WEBVTT - The Pixar Story: Part 2 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:12.680 Get Technology with text stuff from dot com. Hey there, 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.239 and welcome to text Stuff, and the second part of 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:20.119 the Pixar Story. So when I first started recording this, 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:21.599 I thought it was going to be a two parter, 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.840 but as I started to fill out more and more 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.400 notes about the various things that went on at Pixar 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:33.440 over the last couple of decades, I realized that it 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:35.839 was gonna be bigger than two parts. So this will 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.879 actually be the second part of a three part series, 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.280 and some of these episodes might go a little long. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:47.680 So um, I think Pixar is a fascinating company, had 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:51.080 some really interesting people go in and out of it, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:57.240 So I apologize for getting rather verbos, but I think 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.960 it's important to really explore some of the cool thing 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:05.680 things going on within Pixar, not just from a technological standpoint, 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:08.240 but from a creative one and from a business standpoint 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.240 as well, a lot of interesting lessons to learn. So 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:16.600 with the last episode, I left off just before Pixar 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.600 was going to debut its first feature length computer animated film, 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.240 which of course is Toy Story, and I left it 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:29.360 off as a fake cliffhanger. Would the company succeed? Of 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.039 course they did, But one thing I want to point 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.000 out is that Toy Story itself was partly made possible 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:38.600 because of another movie, not a Pixar film, but the 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.280 movie A Nightmare Before Christmas. And the reason I say 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.640 this is A Nightmare Before Christmas was a stop motion 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.840 animated film produced by Tim Burton, and it was the 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.960 first animated film that Disney agreed to distribute, even though 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:57.520 the animation itself was not done by Walt Disney Animation Studios, 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.400 and that actually laid the ground own work for Pixar 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:06.120 to follow along with Toy Story. Also, one other connection 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:11.520 between the two, John Lasseter of Pixar fame and Tim 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:15.240 Burton both attended cal Arts at the same time. So 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.079 that's kind of cool, little little kind of a connection. 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.440 So one thing I gotta get off the bat, this 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:25.600 is gonna be true for all the different movies that 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.880 I talked about the Pixar has worked on. Each film 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.400 required many years to finish. A team might work on 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.200 a movie for five years at a time. It's not 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:39.880 that unusual, particularly with these computer animated films, and during 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.200 the development of Toy Story, the characters and script went 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:47.600 through lots and lots of changes. Also, not unusual with Pixar. 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.840 They've always said that story comes first. They have to 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.720 get the story right, and if they don't have the 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:58.960 story just right, people don't care how good your animation is. 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.720 If the story doesn't hold your attention, you eventually just say, well, 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.040 that was pretty and flashy. But I didn't really care 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:09.480 about anything. Back in the original run, when they were 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:13.720 first drafting out the story for toy story, buzz light 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:16.040 Year had a totally different name. He was called Tempest, 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.440 which was a reference to the classic arcade machine and wood. 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.880 He originally wasn't a pull string toy. He was a 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:28.120 Ventriloquists dummy, but Michael Eisner, who at the time was 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.800 Disney's CEO, stepped in and asked Pixar to change it 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.400 because he said dummies are inherently creepy, and it is 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:37.920 difficult for me to disagree with that. I don't agree 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.720 with a lot of things that Michael Eisner did, but 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:45.080 I definitely agree that ventriloquist dummies are are creepy. And 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.800 another major change was Buzzes whole worldview. In those early drafts, 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:52.720 buzz Lightyear knew that he was a toy, and he 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.120 knew that there was a television show that tied in 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:57.920 with the toy, but then they had Tim Allen come 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:02.480 in to do the the voiceovers acting, and Tim Allen's 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.360 take on Buzz was that the character was completely oblivious. 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:10.320 He lived the role of a space ranger. That is 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:13.320 what Buzz was. He wasn't a toy of a space ranger. 