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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech

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Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a tech Stuff classic episode.

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Speaker 1: So last Friday I brought you The Pixar Story Part one,

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Speaker 1: so it should come as no surprise that today we're

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Speaker 1: going to listen to The Pixar Story Part two. This

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Speaker 1: episode originally published on August third, twenty sixteen.

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Speaker 2: Hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 1: So with the last episode, I left off just before

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Speaker 1: Pixar was going to debut its first feature length computer

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Speaker 1: animated film, which of course is Toy Story, and I

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Speaker 1: left it off as a fake cliffhanger. Would the company succeed?

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Speaker 1: Of course they did. But one thing I want to

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Speaker 1: out is that Toy Story itself was partly made possible

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Speaker 1: because of another movie, not a Pixar film, but the

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Speaker 1: movie A Nightmare Before Christmas, And the reason I say

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Speaker 1: this is a Nightmare Before Christmas was a stop motion

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Speaker 1: animated film produced by Tim Burton, and it was the

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Speaker 1: first animated film that Disney agreed to distribute. Even though

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Speaker 1: the animation itself was not done by Walt Disney Animation Studios,

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Speaker 1: and that actually laid the groundwork for Pixar to follow

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Speaker 1: along with Toy Story. Also one other connection between the two,

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Speaker 1: John Lassiter of Pixar fame and Tim Burton both attended

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Speaker 1: cal Arts at the same time. So that's kind of cool,

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Speaker 1: little kind of a connection.

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Speaker 2: So one thing I got to get off the bat,

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Speaker 2: this is going.

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Speaker 1: To be true for all the different movies that I

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Speaker 1: talk about that Pixar has worked on. Each film required

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Speaker 1: many years to finish.

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Speaker 2: A team.

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Speaker 1: He might work on a movie for five years at

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Speaker 1: a time. It's not that unusual, particularly with these computer

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Speaker 1: animated films, and during the development of Toy Story, the

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Speaker 1: characters and script went through lots and lots of changes.

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Speaker 1: Also not unusual with Pixar. They've always said that story

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Speaker 1: comes first. They have to get the story right, and

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Speaker 1: if they don't have the story just right, people don't

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Speaker 1: care how good your animation is. If the story doesn't

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Speaker 1: hold your attention, you eventually just say, well that was

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Speaker 1: pretty and flashy, but I didn't really care about anything.

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Speaker 1: Back in the original run, when they were first drafting

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Speaker 1: out the story for Toy Story, buzz Light Year had

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Speaker 1: a totally different name. He was called Tempest, which was

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Speaker 1: a reference to the classic arcade machine, and Woody originally

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Speaker 1: wasn't a pull string toy. He was a Ventriloquists dummy.

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Speaker 1: But Michael Eisner, who at the time was Disney's CEO,

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Speaker 1: stepped in and asked Pixar to change it because he said,

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Speaker 1: dummies are inherently creepy, and it is difficult for me to.

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Speaker 2: Disagree with that.

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Speaker 1: I don't agree with a lot of things that Michael

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Speaker 1: Eisner did, but I definitely agree that ventriloquist dummies are creepy.

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Speaker 2: And another major change.

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Speaker 1: Was Buzz's whole worldview. In those early drafts, Buzz light

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Speaker 1: Year knew that he was a toy, and he knew

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Speaker 1: that there was a television show that tied in with

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Speaker 1: a toy. But then they had Tim Allen come in

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Speaker 1: to do the voiceovers the acting, and Tim Allen's take

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Speaker 1: on Buzz was that the character was completely oblivious. He

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Speaker 1: lived the role of a space ranger. That is what

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Speaker 1: Buzz was. He wasn't a toy of a space ranger.

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Speaker 1: He was a space ranger. And the writers thought, well,

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Speaker 1: that's way more interesting, So they actually reworked the story

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Speaker 1: based upon Tim Allen's performance, and they started to change things.

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Speaker 1: So this whole process goes on for a long time,

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Speaker 1: and according to people at Pixtar, those characters were really

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Speaker 1: tough to nail down. Disney executives found the initial characters

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Speaker 1: a little too wholesome and boring, which is kind of

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Speaker 1: interesting to think that Disney execs would say.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, these guys, there's not a lot.

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Speaker 1: There's not a lot going on here. We need some

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Speaker 1: more conflict, We need them to not be these just

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Speaker 1: perfect toys. So the next iteration went a little too

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Speaker 1: far in the other direction, and Pixar says, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: kind of accidentally turned Woody into a real jerkface.

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Speaker 2: He became just unlikable.

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Speaker 1: So they had to figure out where was the balance

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Speaker 1: between these two extremes, and fortunately the writers were able

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Speaker 1: to come up with that balance, though for a while

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Speaker 1: it actually looked like Disney might pull the plug on

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Speaker 1: toy story. Keep in mind, Disney was providing the funding here.

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Speaker 1: Disney was giving Pixar twenty well not giving, but providing

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Speaker 1: twenty one million dollars for Pixar to produce three movies,

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Speaker 1: and they were Disney was also going to provide the

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Speaker 1: distribution for Pixar, and in return, Disney was taking an

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Speaker 1: enormous share of the revenue should these movies prove to

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Speaker 1: be successful. The whole project required way more resources than

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Speaker 1: Picks are anticipated. They had only been working on short

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Speaker 1: films up to that point and did not realize what

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Speaker 1: a different creature a feature length film can be. It's

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Speaker 1: not just oh, this one short we did require ten people,

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Speaker 1: but this movie is four times longer, so we'll need

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Speaker 1: forty people. It's way more complicated than that. They originally

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Speaker 1: thought they could get away with just using eight animators

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Speaker 1: for toy story, and on top of that, they would

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Speaker 1: have people in lighting and textures, but eight animators to

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Speaker 1: actually create the animation. They ended up with thirty three

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Speaker 1: by the end of the production, and all the other

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Speaker 1: departments also needed more people than they originally estimated, so

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Speaker 1: with each film, Pixar would typically add a few more animators.

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Speaker 2: By the time Monsters Inc.

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Speaker 1: Rolls around, for example, there were fifty animators working on

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Speaker 1: that movie. So it became clear that this feature link

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Speaker 1: game was different and not a big surprise that Pixar

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Speaker 1: had to learn this. It was new territory for them.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 1: They also had to make sure that everyone who was

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Speaker 1: working on animation was going to animate the characters in

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Speaker 1: a consistent way. You couldn't have different animators manipulate characters

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Speaker 1: so that they have their own quirks. When one animator

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Speaker 1: is working on it but not on another, it's inconsistent

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Speaker 1: and disorienting. So typically a lead animator would be assigned

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Speaker 1: to every major character to create the desired performance, but

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Speaker 1: an individual animator might work on every single character in

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Speaker 1: a film at some point or another. It may just

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Speaker 1: be that the characters in the background for that sequence,

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Speaker 1: but they still have to act in character.

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Speaker 2: Acting is interesting because normally.

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Speaker 1: We think of it as a creation between an actor

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Speaker 1: and maybe a director, or perhaps a couple of actors

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Speaker 1: and a director, but in this case, it's an entire

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Speaker 1: department of people coming together to determine what acting is

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Speaker 1: for each individual character, sometimes multiple departments of people, so

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Speaker 1: much more complicated than a live.

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Speaker 2: Action sort of production.

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Speaker 1: The first bit that they actually animated for Toy Story

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Speaker 1: was the sequence in which the toy soldiers deploy to

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Speaker 1: see what Andy is getting for his birthday. So to

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Speaker 1: get an idea of how those soldiers would actually move around.

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Speaker 1: The animators ended up strapping their feet to boards, and

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Speaker 1: then they tried to move around with their feet connected

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Speaker 1: to each other on these solid wooden boards. Supposedly the

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Speaker 1: first person to try this actually was nailing their shoes

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Speaker 1: to the boards and did so the wrong way, in

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Speaker 1: other words, nailing up from the board through.

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Speaker 2: The shoe, which seems to be a little poorly thought

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Speaker 2: out in my mind.

