Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a tech Stuff classic episode.
Speaker 1: So last Friday I brought you The Pixar Story Part one,
Speaker 1: so it should come as no surprise that today we're
Speaker 1: going to listen to The Pixar Story Part two. This
Speaker 1: episode originally published on August third, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: So with the last episode, I left off just before
Speaker 1: Pixar was going to debut its first feature length computer
Speaker 1: animated film, which of course is Toy Story, and I
Speaker 1: left it off as a fake cliffhanger. Would the company succeed?
Speaker 1: Of course they did. But one thing I want to
Speaker 1: out is that Toy Story itself was partly made possible
Speaker 1: because of another movie, not a Pixar film, but the
Speaker 1: movie A Nightmare Before Christmas, And the reason I say
Speaker 1: this is a Nightmare Before Christmas was a stop motion
Speaker 1: animated film produced by Tim Burton, and it was the
Speaker 1: first animated film that Disney agreed to distribute. Even though
Speaker 1: the animation itself was not done by Walt Disney Animation Studios,
Speaker 1: and that actually laid the groundwork for Pixar to follow
Speaker 1: along with Toy Story. Also one other connection between the two,
Speaker 1: John Lassiter of Pixar fame and Tim Burton both attended
Speaker 1: cal Arts at the same time. So that's kind of cool,
Speaker 1: little kind of a connection.
Speaker 2: So one thing I got to get off the bat,
Speaker 2: this is going.
Speaker 1: To be true for all the different movies that I
Speaker 1: talk about that Pixar has worked on. Each film required
Speaker 1: many years to finish.
Speaker 2: A team.
Speaker 1: He might work on a movie for five years at
Speaker 1: a time. It's not that unusual, particularly with these computer
Speaker 1: animated films, and during the development of Toy Story, the
Speaker 1: characters and script went through lots and lots of changes.
Speaker 1: Also not unusual with Pixar. They've always said that story
Speaker 1: comes first. They have to get the story right, and
Speaker 1: if they don't have the story just right, people don't
Speaker 1: care how good your animation is. If the story doesn't
Speaker 1: hold your attention, you eventually just say, well that was
Speaker 1: pretty and flashy, but I didn't really care about anything.
Speaker 1: Back in the original run, when they were first drafting
Speaker 1: out the story for Toy Story, buzz Light Year had
Speaker 1: a totally different name. He was called Tempest, which was
Speaker 1: a reference to the classic arcade machine, and Woody originally
Speaker 1: wasn't a pull string toy. He was a Ventriloquists dummy.
Speaker 1: But Michael Eisner, who at the time was Disney's CEO,
Speaker 1: stepped in and asked Pixar to change it because he said,
Speaker 1: dummies are inherently creepy, and it is difficult for me to.
Speaker 2: Disagree with that.
Speaker 1: I don't agree with a lot of things that Michael
Speaker 1: Eisner did, but I definitely agree that ventriloquist dummies are creepy.
Speaker 2: And another major change.
Speaker 1: Was Buzz's whole worldview. In those early drafts, Buzz light
Speaker 1: Year knew that he was a toy, and he knew
Speaker 1: that there was a television show that tied in with
Speaker 1: a toy. But then they had Tim Allen come in
Speaker 1: to do the voiceovers the acting, and Tim Allen's take
Speaker 1: on Buzz was that the character was completely oblivious. He
Speaker 1: lived the role of a space ranger. That is what
Speaker 1: Buzz was. He wasn't a toy of a space ranger.
Speaker 1: He was a space ranger. And the writers thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's way more interesting, So they actually reworked the story
Speaker 1: based upon Tim Allen's performance, and they started to change things.
Speaker 1: So this whole process goes on for a long time,
Speaker 1: and according to people at Pixtar, those characters were really
Speaker 1: tough to nail down. Disney executives found the initial characters
Speaker 1: a little too wholesome and boring, which is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to think that Disney execs would say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, these guys, there's not a lot.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot going on here. We need some
Speaker 1: more conflict, We need them to not be these just
Speaker 1: perfect toys. So the next iteration went a little too
Speaker 1: far in the other direction, and Pixar says, yeah, we
Speaker 1: kind of accidentally turned Woody into a real jerkface.
Speaker 2: He became just unlikable.
Speaker 1: So they had to figure out where was the balance
Speaker 1: between these two extremes, and fortunately the writers were able
Speaker 1: to come up with that balance, though for a while
Speaker 1: it actually looked like Disney might pull the plug on
Speaker 1: toy story. Keep in mind, Disney was providing the funding here.
Speaker 1: Disney was giving Pixar twenty well not giving, but providing
Speaker 1: twenty one million dollars for Pixar to produce three movies,
Speaker 1: and they were Disney was also going to provide the
Speaker 1: distribution for Pixar, and in return, Disney was taking an
Speaker 1: enormous share of the revenue should these movies prove to
Speaker 1: be successful. The whole project required way more resources than
Speaker 1: Picks are anticipated. They had only been working on short
Speaker 1: films up to that point and did not realize what
Speaker 1: a different creature a feature length film can be. It's
Speaker 1: not just oh, this one short we did require ten people,
Speaker 1: but this movie is four times longer, so we'll need
Speaker 1: forty people. It's way more complicated than that. They originally
Speaker 1: thought they could get away with just using eight animators
Speaker 1: for toy story, and on top of that, they would
Speaker 1: have people in lighting and textures, but eight animators to
Speaker 1: actually create the animation. They ended up with thirty three
Speaker 1: by the end of the production, and all the other
Speaker 1: departments also needed more people than they originally estimated, so
Speaker 1: with each film, Pixar would typically add a few more animators.
Speaker 2: By the time Monsters Inc.
Speaker 1: Rolls around, for example, there were fifty animators working on
Speaker 1: that movie. So it became clear that this feature link
Speaker 1: game was different and not a big surprise that Pixar
Speaker 1: had to learn this. It was new territory for them.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: They also had to make sure that everyone who was
Speaker 1: working on animation was going to animate the characters in
Speaker 1: a consistent way. You couldn't have different animators manipulate characters
Speaker 1: so that they have their own quirks. When one animator
Speaker 1: is working on it but not on another, it's inconsistent
Speaker 1: and disorienting. So typically a lead animator would be assigned
Speaker 1: to every major character to create the desired performance, but
Speaker 1: an individual animator might work on every single character in
Speaker 1: a film at some point or another. It may just
Speaker 1: be that the characters in the background for that sequence,
Speaker 1: but they still have to act in character.
Speaker 2: Acting is interesting because normally.
Speaker 1: We think of it as a creation between an actor
Speaker 1: and maybe a director, or perhaps a couple of actors
Speaker 1: and a director, but in this case, it's an entire
Speaker 1: department of people coming together to determine what acting is
Speaker 1: for each individual character, sometimes multiple departments of people, so
Speaker 1: much more complicated than a live.
Speaker 2: Action sort of production.
Speaker 1: The first bit that they actually animated for Toy Story
Speaker 1: was the sequence in which the toy soldiers deploy to
Speaker 1: see what Andy is getting for his birthday. So to
Speaker 1: get an idea of how those soldiers would actually move around.
Speaker 1: The animators ended up strapping their feet to boards, and
Speaker 1: then they tried to move around with their feet connected
Speaker 1: to each other on these solid wooden boards. Supposedly the
Speaker 1: first person to try this actually was nailing their shoes
Speaker 1: to the boards and did so the wrong way, in
Speaker 1: other words, nailing up from the board through.
