Speaker 1: Get in Tech Technology with Tech Stuff from hatt Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and today the grand conclusion of the Pixar Story.
Speaker 1: It is part three. If you have not listened to
Speaker 1: the first two parts, I recommend you go back and
Speaker 1: do that thing, because otherwise you're gonna be starting right
Speaker 1: towards the two thirds mark. Actually, this episode is probably
Speaker 1: gonna be a little long. I'm not gonna lie to
Speaker 1: you because we still got a lot to cover. We
Speaker 1: left off last episode in two thousand and six, when
Speaker 1: Disney had officially announced its intent to acquire Pixar outright,
Speaker 1: it would no longer just be a partnership, a contractual partnership.
Speaker 1: It would be that the two companies would become united.
Speaker 1: So now we're gonna pick up in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: when Pixar would release first film it had as an
Speaker 1: official part of the Disney company itself. That film was Rattitui,
Speaker 1: with Patton Oswalt voicing the main character Patton Oswald, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite comedians. Now, Ratitui was again very successful.
Speaker 1: Like all the Pixar films that led up to this point,
Speaker 1: it was successful both financially and critically. It later would
Speaker 1: win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. We're getting to
Speaker 1: a point now where the people were starting to ask
Speaker 1: the question are other movies ever going to have a
Speaker 1: real chance against Pixar movies in the category of animated feature?
Speaker 1: And we also see more and more push from companies
Speaker 1: like Pixar for the Academy to consider animated movies on
Speaker 1: the same playing ground as live action films. Now, Ratitui
Speaker 1: would be another Brad Bird directed film, although not Originally,
Speaker 1: brad was brought in to replace a director, Jan Pecava.
Speaker 1: I believe Jan might be Yon Jan Piccava was at
Speaker 1: the Helm and then Brad Bird took over. One of
Speaker 1: the big challenges facing the animators with Rattatui was finding
Speaker 1: a way to animate Linguini. That's the human character who's
Speaker 1: under then the control or partial control of Remy the rat.
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out, well, how do we animate
Speaker 1: him where it's clear to the audience that he's not
Speaker 1: really in control of his own movements, or not in
Speaker 1: full control at any rate. That took a lot of work,
Speaker 1: so they ended up doing a lot of uh. They
Speaker 1: studied a lot of puppet puppets like marionettes and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. That movie did quite well and over at Disneyland.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a new attraction called the
Speaker 1: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage opened up now that actually used
Speaker 1: the old Submarine Voyage ride, the twenty thousand leagues under
Speaker 1: the C type ride, which had closed in so almost
Speaker 1: a decade after the ride had closed, it reopens with
Speaker 1: a new theme with Finding Nemo. Disney World would get
Speaker 1: its own version of this ride, but that would be
Speaker 1: housed in the Living Seas and not used the submarines. Instead,
Speaker 1: you get a Little Mermaid Submarine ride now instead of
Speaker 1: the the Finding Nemo version. In two thousand eight, uh
Speaker 1: Pixar would debut the film Wally Could come out actually
Speaker 1: the day after my birthday that year, and Wally won
Speaker 1: the Oscar for Best Animated Feature the movies Adorable and
Speaker 1: also debuted with the short film Presto. Wally was the
Speaker 1: first Pixar film to feature scenes with live actors, and
Speaker 1: the experience was so much faster than computer animation that
Speaker 1: Picks her folks were really surprised and excited about it,
Speaker 1: because with animation, if you create a scene and you
Speaker 1: realize we need to have this character turn around a
Speaker 1: little faster, or we need to light this in a
Speaker 1: different way, or the entire pacing of the scene needs
Speaker 1: to slow down a bit for it to make sense.
Speaker 1: That requires animators to go back and do a ton
Speaker 1: more work, and it could be many, many many days
Speaker 1: before there's something else to look at, whereas with live action,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, you give the direction to the
Speaker 1: crew and to the cast, and you do it again
Speaker 1: and it's right there. So the animators were all kind
Speaker 1: of gaga over how different live action is to computer animation,
Speaker 1: and they said that the actors were kind of amused
Speaker 1: because that's what the actors were used to, but the animators,
Speaker 1: to them, is a whole new world. Oh. Also, the
Speaker 1: fact that the shoot was catered appeared to be a
Speaker 1: really big deal, which just tells you what kind of
Speaker 1: things people find important when they when they go to
Speaker 1: a film shoot. Man, I wish my shoots were catered. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was an entertaining thing to see that this live
Speaker 1: action being incorporated into the movie had such an effect
Speaker 1: on the various Pixar employees. Uh, And it was also
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to just see live action showing up
Speaker 1: at a Pixar movie in the first place. But another
Speaker 1: big challenge with Wally was creating a story in which
Speaker 1: there's really no dialogue for the first act of the film. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously that makes the story much more of a story
Speaker 1: challenge rather than a technical challenge, but it also meant
Speaker 1: that the team had to put in a lot of
Speaker 1: personality in the animations. They had to figure out, how
Speaker 1: can we animate these characters in a way where we
Speaker 1: understand what their emotional reactions are, what their motivations are,
Speaker 1: what they're feeling and thinking at any given time, considering
Speaker 1: the fact they're not able to talk. They're not they
Speaker 1: have nothing to talk to, and that actually ends up
Speaker 1: creating a pretty tough technical challenge. It's not just how
Speaker 1: do you animate this character, but what what motions indicate
Speaker 1: those specific feelings and thoughts. So it involves animators studying
Speaker 1: themselves a lot, as they make different facial expressions and
Speaker 1: they have different body language in response to different types
Speaker 1: of ideas, like you know, you just gotta you just
Speaker 1: open the door, and you just found out your friends
Speaker 1: are throwing you a surprise birthday party, what's your reaction?