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Speaker 1: But at any rate, you had these animators trying to

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Speaker 1: get around so that they could get a good basis

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Speaker 1: for how the characters should move in the actual film,

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Speaker 1: and apparently it was quite the scene it pisar HQ.

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Speaker 2: Now, computer animation.

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Speaker 1: Takes several steps to complete, just like traditional animation does.

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Speaker 1: So in computer animation, you have to build the computer

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Speaker 1: models for the characters, so this is the three dimensional

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Speaker 1: representation of your character. You have to also do that

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Speaker 1: for sets and props. You can't just do it for

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Speaker 1: just the characters, otherwise everything else is flat, and you

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Speaker 1: animate the sequences according to the storyboard and performances. But

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Speaker 1: at that point, even after you've modeled everything and you've

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Speaker 1: figured out the physics and you know how different parts

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Speaker 1: move in relation to each other. You still end up

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Speaker 1: with kind of a featureless and plastic figure. Everything looks

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Speaker 1: kind of like it's just a simple solid body plastic.

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Speaker 1: So then you have to overlay color textures and shading

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Speaker 1: to give more definition to the characters. And then you

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Speaker 1: have to add lighting sequences to create the mood you

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Speaker 1: want for that scene and the effects you need, and.

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Speaker 2: This gets really complicated.

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Speaker 1: In a physical space where you're actually shooting live action,

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Speaker 1: you can move lights around and see what sort of

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Speaker 1: effects you get. You know what happens if you light

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Speaker 1: the scene from the back as opposed to from the front.

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Speaker 1: But in computer animation you have to actually program all

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Speaker 1: that in, at least initially. You might eventually come up

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Speaker 1: with a lighting software suite that does most of this automatically,

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Speaker 1: and then you can make minor tweaks at that point,

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Speaker 1: but when you start out, you have to program how

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Speaker 1: the light behaves. The computer doesn't magically know that light

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Speaker 1: from one direction is going to create a different effect

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Speaker 1: than light from another direction. You have to build all

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Speaker 1: that in, so it's incredibly time consuming and work intensive.

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Speaker 1: It involves a lot of technical know how and artistic

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Speaker 1: know how as well, so it's not an easy job.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Originally Pixar employees thought they could render the entire film

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Speaker 1: in twenty months using fifty three processors. That's just the

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Speaker 1: rendering stage, mind you, that's not the animation, but twenty

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Speaker 1: months just to render the work that they had created.

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Speaker 1: But turned out they needed three hundred machines to do

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Speaker 1: the job, not fifty three processors, three hundred computers, and

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Speaker 1: today Pixar has more than twenty thousand processors to work

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Speaker 1: on render jobs, which means they could take that raw

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Speaker 1: footage from Toy Story and render it in real time

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Speaker 1: by the end of If you were to start rendering

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Speaker 1: all that footage and you started the DVD of Toy

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Speaker 1: Story at the same time, you would be done with

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Speaker 1: both at around the same time. Not necessarily true with

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Speaker 1: later Pixar films, which are more complicated than that first

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Speaker 1: Toy Story movie, but it does illustrate how much more

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Speaker 1: sophisticated things have become since then. And once again we

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Speaker 1: see that Moore's law has brought down the cost of

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Speaker 1: computing to a point where this sort of thing is possible.

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Speaker 1: It's not outside the reach of a production studio now.

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Speaker 1: At the time that would have been impossible. It would

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Speaker 1: have been too expensive to have twenty thousand processors, let

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Speaker 1: alone the idea of well, how do we power them

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Speaker 1: and keep them cold enough so that they work, and

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Speaker 1: where do we put them and all that kind of stuff.

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Speaker 1: But we've seen the chips get smaller, we've seen them

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Speaker 1: get more powerful, we've seen more sophisticated processors with multiple cores,

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Speaker 1: including graphics processors, and of course we've seen that price

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Speaker 1: come down over time, so now it's less of an

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Speaker 1: insurmountable obstacle. Still expensive, just not as expensive as it

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Speaker 1: would have been back then. So after making Toy Story,

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Speaker 1: John Lassiter realized that a feature link computer animated film

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Speaker 1: was way too much work for a single director. He

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Speaker 1: was the director for Toy Story, but he realized this

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Speaker 1: is too big a job for one person to head up.

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Speaker 1: So from that point forward, the Pixar films would have

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Speaker 1: multiple directors, with normally one acting as kind of the

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Speaker 1: primary director to steer the vision of the film, and

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Speaker 1: others to oversee specific aspects of the production like cinematography

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Speaker 1: and lighting and that sort of stuff. The movie came

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Speaker 1: out on November twenty second, nineteen ninety five, and it

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Speaker 1: was directed by John Lassiter. Several writers worked on the story,

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Speaker 1: including Joss Whedon, who is of course the creator of

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Speaker 1: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly and Angel and things

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Speaker 1: like that. Whedon, by the way, wrote a couple of

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Speaker 1: my favorite lines, including You're a sad, strange little man

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Speaker 1: and you have My Pity and one of my favorite

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Speaker 1: lines of all time, wind the Frog. This movie also

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Speaker 1: marked the first time Pixar worked with the musician Randy Newman,

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Speaker 1: who would go on to compose the music for six

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Speaker 1: more Pixar movies. So he hasn't worked on all of them,

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Speaker 1: but he worked on a lot of them. And also

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Speaker 1: on a personal note, Toy Story was the first movie

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Speaker 1: I saw while dating the woman who would later on

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Speaker 1: become my wife. It took some convincing to get her

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Speaker 1: to the theater to go and see a movie called

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Speaker 1: Toy Story, but I eventually convinced her to do so,

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Speaker 1: and afterwards she became a lifelong Pixar fan.

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Speaker 2: So I did something right. Nineteen years woo now, Toy

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Speaker 2: Story was a really big hit.

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Speaker 1: According to box office Mojo, Toy Story's global box office

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Speaker 1: amounted to three hundred and sixty two million dollars, but

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Speaker 1: Pixar's deal with Disney meant it only received a small

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Speaker 1: percentage of the profits. Between ten and fifteen percent of

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Speaker 1: the profits. Most of that money went to Disney, not

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Speaker 1: to Pixar. Some folks over at Pixar felt that this

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Speaker 1: was kind of unfair that Disney was providing the distribution

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Speaker 1: in marketing and that initial maybe seven million dollars you

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Speaker 1: could argue for the budget of the movie, but otherwise

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Speaker 1: wasn't responsible for the actual success of the movie. Disney,

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Speaker 1: apart from giving some notes, didn't determine the story. They

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Speaker 1: didn't do the animation, they didn't do the effects, they

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Speaker 1: didn't hire the voice actors.

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Speaker 2: So some folks over at Pixar were.

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Speaker 1: A little not happy with this arrangement, but that's how

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Speaker 1: things were at the time. Shortly after Toy Story premier,

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Speaker 1: like a week after Toy Story came out, Steve Jobs

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Speaker 1: made the big move and took Pixar public with an

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Speaker 1: initial public offering or IPO. It ended up being the

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Speaker 1: biggest technology IPO in nineteen ninety five, which was also

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Speaker 1: a year that saw Netscape go public. If you don't

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Speaker 1: know what Netscape is, go look it up. It used

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Speaker 1: to be the name in computer.

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Speaker 2: Browsers for the Internet back in the day.

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Speaker 1: Now before the IPO, the estimated value of a share

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Speaker 1: of Pixar stock was between twelve and fourteen dollars. That's

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Speaker 1: what analysts were predicting that Pixar shares would be between

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Speaker 1: twelve and fourteen bucks per share, But when trading opened,

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Speaker 1: the initial share price was actually twenty two dollars, and

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Speaker 1: toy Story's incredible opening was probably part of the reason

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Speaker 1: why it was higher than originally estimated. During that first

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Speaker 1: day of trading, the stock reached its highest point at

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Speaker 1: forty six dollars per share, which means it more than

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Speaker 1: doubled its value from the opening bell of the stock exchange. Now,

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Speaker 1: granted it didn't end at forty six dollars per year

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Speaker 1: on that first day. It actually settled to thirty nine

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Speaker 1: dollars per year, so still higher than what it opened at.