Speaker 2: The shoe, which seems to be a little poorly thought
Speaker 2: out in my mind.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, you had these animators trying to
Speaker 1: get around so that they could get a good basis
Speaker 1: for how the characters should move in the actual film,
Speaker 1: and apparently it was quite the scene it pisar HQ.
Speaker 2: Now, computer animation.
Speaker 1: Takes several steps to complete, just like traditional animation does.
Speaker 1: So in computer animation, you have to build the computer
Speaker 1: models for the characters, so this is the three dimensional
Speaker 1: representation of your character. You have to also do that
Speaker 1: for sets and props. You can't just do it for
Speaker 1: just the characters, otherwise everything else is flat, and you
Speaker 1: animate the sequences according to the storyboard and performances. But
Speaker 1: at that point, even after you've modeled everything and you've
Speaker 1: figured out the physics and you know how different parts
Speaker 1: move in relation to each other. You still end up
Speaker 1: with kind of a featureless and plastic figure. Everything looks
Speaker 1: kind of like it's just a simple solid body plastic.
Speaker 1: So then you have to overlay color textures and shading
Speaker 1: to give more definition to the characters. And then you
Speaker 1: have to add lighting sequences to create the mood you
Speaker 1: want for that scene and the effects you need, and.
Speaker 2: This gets really complicated.
Speaker 1: In a physical space where you're actually shooting live action,
Speaker 1: you can move lights around and see what sort of
Speaker 1: effects you get. You know what happens if you light
Speaker 1: the scene from the back as opposed to from the front.
Speaker 1: But in computer animation you have to actually program all
Speaker 1: that in, at least initially. You might eventually come up
Speaker 1: with a lighting software suite that does most of this automatically,
Speaker 1: and then you can make minor tweaks at that point,
Speaker 1: but when you start out, you have to program how
Speaker 1: the light behaves. The computer doesn't magically know that light
Speaker 1: from one direction is going to create a different effect
Speaker 1: than light from another direction. You have to build all
Speaker 1: that in, so it's incredibly time consuming and work intensive.
Speaker 1: It involves a lot of technical know how and artistic
Speaker 1: know how as well, so it's not an easy job.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Originally Pixar employees thought they could render the entire film
Speaker 1: in twenty months using fifty three processors. That's just the
Speaker 1: rendering stage, mind you, that's not the animation, but twenty
Speaker 1: months just to render the work that they had created.
Speaker 1: But turned out they needed three hundred machines to do
Speaker 1: the job, not fifty three processors, three hundred computers, and
Speaker 1: today Pixar has more than twenty thousand processors to work
Speaker 1: on render jobs, which means they could take that raw
Speaker 1: footage from Toy Story and render it in real time
Speaker 1: by the end of If you were to start rendering
Speaker 1: all that footage and you started the DVD of Toy
Speaker 1: Story at the same time, you would be done with
Speaker 1: both at around the same time. Not necessarily true with
Speaker 1: later Pixar films, which are more complicated than that first
Speaker 1: Toy Story movie, but it does illustrate how much more
Speaker 1: sophisticated things have become since then. And once again we
Speaker 1: see that Moore's law has brought down the cost of
Speaker 1: computing to a point where this sort of thing is possible.
Speaker 1: It's not outside the reach of a production studio now.
Speaker 1: At the time that would have been impossible. It would
Speaker 1: have been too expensive to have twenty thousand processors, let
Speaker 1: alone the idea of well, how do we power them
Speaker 1: and keep them cold enough so that they work, and
Speaker 1: where do we put them and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But we've seen the chips get smaller, we've seen them
Speaker 1: get more powerful, we've seen more sophisticated processors with multiple cores,
Speaker 1: including graphics processors, and of course we've seen that price
Speaker 1: come down over time, so now it's less of an
Speaker 1: insurmountable obstacle. Still expensive, just not as expensive as it
Speaker 1: would have been back then. So after making Toy Story,
Speaker 1: John Lassiter realized that a feature link computer animated film
Speaker 1: was way too much work for a single director. He
Speaker 1: was the director for Toy Story, but he realized this
Speaker 1: is too big a job for one person to head up.
Speaker 1: So from that point forward, the Pixar films would have
Speaker 1: multiple directors, with normally one acting as kind of the
Speaker 1: primary director to steer the vision of the film, and
Speaker 1: others to oversee specific aspects of the production like cinematography
Speaker 1: and lighting and that sort of stuff. The movie came
Speaker 1: out on November twenty second, nineteen ninety five, and it
Speaker 1: was directed by John Lassiter. Several writers worked on the story,
Speaker 1: including Joss Whedon, who is of course the creator of
Speaker 1: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly and Angel and things
Speaker 1: like that. Whedon, by the way, wrote a couple of
Speaker 1: my favorite lines, including You're a sad, strange little man
Speaker 1: and you have My Pity and one of my favorite
Speaker 1: lines of all time, wind the Frog. This movie also
Speaker 1: marked the first time Pixar worked with the musician Randy Newman,
Speaker 1: who would go on to compose the music for six
Speaker 1: more Pixar movies. So he hasn't worked on all of them,
Speaker 1: but he worked on a lot of them. And also
Speaker 1: on a personal note, Toy Story was the first movie
Speaker 1: I saw while dating the woman who would later on
Speaker 1: become my wife. It took some convincing to get her
Speaker 1: to the theater to go and see a movie called
Speaker 1: Toy Story, but I eventually convinced her to do so,
Speaker 1: and afterwards she became a lifelong Pixar fan.
Speaker 2: So I did something right. Nineteen years woo now, Toy
Speaker 2: Story was a really big hit.
Speaker 1: According to box office Mojo, Toy Story's global box office
Speaker 1: amounted to three hundred and sixty two million dollars, but
Speaker 1: Pixar's deal with Disney meant it only received a small
Speaker 1: percentage of the profits. Between ten and fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: the profits. Most of that money went to Disney, not
Speaker 1: to Pixar. Some folks over at Pixar felt that this
Speaker 1: was kind of unfair that Disney was providing the distribution
Speaker 1: in marketing and that initial maybe seven million dollars you
Speaker 1: could argue for the budget of the movie, but otherwise
Speaker 1: wasn't responsible for the actual success of the movie. Disney,
Speaker 1: apart from giving some notes, didn't determine the story. They
Speaker 1: didn't do the animation, they didn't do the effects, they
Speaker 1: didn't hire the voice actors.
Speaker 2: So some folks over at Pixar were.
Speaker 1: A little not happy with this arrangement, but that's how
Speaker 1: things were at the time. Shortly after Toy Story premier,
Speaker 1: like a week after Toy Story came out, Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: made the big move and took Pixar public with an
Speaker 1: initial public offering or IPO. It ended up being the
Speaker 1: biggest technology IPO in nineteen ninety five, which was also
Speaker 1: a year that saw Netscape go public. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what Netscape is, go look it up. It used
Speaker 1: to be the name in computer.
Speaker 2: Browsers for the Internet back in the day.