Speaker 1: Or you got home to find out that your dog
Speaker 1: got out of the backyard somehow and is missing. What's
Speaker 1: your reaction and studying yourself and then translating that into
Speaker 1: a character, and a character that's not human a robot
Speaker 1: is a big challenge, whether it's technical or just from
Speaker 1: a psychological standpoint. So pretty spectacular work that they were
Speaker 1: able to create characters that could give you that feeling
Speaker 1: that they wanted, even though they're not human or speaking.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight, Pixar would finish work on the
Speaker 1: first set of Car Tunes, which are in fact short
Speaker 1: cartoons about the cars characters. Jim Morris, who produced Wally,
Speaker 1: would become the general manager of Pixar, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, Up debuts at the can Film Festival, so
Speaker 1: the first animated film ever in the history of the
Speaker 1: festival to open the whole thing UP, and I imagine
Speaker 1: that festival attendees were just as devastated by the first
Speaker 1: ten minutes of that movie that I am. I still
Speaker 1: can't watch the first ten minutes of Up without turning
Speaker 1: into a blubbering mess. I know because I did it today.
Speaker 1: When I'm recording this, I was doing research on Pixar,
Speaker 1: specifically on UP and I watched it twice. I watched
Speaker 1: the original sequence in storyboard format, and then I watched
Speaker 1: the actual finished sequence, and I was so thankful that
Speaker 1: on Friday's our office is pretty dead because no one
Speaker 1: was there to hear me blubbering at my desk. I'm
Speaker 1: not ashamed of it. I just don't want to make
Speaker 1: other people feel uncomfortable. The whole idea for UP began
Speaker 1: with just the notion of an old man floating his
Speaker 1: house away with a bunch of balloons, which is just
Speaker 1: kind of a comedic image. But while the image was
Speaker 1: really evocative and people at Pixar thought, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: really cool idea, they had to come up with, well,
Speaker 1: why is he doing that? Where is he going? What's
Speaker 1: the whole point? So they had to create a story
Speaker 1: around this this picture, and that's where they started working
Speaker 1: on the ideas for UP Now. The original opening had
Speaker 1: the character of car Earl, who's the main character, and
Speaker 1: UP and his wife Ellie, falling in love through a
Speaker 1: contentious and competitive relationship. It starts off when their kids. Originally,
Speaker 1: the two kids didn't get along with each other and
Speaker 1: would um kind of ambush one another and punch each
Speaker 1: other and it was sort of a violent behavior, and
Speaker 1: and it got to a point where those punches give
Speaker 1: way to the characters, uh, falling for each other, dating,
Speaker 1: getting married, and all the story beats that you see
Speaker 1: in the first ten minutes of Up that I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go over or I'll start crying on a podcast,
Speaker 1: and no one wants that. But at any rate, it's
Speaker 1: say same sort of progression, but in a different emotional
Speaker 1: impact because people are getting punched. Um. So they ended
Speaker 1: up reworking it because when they showed it to people,
Speaker 1: their reaction was pretty quiet and they said it's a
Speaker 1: little too violent. So they went back, reworked it and
Speaker 1: did a different take, which led to you what you
Speaker 1: saw in the film. Technical challenges included creating a system
Speaker 1: that could guide the behavior of a lot of balloons,
Speaker 1: because that's how Carl's House moves to South America. So
Speaker 1: how many balloons were used in like in the movie?
Speaker 1: How how are the balloons showing up? I mean not
Speaker 1: real balloons, obviously they're virtual balloons, but how many were
Speaker 1: on screen? According to one animator, two hundred eighty six
Speaker 1: balloons or somewhere in that neighborhood were used to get
Speaker 1: Carl's house off the ground. And those balloons had to
Speaker 1: behave in a believable way. They had to be buoyant,
Speaker 1: so they had to rise up in the air, but
Speaker 1: they had to rise up in the air in a
Speaker 1: way that was natural, Like if a breeze came by,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a straight line up, it would be
Speaker 1: moving off at an angle. They had to bounce off
Speaker 1: each other. They had to have presence. They had to
Speaker 1: be able to react off of each other's strings. So
Speaker 1: the first balloons that go up are followed by other balloons,
Speaker 1: but those balloons also have to move through strings, and
Speaker 1: that's going to restrict the way those balloons move. It
Speaker 1: all had to be believable or else it would just
Speaker 1: be distracting. So, uh, the modeling they did, the simulations
Speaker 1: they did to create the rules of physics for those
Speaker 1: balloons was pretty sophisticated. It was kind of like not
Speaker 1: on you not unlike the hair simulator that they had
Speaker 1: to build for monsters, inc. They needed to have a
Speaker 1: system there that would make all of this work in
Speaker 1: a way that was uh, you know, that behaved a
Speaker 1: set of rules and that wouldn't require animators to sit
Speaker 1: there and hand animate ten thousand balloons, which would for
Speaker 1: the number of shots, in the number of frames that
Speaker 1: it shows up on screen, it would be impossible. The
Speaker 1: movie would still be in development if all that had
Speaker 1: to be done by hand. The short partly Cloudy would
Speaker 1: accompany Up and Up would win the Oscar for Best
Speaker 1: Animated Feature Film. Also, it won an Oscar for Best
Speaker 1: Original Score. And that's really when people were beginning to ask,
Speaker 1: is any movie animated film besides Pisarre ever going to
Speaker 1: have a shot at winning that Best Animated category. The answer,
Speaker 1: by the ways, yes, but at the time it looked
Speaker 1: like Pixar could not produce anything but a surefire hit.