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.400 He was a space ranger. And the writers thought, well, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.719 that's way more interesting. So they actually reworked the story 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:24.440 based upon Tim Allen's performance and they started to change things. 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:27.720 So this whole process goes on for a long time, 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.200 and according to people at Pixar, those characters were really 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.120 tough to nailed down. Disney executives found the initial characters 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.360 a little too wholesome and boring, which is kind of 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.960 interesting to think that Disney exects would say, yeah, you know, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:42.920 these guys, there's there's not a lot, there's not a 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.159 lot going on here. We need some more conflict, We 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:49.279 need them to not be these just perfect toys. So 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.880 the next iteration went a little too far in the 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.080 other direction, and Pixar says, yeah, we kind of accidentally 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:59.440 turned Woody into a real jerk face. He became just 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:02.400 likable so they had to figure out where was the 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.440 balance between these two extremes, and fortunately the writers were 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:07.839 able to come up with that balance. Though for a 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.560 while it actually looked like Disney might pull the plug 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.279 on Toy Story. Keep in mind, Disney was providing the 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:19.719 funding here. Disney was giving Pixar twenty well not giving, 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:24.200 but providing twenty one million dollars for Pixar to produce 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.840 three movies, and uh they were. Disney was also going 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.440 to provide the distribution for Pixar, and in return, Disney 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.400 was taking an enormous share of the revenue should these 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.960 movies prove to be successful. The whole project required way 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:43.599 more resources than Pisar anticipated. They had only been working 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:45.960 on short films up to that point and did not 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:51.640 realize what a different creature a feature length film can be. 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:57.040 It's not just oh, this one short we did required 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:00.200 ten people, but this movie is four times longer, so 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.279 we'll need forty people. It's way more complicated than that. 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.440 They originally thought they could get away with just using 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.760 eight animators for Toy Story, and on top of that, 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.360 they would have people in lighting and textures, but eight 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.720 animators to actually create the animation. They ended up with 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.080 thirty three by the end of the production, and all 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.640 the other departments also needed more people than they originally estimated, 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:28.840 so with each film, Pixar would typically add a few 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.480 more animators. By the time Monsters Inc. Rolls around, for example, 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:37.080 there were fifty animators working on that movie. So it 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:41.039 became clear that this feature link game was different and 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:43.760 not a big surprise that Pixar had to learn this. 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:48.640 It was new territory for them. Now. They also had 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.800 to make sure that everyone who was working on animation 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.160 was going to animate the characters in a consistent way. 0:06:55.400 --> 0:07:00.480 You couldn't have different animators manipulate characters so that they 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:02.919 have their own quirks. When one animator is working on 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.320 it but not on another, it's inconsistent and disorienting. So 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.920 typically a lead animator would be assigned to every major 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:15.240 character to create the desired performance, but an individual animator 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.200 might work on every single character in a film at 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.240 some point or another. It may just be that the 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.360 characters in the background for that sequence, but they still 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:29.520 have to act in character. Acting is interesting because normally 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.520 we think of it as a creation between an actor 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.160 and maybe a director or perhaps a couple of actors 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.600 and a director, but in this case it's an entire 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:42.880 department of people coming together to determine what acting is 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:47.680 for each individual character, sometimes multiple departments of of people, 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:52.040 so much more complicated than a live action sort of production. 