Speaker 1: Now before the IPO, the estimated value of a share
Speaker 1: of Pixar stock was between twelve and fourteen dollars. That's
Speaker 1: what analysts were predicting that Pixar shares would be between
Speaker 1: twelve and fourteen bucks per share, But when trading opened,
Speaker 1: the initial share price was actually twenty two dollars, and
Speaker 1: toy Story's incredible opening was probably part of the reason
Speaker 1: why it was higher than originally estimated. During that first
Speaker 1: day of trading, the stock reached its highest point at
Speaker 1: forty six dollars per share, which means it more than
Speaker 1: doubled its value from the opening bell of the stock exchange. Now,
Speaker 1: granted it didn't end at forty six dollars per year
Speaker 1: on that first day. It actually settled to thirty nine
Speaker 1: dollars per year, so still higher than what it opened at.
Speaker 2: Because Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: Owned practically all the shares in the company before taking
Speaker 1: it public, it turned him into a billionaire a billion
Speaker 1: air overnight. He had spent fifty million dollars on this
Speaker 1: company over time trying to keep it afloat. That gamble
Speaker 1: paid off big time and of course, it gave Pixar
Speaker 1: a bit more leverage.
Speaker 2: It was a force to be reckoned with a.
Speaker 1: One point four six billion dollar market value force. So
Speaker 1: imagine that. Imagine that you were working for a company that,
Speaker 1: over the course of a week, has its first feature
Speaker 1: length film come out and then is valued at one
Speaker 1: point four to six billion dollars. It must have been incredible. Also,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, David di Francesco, whom we talked
Speaker 1: about in the last episode, received an Academy Award for
Speaker 1: the develop element of a film input scanning technique. And
Speaker 1: Pixar was continuing to develop new technologies in the film industry,
Speaker 1: and eventually it was also licensing those technologies out to
Speaker 1: other companies. So it wasn't just that they were developing
Speaker 1: tools in house to get their stuff done.
Speaker 2: They were innovating in.
Speaker 1: Technology and then making money through licenses so that other
Speaker 1: production companies could take advantage of those advancements.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more about Pixar after this quick break.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, Pixar completed work on their short
Speaker 1: animated film Jerry's Game, which would win a Best Animated
Speaker 1: Short Film Oscar for Pixar that would be their second
Speaker 1: best animated short film, Oscar. They would win many, many more.
Speaker 1: And also in nineteen ninety seven, Pixar hired Randy S. Nelson,
Speaker 1: who would become the dean of Pixar University. Now this
Speaker 1: is not like a giant college campus somewhere akin to
Speaker 1: Monsters University.
Speaker 2: This is Pixar's.
Speaker 1: Internal skills development department, which gives Pixar employees the opportunity
Speaker 1: to take classes in all sorts of fields and disciplines,
Speaker 1: from story development and screenwriting to drawing and sculpting. And
Speaker 1: this Nelson guy, he sounds like someone I'd really get
Speaker 1: along with. He was a founder of the Flying Karamtsov Brothers,
Speaker 1: so he's a juggler, and as a juggler, if you
Speaker 1: didn't know, I'm also a juggler.
Speaker 2: I really respect that.
Speaker 1: He had also worked with Steve Jobs both at Apple
Speaker 1: and at Next. Remember Jobs had been essentially forced out
Speaker 1: of Apple and had founded a new company called Next Computers,
Speaker 1: eventually abandoning the hardware side of Next Computers and developing
Speaker 1: software instead. Now, according to Nelson, if you were to
Speaker 1: take all the courses, or to take a full suite
Speaker 1: of courses at Pixar University, you would have the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a bachelor's degree education in fine arts. That's how
Speaker 1: comprehensive their internal development department was. They were dedicated to
Speaker 1: making certain that employees had the opportunity to learn new
Speaker 1: skills and develop ones that they had already started to
Speaker 1: create or to build on previously. And this included all
Speaker 1: sorts of different types of activities, including improvisational acting. So
Speaker 1: you might end up finding yourself sitting next to the
Speaker 1: head of the company, but you're both classmates at that class.
Speaker 1: So it also helped break down the hierarchical barriers between
Speaker 1: bosses and employees. The motto of Pixar University is alienis not,
Speaker 1: which I know I'm terribly mispronouncing because I have little
Speaker 1: Latin and less Greek, just like a mister Shakespeare Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: but the Latin phrase actually means alone no longer. And
Speaker 1: it also is a secondary Latin inscription on the Pixar
Speaker 1: University crest, which says tempus pecunia somnum, which means time, money, sleep.
Speaker 1: The three of those, I think sleep is the one
Speaker 1: that the typical Pixar employee has the least.
Speaker 2: Of, maybe time. It's kind of hard to say.
Speaker 1: Moving on over to talk about nineteen ninety seven a bit.
Speaker 1: Pixar and Disney renegotiated their agreement at that time.
Speaker 2: So if you.
Speaker 1: Remember, they originally had come up with an I this
Speaker 1: deal that that Pixar was going to make three movies
Speaker 1: for Disney, after which there would be time to negotiate
Speaker 1: a new relationship instead, and in return, Disney was going
Speaker 1: to get the massive majority of the profits from those movies.
Speaker 1: But the renegotiation went a little better for Pixar. They
Speaker 1: agreed to do a ten year, five film deal and
Speaker 1: in that deal, Pixar would receive fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: profits from the films. The New York Times reported on
Speaker 1: the change in agreements and revealed that the new Pixar
Speaker 1: film was going to.
Speaker 2: Be called Bugs.
Speaker 1: So this was before the movie had come out. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they were still working on it. It was still in development,
Speaker 1: so the title had not been finalized. Now that arrangement,
Speaker 1: with the new deal of being a ten year, five
Speaker 1: film contract, answered some of the criticisms industry analysts had
Speaker 1: about the Pixar IPO, because when Pixar went public, some
Speaker 1: analysts were saying, this seems really like investors are pushing
Speaker 1: this company beyond its actual value, because keep in mind,
Speaker 1: while they're doing great work, and while their movies are
Speaker 1: making huge amounts of money in the box office, that
Speaker 1: most of that money is not going to Pixar, it's
Speaker 1: going to Disney. So maybe you shouldn't drive the value
Speaker 1: of this company up so high since it's really not
Speaker 1: earning money for itself. Once this new arrangement came in,
Speaker 1: that took some of that criticism away. Bugs of course
Speaker 1: ended up being A Bugs Life, which would come out
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, and it broke the record for
Speaker 1: a Thanksgiving weekend film opening in the United States. The
Speaker 1: movie combines a couple of famous stories you got ESOPs
Speaker 1: the Ant and the Grasshopper as part of it, and
Speaker 1: a very healthy dose of the Seven Samurai as the
Speaker 1: various core story elements.
Speaker 2: And the Pixar team said that A Bugs Life was particularly.
Speaker 1: Challenging and rewarding. The movie called for a lot of
Speaker 1: characters on screen at once. I mean hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of insects all on screen at the same time, which
Speaker 1: requires a lot of processing power. You're talking about a
Speaker 1: ton of animation. You don't want your characters all just
Speaker 1: standing still, and that requires a lot of computer power. Also,
Speaker 1: on top of that, the characters had lots of limbs.
Speaker 1: I mean, insects have lots of legs, so most of
Speaker 1: these creatures had six legs. Some of them also had
Speaker 1: wings or also antenna. On top of that, these settings
Speaker 1: were on uneven surfaces, and those surfaces had to have
Speaker 1: an organic look to them. There was also fire and
Speaker 1: smoke in the movie, which is notoriously difficult to get
Speaker 1: just right with computer animation, or at least it was
Speaker 1: at that time, and so it was very resource heavy.