Speaker 1: Um In two thousand nine ed when cat Mole was
Speaker 1: honored by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences with
Speaker 1: the Gordon E. Saw Your Award, which is an award
Speaker 1: for an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological
Speaker 1: contributions have brought credit to the industry as a whole. Now,
Speaker 1: cat Mole, of course, had been working on lots of
Speaker 1: different technologies related to film, not just directly to computer graphics,
Speaker 1: but other applications as well, and as a result, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of movie studios that were able to
Speaker 1: do some pretty incredible things using the technology he had invented,
Speaker 1: so it was not a big surprise that he was
Speaker 1: honored with this award. Also in two thousand nine, Pixar
Speaker 1: created a wholly owned subsidiary called Pixar Canada because it
Speaker 1: was located in Mexico, just kidding, it was in Vancouver.
Speaker 1: The main purpose for Pixar Canada was to create short
Speaker 1: films based off the characters from Pixar feature films, So
Speaker 1: Pixar Canada would be focusing on short cartoons that had
Speaker 1: characters from Toy Story or Monsters Incorporator that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and uh it freed up animators at the main Pixar
Speaker 1: headquarters to to focus on feature length films. In Pixar
Speaker 1: debuts Toy Story three, which of course breaks even more records.
Speaker 1: It becomes the highest grossing animated film of all time
Speaker 1: at that point. It also became the first animated film
Speaker 1: to rake in a billion dollars at the box office.
Speaker 1: It won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, and the composer
Speaker 1: Randy Newman won an Oscar for the song We Belong Together.
Speaker 1: Um so very critically praised film, the first two films
Speaker 1: in the Toy Story series really explore the idea of
Speaker 1: if a toy could think and feel, what would it
Speaker 1: feel if it were lost or if it had been stolen.
Speaker 1: The third film explores the idea of how what a
Speaker 1: toy feel if the owner had outgrown the toy. Kind
Speaker 1: of explored a little bit in Toy Story two with Jesse,
Speaker 1: but now the characters of Woody and Buzz Lightyear have
Speaker 1: to deal with that. So some of these are pretty
Speaker 1: heavy concepts, the idea of being abandoned and mortality and
Speaker 1: purpose in life, and it's all being explored by three
Speaker 1: D animated toys. But what was the big challenge in
Speaker 1: this film? We've talked in some of the other movie
Speaker 1: is about you know, for in Monsters, Inc. Was a
Speaker 1: big challenge getting those underwater effects just right and finding
Speaker 1: Nemo that was a big challenge. Was there anything left
Speaker 1: to be challenging by the time they hit Toys Story three,
Speaker 1: well look going to Pixar. Yeah, And the big challenge
Speaker 1: they had at that point was creating a meaningful exchange
Speaker 1: between human characters. As Andy gives his toys away to
Speaker 1: the little girl Bonnie at the end. Spoiler alert, if
Speaker 1: you haven't watched Toy Story three by now, but it's
Speaker 1: been out for six years. To come on, uh, that
Speaker 1: that moment had to be really meaningful, and it's a
Speaker 1: moment between two human characters. Earlier Toy Story films had
Speaker 1: received criticism that the human characters looked kind of like
Speaker 1: toys too, they didn't really look like people. And Pixar
Speaker 1: had created human characters in previous films like Up and
Speaker 1: The Incredibles, but those characters have been pretty stylized, like
Speaker 1: they're not not so human, like, you know, they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be people, but they don't really look like people.
Speaker 1: But Picks are also new. They couldn't go too far
Speaker 1: in the other direction. They couldn't make Andy look too
Speaker 1: human or Bonnie look too human. And that's because of
Speaker 1: the uncanny valley problem. And if you've never heard that
Speaker 1: term before, it really started to be applied in robotics,
Speaker 1: but the same is true for computer animation. The idea
Speaker 1: is that uncanny valley is the closer you get to
Speaker 1: looking like a human without getting it absolutely right, the
Speaker 1: more unsettling it is. Typically, the real problem is with
Speaker 1: the eyes. The eyes, if they don't look like they're
Speaker 1: really like there's any life behind those eyes. It looks
Speaker 1: like there's a an animated corpse acting in front of you,
Speaker 1: which for most people is probably not something that is
Speaker 1: really entertaining or uh fun to watch. It's unsettling. So
Speaker 1: this has been a real issue with robotics and with animation.