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Speaker 2: Because Steve Jobs.

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Speaker 1: Owned practically all the shares in the company before taking

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Speaker 1: it public, it turned him into a billionaire a billion

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Speaker 1: air overnight. He had spent fifty million dollars on this

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Speaker 1: company over time trying to keep it afloat. That gamble

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Speaker 1: paid off big time and of course, it gave Pixar

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Speaker 1: a bit more leverage.

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Speaker 2: It was a force to be reckoned with a.

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Speaker 1: One point four six billion dollar market value force. So

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Speaker 1: imagine that. Imagine that you were working for a company that,

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Speaker 1: over the course of a week, has its first feature

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Speaker 1: length film come out and then is valued at one

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Speaker 1: point four to six billion dollars. It must have been incredible. Also,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, David di Francesco, whom we talked

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Speaker 1: about in the last episode, received an Academy Award for

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Speaker 1: the develop element of a film input scanning technique. And

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Speaker 1: Pixar was continuing to develop new technologies in the film industry,

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Speaker 1: and eventually it was also licensing those technologies out to

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Speaker 1: other companies. So it wasn't just that they were developing

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Speaker 1: tools in house to get their stuff done.

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Speaker 2: They were innovating in.

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Speaker 1: Technology and then making money through licenses so that other

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Speaker 1: production companies could take advantage of those advancements.

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Speaker 3: We'll be back with more about Pixar after this quick break.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, Pixar completed work on their short

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Speaker 1: animated film Jerry's Game, which would win a Best Animated

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Speaker 1: Short Film Oscar for Pixar that would be their second

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Speaker 1: best animated short film, Oscar. They would win many, many more.

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Speaker 1: And also in nineteen ninety seven, Pixar hired Randy S. Nelson,

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Speaker 1: who would become the dean of Pixar University. Now this

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Speaker 1: is not like a giant college campus somewhere akin to

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Speaker 1: Monsters University.

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Speaker 2: This is Pixar's.

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Speaker 1: Internal skills development department, which gives Pixar employees the opportunity

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Speaker 1: to take classes in all sorts of fields and disciplines,

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Speaker 1: from story development and screenwriting to drawing and sculpting. And

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Speaker 1: this Nelson guy, he sounds like someone I'd really get

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Speaker 1: along with. He was a founder of the Flying Karamtsov Brothers,

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Speaker 1: so he's a juggler, and as a juggler, if you

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Speaker 1: didn't know, I'm also a juggler.

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Speaker 2: I really respect that.

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Speaker 1: He had also worked with Steve Jobs both at Apple

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Speaker 1: and at Next. Remember Jobs had been essentially forced out

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Speaker 1: of Apple and had founded a new company called Next Computers,

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Speaker 1: eventually abandoning the hardware side of Next Computers and developing

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Speaker 1: software instead. Now, according to Nelson, if you were to

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Speaker 1: take all the courses, or to take a full suite

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Speaker 1: of courses at Pixar University, you would have the equivalent

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Speaker 1: of a bachelor's degree education in fine arts. That's how

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Speaker 1: comprehensive their internal development department was. They were dedicated to

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Speaker 1: making certain that employees had the opportunity to learn new

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Speaker 1: skills and develop ones that they had already started to

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Speaker 1: create or to build on previously. And this included all

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Speaker 1: sorts of different types of activities, including improvisational acting. So

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Speaker 1: you might end up finding yourself sitting next to the

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Speaker 1: head of the company, but you're both classmates at that class.

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Speaker 1: So it also helped break down the hierarchical barriers between

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Speaker 1: bosses and employees. The motto of Pixar University is alienis not,

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Speaker 1: which I know I'm terribly mispronouncing because I have little

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Speaker 1: Latin and less Greek, just like a mister Shakespeare Shakespeare,

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Speaker 1: but the Latin phrase actually means alone no longer. And

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Speaker 1: it also is a secondary Latin inscription on the Pixar

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Speaker 1: University crest, which says tempus pecunia somnum, which means time, money, sleep.

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Speaker 1: The three of those, I think sleep is the one

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Speaker 1: that the typical Pixar employee has the least.

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Speaker 2: Of, maybe time. It's kind of hard to say.

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Speaker 1: Moving on over to talk about nineteen ninety seven a bit.

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Speaker 1: Pixar and Disney renegotiated their agreement at that time.

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Speaker 2: So if you.

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Speaker 1: Remember, they originally had come up with an I this

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Speaker 1: deal that that Pixar was going to make three movies

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Speaker 1: for Disney, after which there would be time to negotiate

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Speaker 1: a new relationship instead, and in return, Disney was going

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Speaker 1: to get the massive majority of the profits from those movies.

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Speaker 1: But the renegotiation went a little better for Pixar. They

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Speaker 1: agreed to do a ten year, five film deal and

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Speaker 1: in that deal, Pixar would receive fifty percent of the

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Speaker 1: profits from the films. The New York Times reported on

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Speaker 1: the change in agreements and revealed that the new Pixar

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Speaker 1: film was going to.

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Speaker 2: Be called Bugs.

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Speaker 1: So this was before the movie had come out. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: they were still working on it. It was still in development,

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Speaker 1: so the title had not been finalized. Now that arrangement,

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Speaker 1: with the new deal of being a ten year, five

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Speaker 1: film contract, answered some of the criticisms industry analysts had

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Speaker 1: about the Pixar IPO, because when Pixar went public, some

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Speaker 1: analysts were saying, this seems really like investors are pushing

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Speaker 1: this company beyond its actual value, because keep in mind,

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Speaker 1: while they're doing great work, and while their movies are

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Speaker 1: making huge amounts of money in the box office, that

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Speaker 1: most of that money is not going to Pixar, it's

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Speaker 1: going to Disney. So maybe you shouldn't drive the value

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Speaker 1: of this company up so high since it's really not

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Speaker 1: earning money for itself. Once this new arrangement came in,

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Speaker 1: that took some of that criticism away. Bugs of course

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Speaker 1: ended up being A Bugs Life, which would come out

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, and it broke the record for

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Speaker 1: a Thanksgiving weekend film opening in the United States. The

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Speaker 1: movie combines a couple of famous stories you got ESOPs

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Speaker 1: the Ant and the Grasshopper as part of it, and

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Speaker 1: a very healthy dose of the Seven Samurai as the

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Speaker 1: various core story elements.

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Speaker 2: And the Pixar team said that A Bugs Life was particularly.

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Speaker 1: Challenging and rewarding. The movie called for a lot of

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Speaker 1: characters on screen at once. I mean hundreds and hundreds

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Speaker 1: of insects all on screen at the same time, which

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Speaker 1: requires a lot of processing power. You're talking about a

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Speaker 1: ton of animation. You don't want your characters all just

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Speaker 1: standing still, and that requires a lot of computer power. Also,

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Speaker 1: on top of that, the characters had lots of limbs.

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Speaker 1: I mean, insects have lots of legs, so most of

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Speaker 1: these creatures had six legs. Some of them also had

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Speaker 1: wings or also antenna. On top of that, these settings

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Speaker 1: were on uneven surfaces, and those surfaces had to have

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Speaker 1: an organic look to them. There was also fire and

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Speaker 1: smoke in the movie, which is notoriously difficult to get

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Speaker 1: just right with computer animation, or at least it was

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Speaker 1: at that time, and so it was very resource heavy.

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Speaker 1: It was a very ambitious project to take on after

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Speaker 1: toy story. Now, one of the defining looks of the

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Speaker 1: film is the translucent nature of the various leaves and flowers.