Speaker 1: It was a very ambitious project to take on after
Speaker 1: toy story. Now, one of the defining looks of the
Speaker 1: film is the translucent nature of the various leaves and flowers.
Speaker 1: So John Laster said it was like characters were living
Speaker 1: in a world of stained glass, and that the animators
Speaker 1: had to create ways for light to behave properly to
Speaker 1: shine through these surfaces. And again it meant creating new rules,
Speaker 1: making up new rules so that things looked right. They
Speaker 1: didn't just look pretty, but they looked natural. And the
Speaker 1: story of a bug's life changed a lot too over
Speaker 1: the course of its production. Originally, the main character was
Speaker 1: the head of the circus bugs, and that was an
Speaker 1: ant named Red. But the film didn't find a voice
Speaker 1: with that main character in place. They couldn't figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what's the story here, where's the character arc? Why would
Speaker 1: this character stick with this plan of pretending to be
Speaker 1: a group of warriors to fight off grasshoppers.
Speaker 2: He has no steak, he could just leave.
Speaker 1: And that's when they realized that perhaps a couple of
Speaker 1: the ants that would be asking the circus performers for
Speaker 1: help are the real main characters. And eventually those ants
Speaker 1: were reduced to a single ant, Flick, and that became
Speaker 1: the main character.
Speaker 2: So it was interesting to see that story remained the
Speaker 2: chief concern. These other technical.
Speaker 1: Issues, while really fascinating, they were secondary. It wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: how pretty the screen was. Again, if you went and
Speaker 1: saw it, you didn't care about the characters. Now, while
Speaker 1: A Bug's Life was in production, a team led by
Speaker 1: David D. Francesco created a new way to transfer computer
Speaker 1: animation onto film stock.
Speaker 2: Now remember this.
Speaker 1: Is before most theaters were able to have digital projectors.
Speaker 1: There were only a few digital projectors in place in
Speaker 1: a couple of theaters around North America. So we're still
Speaker 1: talking about an era in which physical reels of film
Speaker 1: are produced and projected onto screens. So Defrancesco's method was
Speaker 1: using a laser recording system that became known as Pixar Vision.
Speaker 1: Used solid state lasers to record images onto film. So
Speaker 1: film is photo reactive, meaning that when light hits it,
Speaker 1: there's a chemical change, and that's where we're able to
Speaker 1: capture images on film. Lasers are really really precise, way
Speaker 1: more precise than cathode ray tubes, which was the typical
Speaker 1: way to transfer computer animation over to film. So using
Speaker 1: lasers allowed for a much higher quality color reproduction and
Speaker 1: sharper images on film than the earlier versions did. Plus
Speaker 1: d Francesco's invention was faster than the cathode ray tube method.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to use a CRT method, it would
Speaker 1: take thirty five seconds to record a single frame of
Speaker 1: computer animation onto film. With the laser method it took
Speaker 1: eight seconds, so much much faster, four times faster than
Speaker 1: the traditional method. So DeFrancesco would receive a Technical Academy
Speaker 1: Award for this invention. He started he was starting to
Speaker 1: rack up those those Academy awards for his technological contributions
Speaker 1: to the film industry. Now, the big advantage of using
Speaker 1: that laser recording system is that allowed for that much
Speaker 1: higher quality transfer of an image onto film, and the
Speaker 1: first time it was used was on A Bugs Life,
Speaker 1: So the transfers that were made for A Bugs Life
Speaker 1: relied upon the system, and it would be used on
Speaker 1: lots of future films.
Speaker 2: Though by the time we get around to Monsters.
Speaker 1: Incorporated, Pixar was really starting to push for digital projectors
Speaker 1: in more movie theaters, saying that the digital projection is
Speaker 1: just superior. You get more vibrant colors and sharper images
Speaker 1: than you ever will with film. You don't have the
Speaker 1: jitter that you would have with film, you don't have
Speaker 1: other physical limitations of film. There, you would have pure
Speaker 1: digital experience, which for computer animated film makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: If you're talking about other types of movies, you can have.
Speaker 1: A legitimate argument that the film creates a certain sensibility
Speaker 1: that you cannot easily replicate using digital projection. Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 1: would go bonkers if you told him from now on
Speaker 1: you can only do movies in digital, you cannot do
Speaker 1: them in film, and it does have a very different effect.
Speaker 1: But in computer animated movies, that's less of a problem
Speaker 1: because the whole film is digital. It's only when you
Speaker 1: put it onto film that it becomes analog. There was
Speaker 1: never a physical object for you to shoot on film in.
Speaker 2: The first place. Now, in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Toy Story two comes out that would end up being
Speaker 1: a bit of a point of contention a little bit
Speaker 1: later between Disney and Pixar, and this development process was
Speaker 1: uneasy from the beginning, actually, because Disney originally wanted this
Speaker 1: to be a direct to video sequel.
Speaker 2: If you remember the nineties.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, Disney was really into creating
Speaker 1: directive video sequels of a lot of its very popular
Speaker 1: feature length films, so much so that it became.
Speaker 2: A bit of a joke in the industry.
Speaker 1: But John Laster and his team fought for a cinematic release,
Speaker 1: and eventually Disney agreed. They said, all right, fine, we
Speaker 1: will make this a theatrical release film, not a directive
Speaker 1: video sequel. Now, during the making of the movie, there
Speaker 1: were some really huge setbacks. A terrible sequence of events happened.
Speaker 1: So first, the files for the film were all saved
Speaker 1: on a Linux system and someone ran the function r
Speaker 1: M star on the hard drive holding all the Toy
Speaker 1: Story two files. Our M stands for remove, essentially, it's
Speaker 1: to delete stuff, and STAR pretty much means everything you find.
Speaker 1: So someone was essentially deleting all the material off of
Speaker 1: a hard drive, and that hard drive happened to have
Speaker 1: all of Toy Story two's assets on it, including reference files, animation,
Speaker 1: the completed movie. Up to that point, all of it
Speaker 1: was on this hard drive. So when this was detected,
Speaker 1: people saw that various assets were starting to disappear, including
Speaker 1: entire sequences and even characters. They began to get deleted,
Speaker 1: and to make matters worse, the official backup for the film.
Speaker 1: They found out it hadn't been backing up for a
Speaker 1: couple of months. There had been a failure that had
Speaker 1: not been corrected or addressed. Instead, the team which was
Speaker 1: working furiously to try and get this movie done on time,
Speaker 1: was relying on the primary copy of the movie and
Speaker 1: the backup was outdated. Now, if this is where that
Speaker 1: story ended, things would have turned out very differently. The
Speaker 1: whole film would have been set back a huge amount.
Speaker 1: But the technical director for the movie happened to have
Speaker 1: a copy of all the files on her work computer.
Speaker 1: Her computer that she used to work from home. She
Speaker 1: had requested that computer so that she could occasionally spend
Speaker 1: time at home with her family and not just live
Speaker 1: at the office, And so the team actually sent people
Speaker 1: to her house to physically take her computer, secure it
Speaker 1: in the backseat of her car, and then very gently
Speaker 1: transport it back to Pixar so that they could recapture
Speaker 1: all the assets that had been lost in the Great
Speaker 1: file deletion.