Speaker 1: How do you create a character that is believable and
Speaker 1: realistic enough so that people can empathize with that character
Speaker 1: and feel something when they see that character going through
Speaker 1: various issues without going so realistic that you make everyone
Speaker 1: kind of squirm in their seats because it's something is
Speaker 1: almost but not quite perfect. It's just wrong enough to
Speaker 1: be not good right like like it's it's you don't
Speaker 1: want to look at it. And if you've seen certain
Speaker 1: computer animated films that have pretty realistic depictions of humans
Speaker 1: where things are just slightly off, polar Express jumps to
Speaker 1: mind for me, you know what I'm talking about. It
Speaker 1: just it's something doesn't look right and it is unsettling.
Speaker 1: So they had to get that uh fixed for Toy
Speaker 1: Story three because the scene is the end of the movie.
Speaker 1: It's it's really important that they got the scene right.
Speaker 1: So it took them a lot of time to work
Speaker 1: on designs for the characters that would work and do
Speaker 1: the story justice without making the audience feel uneasy in
Speaker 1: the process. And capturing that moment of Andy coming to
Speaker 1: the realization that he needs to let go of his toys.
Speaker 1: That was a huge challenge to that's that would be
Speaker 1: a tough acting gig to ask a human being. To
Speaker 1: ask a human I need you to show us that
Speaker 1: your character has realized it's time to let go of
Speaker 1: a beloved piece of childhood, because it's the right thing
Speaker 1: to do, both for the child you're giving the toy
Speaker 1: to and for the toy itself. I need to see that.
Speaker 1: That would be tough to ask a human actor to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, good human actors would be to do it,
Speaker 1: but it's not easy. It's even harder when you're talking
Speaker 1: about animation, because that's a huge group of people all
Speaker 1: working together to try and make that happen, and getting
Speaker 1: all those little details right is enormously challenging from a
Speaker 1: technical standpoint. Now and behind the scenes footage for Toy
Speaker 1: Story three, they reveal that the entire movie has one
Speaker 1: nine thousand, six hundred eighty frames in it, and each
Speaker 1: object in the film, every single thing you see in
Speaker 1: the movie had to be built in in several stages
Speaker 1: by several teams of people, even if it only appeared
Speaker 1: in a second or two of on screen time. So
Speaker 1: every single individual component had to be designed, sketched out, modeled, lit, textured, colored.
Speaker 1: All of these things all had to happen for all
Speaker 1: of the different pieces, for all the frames of the movie.
Speaker 1: And then you start to understand, Oh, now, I see
Speaker 1: why making a movie like this takes five years. Uh.
Speaker 1: That same year that Toy Story three came out, they
Speaker 1: published a short called Day and Night. And that also
Speaker 1: also that same year, John Laster would become the first
Speaker 1: producer of animated films to win the Producers Guild of
Speaker 1: America David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Motion Pictures. So
Speaker 1: Pixar again becomes a pioneer in the animation industry, really
Speaker 1: helping gain more legitimacy in the eyes of other parts
Speaker 1: of the industry. For a long time, I would argue
Speaker 1: that animated films have been kind of looked down upon
Speaker 1: by certain, uh, certain other areas of the film industry.
Speaker 1: I think that both Disney in general and picks Are
Speaker 1: in particular have done a lot to turn that around.
Speaker 1: Other studios also have done great work, DreamWorks among them.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like Pixar and Disney are the
Speaker 1: only two entities out there, but they really did pave
Speaker 1: the way for a lot of other successes. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, Pixar turns twenty five and releases Cars To. Also,
Speaker 1: they released the first toy story short cartoon, Hawaiian Vacation,
Speaker 1: and another short film called La Luna that year. Now
Speaker 1: Lassner would direct Cars To, which was the first time
Speaker 1: he had directed a film since the original Cars, which
Speaker 1: came out I think two thousand six. Uh. He had
Speaker 1: directed some of the other shorter cartoons Pixar had produced
Speaker 1: between Cars and Cars Too, but he hadn't directed a
Speaker 1: feature length film since Cars. Out of the seventeen movies
Speaker 1: Pixar has made, Cars ranks number fifteen at the box
Speaker 1: office in the United States, so it's not at the
Speaker 1: very bottom, but it's two up from the very bottom. Uh.
Speaker 1: It ranks number nine globally, however, so nine on a
Speaker 1: seventeen when you look at worldwide box office, So what
Speaker 1: two films actually got less at the box office than
Speaker 1: Cars Too. That would be a Bug's Life, which was
Speaker 1: Pixar's second film made a little less than Toy Story did,
Speaker 1: and The Good Dinosaur, which is at the bottom of
Speaker 1: both the US and the global box office lists. We'll
Speaker 1: get to The Good Dinosaur in just a little bit
Speaker 1: and talk about the problems that movie had. In two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, Brave is released by Pixar along with La Luna,
Speaker 1: which had been premiered the year before, but officially released
Speaker 1: with a movie in two thousand and twelve. Brave also
Speaker 1: would win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Brave was
Speaker 1: co directed by Brenda Chapman, who was the first woman
Speaker 1: to direct a Pixar film. She had previously been the
Speaker 1: first woman to direct a major studio animated picture, but
Speaker 1: that was with DreamWorks. She was one of three directors
Speaker 1: for The Prince of Egypt, and she was the first
Speaker 1: woman director to win an Academy Award for Best Animated
Speaker 1: Feature with Brave. That being said, she was not director
Speaker 1: from start to finish. She had the idea of for Brave.