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Speaker 1: So John Laster said it was like characters were living

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Speaker 1: in a world of stained glass, and that the animators

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Speaker 1: had to create ways for light to behave properly to

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Speaker 1: shine through these surfaces. And again it meant creating new rules,

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Speaker 1: making up new rules so that things looked right. They

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Speaker 1: didn't just look pretty, but they looked natural. And the

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Speaker 1: story of a bug's life changed a lot too over

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Speaker 1: the course of its production. Originally, the main character was

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Speaker 1: the head of the circus bugs, and that was an

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Speaker 1: ant named Red. But the film didn't find a voice

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Speaker 1: with that main character in place. They couldn't figure out, well,

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Speaker 1: what's the story here, where's the character arc? Why would

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Speaker 1: this character stick with this plan of pretending to be

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Speaker 1: a group of warriors to fight off grasshoppers.

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Speaker 2: He has no steak, he could just leave.

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Speaker 1: And that's when they realized that perhaps a couple of

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Speaker 1: the ants that would be asking the circus performers for

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Speaker 1: help are the real main characters. And eventually those ants

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Speaker 1: were reduced to a single ant, Flick, and that became

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Speaker 1: the main character.

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Speaker 2: So it was interesting to see that story remained the

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Speaker 2: chief concern. These other technical.

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Speaker 1: Issues, while really fascinating, they were secondary. It wouldn't matter

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Speaker 1: how pretty the screen was. Again, if you went and

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Speaker 1: saw it, you didn't care about the characters. Now, while

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Speaker 1: A Bug's Life was in production, a team led by

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Speaker 1: David D. Francesco created a new way to transfer computer

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Speaker 1: animation onto film stock.

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Speaker 2: Now remember this.

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Speaker 1: Is before most theaters were able to have digital projectors.

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Speaker 1: There were only a few digital projectors in place in

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Speaker 1: a couple of theaters around North America. So we're still

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Speaker 1: talking about an era in which physical reels of film

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Speaker 1: are produced and projected onto screens. So Defrancesco's method was

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Speaker 1: using a laser recording system that became known as Pixar Vision.

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Speaker 1: Used solid state lasers to record images onto film. So

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Speaker 1: film is photo reactive, meaning that when light hits it,

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Speaker 1: there's a chemical change, and that's where we're able to

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Speaker 1: capture images on film. Lasers are really really precise, way

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Speaker 1: more precise than cathode ray tubes, which was the typical

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Speaker 1: way to transfer computer animation over to film. So using

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Speaker 1: lasers allowed for a much higher quality color reproduction and

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Speaker 1: sharper images on film than the earlier versions did. Plus

438
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:37,399
Speaker 1: d Francesco's invention was faster than the cathode ray tube method.

439
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: If you wanted to use a CRT method, it would

440
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: take thirty five seconds to record a single frame of

441
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 1: computer animation onto film. With the laser method it took

442
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: eight seconds, so much much faster, four times faster than

443
00:26:55,359 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: the traditional method. So DeFrancesco would receive a Technical Academy

444
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: Award for this invention. He started he was starting to

445
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 1: rack up those those Academy awards for his technological contributions

446
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: to the film industry. Now, the big advantage of using

447
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: that laser recording system is that allowed for that much

448
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: higher quality transfer of an image onto film, and the

449
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: first time it was used was on A Bugs Life,

450
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: So the transfers that were made for A Bugs Life

451
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: relied upon the system, and it would be used on

452
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 1: lots of future films.

453
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 2: Though by the time we get around to Monsters.

454
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:34,440
Speaker 1: Incorporated, Pixar was really starting to push for digital projectors

455
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: in more movie theaters, saying that the digital projection is

456
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: just superior. You get more vibrant colors and sharper images

457
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,080
Speaker 1: than you ever will with film. You don't have the

458
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: jitter that you would have with film, you don't have

459
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:52,120
Speaker 1: other physical limitations of film. There, you would have pure

460
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: digital experience, which for computer animated film makes perfect sense.

461
00:27:56,600 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 2: If you're talking about other types of movies, you can have.

462
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 1: A legitimate argument that the film creates a certain sensibility

463
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:07,880
Speaker 1: that you cannot easily replicate using digital projection. Quentin Tarantino

464
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: would go bonkers if you told him from now on

465
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: you can only do movies in digital, you cannot do

466
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 1: them in film, and it does have a very different effect.

467
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:22,920
Speaker 1: But in computer animated movies, that's less of a problem

468
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: because the whole film is digital. It's only when you

469
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,919
Speaker 1: put it onto film that it becomes analog. There was

470
00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:34,880
Speaker 1: never a physical object for you to shoot on film in.

471
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 2: The first place. Now, in nineteen ninety nine.

472
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,719
Speaker 1: Toy Story two comes out that would end up being

473
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: a bit of a point of contention a little bit

474
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: later between Disney and Pixar, and this development process was

475
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: uneasy from the beginning, actually, because Disney originally wanted this

476
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: to be a direct to video sequel.

477
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 2: If you remember the nineties.

478
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, Disney was really into creating

479
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: directive video sequels of a lot of its very popular

480
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: feature length films, so much so that it became.

481
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 2: A bit of a joke in the industry.

482
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: But John Laster and his team fought for a cinematic release,

483
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 1: and eventually Disney agreed. They said, all right, fine, we

484
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: will make this a theatrical release film, not a directive

485
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: video sequel. Now, during the making of the movie, there

486
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 1: were some really huge setbacks. A terrible sequence of events happened.

487
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: So first, the files for the film were all saved

488
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: on a Linux system and someone ran the function r

489
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: M star on the hard drive holding all the Toy

490
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 1: Story two files. Our M stands for remove, essentially, it's

491
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: to delete stuff, and STAR pretty much means everything you find.

492
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: So someone was essentially deleting all the material off of

493
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:00,239
Speaker 1: a hard drive, and that hard drive happened to have

494
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 1: all of Toy Story two's assets on it, including reference files, animation,

495
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: the completed movie. Up to that point, all of it

496
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: was on this hard drive. So when this was detected,

497
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: people saw that various assets were starting to disappear, including

498
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: entire sequences and even characters. They began to get deleted,

499
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: and to make matters worse, the official backup for the film.

500
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: They found out it hadn't been backing up for a

501
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 1: couple of months. There had been a failure that had

502
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: not been corrected or addressed. Instead, the team which was

503
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: working furiously to try and get this movie done on time,

504
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: was relying on the primary copy of the movie and

505
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: the backup was outdated. Now, if this is where that

506
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: story ended, things would have turned out very differently. The

507
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: whole film would have been set back a huge amount.

508
00:30:56,320 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: But the technical director for the movie happened to have

509
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: a copy of all the files on her work computer.

510
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 1: Her computer that she used to work from home. She

511
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: had requested that computer so that she could occasionally spend

512
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: time at home with her family and not just live

513
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: at the office, And so the team actually sent people

514
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: to her house to physically take her computer, secure it

515
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: in the backseat of her car, and then very gently

516
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: transport it back to Pixar so that they could recapture

517
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: all the assets that had been lost in the Great

518
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: file deletion.

519
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 2: And they were able to do it, and the.

520
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: Movie was able to continue in development and not suffer

521
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: this terrible setback. But then they had another major challenge

522
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: when Disney executive, seeing an early cut, said they didn't

523
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: like where it was headed, so the team had to

524
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: rework the film, but Disney said, we are not going

525
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: to change the release date. You still have the same

526
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 1: deadline to get the movie finished, even though you have

527
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: to go back and rework a lot.

528
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 2: Of this stuff.

529
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,600
Speaker 1: So teams would start putting in as many as thirty

530
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 1: six to forty eight hours in a row of work,

531
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 1: so just working for two days non stop, like not

532
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: even to take a real night's sleep, just working on

533
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: sequences to get this movie finished in time for the deadline.

534
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: Lee Unkrich who oversaw cinematography for the film, said that

535
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: while they were technically capable of putting a camera anywhere

536
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: within a scene and have it do anything that could

537
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: disobey the laws of physics, because it's a virtual camera,

538
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 1: you can place the virtual camera anywhere you want.

539
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to follow the rules of a real

540
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 2: world camera.

541
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: He said that if you did that, they found that

542
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: audiences responded as if things weren't right. If it didn't

543
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: behave the way an actual camera did, you lost the audience.