Speaker 2: And they were able to do it, and the.
Speaker 1: Movie was able to continue in development and not suffer
Speaker 1: this terrible setback. But then they had another major challenge
Speaker 1: when Disney executive, seeing an early cut, said they didn't
Speaker 1: like where it was headed, so the team had to
Speaker 1: rework the film, but Disney said, we are not going
Speaker 1: to change the release date. You still have the same
Speaker 1: deadline to get the movie finished, even though you have
Speaker 1: to go back and rework a lot.
Speaker 2: Of this stuff.
Speaker 1: So teams would start putting in as many as thirty
Speaker 1: six to forty eight hours in a row of work,
Speaker 1: so just working for two days non stop, like not
Speaker 1: even to take a real night's sleep, just working on
Speaker 1: sequences to get this movie finished in time for the deadline.
Speaker 1: Lee Unkrich who oversaw cinematography for the film, said that
Speaker 1: while they were technically capable of putting a camera anywhere
Speaker 1: within a scene and have it do anything that could
Speaker 1: disobey the laws of physics, because it's a virtual camera,
Speaker 1: you can place the virtual camera anywhere you want.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to follow the rules of a real
Speaker 2: world camera.
Speaker 1: He said that if you did that, they found that
Speaker 1: audiences responded as if things weren't right. If it didn't
Speaker 1: behave the way an actual camera did, you lost the audience.
Speaker 1: So you actually had to restrict the virtual camera, give
Speaker 1: it the same limitations a physical camera would have, which
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting that despite the fact you have the
Speaker 1: technical capability, you couldn't really take advantage of it in
Speaker 1: that way and still manage to keep your audience. Now,
Speaker 1: Toy Story two was the first sequel to earn more
Speaker 1: money than the original film. It broke opening weekend records
Speaker 1: in the UK and the US and in Japan, and
Speaker 1: it was the first film to be created, mastered, and
Speaker 1: exhibited digitally. Now not exclusively digitally, because again at this time,
Speaker 1: not that many theaters had digital protectors, but the ones
Speaker 1: that did showed Toy Story two in digital format. In
Speaker 1: two thousand, Pixar would premiere the short for the Birds,
Speaker 1: which would of course go on to win an Oscar
Speaker 1: for Best Short Animated Film, and Pixar would relocate to
Speaker 1: a new headquarters in Emeryville, California. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: they debuted Monsters Inc. Now, this was the first Pixar
Speaker 1: film not directed by John Lassiter. He had worked on
Speaker 1: Toy Story, A Bugs Life and Toy Story two, but
Speaker 1: Pete Doctor came in as the main director and David
Speaker 1: Silverman and Lee Unkrich co directed it.
Speaker 2: Billy Crystal, who voiced the part.
Speaker 1: Of Mike Wazowski, was originally offered the role of Buzz
Speaker 1: light Year for Toy Story, but he turned it down,
Speaker 1: and he said that this was such a huge mistake
Speaker 1: that he leapt at the opportunity to voice a character
Speaker 1: in a new Pixar movie. One of the big advancements
Speaker 1: they made in computer animation for Monsters Inc. Was building
Speaker 1: realistic looking fur, and when you think about it, you
Speaker 1: realize how important it was for them to develop this,
Speaker 1: considering the types of furry creatures they had in Monsters Inc.
Speaker 2: If you don't create a.
Speaker 1: System to animate the fur automatically, it means that you
Speaker 1: would have to animate every strand of fur by hand.
Speaker 2: And if you didn't even.
Speaker 1: Allow it, like maybe maybe you say, all right, let's
Speaker 1: not animate every individual hair. That's ridiculous. Sully has more
Speaker 1: than a million hairs over his entire body and animating
Speaker 1: every single one of those individually by hand.
Speaker 2: Is not possible. Let's group them together.
Speaker 1: Well, if you did that, then you would end up
Speaker 1: with this weird, matted look where hair still wouldn't seem
Speaker 1: to move naturally. So they had to find a way
Speaker 1: to solve that, and they did that by building a
Speaker 1: simulator so each hair behaves according to the rules set
Speaker 1: in this simulator. It took Home a long time to
Speaker 1: get the simulator just right so that hairs would behave properly,
Speaker 1: So the team had to test the program to make
Speaker 1: sure that the fur and hair is moving in the
Speaker 1: right way. They'd had to make tweaks whenever it didn't
Speaker 1: look right, and I had to work very hard to
Speaker 1: solve collision problems with the fur. And some of the
Speaker 1: other issues were that if a character moved too quickly,
Speaker 1: the fur would sometimes go crazy and stretch too far
Speaker 1: like it suddenly it would act like a rubber band
Speaker 1: and stretch across the screen, and it wasn't until later
Speaker 1: that they figured out where that problem was coming from. Also,
Speaker 1: they went ahead and made a decision that certain fur,
Speaker 1: like the fur around Sully's face, wouldn't be animated by
Speaker 1: this dynamic computer simulation.
Speaker 2: Because they wanted to have really tight.
Speaker 1: Control for the purposes of performance and expression. They didn't
Speaker 1: want the fur to be distracting. So for those cases
Speaker 1: the fur was not dynamic. It was actually static and
Speaker 1: could be animated by hand if necessary. But the rest
Speaker 1: of the fur, the stuff that was over Sully's body
Speaker 1: in general, that followed the rules of the simulation they
Speaker 1: also want to have then created a program to simulate
Speaker 1: the natural movements of clothing. In Toy Story two, they
Speaker 1: had to animate all of Awl of Owl's toy barn.
Speaker 1: They had to animate all of his clothing by hand,
Speaker 1: and according to the animators, this was a real pain
Speaker 1: in the butt because not only did it take a
Speaker 1: lot of time to get clothes to animate in the
Speaker 1: way that they looked right and they behaved according to
Speaker 1: the contours of the person wearing the clothing, and.
Speaker 2: So the worst part is if you do your job right,
Speaker 2: no one notices. They only notice if you don't do.
Speaker 1: Your job right because it doesn't look right. So it's
Speaker 1: a frustrating thing to think you spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time to get something to work just right so that people.
Speaker 2: Do not notice it.
Speaker 1: And so as a result, they created this automated program
Speaker 1: that would save time and frustration and the animators could
Speaker 1: work on other stuff that was more important from a
Speaker 1: performance standpoint.
Speaker 3: We're going to take a quick break for some messages
Speaker 3: from our sponsor and be back with more about the
Speaker 3: Pixar story. Glenn McQueen, who was a supervising animator for
Speaker 3: Monsters Zinc, spoke to an interview about how the increase
Speaker 3: in computer power was.
Speaker 2: Both good and bad.
Speaker 1: It was good in that it gave animators more power
Speaker 1: to create visual complexity, but with that complexity comes the
Speaker 1: challenge of making sure all the details in the frame
Speaker 1: are working properly. And as we've seen in all realms
Speaker 1: of computers, not just in animation, if you add more power,
Speaker 1: programmers or animators or directors will find ways to make
Speaker 1: use of that power, so you're never actually ahead of
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: This is why when we get a new computer with
Speaker 1: an even more powerful processor. You start to think, well,
Speaker 1: this thing isn't isn't faster than what my old computer was, Like, well,
Speaker 1: that's not because the processor isn't more powerful. It is
Speaker 1: the problem is that software developers are building software to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that power, and they may not be
Speaker 1: taking the most efficient path to doing that. So you
Speaker 1: have this constant issue with the fact that software is
Speaker 1: taking up all the power that the new shiny processors
Speaker 1: can generate, and it feels like we're kind of treading water.