Speaker 1: She based it off her own relationship with her daughter,
Speaker 1: but there were some real creative issues behind the scenes
Speaker 1: while they were working on the story. So during the
Speaker 1: production of the film, Chapman was essentially fired from the production.
Speaker 1: According to Chapman herself and Mark Andrews stepped in her place.
Speaker 1: They both got co director credit, but she was no
Speaker 1: longer part of the production, and she stayed on with
Speaker 1: Pixar until the movie came out, and then she left
Speaker 1: and for a while she worked as a consultant with Lucasfilm.
Speaker 1: She went back to dream Works for a while. She's
Speaker 1: done some other stuff since then, but yeah, she was
Speaker 1: not on for the entire film. Still was the first
Speaker 1: female director of a Pixar movie. Now, for Brave, they
Speaker 1: actually had to go back and create a new hair simulator.
Speaker 1: They built one for Monsters Inc more than a know
Speaker 1: around a decade earlier, but they needed a new one.
Speaker 1: Why because Meredith's hair is curly, and curly hair moves
Speaker 1: in a different way than straight hair, and they could
Speaker 1: not get curly hair to work properly using the old simulator,
Speaker 1: so they had to make a new one. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was so hard for them to get the curly
Speaker 1: hair to behave the way they wanted it to for
Speaker 1: a while, they actually talked about giving Merida a haircut,
Speaker 1: but that was met with an intense negative reaction for
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone else in the company, and they said, no,
Speaker 1: you gotta get this right. So it took more than
Speaker 1: a year just to get the hair right, to build
Speaker 1: a computer simulation that could take curly hair and make
Speaker 1: it behave in a natural way. When you think about
Speaker 1: the nature of curly hair, you can understand why. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's just a wire that's got some weight
Speaker 1: to it that needs to move around. That curl is
Speaker 1: going to extend or contract based upon the various forces
Speaker 1: that are acting upon it. It's a complicated thing to simulate,
Speaker 1: and you have to do it for a character who's
Speaker 1: in nearly every frame of the movie, and so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of motion that goes in that even when
Speaker 1: she has to have her hair pulled back, she still
Speaker 1: has a little curl that gets loose. In the witches Workshop,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you pay attention, there's some Easter
Speaker 1: eggs with references to other Pixar films, including if you
Speaker 1: look closely, a Pizza planet car is on the table
Speaker 1: in the Witch's workshop before she clears it. Just Pixar
Speaker 1: loves to work in little easter eggs and all their
Speaker 1: movies and I was going to talk about more of those,
Speaker 1: but I realized that if I did that, I'd have
Speaker 1: to do a three year or four more parts, and
Speaker 1: that's stretching it even for you guys. Two, Pixar releases
Speaker 1: Monsters University. Now. This is Pixar's first prequel film. Monster's
Speaker 1: University tells a story about how Mike and Sully met
Speaker 1: in college. The first pass at the story got a
Speaker 1: note that was a killer, which was this story is
Speaker 1: too predictable. That's a hard, hard problem to overcome when
Speaker 1: you're talking about a prequel because you already know where
Speaker 1: the characters end up. You've seen the original movie and
Speaker 1: Monsters Inc. They're working on the scare floor. So how
Speaker 1: do you create a movie where knowing how they end
Speaker 1: up is not leading to a predictable outcome. It also
Speaker 1: became a big challenge to define the character of Sully
Speaker 1: because in Monsters, Inc. The character of Sully really comes
Speaker 1: out because he's interacting with the human girl Boo. When
Speaker 1: he has Boo there, that's where you see Sullivan's personality
Speaker 1: come forward. But Boo is not in Monsters University. This
Speaker 1: is before Sullivan meets Boo. So for a while they
Speaker 1: were trying to make Sullivan the focus of the movie,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't figure out what what what character was
Speaker 1: there And eventually they realized, hey, wait a minute, Mike Wazowski,
Speaker 1: maybe we focus on him instead, and uh. Once they
Speaker 1: did that, then they were able to really develop a
Speaker 1: story that they believed in. Now, in Monsters, Inc. There
Speaker 1: were five notable characters that had for in Monsters University,
Speaker 1: there were two hundred and fifty. So while they had
Speaker 1: created the simulator more than a decade earlier, they had
Speaker 1: to rely on it again, and they had to scale
Speaker 1: it up, which required way more computer power than what
Speaker 1: they were using ten years earlier. And like I said previously,
Speaker 1: Sullivan had about a million hares just on his own,
Speaker 1: and animating all of those by hand is impossible. So
Speaker 1: the simulation guided the way each hair would move depending
Speaker 1: upon the forces acting on it, and it even included momentum,
Speaker 1: which meant that once a character stops moving, the hair
Speaker 1: would continue to move just a little bit because it
Speaker 1: it still had some momentum, some inertia keeping it going,
Speaker 1: and a rather inertia would keep it still until it
Speaker 1: starts moving. But you get what I'm saying, Like it
Speaker 1: it behaved according to physics. It wasn't just it moves
Speaker 1: when he moves and stops when he stops. There's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a lag there, which is realistic. It's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. One of the problems they noticed was