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:57.240 The first bit that they actually animated for Toy Story 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:01.680 was the sequence in which the toy soldiers deployed to 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:04.800 see what Andy is getting for his birthday. So to 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.560 get an idea of how those soldiers would actually move around, 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.080 the animators ended up strapping their feet to boards, and 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.920 then they tried to move around with their feet connected 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:19.960 to each other on these these solid wooden boards. Supposedly 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:22.960 the first person to try this actually was nailing their 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:27.360 shoes to the boards and did so the wrong way, 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.480 in other words, nailing up from the board through the shoe, 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:35.160 which seems to be a little uh, poorly thought out 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.840 in my mind. But at any rate, you had these 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.240 these animators trying to get around so that they could 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:45.600 get a good basis for how the character should move 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.960 in the actual film, and apparently was quite the scene 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:54.440 that Pixar HQ. Now. Computer animation takes several steps to complete, 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:59.000 just like traditional animation does, so In computer animation, you 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:01.560 have to build the computer models for the characters, so 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:06.320 this is the three dimensional representation of your character. You 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.480 have to also do that for sets and props. You 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.040 can't just do it for just the characters, otherwise everything 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.760 else is flat, and you animate the sequences according to 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:19.000 the storyboard and performances. But at that point, even after 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.080 you've modeled everything and you've figured out the physics and 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.160 you know how different parts move in relation to each other, 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:27.920 you still end up with kind of a featureless and 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:32.520 plastic figure. Everything looks kind of like it's just like 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:37.240 simple solid body plastic. So then you have to overlay 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.920 color textures and shading to give more definition to the characters. 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.160 And then you have to add lighting sequences to create 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.439 the mood you want for that scene and the effects 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:51.880 you need, and this gets really complicated. In a physical 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.760 uh space where you're actually shooting live action, you can 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.760 move lights around and see what sort of effects you get. 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:02.000 You know what happens if you light the scene from 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.480 the back as opposed to from the front. But in 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.520 computer animation you have to actually program all that in. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.520 At least initially. You might eventually come come up with 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.480 a lighting software suite that does most of this automatically, 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.360 and then you can make minor tweaks at that point. 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:22.360 But when you start out, you have to program how 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:26.840 the light behaves. The computer doesn't magically know that light 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:29.800 from one direction is going to create a different effect 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:32.120 from than light from another direction. You have to actually 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.680 build all that in. So it's incredibly time consuming and 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.640 work intensive. It involves a lot of technical know how 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:43.920 and artistic know how as well, so it's it's not 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.840 an easy job. Now. Originally Pixar employees thought they could 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:52.760 render the entire film in twenty months using fifty three processors. 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:56.160 That's just the rendering stage, mind you, that's not the animation, 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.559 but twenty months just to render the work that they 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.600 had created. But it turned out they needed three hundred 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.520 machines to do the job, not fifty three processors. Three 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:09.040 D computers, and today Pixar has more than twenty thousand 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.480 processors to work on render jobs, which means they could 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.960 take that raw footage from Toy Story and render it 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.720 in real time by the end of if if you 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.880 were to start rendering all that footage and you started 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.280 the DVD of Toy Story at the same time, you 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.800 would be done with both at around the same time. Uh. 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.360 Not necessarily true with later Pixar films, which are more 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.120 complicated than that first Toy Story movie, but it does 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.400 illustrate how much more sophisticated things have become since then. 