Speaker 2: Same thing's true with animation.
Speaker 1: You can do more stuff, but once again you just
Speaker 1: start pushing up against the boundaries of what the technology
Speaker 1: is capable of doing. Now, the most difficult sequence for
Speaker 1: the team to nail down, both from a story perspective
Speaker 1: and technical challenges, was the sequence inside the Yeti's Cave,
Speaker 1: and it was so hard for them to get that
Speaker 1: scene right that they started using the phrase Yeti's Cave
Speaker 1: as code for any scene in any Pixar film that
Speaker 1: is near impossible to get right. They would say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is turning into another Yeti's Cave, just to explain, like,
Speaker 1: we know this isn't where it needs to be yet
Speaker 1: and we Need to Fix.
Speaker 2: It Monsters, Inc. Did really well.
Speaker 1: It hit one hundred million dollars in domestic box office
Speaker 1: in just nine days, which was faster than any other
Speaker 1: animated film in history up to that point. Edwin Cattmull
Speaker 1: officially became the president of Pixar again, and the company
Speaker 1: had six hundred employees at that point. Now two thousand
Speaker 1: and one would see ed Edwin Catmull, Lauren Carpenter, and
Speaker 1: Rob Cook receive an Academy Award of Merit for the
Speaker 1: Pixar in house rendering software package known as Pixar's RenderMan,
Speaker 1: which have been used in many other films to render
Speaker 1: CGI effects, not just Pixar's movies. They had licensed it
Speaker 1: out to other production companies, and this would.
Speaker 2: Represent the first OSCAR ever awarded specifically for the development
Speaker 2: of software. In two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: Pixar would debut a new short film called Mike's New Car,
Speaker 1: and this was the first time Pixar had ever released
Speaker 1: a short film starring characters from one of their feature
Speaker 1: length films. It was nominated for an Academy Award, but
Speaker 1: it did not win one. But that same year, the
Speaker 1: first Disney Park attraction based off of Pixar property opens,
Speaker 1: that would be a bugs Land at Disney California Adventure Park.
Speaker 1: Of course, Disney's California Adventure would eventually become home for
Speaker 1: the Car's Ride, which if you've not had the chance
Speaker 1: to go on it, if you ever do go to Disneyland,
Speaker 1: I would say that a trip over to California Adventure
Speaker 1: is completely worth it just for the Car's Ride. It
Speaker 1: is really really well done. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Finding Nemo premieres with a remastered version of the classic
Speaker 1: Pixar short Nick Knack. That was one of the ones
Speaker 1: that they had made back when they were trying to
Speaker 1: sell hardware. Nick Knack was kind of their demo for saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look at the kind of stuff we can do. So
Speaker 1: this time a remaster version comes out with Finding Nemo,
Speaker 1: and Finding Nemo would break more opening weekend box office
Speaker 1: records for an animated film and would win an Oscar
Speaker 1: for Best Animated Feature.
Speaker 2: And back in Monsters, Inc.
Speaker 1: Where the fur effects were the big challenge with Finding Nemo, obviously,
Speaker 1: the big challenge was getting those underwater effects just right.
Speaker 1: All sorts of stuff need to be right. The way
Speaker 1: that particulates floated in the water had to be modeled correctly.
Speaker 1: The light had to be just right for each of
Speaker 1: the different water environments they were in the colors, how
Speaker 1: those colors and light would affect the way characters appear
Speaker 1: on screen. All of that had to be researched and developed,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty incredible. They were eventually able to
Speaker 1: create underwater scenes so convincingly. They would take some reference
Speaker 1: material some actual film shot underwater an attempt to recreate
Speaker 1: that film using computer generated imagery. They got so good
Speaker 1: at it that you couldn't tell the difference between the
Speaker 1: two if you showed them side by side. It would
Speaker 1: be very difficult to say, this one's the real footage
Speaker 1: and this one's the computer animated footage. At that point,
Speaker 1: they then had to dial back the realism because in
Speaker 1: the world of Fighting Nemo, they wanted it to be
Speaker 1: somewhat like a make believe world, but based in the
Speaker 1: underwater world we know of, so it had to be
Speaker 1: It couldn't be too realistic or it would lose the audience,
Speaker 1: and it couldn't be too cartoony or it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: what they wanted. And they also had to study how
Speaker 1: fish moved through water to make sure that the animation
Speaker 1: made sense. They had to research aquatic life to understand
Speaker 1: their anatomy, and every animator was required by John Lassiter
Speaker 1: to get certified in scuba and to take several dives
Speaker 1: to have first hand ex experience underwater around these environments.
Speaker 1: They also had to develop the color palette that particulate
Speaker 1: movement all of that stuff, and this was a huge undertaking.
Speaker 1: Oh and they also had to figure out how can
Speaker 1: you make a compelling character out of a fish because
Speaker 1: traditionally fish have very limited abilities to emote. They don't
Speaker 1: do a lot of emoting, so they had to cheat
Speaker 1: a bit on that one. They had to give fish
Speaker 1: things like eyelids, which fish do not have, and to
Speaker 1: give them more expressive faces and be able to move
Speaker 1: their brows and things like that so that they could
Speaker 1: have characters have expressions on screen.
Speaker 2: That was a bit of a challenge too to get
Speaker 2: that just right. And of course developing the story was
Speaker 2: a big tough thing to do. It's a story that.
Speaker 1: Begins with a character losing his wife and most of
Speaker 1: his children. Of course, that's not the only time that
Speaker 1: happens in Pixar, and it's not the only time you
Speaker 1: see it in Disney, But you have to be a
Speaker 1: to treat that just right so that it has an
Speaker 1: emotional impact but doesn't become so overpowering that people you
Speaker 1: lose everybody at the very opening of your movie.
Speaker 2: It's a delicate thing.
Speaker 1: Also, in two thousand and three, Pixar debuted the short Bounden,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and four, Pixar would release The Incredibles,
Speaker 1: which I would say is arguably one of the best
Speaker 1: superhero films ever made. I'm including all the live action films,
Speaker 1: and The Incredibles broke all of Pixar's box office records
Speaker 1: for opening weekend up to that point. It also would
Speaker 1: eventually win the Best Animated Film Oscar. Now, this movie
Speaker 1: was a little bit different from earlier ones. Pixar brought
Speaker 1: on brad Bird. He actually ended up joining Pixar becoming
Speaker 1: part of the company. But when brad Bird came on board,
Speaker 1: he also brought some folks that he had been working
Speaker 1: with in previous productions, and so at first there was
Speaker 1: kind of a Pixar versus brad Bird and his guys
Speaker 1: sort of feeling. It took a while for the two
Speaker 1: groups to meld together and work together effectively, and brad
Speaker 1: Bird was apparently something of a and abrasive is probably
Speaker 1: the wrong word, but he definitely seemed to come across
Speaker 1: as a bit aggressive because in various drawings of brad
Speaker 1: Bird that were made around the time, it always looks
Speaker 1: like he's screaming at everybody, which in the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes footage for The Incredibles, brad Bird seems to take
Speaker 1: a little bit of an exception to He's mostly amused
Speaker 1: by it, but he's like, come on, guys.