Speaker 1: whenever Sullivan would make really big fast movements, his hair
Speaker 1: would stretch out across the screen. It would be like
Speaker 1: a rubber band where it would extend all the way
Speaker 1: onto the other end of the screen. And this was
Speaker 1: a problem. It looked awful, you know. It wasn't like, uh,
Speaker 1: the hair just looked elongated. It was looking grotesque. They
Speaker 1: eventually figured out what the problem was. The simulation was
Speaker 1: calculating that those hairs were being subjected to forces of
Speaker 1: up to one hundred g s with Sullivan at the
Speaker 1: mass and speed he moved was creating forces of one
Speaker 1: and so the hairs were stretching and deforming because of
Speaker 1: those massive forces acting on them in the simulation. So
Speaker 1: they came up with a way to solve this. They
Speaker 1: created a little kind of force field areas that they
Speaker 1: called inertial field generators, which sounds like a star trek
Speaker 1: kind of thing to me, and these ended up creating
Speaker 1: new rules for those hairs, saying, even though Sullivan moves
Speaker 1: really fast and he's a big, big monster, uh, you
Speaker 1: never really experienced more than ten gs of force, and
Speaker 1: that allowed the hair to behave itself and not stretch
Speaker 1: across the screen and ruin everything. Uh. In two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: also Disney's film Planes comes out. Now, Planes is tied
Speaker 1: to Pixar's Cars series, but Planes is not produced by Pixar,
Speaker 1: so instead, the Plane series comes out of Disney Tunes studios.
Speaker 1: If you look at the movie Planes, it clearly is
Speaker 1: inspired by Cars. The animation style is very much in
Speaker 1: keeping with Cars. The character creation is is unquestionably of
Speaker 1: that uh style, but it's not Pixar. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to point that out just because it was interesting to
Speaker 1: see that other elements of Disney started to create movies
Speaker 1: that were leveraging the the property of Pixar, but we're
Speaker 1: not actually produced by Pixar itself. Two thousand fourteen was
Speaker 1: a weird year for Pixar. That was the first year
Speaker 1: in a really long time that did not have a
Speaker 1: feature film debut from the studio. The reason why no
Speaker 1: movie came out in two thousand and fourteen was because
Speaker 1: of huge problems that were happening with the films that
Speaker 1: were currently in development at Pixar. Uh, there were some major,
Speaker 1: major story issues happening that we're holding up the release
Speaker 1: of a couple of movies. In one case, the movie
Speaker 1: that came out ended up being a success despite those problems.
Speaker 1: In the other case, a movie came out and failed
Speaker 1: to find that level of success. But in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, UH we did get some picks Are stuff.
Speaker 1: There was a TV special that came out for the
Speaker 1: holidays and it aired on ABC called Toy Story that
Speaker 1: Time Forgot. And also picks Are released a free, non
Speaker 1: commercial version of its in house rendering software called render Man.
Speaker 1: The company also licensed a commercial version of this software
Speaker 1: to other parties. And with render Man, you can create
Speaker 1: these virtual three dimensional camera placements, you can define geometry,
Speaker 1: you can place lights on lots of other stuff. Now
Speaker 1: it's not a three D modeling suite, you would need
Speaker 1: other program ams to do that, and it's not an
Speaker 1: animating suite you would need other programs to do that.
Speaker 1: But it can act as a liaison between those two
Speaker 1: types of softwares modeling and animation. So very useful and
Speaker 1: now people have an have access to a non commercial
Speaker 1: free version of it because of the release in now
Speaker 1: would be when those movies that had been in trouble
Speaker 1: during their development cycles finally come out. The first was
Speaker 1: Inside Out. Pixar story department had to research a lot
Speaker 1: of information and neuroscience and psychology to get this story right,
Speaker 1: because of course, it's all about how our brains process
Speaker 1: information and emotions. It's really about how emotions can guide
Speaker 1: our decisions and affect us and change over time. That's
Speaker 1: the heart of the story, and several emotions were workshopped
Speaker 1: in the development process but eventually dropped from the final
Speaker 1: version of the story. There were emotions like hope and envy,
Speaker 1: pride on we even shot in Freuda was part of
Speaker 1: the original story development, and at one point the story
Speaker 1: had twenty seven different emotions as characters, but that just
Speaker 1: wasn't manageable, so they had to figure out what were
Speaker 1: the most important ones, What could we what could you
Speaker 1: peel away and and have as your core of characters,
Speaker 1: And that story was really hard to get right. Pete Doctor,
Speaker 1: who was leading the project, even thought about giving up
Speaker 1: after three years of working on the story and and
Speaker 1: not getting anywhere or feeling like it just wasn't heading
Speaker 1: in the right direction. Uh. Originally, the prime story was
Speaker 1: not going to be about an eleven year old girl's
Speaker 1: reaction when her family moves from one part of the
Speaker 1: country to another. That's kind of the the the event
Speaker 1: that precipitates all the action of the film as it stands,
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the original story. The original story was
Speaker 1: going to be that Joy the emotion. Joy decides she
Speaker 1: doesn't want the girl Riley, to grow up into an adult.