544
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: So you actually had to restrict the virtual camera, give

545
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: it the same limitations a physical camera would have, which

546
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting that despite the fact you have the

547
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: technical capability, you couldn't really take advantage of it in

548
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: that way and still manage to keep your audience. Now,

549
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 1: Toy Story two was the first sequel to earn more

550
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 1: money than the original film. It broke opening weekend records

551
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: in the UK and the US and in Japan, and

552
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 1: it was the first film to be created, mastered, and

553
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: exhibited digitally. Now not exclusively digitally, because again at this time,

554
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: not that many theaters had digital protectors, but the ones

555
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: that did showed Toy Story two in digital format. In

556
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: two thousand, Pixar would premiere the short for the Birds,

557
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 1: which would of course go on to win an Oscar

558
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:03,080
Speaker 1: for Best Short Animated Film, and Pixar would relocate to

559
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:08,120
Speaker 1: a new headquarters in Emeryville, California. In two thousand and one,

560
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: they debuted Monsters Inc. Now, this was the first Pixar

561
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: film not directed by John Lassiter. He had worked on

562
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: Toy Story, A Bugs Life and Toy Story two, but

563
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: Pete Doctor came in as the main director and David

564
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: Silverman and Lee Unkrich co directed it.

565
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 2: Billy Crystal, who voiced the part.

566
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 1: Of Mike Wazowski, was originally offered the role of Buzz

567
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:34,280
Speaker 1: light Year for Toy Story, but he turned it down,

568
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:37,800
Speaker 1: and he said that this was such a huge mistake

569
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: that he leapt at the opportunity to voice a character

570
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: in a new Pixar movie. One of the big advancements

571
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: they made in computer animation for Monsters Inc. Was building

572
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: realistic looking fur, and when you think about it, you

573
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: realize how important it was for them to develop this,

574
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:59,319
Speaker 1: considering the types of furry creatures they had in Monsters Inc.

575
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 2: If you don't create a.

576
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: System to animate the fur automatically, it means that you

577
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: would have to animate every strand of fur by hand.

578
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 2: And if you didn't even.

579
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:13,319
Speaker 1: Allow it, like maybe maybe you say, all right, let's

580
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: not animate every individual hair. That's ridiculous. Sully has more

581
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 1: than a million hairs over his entire body and animating

582
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: every single one of those individually by hand.

583
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 2: Is not possible. Let's group them together.

584
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: Well, if you did that, then you would end up

585
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,760
Speaker 1: with this weird, matted look where hair still wouldn't seem

586
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:36,919
Speaker 1: to move naturally. So they had to find a way

587
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: to solve that, and they did that by building a

588
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 1: simulator so each hair behaves according to the rules set

589
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 1: in this simulator. It took Home a long time to

590
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 1: get the simulator just right so that hairs would behave properly,

591
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 1: So the team had to test the program to make

592
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 1: sure that the fur and hair is moving in the

593
00:35:56,400 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 1: right way. They'd had to make tweaks whenever it didn't

594
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: look right, and I had to work very hard to

595
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:05,680
Speaker 1: solve collision problems with the fur. And some of the

596
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 1: other issues were that if a character moved too quickly,

597
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: the fur would sometimes go crazy and stretch too far

598
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 1: like it suddenly it would act like a rubber band

599
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: and stretch across the screen, and it wasn't until later

600
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,720
Speaker 1: that they figured out where that problem was coming from. Also,

601
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 1: they went ahead and made a decision that certain fur,

602
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: like the fur around Sully's face, wouldn't be animated by

603
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: this dynamic computer simulation.

604
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 2: Because they wanted to have really tight.

605
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: Control for the purposes of performance and expression. They didn't

606
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 1: want the fur to be distracting. So for those cases

607
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:48,800
Speaker 1: the fur was not dynamic. It was actually static and

608
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: could be animated by hand if necessary. But the rest

609
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:54,920
Speaker 1: of the fur, the stuff that was over Sully's body

610
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: in general, that followed the rules of the simulation they

611
00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 1: also want to have then created a program to simulate

612
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 1: the natural movements of clothing. In Toy Story two, they

613
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:08,320
Speaker 1: had to animate all of Awl of Owl's toy barn.

614
00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 1: They had to animate all of his clothing by hand,

615
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:13,359
Speaker 1: and according to the animators, this was a real pain

616
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:16,799
Speaker 1: in the butt because not only did it take a

617
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: lot of time to get clothes to animate in the

618
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 1: way that they looked right and they behaved according to

619
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: the contours of the person wearing the clothing, and.

620
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:30,239
Speaker 2: So the worst part is if you do your job right,

621
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 2: no one notices. They only notice if you don't do.

622
00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 1: Your job right because it doesn't look right. So it's

623
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:40,279
Speaker 1: a frustrating thing to think you spend a lot of

624
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 1: time to get something to work just right so that people.

625
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 2: Do not notice it.

626
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,800
Speaker 1: And so as a result, they created this automated program

627
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: that would save time and frustration and the animators could

628
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 1: work on other stuff that was more important from a

629
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: performance standpoint.

630
00:37:56,920 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 3: We're going to take a quick break for some messages

631
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 3: from our sponsor and be back with more about the

632
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 3: Pixar story. Glenn McQueen, who was a supervising animator for

633
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 3: Monsters Zinc, spoke to an interview about how the increase

634
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 3: in computer power was.

635
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 2: Both good and bad.

636
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 1: It was good in that it gave animators more power

637
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: to create visual complexity, but with that complexity comes the

638
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,240
Speaker 1: challenge of making sure all the details in the frame

639
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: are working properly. And as we've seen in all realms

640
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 1: of computers, not just in animation, if you add more power,

641
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:42,719
Speaker 1: programmers or animators or directors will find ways to make

642
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 1: use of that power, so you're never actually ahead of

643
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: the game.

644
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 2: You know.

645
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: This is why when we get a new computer with

646
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 1: an even more powerful processor. You start to think, well,

647
00:38:55,320 --> 00:39:01,000
Speaker 1: this thing isn't isn't faster than what my old computer was, Like, well,

648
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:04,400
Speaker 1: that's not because the processor isn't more powerful. It is

649
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:08,400
Speaker 1: the problem is that software developers are building software to

650
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:11,560
Speaker 1: take advantage of that power, and they may not be

651
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 1: taking the most efficient path to doing that. So you

652
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,279
Speaker 1: have this constant issue with the fact that software is

653
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:25,439
Speaker 1: taking up all the power that the new shiny processors

654
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:29,200
Speaker 1: can generate, and it feels like we're kind of treading water.

655
00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 2: Same thing's true with animation.

656
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 1: You can do more stuff, but once again you just

657
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: start pushing up against the boundaries of what the technology

658
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:39,719
Speaker 1: is capable of doing. Now, the most difficult sequence for

659
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: the team to nail down, both from a story perspective

660
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 1: and technical challenges, was the sequence inside the Yeti's Cave,

661
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: and it was so hard for them to get that

662
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: scene right that they started using the phrase Yeti's Cave

663
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: as code for any scene in any Pixar film that

664
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: is near impossible to get right. They would say, oh,

665
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: this is turning into another Yeti's Cave, just to explain, like,

666
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 1: we know this isn't where it needs to be yet

667
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:13,760
Speaker 1: and we Need to Fix.

668
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,839
Speaker 2: It Monsters, Inc. Did really well.

669
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: It hit one hundred million dollars in domestic box office

670
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: in just nine days, which was faster than any other

671
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:26,880
Speaker 1: animated film in history up to that point. Edwin Cattmull

672
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 1: officially became the president of Pixar again, and the company

673
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:35,720
Speaker 1: had six hundred employees at that point. Now two thousand

674
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 1: and one would see ed Edwin Catmull, Lauren Carpenter, and

675
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: Rob Cook receive an Academy Award of Merit for the

676
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: Pixar in house rendering software package known as Pixar's RenderMan,

677
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: which have been used in many other films to render

678
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 1: CGI effects, not just Pixar's movies. They had licensed it

679
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:57,320
Speaker 1: out to other production companies, and this would.