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.959 And once again we see that Moore's law has brought 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.080 down the cost of computing to a point where this 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:49.400 sort of thing is possible. It's not outside the reach 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.720 of a production studio now. At the time that would 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.320 have been impossible. It would have been too expensive to 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:59.120 have twenty thousand processors, let alone the idea of well 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:00.840 how do we how do we power them and keep 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.320 them cold enough so that they work, and where do 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.480 we put them and all that kind of stuff. But 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.679 we've seen the chips get smaller, we've seen them we 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:16.440 get more powerful, we've seen more uh sophisticated processors with 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:21.080 multiple cores, including graphics processors, and of course we've seen 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.240 that price come down over time, so now it's less 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:30.480 of a an insurmountable obstacle. Still expensive, just not as 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:33.959 expensive as it would have been back then. So after 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.480 making Toy Story, John Lasseter realized that a feature link 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.120 computer animated film was way too much work for a 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:43.840 single director. He was the director for Toy Story, but 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:46.360 he realized this is too big a job for one 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.920 person to head up. So from that point forward, the 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.880 Pixar films would have multiple directors, with normally one acting 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:55.880 as kind of the primary director to steer the vision 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:59.840 of the film, and others to oversee specific aspects of 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.520 the production, like like cinematography and lighting and that sort 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.880 of stuff. The movie came out on November twenty two, 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:12.200 n and it was directed by John Lasseter. Several writers 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.320 worked on the story, including Josh Weeden, who is of 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.319 course the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.439 and Angel and things like that. Wheed and by the way, 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.200 I wrote a couple of my favorite lines, including You're 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.360 a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:30.600 and uh one of my favorite lines of all time, 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:35.720 wind the Frog. This movie also marked the first time 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:39.440 Pixar worked with the musician Randy Newman, who would go 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:42.600 on to compose the music for six more Pixar movies. 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.280 So he hasn't worked on all of them, but he 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.080 worked on a lot of them, and also on a 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.959 personal note, Toy Story was the first movie I saw 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.120 while dating the woman who would later on become my wife. 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:58.320 It took some convincing to get her to the theater 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.640 to to go and see a move V called Toy Story, 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.360 but I eventually convinced her to do so, and afterwards 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:08.000 she became a lifelong Pixar fan. So I did something right. 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:15.120 Uh nineteen years woo Now, Toy Story was a really 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:19.880 big hit. According to box office Mojo, Toy Stories global 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:23.360 box office amounted to three hundred sixty two million dollars, 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.960 but Pixar's deal with Disney meant it only received a 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.480 small percentage of the profits. Between ten and fifteen percent 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.680 of the profits. Most of that money went to Disney, 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:37.760 not to Pixar. Some folks over at Pixar felt that 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.800 this was kind of unfair, that Disney was providing the 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:46.400 distribution and marketing, and that initial maybe seven million dollars 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:48.760 you could argue for the budget of the movie, but 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:53.320 otherwise wasn't responsible for the actual success of the movie. Disney, 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.320 apart from giving some notes, didn't determine the story. They 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.880 didn't do the animation, they didn't do the effects, they 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:03.920 didn't hire the voice actors, so some folks over Pixar. 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.640 We're a little not happy with this arrangement, but that's 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:12.840 how things were at the time. Shortly after Toy Story premiered, 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:17.000 like a week after Toy Story came out, Steve Jobs 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.120 made the big move and took Pixar public with an 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:24.000 initial public offering or i p O. It ended up 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:29.400 being the biggest technology i p O in which was 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.760 also a year that saw Netscape go public. If you 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:35.960 don't know what Netscape is, go look it up. Used 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:39.600 to be the name and computer browsers for the Internet 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.680 back in the day. Now, before the i p O, 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:47.040 the estimated value of a share of Pixar stock was 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:51.000 between twelve and fourteen dollars. That's what analysts were predicting 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:55.040 that Pixar shares would be between twelve and fourteen bucks 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.960 per share, but when trading open, the initial share price 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:03.320 was actually twenty two dollars. Toy stories incredible opening was 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.640 probably part of the reason why it was higher than 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:10.520 originally estimated. During that first day of trading, the stock 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:13.760 reached its highest point at forty six dollars per share, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:18.160 which means it more than doubled its value from the 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.360 opening bell of the stock exchange. Now, granted it, it 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.040 didn't end at forty six dollars per year on that 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.320 first day. It actually settled to thirty nine dollars per year, 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.400 so still higher than what it opened at. And because 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.440 Steve Jobs owned practically all the shares in the company 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:40.360 before taking it public, it turned him into a billionaire 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:47.120 a billion air overnight. He had spent fifty million dollars 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.400 on this company over time trying to keep it afloat. 