist, at least not in a
Speaker 1: way that was attainable for a a division within a
Speaker 1: production studio. So the group began to develop a specialized
Speaker 1: computer called the Pixar Image Computer. So that this is
Speaker 1: where they get their name of the company. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: but Pixar Image Computer. The name came from Alvi ray
Speaker 1: Smith and Lauren Carpenter, who were trying to brainstorm and
Speaker 1: name for this device. Uh. Alvi ray Smith wanted to
Speaker 1: come up with a name that had almost kind of
Speaker 1: a Spanish verbs sound to it, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: be a little, um, a little uh futuristic sounding too,
Speaker 1: and they decided to go with pixar as if it
Speaker 1: were a verb to to make a picture. But it
Speaker 1: was all on at it and ultimately they thought Pixar
Speaker 1: sounded kind of cool, and that's what they called the computer,
Speaker 1: the Pixar Image Computer. The computer allowed for both image
Speaker 1: processing and computer graphics development on the same device. So
Speaker 1: up to that point, those processes had to be done
Speaker 1: separately on different machines, which limited the sort of stuff
Speaker 1: you could actually produce. But the Pixar Image Computer changed
Speaker 1: that and created a new discipline called image computing. So
Speaker 1: it's sort of a combination of the two previously existing
Speaker 1: disciplines and it allows you to do a lot more
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. The Pixar Image Computer had a chap channel processor,
Speaker 1: which is a four parallel processor chip capable of performing
Speaker 1: forty million instructions per second, which was not bad for
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, and it had a twenty four megabyte
Speaker 1: picture memory AH and that memory could be expanded to
Speaker 1: forty eight megabytes UH memory bus could access that memory
Speaker 1: and a blistering two forty megabytes per second, and the
Speaker 1: system was also expandable. Two additional chaps could be added
Speaker 1: to provide up to a hundred twenty million instructions per
Speaker 1: second um. This is, you know, obviously not state of
Speaker 1: the art compared to today's standards, but in the eighties,
Speaker 1: to be able to create this device specifically so you
Speaker 1: could do image computing was pretty impressive. The video controller
Speaker 1: bus was twice as fast as the memory bus at
Speaker 1: four eighty megabytes per second, and depending upon the software
Speaker 1: load out, the computer would work with in TSC PAL
Speaker 1: and ten twenty four by seven r GB displays. The
Speaker 1: Pixar Image Computer required a host computer, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: a standalone device on its own, and you actually had
Speaker 1: to pair it with another computer in order to control it.
Speaker 1: This typically was a big, expensive computer that was not
Speaker 1: meant for personal you. So this wasn't a personal computer.
Speaker 1: It's not like it was a an Apple one or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It wasn't anywhere along those lines. We're
Speaker 1: talking about like a Sun system or a similar computer,
Speaker 1: where uh, it's a pretty massive, powerful system all on
Speaker 1: its own, and then you would connect that, you would
Speaker 1: network it to the Pixar Image Computer and it would
Speaker 1: communicate over cables a transmission rate of eighty megabytes per second. Uh.
Speaker 1: The computer was not cheap. It cost one thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and keep in mind this is the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, so it would be significantly more than that
Speaker 1: today if you adjust for inflation. And also keep in
Speaker 1: mind that a hundred thirty five thousand dollars just gets
Speaker 1: you the Pixar image computer. You still need that host computer,
Speaker 1: which could cost another thirty five thousand dollars. So hundred
Speaker 1: seventy thousand dollars just for this one method of image
Speaker 1: computer geting, it's pretty pretty expensive. The list of customers
Speaker 1: was small, but it included some very influential ones, and
Speaker 1: in fact, the company envisioned, or rather the division at
Speaker 1: this time within LucasArts or Lucasfilm, envisioned six different markets
Speaker 1: for its image computer, and that included medical imaging, remote
Speaker 1: sensing and mapping, seismic imaging, design and animation, graphic arts
Speaker 1: and science, and scientific visualization. So that's kind of incredible
Speaker 1: when you think about it, like this was a company
Speaker 1: that eventually becomes known for creating computer animated films, but
Speaker 1: early on they were trying to generate revenue through developing
Speaker 1: hardware and selling it to a diverse group of clients,
Speaker 1: not just other entertainment companies, but medical industries, you know,
Speaker 1: and and scientific research centers. So it was kind of incredible.