680
00:40:57,200 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 2: Represent the first OSCAR ever awarded specifically for the development

681
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:05,240
Speaker 2: of software. In two thousand and two.

682
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:08,720
Speaker 1: Pixar would debut a new short film called Mike's New Car,

683
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 1: and this was the first time Pixar had ever released

684
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 1: a short film starring characters from one of their feature

685
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 1: length films. It was nominated for an Academy Award, but

686
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 1: it did not win one. But that same year, the

687
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:23,280
Speaker 1: first Disney Park attraction based off of Pixar property opens,

688
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:27,320
Speaker 1: that would be a bugs Land at Disney California Adventure Park.

689
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: Of course, Disney's California Adventure would eventually become home for

690
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: the Car's Ride, which if you've not had the chance

691
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 1: to go on it, if you ever do go to Disneyland,

692
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: I would say that a trip over to California Adventure

693
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: is completely worth it just for the Car's Ride. It

694
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: is really really well done. In two thousand and three,

695
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 1: Finding Nemo premieres with a remastered version of the classic

696
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: Pixar short Nick Knack. That was one of the ones

697
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: that they had made back when they were trying to

698
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: sell hardware. Nick Knack was kind of their demo for saying, hey,

699
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: look at the kind of stuff we can do. So

700
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 1: this time a remaster version comes out with Finding Nemo,

701
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: and Finding Nemo would break more opening weekend box office

702
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:13,720
Speaker 1: records for an animated film and would win an Oscar

703
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: for Best Animated Feature.

704
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 2: And back in Monsters, Inc.

705
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 1: Where the fur effects were the big challenge with Finding Nemo, obviously,

706
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:24,919
Speaker 1: the big challenge was getting those underwater effects just right.

707
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: All sorts of stuff need to be right. The way

708
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:31,840
Speaker 1: that particulates floated in the water had to be modeled correctly.

709
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 1: The light had to be just right for each of

710
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 1: the different water environments they were in the colors, how

711
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 1: those colors and light would affect the way characters appear

712
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 1: on screen. All of that had to be researched and developed,

713
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:53,640
Speaker 1: and it was pretty incredible. They were eventually able to

714
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: create underwater scenes so convincingly. They would take some reference

715
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:02,440
Speaker 1: material some actual film shot underwater an attempt to recreate

716
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 1: that film using computer generated imagery. They got so good

717
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: at it that you couldn't tell the difference between the

718
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 1: two if you showed them side by side. It would

719
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 1: be very difficult to say, this one's the real footage

720
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 1: and this one's the computer animated footage. At that point,

721
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: they then had to dial back the realism because in

722
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: the world of Fighting Nemo, they wanted it to be

723
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: somewhat like a make believe world, but based in the

724
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:34,359
Speaker 1: underwater world we know of, so it had to be

725
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: It couldn't be too realistic or it would lose the audience,

726
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 1: and it couldn't be too cartoony or it wouldn't be

727
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: what they wanted. And they also had to study how

728
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:46,320
Speaker 1: fish moved through water to make sure that the animation

729
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 1: made sense. They had to research aquatic life to understand

730
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:54,800
Speaker 1: their anatomy, and every animator was required by John Lassiter

731
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:58,880
Speaker 1: to get certified in scuba and to take several dives

732
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 1: to have first hand ex experience underwater around these environments.

733
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:06,320
Speaker 1: They also had to develop the color palette that particulate

734
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 1: movement all of that stuff, and this was a huge undertaking.

735
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: Oh and they also had to figure out how can

736
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: you make a compelling character out of a fish because

737
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:23,359
Speaker 1: traditionally fish have very limited abilities to emote. They don't

738
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,359
Speaker 1: do a lot of emoting, so they had to cheat

739
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:28,240
Speaker 1: a bit on that one. They had to give fish

740
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 1: things like eyelids, which fish do not have, and to

741
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: give them more expressive faces and be able to move

742
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: their brows and things like that so that they could

743
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,800
Speaker 1: have characters have expressions on screen.

744
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 2: That was a bit of a challenge too to get

745
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 2: that just right. And of course developing the story was

746
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 2: a big tough thing to do. It's a story that.

747
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: Begins with a character losing his wife and most of

748
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: his children. Of course, that's not the only time that

749
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 1: happens in Pixar, and it's not the only time you

750
00:44:58,239 --> 00:45:00,040
Speaker 1: see it in Disney, But you have to be a

751
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: to treat that just right so that it has an

752
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 1: emotional impact but doesn't become so overpowering that people you

753
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: lose everybody at the very opening of your movie.

754
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 2: It's a delicate thing.

755
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: Also, in two thousand and three, Pixar debuted the short Bounden,

756
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:20,680
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and four, Pixar would release The Incredibles,

757
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:24,440
Speaker 1: which I would say is arguably one of the best

758
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: superhero films ever made. I'm including all the live action films,

759
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: and The Incredibles broke all of Pixar's box office records

760
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: for opening weekend up to that point. It also would

761
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:41,760
Speaker 1: eventually win the Best Animated Film Oscar. Now, this movie

762
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: was a little bit different from earlier ones. Pixar brought

763
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:48,880
Speaker 1: on brad Bird. He actually ended up joining Pixar becoming

764
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: part of the company. But when brad Bird came on board,

765
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:54,240
Speaker 1: he also brought some folks that he had been working

766
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: with in previous productions, and so at first there was

767
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:02,759
Speaker 1: kind of a Pixar versus brad Bird and his guys

768
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: sort of feeling. It took a while for the two

769
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:08,640
Speaker 1: groups to meld together and work together effectively, and brad

770
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 1: Bird was apparently something of a and abrasive is probably

771
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: the wrong word, but he definitely seemed to come across

772
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:24,800
Speaker 1: as a bit aggressive because in various drawings of brad

773
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: Bird that were made around the time, it always looks

774
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: like he's screaming at everybody, which in the behind the

775
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: scenes footage for The Incredibles, brad Bird seems to take

776
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: a little bit of an exception to He's mostly amused

777
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:38,760
Speaker 1: by it, but he's like, come on, guys.

778
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 2: Eisner reportedly didn't.

779
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: Like the pitch for The Incredibles at all and thought

780
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 1: the film would have to be a live action picture.

781
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: He would just essentially dismiss the idea that this should

782
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:54,680
Speaker 1: be animated, but Lasser was able to change Eisner's mind

783
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 1: and get the film greenlit.

784
00:46:56,920 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 2: Now.

785
00:46:57,120 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: Early ideas had a slightly different take on a story

786
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: than what we saw in the finished film. For example,

787
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: originally everyone in the family could fly except for the

788
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 1: dad Bob, which meant that he would end up behind

789
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:13,680
Speaker 1: the wheel of the family station wagon trying to keep

790
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:15,719
Speaker 1: up with all the rest of his members who are

791
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 1: flying away. Brad Bird decided that that didn't make a

792
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: whole lot of sense, and he didn't want any of

793
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: his characters to have unlimited superpowers. He didn't want any

794
00:47:25,719 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 1: character to be like Superman because he wanted those characters

795
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,400
Speaker 1: to get into situations that were difficult to get out of.

796
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,720
Speaker 1: And if you make a characters too powerful, it's really

797
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: really tricky to come up with complications that that character

798
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:44,760
Speaker 1: can't just immediately fix, right. I mean, that's the problem

799
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: with a lot of Superman stories is how do you

800
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: create a situation for Superman that he can't just fix

801
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: right away? And it tends to mean you have to

802
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: escalate everything. So instead of escalating everything to a ridiculous level,

803
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 1: Brad Bird's and let's make certain that the powers, while

804
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: cool and beyond the capabilities of your typical human, don't

805
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: get to the point where any one character is invincible. Now,

806
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:18,760
Speaker 1: the animators had the challenge of making unrealistically proportioned characters

807
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:21,239
Speaker 1: move in a believable way. If you've seen the Incredibles,

808
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: you know, while they're unmistakably human, they don't have the

809
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:29,319
Speaker 1: proportions of humans. Bob, for example, has these tiny little

810
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 1: feet and legs compared to a massive, massive Torso it's

811
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:38,839
Speaker 1: not realistic. It's a stylized version of a human being.