Speaker 1: She wants Riley to be a kid because kids experienced
Speaker 1: Joy on a level that is orders of magnitude greater
Speaker 1: than adults, and so Joy was going to take every
Speaker 1: opportunity to keep Riley from developing into an adult. But
Speaker 1: then they realized that that turned Joy into a really
Speaker 1: unlikable character, so they scrapped that. They had to go
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board and they had to re
Speaker 1: storyboard the entire movie. They had hit the point where
Speaker 1: they had storyboarded the film. Now, typically Pixar doesn't start
Speaker 1: storyboarding until they feel that the general story is is
Speaker 1: pretty good, that the script is done. Then they would
Speaker 1: storyboard a movie, and then the next step once the
Speaker 1: storyboard is approved, is to go into animation modeling an animation,
Speaker 1: but this one had been storyboarded and then they had
Speaker 1: to scrap it and redo it. So it really was
Speaker 1: a dramatic change, and they still had to try and
Speaker 1: get the movie out before it got too late. On
Speaker 1: top of that, Inside That was the first Pixar film
Speaker 1: made without the input of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs had
Speaker 1: passed away in two thousand eleven, and while Jobs hadn't
Speaker 1: really been in a real leadership role for many years,
Speaker 1: he was still active in the process of hearing story
Speaker 1: ideas and giving his input all the way up to
Speaker 1: his death. Uh and John Lasseter was also largely absent.
Speaker 1: John Lasseter was over at Walt Disney Animation trying to
Speaker 1: get that department to turn around because they had had
Speaker 1: their own series of disappointing films, films that weren't necessarily bad,
Speaker 1: but we're not performing well at the box office, movies
Speaker 1: like The Princess and the Frog, which is a perfectly
Speaker 1: fine film but failed to capture an audience. So Lasseter
Speaker 1: was trying to fix that and wasn't really around to
Speaker 1: help out with Inside Out. There are also big technical
Speaker 1: challenges with that movie. A big one being that the
Speaker 1: character of Joy has these little particles that radiate from
Speaker 1: her skin, and since Joy is the primary protagonist, that
Speaker 1: meant having to replicate that effect for hundreds of shots
Speaker 1: in the movie, and that took a lot of computer
Speaker 1: power as well. Ultimately, all that hard work paid off.
Speaker 1: The movie was a huge success. It was the third
Speaker 1: highest grossing Pixar film in both US and global box
Speaker 1: office numbers, so it worked also it was released with
Speaker 1: the short film Lava. But two thousand fifteen also saw
Speaker 1: the other troubled movie come out, that is The Good Dinosaur,
Speaker 1: and The Good Dinosaur is is a Black Sheep in
Speaker 1: Pixar um. It's the movie that when I talked to
Speaker 1: my co workers, they some of them didn't even realize
Speaker 1: that was a Pixar movie. Some of them hadn't even
Speaker 1: heard the movie at all. Uh So, two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: is the first year in which two different Pixar feature
Speaker 1: length films come out to theaters. But The Good Dinosaur
Speaker 1: does not perform the way Inside Out did. In the
Speaker 1: United States, it earned a hundred twenty three million. Now
Speaker 1: globally it earned almost three two million dollars. That's not
Speaker 1: chump change. That's a lot of money, but it still
Speaker 1: makes the movie the lowest performing film in Pixar's history
Speaker 1: as an animation studio. That dree million dollars. That's less
Speaker 1: than what Toy Story one made at the box office.
Speaker 1: If you adjust for inflation, it's much less than what
Speaker 1: Toy Story made. And if you you know, not just inflation,
Speaker 1: but the inflation of movie ticket prices, much much less,
Speaker 1: it means way fewer people saw that movie. The story
Speaker 1: of the film, which if you haven't seen it, it's
Speaker 1: about on a dinosaur. It's it's the takes the premise
Speaker 1: of what if the the meteor that struck the Earth
Speaker 1: and helped precipitate the mass extinction that led to all
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs dying off. What if it never hit the Earth.
Speaker 1: What if it missed and dinosaurs continued to live on
Speaker 1: Earth and humans evolved at least two to caveman status um,
Speaker 1: and you had both coexisting on the same planet. That's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the world. It said it. That's not
Speaker 1: the premise of the story, but it is the world
Speaker 1: that the characters exist within. The that whole story was
Speaker 1: reworked several times. The idea of well, what is the
Speaker 1: actual point A to point B two point C storyline?
Speaker 1: We we understand what the world is, but what are
Speaker 1: we trying to say? It was a huge problem, an
Speaker 1: enormous problem. It caused the film to miss its original
Speaker 1: release date. It was supposed to come out in two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, It got pushed to two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: and then pushed again to two thousand fifteen. So when
Speaker 1: the story was not where it needed to be by
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, when it was supposed to debut, and
Speaker 1: it hadn't even been finished or really gone beyond that
Speaker 1: story development stage, Bob Peterson and John Walker, who were
Speaker 1: leading the project at that time, were removed from the project.