Speaker 1: One of the customers that was interested in this technology
Speaker 1: was Disney that the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney
Speaker 1: Company approached the Computer Graphics division over at Lucasfilm and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we have this idea, but we can't put it together.
Speaker 1: We need someone else to design it for us, but
Speaker 1: we want a computer animation production system or CAPS, And
Speaker 1: this was their attempt to update the cell animation process.
Speaker 1: It was to digitize the cell animation animation process. So
Speaker 1: in other words, they still weren't going away from hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation. They still wanted to do that, but they
Speaker 1: wanted an updated method to process each of those cells
Speaker 1: to make it more efficient and uh more effective. So
Speaker 1: the process of creating the system CAPS spanned a couple
Speaker 1: of years. By the time it was ready, the division,
Speaker 1: this computer Graphics division was no longer part of Lucasfilm.
Speaker 1: It actually would take so long for them to finish
Speaker 1: the CAP system that it was when it was done
Speaker 1: when Pixar became its own entity. Now, Smith continued to
Speaker 1: work on other projects, including creating a new channel for pixels.
Speaker 1: So by channel, I mean how do you describe a pixel?
Speaker 1: You already had the color channels of red, green, and blue,
Speaker 1: but Smith added an alpha channel, and the alpha channel
Speaker 1: allowed you to tag pixels with extra data that could
Speaker 1: be used for matting, for a compositing, for overlays, and
Speaker 1: for anti aliasing. So you can think of it as
Speaker 1: here's an extra way of being able to describe this pixel,
Speaker 1: to get a specific effect beyond just what color is it?
Speaker 1: That's kind of cool Now around, Alvie Smith was looking
Speaker 1: into creating the first feature length computer animated film, and
Speaker 1: he started actually having some serious conversations about it. It
Speaker 1: was going to be a collaboration with a Japanese company,
Speaker 1: and the movie they had decided to try and make
Speaker 1: would be a story inspired by the famous Chinese novel
Speaker 1: Journey to the West. But when Alvi Ray Smith sat
Speaker 1: down to seriously look at how much would that cost?
Speaker 1: What would the film's budget need to be, he realized
Speaker 1: that the industry wasn't efficient enough to allow for a
Speaker 1: realistic budget. It's just that it would be too expensive,
Speaker 1: it would never get made, and he came to the
Speaker 1: reluctant conclusion that they would continue to wait for Moore's
Speaker 1: law to keep on being Moore's law and bring down
Speaker 1: those costs. Keep in mind, Moore's law at its heart
Speaker 1: really isn't about how quickly computer power increases. It's really
Speaker 1: about how quickly computer power becomes more affordable. Uh. When
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore made the observation, it was really from an
Speaker 1: economic standpoint, not a technological capability standpoint. He said that
Speaker 1: when the price of developing more powerful processors comes down,
Speaker 1: then obviously people develop more powerful processors. And he's noticed
Speaker 1: that that tends to happen every eighteen to twenty four months.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to think that More's laws really more
Speaker 1: about economics than it is about how many discrete elements
Speaker 1: you can cram onto a square inch of a silicon wafer.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, UH Smith recognized there just was
Speaker 1: not going to be a full length computer animated feature
Speaker 1: film until the technology was caught up to make it,
Speaker 1: you know, economically feasible. In February six, the Computer Graphics
Speaker 1: Division was spun off from Lucasfilm. The technology the team
Speaker 1: had developed had applications beyond the film industry, like we mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, was the medical field and seismic studies as
Speaker 1: well as things like meteorology. All of them had different applications,
Speaker 1: so the technology was valuable, but Lucas was ready to
Speaker 1: get rid of it because while the division was accomplished,
Speaker 1: it had been losing money for several years and it
Speaker 1: was really expensive to make good computer graphics. But on
Speaker 1: top of that, Lucas had other reasons that he didn't
Speaker 1: want to have this financial drain hitting him. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi had come out in nineteen eight three.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about nineteen eight six, three years later.
Speaker 1: Star Wars merchandise sales were starting to slack off pretty
Speaker 1: big time. By so the huge checks that had been
Speaker 1: coming in we're starting to dry up at this point.