812
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 1: So animating a character like that so that the character

813
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: appears to move in a natural way when the character

814
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:48,840
Speaker 1: itself is an unnatural shape is a pretty tough problem.

815
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,759
Speaker 1: And also they had to create a look to the

816
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: character so that they didn't look like toys.

817
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 2: You know, that was the issue with Toy Story.

818
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:01,720
Speaker 1: In fact, some people pointed out that in Toy Story

819
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 1: and Toy Story two kind of toy like himself, he

820
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,319
Speaker 1: didn't look very much like a human. So they had

821
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:09,319
Speaker 1: those challenges ahead of them. They needed to get that

822
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:13,839
Speaker 1: just right. But you could argue that maybe by going

823
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:17,760
Speaker 1: the stylized route they didn't really nail it. I think

824
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:21,280
Speaker 1: it's perfect for the way the movie is. Two thousand

825
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 1: and four, Finding Nemo would go on to become the

826
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 1: best selling DVD of all time, with twenty four million

827
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:32,399
Speaker 1: copies in North America alone. Also in two thousand and four,

828
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: over at Epcot Walt Disney World, there was a new

829
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: attraction that opened called Turtle Talk with Crush, which was

830
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 1: part of the Living Seas Pavilion.

831
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:44,800
Speaker 2: So Turtle Talk with Crush is really cool.

832
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 1: The basic premise is you go into a little theater

833
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,800
Speaker 1: and Crush from Finding Nemo. That's the sea Turtle shows

834
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 1: up and he has a conversation with audience, an actual conversation.

835
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 1: He can talk to specific people in the audience, ask

836
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,880
Speaker 1: them questions and tell jokes and that sort of stuff.

837
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:10,319
Speaker 1: So it's an incredible thing to see, and it's it

838
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:11,919
Speaker 1: can at least be It can be a little mind

839
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:14,319
Speaker 1: blowing at first because it looks like they're doing three

840
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: D computer animation in real time.

841
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:20,720
Speaker 2: That's not exactly what's happening. It's more like a video game.

842
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:22,800
Speaker 1: Like think of a video game where you're able to

843
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: control the characters make the move around, and it's similar

844
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 1: to that. So there's a performer who's behind the scenes

845
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:33,719
Speaker 1: who can control Crush. They can make the turtle move

846
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 1: around and do tricks and move his mouth, and then

847
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: the performer actually provides the voice.

848
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 2: So they always have to have someone on staff.

849
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:45,920
Speaker 1: Usually a couple of people who could do the Crush

850
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:49,720
Speaker 1: voice really really well. You need to have a couple

851
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:52,440
Speaker 1: because sometimes the person's voice isn't up to snuff and you.

852
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:54,000
Speaker 2: Have to call in the backup.

853
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting that that's become an actual job.

854
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: Like if you can do a good crush voice and

855
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: you can learn this system. You got a good you

856
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:06,799
Speaker 1: got some good job security there. So this is really

857
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: kind of a type of machinema. That's machinema with a

858
00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: lowercase M, and that's machine animation, the idea of using

859
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:18,360
Speaker 1: a pre existing three D virtual environment in order to

860
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 1: render animation in real time. In this case, this was

861
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:28,400
Speaker 1: a custom built system meant just for this this attraction.

862
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:31,319
Speaker 1: It's not like they bought a video game off the

863
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: shelf and they're using it for that purpose. They developed

864
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:36,440
Speaker 1: it from the ground up. But it's the same basic principle,

865
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: and the performer can hear audio thanks to a handheld

866
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: mic and possibly some other mics that might be positioned

867
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: around the room, and also can see people through a

868
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: camera system, so that's where that interactivity can come in.

869
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:53,600
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, another Pixar short film debuts.

870
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,440
Speaker 1: This one is called One Man Band, and the New

871
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:59,359
Speaker 1: York Museum of Modern Art would host an exhibition called

872
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 1: Pixart Twenty Years of Animation in December of two thousand

873
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:06,080
Speaker 1: and five, though to be fair, the actual twentieth anniversary

874
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:09,760
Speaker 1: happens in two thousand and six, so the exhibition opened

875
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: a little early, but yeah, Pixar was coming up on

876
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:17,520
Speaker 1: twenty years as an entity, although it only had been

877
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: making feature length films for about ten years. In a

878
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:24,560
Speaker 1: sad piece of news from two thousand and five, Joe Raft,

879
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 1: who had worked both with Disney Animation and with Pixar,

880
00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: died in a car accident. Raft had worked on Disney

881
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: films like Who Framed Roger, Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty

882
00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:40,400
Speaker 1: and the Beast, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and The

883
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 1: Lion King as a story artist, a storyboard supervisor, and

884
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:49,799
Speaker 1: occasionally as a voice actor, his specialty being cartoon screams.

885
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:52,759
Speaker 1: He would go on to work on Toy Story as

886
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:55,960
Speaker 1: a story supervisor. He provided the voice of Heimlich in

887
00:52:56,040 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 1: A Bugs Life, and he also served as story supervisor

888
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:02,399
Speaker 1: for that movie. He voiced Wheezy the Penguin in Toy

889
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: Story two. He worked on Monsters, Inc. And he voiced

890
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: Jacques the Shrimp in Finding Nemo, and he co directed Cars.

891
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:14,760
Speaker 1: So it was very tragic Pixar was lost a real

892
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: superstar in Joe Raft when he passed away. Now, that

893
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:24,239
Speaker 1: same year, Disney did something pretty controversial, at least in

894
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:27,320
Speaker 1: the eyes of some Pixar employees. So in two thousand

895
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: and five, Disney created a new division of Walt Disney

896
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:37,480
Speaker 1: Animation called Circle seven Animation. The entire purpose for Circle

897
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:42,320
Speaker 1: seven Animation was to focus exclusively on developing computer animation

898
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:46,000
Speaker 1: for Disney, with a primary goal of creating sequels to

899
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:50,440
Speaker 1: Disney owned Pixar films. Now, that led some folks to

900
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: dismiss Circle seven, calling it picks Aren't instead of Pixar

901
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: It's picks aren't.

902
00:53:56,880 --> 00:53:59,759
Speaker 2: But the studio never actually produced a single film, nor

903
00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 2: were any of.

904
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 1: The scripts that they wrote at while they were still

905
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:07,360
Speaker 1: a thing, ever used by Pixar in any of their movies.

906
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: This was really Disney's move to try and leverage the

907
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:15,400
Speaker 1: intellectual property that Pixar had created under that agreement for

908
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 1: those five films, and specifically they wanted it so that

909
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:22,920
Speaker 1: if Pixar left Disney, Disney could continue to make money

910
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:26,520
Speaker 1: off of those properties by creating sequels, even though those

911
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:29,160
Speaker 1: sequels would be made by people not connected to the

912
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:35,160
Speaker 1: original film. Now, there wasn't really any hard feelings between

913
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 1: or there weren't, I guess any hard feelings between Pixar

914
00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:43,560
Speaker 1: executives and the folks who were working for Circle seven Animation.

915
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 1: They I'm guessing that John Lassen wasn't thrilled that Circle

916
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: seven Animation became a thing. He was probably very torn

917
00:54:52,239 --> 00:54:54,719
Speaker 1: up about it, but he didn't hold it against the

918
00:54:54,719 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 1: people who had been hired by Disney. It was more

919
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: of a problem with Disney's move in the first and

920
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:04,239
Speaker 1: in fact, when Circle seven ended up dissolving later on,

921
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:09,520
Speaker 1: Lasseter would actually bring on a lot of that staff

922
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 1: and bring them into Walt Disney Animation Studios.

923
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:15,399
Speaker 2: In fact, Andrew.