Speaker 2: Eisner reportedly didn't.
Speaker 1: Like the pitch for The Incredibles at all and thought
Speaker 1: the film would have to be a live action picture.
Speaker 1: He would just essentially dismiss the idea that this should
Speaker 1: be animated, but Lasser was able to change Eisner's mind
Speaker 1: and get the film greenlit.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Early ideas had a slightly different take on a story
Speaker 1: than what we saw in the finished film. For example,
Speaker 1: originally everyone in the family could fly except for the
Speaker 1: dad Bob, which meant that he would end up behind
Speaker 1: the wheel of the family station wagon trying to keep
Speaker 1: up with all the rest of his members who are
Speaker 1: flying away. Brad Bird decided that that didn't make a
Speaker 1: whole lot of sense, and he didn't want any of
Speaker 1: his characters to have unlimited superpowers. He didn't want any
Speaker 1: character to be like Superman because he wanted those characters
Speaker 1: to get into situations that were difficult to get out of.
Speaker 1: And if you make a characters too powerful, it's really
Speaker 1: really tricky to come up with complications that that character
Speaker 1: can't just immediately fix, right. I mean, that's the problem
Speaker 1: with a lot of Superman stories is how do you
Speaker 1: create a situation for Superman that he can't just fix
Speaker 1: right away? And it tends to mean you have to
Speaker 1: escalate everything. So instead of escalating everything to a ridiculous level,
Speaker 1: Brad Bird's and let's make certain that the powers, while
Speaker 1: cool and beyond the capabilities of your typical human, don't
Speaker 1: get to the point where any one character is invincible. Now,
Speaker 1: the animators had the challenge of making unrealistically proportioned characters
Speaker 1: move in a believable way. If you've seen the Incredibles,
Speaker 1: you know, while they're unmistakably human, they don't have the
Speaker 1: proportions of humans. Bob, for example, has these tiny little
Speaker 1: feet and legs compared to a massive, massive Torso it's
Speaker 1: not realistic. It's a stylized version of a human being.
Speaker 1: So animating a character like that so that the character
Speaker 1: appears to move in a natural way when the character
Speaker 1: itself is an unnatural shape is a pretty tough problem.
Speaker 1: And also they had to create a look to the
Speaker 1: character so that they didn't look like toys.
Speaker 2: You know, that was the issue with Toy Story.
Speaker 1: In fact, some people pointed out that in Toy Story
Speaker 1: and Toy Story two kind of toy like himself, he
Speaker 1: didn't look very much like a human. So they had
Speaker 1: those challenges ahead of them. They needed to get that
Speaker 1: just right. But you could argue that maybe by going
Speaker 1: the stylized route they didn't really nail it. I think
Speaker 1: it's perfect for the way the movie is. Two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, Finding Nemo would go on to become the
Speaker 1: best selling DVD of all time, with twenty four million
Speaker 1: copies in North America alone. Also in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: over at Epcot Walt Disney World, there was a new
Speaker 1: attraction that opened called Turtle Talk with Crush, which was
Speaker 1: part of the Living Seas Pavilion.
Speaker 2: So Turtle Talk with Crush is really cool.
Speaker 1: The basic premise is you go into a little theater
Speaker 1: and Crush from Finding Nemo. That's the sea Turtle shows
Speaker 1: up and he has a conversation with audience, an actual conversation.
Speaker 1: He can talk to specific people in the audience, ask
Speaker 1: them questions and tell jokes and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's an incredible thing to see, and it's it
Speaker 1: can at least be It can be a little mind
Speaker 1: blowing at first because it looks like they're doing three
Speaker 1: D computer animation in real time.
Speaker 2: That's not exactly what's happening. It's more like a video game.
Speaker 1: Like think of a video game where you're able to
Speaker 1: control the characters make the move around, and it's similar
Speaker 1: to that. So there's a performer who's behind the scenes
Speaker 1: who can control Crush. They can make the turtle move
Speaker 1: around and do tricks and move his mouth, and then
Speaker 1: the performer actually provides the voice.
Speaker 2: So they always have to have someone on staff.
Speaker 1: Usually a couple of people who could do the Crush
Speaker 1: voice really really well. You need to have a couple
Speaker 1: because sometimes the person's voice isn't up to snuff and you.
Speaker 2: Have to call in the backup.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting that that's become an actual job.
Speaker 1: Like if you can do a good crush voice and
Speaker 1: you can learn this system. You got a good you
Speaker 1: got some good job security there. So this is really
Speaker 1: kind of a type of machinema. That's machinema with a
Speaker 1: lowercase M, and that's machine animation, the idea of using
Speaker 1: a pre existing three D virtual environment in order to
Speaker 1: render animation in real time. In this case, this was
Speaker 1: a custom built system meant just for this this attraction.
Speaker 1: It's not like they bought a video game off the
Speaker 1: shelf and they're using it for that purpose. They developed
Speaker 1: it from the ground up. But it's the same basic principle,
Speaker 1: and the performer can hear audio thanks to a handheld
Speaker 1: mic and possibly some other mics that might be positioned
Speaker 1: around the room, and also can see people through a
Speaker 1: camera system, so that's where that interactivity can come in.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, another Pixar short film debuts.
Speaker 1: This one is called One Man Band, and the New
Speaker 1: York Museum of Modern Art would host an exhibition called
Speaker 1: Pixart Twenty Years of Animation in December of two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, though to be fair, the actual twentieth anniversary
Speaker 1: happens in two thousand and six, so the exhibition opened
Speaker 1: a little early, but yeah, Pixar was coming up on
Speaker 1: twenty years as an entity, although it only had been
Speaker 1: making feature length films for about ten years. In a
Speaker 1: sad piece of news from two thousand and five, Joe Raft,
Speaker 1: who had worked both with Disney Animation and with Pixar,
Speaker 1: died in a car accident. Raft had worked on Disney
Speaker 1: films like Who Framed Roger, Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty
Speaker 1: and the Beast, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and The
Speaker 1: Lion King as a story artist, a storyboard supervisor, and
Speaker 1: occasionally as a voice actor, his specialty being cartoon screams.
Speaker 1: He would go on to work on Toy Story as
Speaker 1: a story supervisor. He provided the voice of Heimlich in
Speaker 1: A Bugs Life, and he also served as story supervisor
Speaker 1: for that movie. He voiced Wheezy the Penguin in Toy
Speaker 1: Story two. He worked on Monsters, Inc. And he voiced
Speaker 1: Jacques the Shrimp in Finding Nemo, and he co directed Cars.
Speaker 1: So it was very tragic Pixar was lost a real
Speaker 1: superstar in Joe Raft when he passed away. Now, that
Speaker 1: same year, Disney did something pretty controversial, at least in
Speaker 1: the eyes of some Pixar employees. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, Disney created a new division of Walt Disney
Speaker 1: Animation called Circle seven Animation. The entire purpose for Circle
Speaker 1: seven Animation was to focus exclusively on developing computer animation
Speaker 1: for Disney, with a primary goal of creating sequels to
Speaker 1: Disney owned Pixar films. Now, that led some folks to
Speaker 1: dismiss Circle seven, calling it picks Aren't instead of Pixar
Speaker 1: It's picks aren't.
Speaker 2: But the studio never actually produced a single film, nor
Speaker 2: were any of.