Speaker 1: On up of that, Lucas had had a very expensive
Speaker 1: divorce in nine three, and he was having lots of issues,
Speaker 1: uh surrounding that, which is an entirely different episode that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve technology, So I don't know who will ever
Speaker 1: cover it, but it is a fascinating story. Oh and
Speaker 1: and Lucas also had one other albatross around his neck.
Speaker 1: He made a little movie called Howard the Duck, and
Speaker 1: it didn't perform quite as well. As he had hoped.
Speaker 1: You remember I mentioned that if you haven't seen young
Speaker 1: Shelock Holmes, it's worth seeing. The same is not true
Speaker 1: for Howard the Duck, although if you've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of friends over and you just want to make fun
Speaker 1: of a movie, it's a pretty decent candidate. So Lucas
Speaker 1: wanted to dump this computer graphics division, and cap'n mill
Speaker 1: and Smith knew about this. They knew that this was coming,
Speaker 1: They saw the writing on the wall, and so for
Speaker 1: about a year before for this happened, they began to
Speaker 1: talk to potential investors who might be able to give
Speaker 1: some capital to the spun off company. And uh they
Speaker 1: ended up courting a certain Steve Jobs as a potential
Speaker 1: backer for that new company. And it had happened for
Speaker 1: about a year and Captain Bill Smith became co founders
Speaker 1: of this new company, which they now named Pixar. So
Speaker 1: they took the name from the computer they had developed,
Speaker 1: which wasn't an easy decision, by the way, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of internal disagreements within Pixar about what to
Speaker 1: call the new company. Uh, the temporary name on the
Speaker 1: documents at around that time was actually g f X,
Speaker 1: so I'm glad that they dropped that and went with Pixar.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs provided capital for the company. He signed a
Speaker 1: five million dollar check specifically to Smith and to Captain Mill,
Speaker 1: who then signed it over to Lucas. Now that five
Speaker 1: million dollars was to essentially pay Lucas for the the company.
Speaker 1: He gave the company another five million dollars to act
Speaker 1: as starting capital for Pixar itself. And like I said,
Speaker 1: Jobs wasn't the only person that they talked to about
Speaker 1: the possibility of investing in this new company. Another person
Speaker 1: who almost funded Pixar. This story would be different if
Speaker 1: this had come to pass. The person who almost funded
Speaker 1: Pixar was Ross Pero. And guys, if you're old enough
Speaker 1: to remember, you know Ross Pero was an entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: a former presidential candidate, independent candidate UM and certain character too. Man.
Speaker 1: I mean Saturday Night Live had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: imitating Ross Pero for a few months. Anyway, Ross Perrow
Speaker 1: almost was the one to fund Pixar, but that deal
Speaker 1: fell through at the last minute and Steve Jobs stepped in. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs himself was going through a bit of a transition.
Speaker 1: He had co founded Apple computers in the seventies. But
Speaker 1: by this time Apple had more or less forced him
Speaker 1: out of the company. The board had made his life
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult. They kind of removed all of his responsibilities,
Speaker 1: so he didn't have anything to do, and they kind
Speaker 1: of sent him off off to the side, so he
Speaker 1: was more or less forgotten. So he just kind of
Speaker 1: left and they paid for it. That company did not
Speaker 1: do so well without Steve Jobs. In fact, Apple began
Speaker 1: to lose focus. At one point the company was in
Speaker 1: danger of completely going bankrupt. And only then was really
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs asked to come back and try and work
Speaker 1: on fixing that. And he did come back and eventually
Speaker 1: was made CEO of Apple and turned everything around. But
Speaker 1: that's another story. In fact, we've covered that on Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the story of Steve Jobs and his
Speaker 1: exodus from Apple, his his exile, and then his triumphant
Speaker 1: returned later on. Now you might have heard that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs has been referred to as a founder or the
Speaker 1: founder of Pixar, or the owner of Pixar, and technically
Speaker 1: neither of those were true at the time that Pixar
Speaker 1: was founded. Now he had a majority stake in the company.
Speaker 1: He had seventy ownership of the company and the employees
Speaker 1: had the other thirty percent. But it was Smith and
Speaker 1: cat Moll who actually founded the company and ran the operations.
Speaker 1: They were the the president or well, Catmill was the
Speaker 1: president and Smith was the vice president of the company.