924
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:18,480
Speaker 1: Milstein, who had been the head of Circle seven, became

925
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: the general manager of Walt Disney Animation Studios.

926
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:25,040
Speaker 2: So there weren't any hard feelings, but it definitely was.

927
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 1: A tense move, and there were some battles going on

928
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:32,200
Speaker 1: at the top levels of Disney and Pixar.

929
00:55:32,239 --> 00:55:32,800
Speaker 2: At this time.

930
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs and Michael Eisner were having some pretty nasty

931
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:42,279
Speaker 1: fights over which movies were counting toward the deal that

932
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: they had made. Eisner was arguing that Toy Story two

933
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:48,280
Speaker 1: should not count.

934
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:50,320
Speaker 2: That is not one of those five.

935
00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:52,759
Speaker 1: Movies that we agreed on because it's a sequel and

936
00:55:52,840 --> 00:55:57,600
Speaker 1: sequels don't count. Jobs said, what are you talking about.

937
00:55:57,640 --> 00:56:00,800
Speaker 1: Of course it counts. It's a full length feature film,

938
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: and ISA are saying, well, it was meant to be

939
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:07,400
Speaker 1: a direct to video sequel, so it doesn't count. And

940
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:10,839
Speaker 1: there was this back and forth arguing, and Jobs was

941
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:17,960
Speaker 1: very visibly looking at other potential partners for Pixar once

942
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 1: the Disney deal was done. So tension was high at

943
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:24,720
Speaker 1: this point between Disney and Pixar.

944
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more about Pixar after this quick break.

945
00:56:38,120 --> 00:56:40,520
Speaker 2: Now. Two thousand and six Rolls Around and Cars.

946
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:42,319
Speaker 1: It's a film that a lot of kids love, but

947
00:56:42,520 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 1: I think it's really just okay. It's not at the

948
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:47,920
Speaker 1: top of my list for my favorites among Pixar's films.

949
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:49,279
Speaker 2: It comes out in two thousand.

950
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 1: And six, it does really well. It actually does very

951
00:56:52,239 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: well at the box office. But the reason that the

952
00:56:55,200 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 1: movie exists in the first place is because John Lassiter

953
00:56:57,880 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 1: loves cars.

954
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:00,880
Speaker 2: And maybe I'm not into.

955
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: The movie so much because I don't like driving. So

956
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:07,160
Speaker 1: that's perhaps the problem. The whole romanticism of driving doesn't

957
00:57:07,200 --> 00:57:09,719
Speaker 1: do anything for me, and that's on me. That's not

958
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 1: the fall of the movie. So Bugs Life was a

959
00:57:13,160 --> 00:57:17,680
Speaker 1: new take on Esop's Fables and the seventh Samurai Cars

960
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 1: is kind of a new take on Doc Hollywood. It's

961
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 1: really very similar story. So, while Finding Nemo made it

962
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,320
Speaker 1: challenging to create characters from fish, cars presented a new challenge.

963
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:33,240
Speaker 1: How do you create a character that's a believable entity

964
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:37,680
Speaker 1: and still recognizably a car like You can't change it

965
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: so much that it doesn't like a car anymore, but

966
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:41,800
Speaker 1: you have to change it enough so that you can

967
00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 1: have a character there where that can express him or herself,

968
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: that can move around in his or her environment and

969
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 1: manipulate it. How do they carry and hold things? This

970
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:56,800
Speaker 1: was actually a really big deal. The animators were saying, well,

971
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: how does a car pick something up? How do they

972
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: carry things around? Apart from Mater who could tow things

973
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: by using the hook on the end of his cable,

974
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: how do you have these characters move things around?

975
00:58:14,200 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 2: And they experimented with that a lot, with.

976
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:24,280
Speaker 1: Things like prehensile antenna or windshield wipers, or the ability

977
00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 1: to hold onto things with a car door, and eventually

978
00:58:27,480 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 1: they just decided it wasn't important and they dropped all that. So,

979
00:58:32,520 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 1: like Finding Nemo, the acting had to be focused in

980
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: the face, even more so since, with a few exceptions,

981
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 1: most of the characters didn't have a lot of ways

982
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 1: to communicate. They couldn't do big gestures with their tires.

983
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 1: They could do little ones, you know. They took a

984
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:49,560
Speaker 1: lot of liberties with the way stuff moves, but mostly

985
00:58:49,600 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 1: it had to be the acting had to be concentrated

986
00:58:53,600 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 1: in the face, and the team had to figure out

987
00:58:55,840 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: how to make chrome look realistic. Chrome's very which means

988
00:59:01,240 --> 00:59:03,520
Speaker 1: it's reflective, so that means you should be able to

989
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: see reflections in the chrome, and that actually was a

990
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: big technical challenge for the crew, but they were able

991
00:59:08,840 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 1: to figure that all of that out and they were

992
00:59:11,120 --> 00:59:14,280
Speaker 1: able to get the movie together and release it. And

993
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:17,040
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, when the movie came out, ended

994
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:20,360
Speaker 1: up being a huge year for Pixar. It wasn't just

995
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:24,680
Speaker 1: when Cars debuted, it was also when Pixar and Disney

996
00:59:24,680 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 1: were able to come to an agreement. Disney announced that

997
00:59:28,360 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 1: it intended to purchase Pixar, and under this new arrangement,

998
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 1: Edwin Capmoll would become the president of Pixar and John

999
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:39,760
Speaker 1: Lassiter would become the chief creative officer of Disney and

1000
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:41,560
Speaker 1: Pixar Animation Studios.

1001
00:59:42,200 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 2: So a huge change.

1002
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: Here where Lassiter the man who had been fired from

1003
00:59:47,800 --> 00:59:53,320
Speaker 1: Disney because he had been too enthusiastic about computer animation,

1004
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 1: was going to become the chief creative officer of that

1005
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: animation department. Huge Turnaround, Crazy Story, And in September of

1006
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Pixar debuted the short film Lifted,

1007
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 1: just one of my favorite short films Pixar has ever done,

1008
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:16,000
Speaker 1: and Pixar employee and story artist Joe Raft would be

1009
01:00:16,160 --> 01:00:20,640
Speaker 1: named a Disney Legend, which is an actual designation within Disney.

1010
01:00:20,680 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 1: It's not just it's not just a term. It actually

1011
01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 1: really means something. It's like a hull of fame within Disney,

1012
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:31,919
Speaker 1: and they induct only a few people every year, and

1013
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:33,800
Speaker 1: he joined that.

1014
01:00:33,800 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 2: List that year.

1015
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: Well, guys, I've got a lot more to talk about

1016
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 1: with Pixar, but I figured this is a good place

1017
01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: to end in two thousand and six. End of two

1018
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:46,520
Speaker 1: thousand and six, when Disney and Pixar joined forces, and

1019
01:00:46,600 --> 01:00:52,520
Speaker 1: Pixar becomes an integrated part of Disney, still largely independent

1020
01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:56,760
Speaker 1: in the sense that it can develop its own movies internally,

1021
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:00,760
Speaker 1: but now officially part of this company, no longer a

1022
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: separate thing. So we'll pick up in two thousand and

1023
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:06,560
Speaker 1: seven for our next episode.

1024
01:01:08,040 --> 01:01:12,160
Speaker 3: All right, that wraps up the Pixar Story Part two.

1025
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:18,040
Speaker 3: Next week we will conclude this retroactive classic series about

1026
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:21,919
Speaker 3: Pixar with the Pixar Story Part three. And as I said,

1027
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,360
Speaker 3: maybe I'll do a part four now because enough time

1028
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:29,040
Speaker 3: has gone by that there's other stuff to chat about.

1029
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:31,080
Speaker 3: So if you want me to talk about Pixar some more,

1030
01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 3: let me know and I'll do a follow up to

1031
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 3: talk about what's been going on since twenty sixteen. In

1032
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:39,520
Speaker 3: the meantime, I hope you are all well and I'll

1033
01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 3: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an

1034
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:54,120
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1035
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1036
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:00,280
Speaker 1: No