Speaker 1: The scripts that they wrote at while they were still
Speaker 1: a thing, ever used by Pixar in any of their movies.
Speaker 1: This was really Disney's move to try and leverage the
Speaker 1: intellectual property that Pixar had created under that agreement for
Speaker 1: those five films, and specifically they wanted it so that
Speaker 1: if Pixar left Disney, Disney could continue to make money
Speaker 1: off of those properties by creating sequels, even though those
Speaker 1: sequels would be made by people not connected to the
Speaker 1: original film. Now, there wasn't really any hard feelings between
Speaker 1: or there weren't, I guess any hard feelings between Pixar
Speaker 1: executives and the folks who were working for Circle seven Animation.
Speaker 1: They I'm guessing that John Lassen wasn't thrilled that Circle
Speaker 1: seven Animation became a thing. He was probably very torn
Speaker 1: up about it, but he didn't hold it against the
Speaker 1: people who had been hired by Disney. It was more
Speaker 1: of a problem with Disney's move in the first and
Speaker 1: in fact, when Circle seven ended up dissolving later on,
Speaker 1: Lasseter would actually bring on a lot of that staff
Speaker 1: and bring them into Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Speaker 2: In fact, Andrew.
Speaker 1: Milstein, who had been the head of Circle seven, became
Speaker 1: the general manager of Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Speaker 2: So there weren't any hard feelings, but it definitely was.
Speaker 1: A tense move, and there were some battles going on
Speaker 1: at the top levels of Disney and Pixar.
Speaker 2: At this time.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs and Michael Eisner were having some pretty nasty
Speaker 1: fights over which movies were counting toward the deal that
Speaker 1: they had made. Eisner was arguing that Toy Story two
Speaker 1: should not count.
Speaker 2: That is not one of those five.
Speaker 1: Movies that we agreed on because it's a sequel and
Speaker 1: sequels don't count. Jobs said, what are you talking about.
Speaker 1: Of course it counts. It's a full length feature film,
Speaker 1: and ISA are saying, well, it was meant to be
Speaker 1: a direct to video sequel, so it doesn't count. And
Speaker 1: there was this back and forth arguing, and Jobs was
Speaker 1: very visibly looking at other potential partners for Pixar once
Speaker 1: the Disney deal was done. So tension was high at
Speaker 1: this point between Disney and Pixar.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more about Pixar after this quick break.
Speaker 2: Now. Two thousand and six Rolls Around and Cars.
Speaker 1: It's a film that a lot of kids love, but
Speaker 1: I think it's really just okay. It's not at the
Speaker 1: top of my list for my favorites among Pixar's films.
Speaker 2: It comes out in two thousand.
Speaker 1: And six, it does really well. It actually does very
Speaker 1: well at the box office. But the reason that the
Speaker 1: movie exists in the first place is because John Lassiter
Speaker 1: loves cars.
Speaker 2: And maybe I'm not into.
Speaker 1: The movie so much because I don't like driving. So
Speaker 1: that's perhaps the problem. The whole romanticism of driving doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything for me, and that's on me. That's not
Speaker 1: the fall of the movie. So Bugs Life was a
Speaker 1: new take on Esop's Fables and the seventh Samurai Cars
Speaker 1: is kind of a new take on Doc Hollywood. It's
Speaker 1: really very similar story. So, while Finding Nemo made it
Speaker 1: challenging to create characters from fish, cars presented a new challenge.
Speaker 1: How do you create a character that's a believable entity
Speaker 1: and still recognizably a car like You can't change it
Speaker 1: so much that it doesn't like a car anymore, but
Speaker 1: you have to change it enough so that you can
Speaker 1: have a character there where that can express him or herself,
Speaker 1: that can move around in his or her environment and
Speaker 1: manipulate it. How do they carry and hold things? This
Speaker 1: was actually a really big deal. The animators were saying, well,
Speaker 1: how does a car pick something up? How do they
Speaker 1: carry things around? Apart from Mater who could tow things
Speaker 1: by using the hook on the end of his cable,
Speaker 1: how do you have these characters move things around?
Speaker 2: And they experimented with that a lot, with.
Speaker 1: Things like prehensile antenna or windshield wipers, or the ability
Speaker 1: to hold onto things with a car door, and eventually
Speaker 1: they just decided it wasn't important and they dropped all that. So,
Speaker 1: like Finding Nemo, the acting had to be focused in
Speaker 1: the face, even more so since, with a few exceptions,
Speaker 1: most of the characters didn't have a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to communicate. They couldn't do big gestures with their tires.
Speaker 1: They could do little ones, you know. They took a
Speaker 1: lot of liberties with the way stuff moves, but mostly
Speaker 1: it had to be the acting had to be concentrated
Speaker 1: in the face, and the team had to figure out
Speaker 1: how to make chrome look realistic. Chrome's very which means
Speaker 1: it's reflective, so that means you should be able to
Speaker 1: see reflections in the chrome, and that actually was a
Speaker 1: big technical challenge for the crew, but they were able
Speaker 1: to figure that all of that out and they were
Speaker 1: able to get the movie together and release it. And
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, when the movie came out, ended
Speaker 1: up being a huge year for Pixar. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: when Cars debuted, it was also when Pixar and Disney
Speaker 1: were able to come to an agreement. Disney announced that
Speaker 1: it intended to purchase Pixar, and under this new arrangement,
Speaker 1: Edwin Capmoll would become the president of Pixar and John
Speaker 1: Lassiter would become the chief creative officer of Disney and
Speaker 1: Pixar Animation Studios.
Speaker 2: So a huge change.
Speaker 1: Here where Lassiter the man who had been fired from
Speaker 1: Disney because he had been too enthusiastic about computer animation,
Speaker 1: was going to become the chief creative officer of that
Speaker 1: animation department. Huge Turnaround, Crazy Story, And in September of
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Pixar debuted the short film Lifted,
Speaker 1: just one of my favorite short films Pixar has ever done,
Speaker 1: and Pixar employee and story artist Joe Raft would be
Speaker 1: named a Disney Legend, which is an actual designation within Disney.
Speaker 1: It's not just it's not just a term. It actually
Speaker 1: really means something. It's like a hull of fame within Disney,
Speaker 1: and they induct only a few people every year, and
Speaker 1: he joined that.
Speaker 2: List that year.
Speaker 1: Well, guys, I've got a lot more to talk about
Speaker 1: with Pixar, but I figured this is a good place
Speaker 1: to end in two thousand and six. End of two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, when Disney and Pixar joined forces, and
Speaker 1: Pixar becomes an integrated part of Disney, still largely independent
Speaker 1: in the sense that it can develop its own movies internally,
Speaker 1: but now officially part of this company, no longer a
Speaker 1: separate thing. So we'll pick up in two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven for our next episode.
Speaker 3: All right, that wraps up the Pixar Story Part two.
Speaker 3: Next week we will conclude this retroactive classic series about
Speaker 3: Pixar with the Pixar Story Part three. And as I said,
Speaker 3: maybe I'll do a part four now because enough time
Speaker 3: has gone by that there's other stuff to chat about.
Speaker 3: So if you want me to talk about Pixar some more,
Speaker 3: let me know and I'll do a follow up to
Speaker 3: talk about what's been going on since twenty sixteen. In
Speaker 3: the meantime, I hope you are all well and I'll
Speaker 3: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: No