Speaker 1: They managed the company. So what Steve Jobs did was
Speaker 1: provide that starting capital. And he also was a master
Speaker 1: marketing genius type. We all know this if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen any Steve Jobs presentation. The guy knew how to
Speaker 1: sell like he was really good at expressing interesting ideas
Speaker 1: and getting you excited about them. So what he started
Speaker 1: to do with Pixar is marketed as a computer hardware company,
Speaker 1: like the makers of the Pixar Image computer, and that
Speaker 1: became a major product under his watch, and Pixar sold
Speaker 1: several to various entities, including the Walt Disney Company. Now
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was technically providing money to Pixar to buy
Speaker 1: the technology rights to the systems that they built that
Speaker 1: picks our image computer and other technologies that they built
Speaker 1: while they were at Lucasfilm. That was where that first
Speaker 1: five million dollars went. And uh, like I said, they
Speaker 1: he had seventy of the ownership and the employees had
Speaker 1: thirty ed. Catmill and Alvie Smith owned the majority of
Speaker 1: that thirty percent, and that's how they ended up also
Speaker 1: becoming the managers, or rather they were also the managers
Speaker 1: for Pixar, the president and vice president respectively. And they
Speaker 1: weren't really as keen on the idea of being a
Speaker 1: hardware company. They lies that there was a necessity for
Speaker 1: it in order for them to remain afloat while waiting
Speaker 1: for Moore's Law to kick in so that they can
Speaker 1: actually start doing what they wanted to do in the
Speaker 1: first place, which was produced computer animation in an economical way.
Speaker 1: And when Pixar formed, Catmill and Smith brought along around
Speaker 1: thirty eight employees of the computer graphics division with them
Speaker 1: from Pixar. That included John Lasseter, so Lasted was one
Speaker 1: of forty Lucasfilm employees who became Pixar employees, and Lasted
Speaker 1: also really wanted to push computer animation, just as he
Speaker 1: was still doing a Disney before they fired him. He
Speaker 1: really wanted computer animation to become a thing, and he
Speaker 1: got the freedom to work on a few projects. Now,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that Steve Jobs was interested in having this
Speaker 1: company produced computer animated shorts or films. That wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: Lasseter was able to make the argument, Hey, we have
Speaker 1: this equipment, this Pisar image computer, and you need to
Speaker 1: be able to sell it to people. So you need
Speaker 1: to show them some interesting demonstrations of what the computer
Speaker 1: is capable of doing. How about we shoot some computer
Speaker 1: animated shorts and that will act as almost like a
Speaker 1: sales pitch, a demo of the technology itself. And he
Speaker 1: got the go ahead. So Laster kind of found a
Speaker 1: work around in order to get to do what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do, which was to make computer animated films. Uh,
Speaker 1: but these weren't intended at least not originally to reach
Speaker 1: a wider audience. It was really meant to pitch to
Speaker 1: potential customers. But that did change. So in a little
Speaker 1: bit later on, after it spun off and started It's
Speaker 1: It's shaky first Steps, Pixar premiered the film Luxo Junior
Speaker 1: at Siggraph. Now that's the short that introduces the famous
Speaker 1: Luxo desk lamp. That little lamp that bounces into frame
Speaker 1: with the Pixar logo, jumps up and down, on the
Speaker 1: ball and then becomes the eye for Pixar. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is where that that character comes from. And the short
Speaker 1: received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film,
Speaker 1: so people took notice of it. The award actually ended
Speaker 1: up going to a different film called a Greek Tragedy.
Speaker 1: But it's okay because Pixar would end up getting a
Speaker 1: lot of Academy Awards over its history, and I'll mention
Speaker 1: quite a few of them in both this one and
Speaker 1: more importantly in the second episode about the Pixar story.
Speaker 1: So by getting that notoriety of being a nominative for
Speaker 1: an Academy Award, it helped the company lands some commercial
Speaker 1: get pigs and design animation for other studios, so it
Speaker 1: kept business going, although Pixar as a company was still
Speaker 1: losing money, and when it would lose money, Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: would invest a little more money to keep it going
Speaker 1: in the hopes that it would eventually pay off big time.
Speaker 1: Um more on that in just a minute. So in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight seven, Pixar debuts a short film titled Red's
Speaker 1: Dream r e. D Red's Dream, also directed by John Laster,
Speaker 1: and they premiered that at the seven cigagraph in they
Speaker 1: have another short film come out. This one is called
Speaker 1: Tin Toy t I n Tin Toy, and it won
Speaker 1: an Academy Award for Best Best Animated Short. That exposure
Speaker 1: helped the company a lot and led to the eventual
Speaker 1: partnership with the Walt Disney Company. It got Disney's attention
Speaker 1: and eventually would lead to discussions between the two companies now.