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:55.840 That gamble paid off big time, and of course it 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:58.320 gave Pixar a bit more leverage. It was a force 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:02.640 to be reckoned with a one point for six billion 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:07.880 dollar market value force. So imagine that. Imagine that you're 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.720 working for a company that, over the course of a 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:15.879 week has its first feature length film come out and 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:20.080 then is valued at one point for six billion dollars. 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:26.760 It must have been incredible. Also in n David Di Francesco, 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.320 whom we talked about in the last episode, received an 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:34.480 Academy Award for the development of a film input scanning technique, 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.959 and Pixar was continuing to develop new technologies in the 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:43.560 film industry, and eventually it was also licensing those technologies 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:45.719 out to other companies. So it wasn't just that they 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.600 were developing tools in house to get their stuff done. 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:52.160 They were innovating in technology and then making money through 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.479 licenses so that other production companies could take advantage of 0:17:55.560 --> 0:18:05.719 those advancements. Moving ahead to nine John Laster received a 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:09.399 Special Achievement Oscar for directing the first feature length computer 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:14.040 animated film, and ed Capbell Alvi, Ray Smith, Thomas Porter, 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.080 and Tom Duff received a Technical Academy Award for their 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:22.639 work in Digital Image compositing. Inn picks Are completed work 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:27.240 on their short animated film Jerry's Game, which would win 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:31.120 a Best Animated Short Film Oscar for Pixar. That would 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:35.359 be their second Best Animated Short Film Oscar. They would 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:40.880 win many many more and also in nine seven, Pixar 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:46.600 hired Randy S. Nelson, who would become the dean of 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:51.600 Pixar University. Now this is not like a giant college 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:56.560 campus somewhere akin to Monsters University. This is Pixar's internal 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:00.879 skills development department, which gives Pixar employees the opportunity to 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.000 take classes and all sorts of fields and disciplines, from 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:09.440 story development and screenwriting to drawing and sculpting, and this 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.400 Nelson guy, he sounds like someone I'd really get along with. 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:17.360 He was a founder of the Flying Kara Matzov Brothers, 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.840 so he's a juggler, and as a juggler, if you 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:24.359 didn't know, I'm also a juggler, I really respect that. 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:27.600 He had also worked with Steve Jobs both at Apple 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:32.520 and at Next. Remember Jobs had been essentially forced out 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.840 of Apple and had founded a new company called Next Computers, 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:40.880 eventually abandoning the hardware side of Next Computers and developing 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.560 software instead. Now, according to Nelson, if you were to 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.640 take all the courses, or or to take a full 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.960 suite of courses at Pixar University, you would have the 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:57.160 equivalent of a bachelor's degree education in fine arts. That's 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:02.760 how comprehensive there in Nal Development department was. They were 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:07.800 dedicated to making certain that employees had the opportunity to 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:11.280 learn new skills and develop ones that they had already 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:17.239 started to to create or to build on previously. And 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:20.959 this included all sorts of different types of of activities, 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.199 including improvisational acting. So you might end up finding yourself 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.440 sitting next to the head of the company, but you're 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:32.399 both classmates at that at that class, so it also 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:37.840 helped break down the hierarchical barriers between bosses and employees. 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:45.040 The motto of Pixar University is alienis non deus, which 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:49.480 I know I'm terribly mispronouncing because I have little Latin 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:52.879 and less Greek, just like a Mr. Shakespeare Shakespeare, but 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:57.399 the Latin phrase actually means alone no longer. And it 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.560 also has a secondary Latin inscription on a Pixar University 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:07.720 crest which says tempest pecunia sumnum, which means time, money, sleep. 