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