Speaker 1: That same year, Night Pixar finished development on an animation
Speaker 1: system called mens M E n V, which stands for
Speaker 1: Modeling Environment. Um. I'll go into more detail on some
Speaker 1: of the technologies they developed in our second episode. In nine,
Speaker 1: Pixar completed work on a new short called knick Knack,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. It features a very determined plastic
Speaker 1: snowman inside a snow globe and he's trying so hard
Speaker 1: to get to a Hawaiian themed like a tropical themed
Speaker 1: setting including a a a lovely young lady toy. So
Speaker 1: you've got the snowman who gets a crush on this
Speaker 1: on this whole you know, sort of tropical uh toy,
Speaker 1: and is trying really hard to break out of his
Speaker 1: snow globe in order to get over to there. That's
Speaker 1: an adorable little short pixel. Pixar also started work on
Speaker 1: some commercials at that time. My favorite commercial that pixarre,
Speaker 1: or actually it's really it was an ad campaign that
Speaker 1: Pixar worked on, because it wasn't just a single commercial
Speaker 1: came out in the early nineties around that was an
Speaker 1: ad campaign for a cool mint, Listerine. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen those commercials, those are the ones where you
Speaker 1: see a little bottle of listerine swinging through the jungle
Speaker 1: and Baltimore's Tarzan Boy is playing in the background, which
Speaker 1: is an awesome poppy song. So I remember those distinctly
Speaker 1: because I remember seeing those commercials come on and they
Speaker 1: actually affected me, Like I thought, well, it's a neat commercial.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, I ignore them, but I like those.
Speaker 1: So pis are just kind of had this ability to
Speaker 1: inject personality into objects that otherwise would be inanimate, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was something that would serve them very well as
Speaker 1: they moved forward into the feature films later on. Getting
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen eighties, in nineteen eighty nine, Pete
Speaker 1: Doctor and Andrew Stanton both joined Pixar, and they both
Speaker 1: become very important later on. Both of them end up
Speaker 1: writing and directing films for Pixar. According to the book
Speaker 1: To Infinity and Beyond, by this time or around this time,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs had invested more than fifty million dollars into
Speaker 1: Pixar over the years, mostly as an attempt to just
Speaker 1: keep the business going. Sales of the Pixar Image Computer
Speaker 1: had really dropped off by this point, the computer, the company,
Speaker 1: rather it was losing money, so Jobs ended up doing
Speaker 1: a round of downsizing, in other words, firing a lot
Speaker 1: of employees, and Jobs was also in the middle of
Speaker 1: dealing with another troubled venture, his company, Next Incorporated, which
Speaker 1: produced the Next Computer, which is incredibly expensive but pretty
Speaker 1: impressive machine. The machine itself failed to make a large
Speaker 1: impact in the market, but it was the thing that
Speaker 1: convinced Apple's board to bring Steve Jobs back a little
Speaker 1: bit later. So by nine Steve Jobs decided he wanted
Speaker 1: to sell off the hardware division of Pixar to refocus
Speaker 1: Pixar into an animation studio and no longer be a
Speaker 1: company that's developing hardware for other industries. So he sold
Speaker 1: that hardware division for two million dollars to a company
Speaker 1: called Vicom Systems. Didn't do so well, for Vicom Systems.
Speaker 1: They filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy the following year. In ninete,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs fired half of Pixar's employees. The company was
Speaker 1: still losing money in he demanded all employees stock shares
Speaker 1: of the company, so he essentially bought the employees shares.
Speaker 1: In fact, he kept doing that throughout the years that
Speaker 1: fifty million he invested in the company. Uh, most of
Speaker 1: the time that ended up him being him purchasing employee
Speaker 1: stock share, So little by little he was increasing his
Speaker 1: ownership of Pixar. But it wasn't necessarily because he thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be a huge hit. It was because, uh,
Speaker 1: he had to keep investing money for it to stay around,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to have that that investment payoff. If
Speaker 1: he let the company just die, he would lose all
Speaker 1: that money, he would not have recaptured it at all.