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:11.160 The three of those, I think sleep is the one 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:16.040 that the typical Pixar employee has the least of. Maybe time, 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.639 It's kind of hard to say. Moving on over to 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.919 uh talk about a bit, Pixar and Disney renegotiated their 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:29.280 agreement at that time. So if you remember, they originally 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:31.520 had come up with a night uh this deal that 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.680 there that Pixar was going to make three movies for Disney, 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.639 after which there would be time to negotiate a new 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:45.240 a new relationship instead, and in return, Disney was going 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:49.600 to get the massive majority of the profits from those movies. 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:54.000 But the renegotiation went a little better for Pixar. They 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:58.920 agreed to do a ten year five film deal uh 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:02.199 and in that deal, Pixar would receive fifty of the 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:05.600 profits from the films. The New York Times reported on 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:08.040 the change in agreements and revealed that the new Pixar 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:12.199 film was going to be called Bugs. So this was 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:15.000 before the movie had come out. Obviously, they were still 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:16.679 working on it. It was still in development, so the 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:21.480 title had not been finalized. Now that arrangement, with the 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:25.000 new deal of being a ten year five film contract, 0:22:25.480 --> 0:22:28.639 answered some of the criticisms industry analysts had about the 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.040 Pixar I p O. Because when Pixar went public, some 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:37.040 analysts were saying, this seems really like investors are pushing 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:41.119 this company beyond its actual value, because keep in mind, 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:43.919 while they're doing great work, and while their movies are 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:46.639 making huge amounts of money in the box office, that 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:48.800 most of that money is not going to Pixar, it's 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:53.440 going to Disney. So maybe you shouldn't drive the value 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:56.159 of this company up so high since it's really not 0:22:56.240 --> 0:23:00.119 earning money for itself. Once this new arrangement came and 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.679 that took some of that criticism away, Bugs, of course, 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:06.160 ended up being a Bug's Life, which would come out 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:10.440 in and it broke the record for a Thanksgiving weekend 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.480 film opening in the United States. The movie combines a 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:18.119 couple of famous stories You've got ESOPs, the ant and 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:21.560 the Grasshopper as part of it, and a very healthy 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:26.680 dose of the Seven Samurai uh As as the various 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:31.760 core story elements, and the Pixar team said that A 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:36.439 Bug's Life was particularly challenging and rewarding. The movie called 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:39.159 for a lot of characters on screen at once, I 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:42.840 mean hundreds and hundreds of insects all on screen at 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:45.800 the same time, which requires a lot of processing power. 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:48.359 You're talking about a ton of animation. You don't want 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:52.560 your characters all just standing still, and that requires a 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:55.560 lot of computer power. Also, on top of that, the 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:59.320 characters had lots of limbs. I mean, insects have lots 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:02.920 of legs, so most of these creatures had six legs. 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:06.359 Some of them also had wings or also antenna. On 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:09.679 top of that, these settings were on uneven surfaces, and 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:12.240 those surfaces had to have an organic look to them. 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:15.920 There was also fire and smoke in the movie, which 0:24:16.119 --> 0:24:20.280 is notoriously difficult to get just right with computer animation 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:23.440 or at least it was at that time, and so 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:27.960 it was very resource heavy. It was a very ambitious 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:31.560 project to take on after toy story. Now, one of 0:24:31.560 --> 0:24:34.680 the defining looks of the film is the translucent nature 0:24:34.720 --> 0:24:38.000 of the various leaves and flowers. So John Laster said 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:40.320 it was like characters were living in a world of 0:24:40.440 --> 0:24:44.719 stained glass, and that the animators had to create ways 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:48.720 for light to behave properly to shine through these surfaces. 0:24:49.040 --> 0:24:52.960 And again it meant creating new rules, making up new 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:57.520 rules so that things looked right, didn't just look pretty, 0:24:57.600 --> 0:25:00.479 but they looked natural. And the story of Bug's life 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:03.080 changed a lot too over the course of its production. Originally, 0:25:03.119 --> 0:25:05.920 the main character was the head of the circus bugs, 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:10.200 and that was an ant named Red. But the film 0:25:10.240 --> 0:25:12.840 didn't find a voice with that main character in place. 0:25:12.880 --> 0:25:15.920 They couldn't They couldn't figure out, well, what's the story here? 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:19.040 Where where's the character arc? Why would this character stick 0:25:19.119 --> 0:25:23.760