Speaker 1: So at one point he technically shut down Pixar like
Speaker 1: Pixar was done, but he formed a new company called Pixar,
Speaker 1: so really it was shut down on paper only it
Speaker 1: wasn't really shut down. And he hired on all the
Speaker 1: people that he had not fired in that round of downsizing,
Speaker 1: and he had full ownership of the company. The employees
Speaker 1: did not get shares in the company. That would end
Speaker 1: up benefiting Steve Jobs big time in just a few years.
Speaker 1: One of the employees who left Pixar in was its
Speaker 1: co founder alv Ray Smith, so he had been there
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. His name was on the founding
Speaker 1: documents along with Ed Catnill. But this was his time
Speaker 1: to leave, so he departed Pixar and went on to
Speaker 1: co found a company called Altamira Software Corporation, which was
Speaker 1: later acquired by Microsoft. Then he worked for Microsoft for
Speaker 1: a while until he retired in nine so he kind
Speaker 1: of departs our story at this point. It was also
Speaker 1: right around this time that Pixar got a message from
Speaker 1: a little company called Disney, and they decided that Disney
Speaker 1: would fund Pixar in making the first feature length computer
Speaker 1: animated film. By those those conversations had developed a little further,
Speaker 1: Pixar actually agreed to go into a partnership with Disney
Speaker 1: and minute to a three picture deal three movies for
Speaker 1: twenty one million dollars. So the three movies essentially each
Speaker 1: had a budget of seven million if you just divide
Speaker 1: it up evenly. The first movie that was to be
Speaker 1: produced under that deal. Is the movie that became Toy Story.
Speaker 1: Now that came out in Steve Jobs had still been
Speaker 1: shopping the company around in those last couple of years,
Speaker 1: kind of seeing if anyone wanted to buy it. But
Speaker 1: he wasn't ready to just give up on it. He
Speaker 1: wanted to recapture the money he had invested in the
Speaker 1: in the company that fifty million dollars, which is a
Speaker 1: little tricky to do, you know, if people don't think
Speaker 1: that the company is worth that much. And he almost
Speaker 1: sold it a couple of times. He almost sold it
Speaker 1: to Microsoft at one point, but instead he held onto
Speaker 1: it and he wanted to see how Toy Story would
Speaker 1: do at the box office. Uh. They had screened Toy
Speaker 1: Story to critics it had not come out in theaters yet,
Speaker 1: and the early response was overwhelmingly positive. It was looking
Speaker 1: pretty good. So right around that time, Steve Jobs named
Speaker 1: himself Pixar CEO. According to several sources, this was mostly
Speaker 1: done out of necessity. The idea was put a recognizable
Speaker 1: name as CEO of the company. Steve Jobs was someone
Speaker 1: that people they knew who he was, so it's almost
Speaker 1: like having a celebrity as the head of your company
Speaker 1: to get that recognition out there. Technically, Cat Moll was
Speaker 1: really still the one calling the shots for Pixar, but
Speaker 1: the question was would Steve Jobs hold onto the company
Speaker 1: or not. It all would depend on the success of
Speaker 1: Toy Story. And here's where we end part one a cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: Will Toy Story be a hit? This is the problem
Speaker 1: with making a cliffhanger for a show that's about a
Speaker 1: stuff that's already happened. You guys already know the answer
Speaker 1: to that question, but play along with me. Join me
Speaker 1: for the next episode where I really focus on Pixar
Speaker 1: as it becomes a power player in computer animation and
Speaker 1: feature films. UH, in pushing technology forward an innovation. There's
Speaker 1: some great stories in there, including UH stories that transform
Speaker 1: not just Pixar, but the Walt Disney company itself. These
Speaker 1: are big deals. I mean, we're talking about billions of
Speaker 1: dollars from a financial standpoint, millions of people entertained from
Speaker 1: another perspective. So UH, tune in next week to hear
Speaker 1: part two. And if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of Text Stuff, maybe there's a topic you've
Speaker 1: always wanted to hear. More about Maybe you've got a
Speaker 1: specific technology you would like me to explain, or there's
Speaker 1: someone you would like me to interview, or if you
Speaker 1: have an idea of someone that should be a perfect
Speaker 1: guest host in the future, let me know. Send me
Speaker 1: an email. The address is tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook
Speaker 1: for Twitter, the handle of both of those is tech
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