Speaker 1: Peterson would remain with Pixar but work on other things,
Speaker 1: and Denise Reem, who was a producer in the film,
Speaker 1: would replace John Walker. Peterson, who had first worked on
Speaker 1: the story when Bob Peterson came up with the idea
Speaker 1: back in two thousand nine, would become the director of
Speaker 1: the movie. And things got pretty dark for Pixar in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. Uh, it wasn't just that The Good
Speaker 1: Dinosaur was having problems. There were other issues as well.
Speaker 1: Pixar had closed was down Pixar Canada in two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen and laid off eighty employees as a result. A
Speaker 1: few months later, the company laid off another sixty seven
Speaker 1: employees from its main office, and by then Pixar was
Speaker 1: up to more than employees. The movie was reworked, and reworked,
Speaker 1: and reworked, and even recast. They had cast the movie
Speaker 1: because they thought they were getting toward a complete story
Speaker 1: in two thousands thirteen, but it didn't happen, so they
Speaker 1: had to recast it because when they came up with
Speaker 1: the finished story, they had dropped a lot of characters
Speaker 1: or replaced them with other characters. So like there's I Think.
Speaker 1: Francis McDorman, I think was the only actress who was
Speaker 1: attached to the original film and and remained on the
Speaker 1: cast for the reworked version. A Monster's University short called
Speaker 1: Party Central was supposed to premiere with The Good Dinosaur,
Speaker 1: but eventually Pixar shifted that to go in front of
Speaker 1: Them up It's Most Wanted, so instead and Different Pixar
Speaker 1: or it called Sanjay's Super Team debuted with The Good Dinosaur,
Speaker 1: and I've seen the Good Dinosaur, but I haven't seen
Speaker 1: Sanjay's Super Team because I saw The Good Dinosaur on
Speaker 1: a plane and they didn't have the short film to
Speaker 1: go in front of it. So I'm curious how Sanjay's
Speaker 1: Super Team matches up. I've heard about it, I knew
Speaker 1: what it was, but I had not seen the actual shorts.
Speaker 1: I need to do that. Moving to two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: wrapping up this epic series on Pixar, we get the
Speaker 1: release of Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo. Finding
Speaker 1: Dorry was originally supposed to come out on November two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. That's when The Good Dinosaur actually premiered, so
Speaker 1: Finding Dory was pushed back to the summer of and
Speaker 1: it's the only feature length Pixar film I have not
Speaker 1: seen yet. It's not because I didn't like Finding Nemo. Actually,
Speaker 1: Finding Nemo might be my favorite Pixar movie to date.
Speaker 1: I think it might be, uh the top one for me.
Speaker 1: Uh there. It's it's tough because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of Pixar movies I think are really really good, but
Speaker 1: Finding Nemo in particular speaks to me. Uh, Finding Doria
Speaker 1: I have not seen yet. It's only because I don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of times, so I haven't been
Speaker 1: to the theater in several months. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of movies that came out this year that I have
Speaker 1: not yet seen. Uh, but a lot of people did
Speaker 1: go see it. It had the largest opening for an
Speaker 1: animated film of our third largest opening, I should say,
Speaker 1: third largest opening of an animated film of all time,
Speaker 1: and grossed four one million dollars in North America alone
Speaker 1: to date as of July, and it's probably more than
Speaker 1: that at that point, and that's just North America, that's
Speaker 1: not globally. So it has done incredibly well and I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see it. I don't have any behind
Speaker 1: the scenes information about Finding Dori other than the fact
Speaker 1: that it had been teased that there was gonna be
Speaker 1: a Finding Nemo seek for a while. In fact, Finding
Speaker 1: There was originally gonna be a Finding Nemo sequel produced
Speaker 1: by that Circle seven group that had been formed when
Speaker 1: Disney wanted to try and continue making films based off
Speaker 1: Pixar movies, but not made by Pixar itself. But of
Speaker 1: course Circle seven had already been dissolved, and Finding Dory
Speaker 1: is not based off anything that Circle seven came up with.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see it. Future films that Pixar
Speaker 1: has planned include Toy Story four, which I don't think
Speaker 1: most people even thought was gonna be a thing, Cars three,
Speaker 1: The Incredibles too, It's another sequel I was never expecting,
Speaker 1: and an original film that is not based off any
Speaker 1: uh former Pixar are previous, I should say previous Pixar
Speaker 1: movie called Coco will come out in Coco being inspired
Speaker 1: by Diamos, the uh Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead,
Speaker 1: the very colorful Hall a Day, and in fact, there
Speaker 1: was some some controversy around that not having anything to
Speaker 1: do with Disney producing a Day of the Dead holiday
Speaker 1: themed movie, in particular, especially once they started bringing on
Speaker 1: cultural experts to make certain that the movie is respectful
Speaker 1: and reflects the cultural values of people of Mexico and
Speaker 1: not just exploit them, which would be horrible. But also
Speaker 1: there was an issue when Disney moved to trademark the
Speaker 1: phrase Dia de las Martos, and a lot of people,
Speaker 1: myself included, felt that that move was perhaps a little
Speaker 1: m M dumb. Dumb is a fine word. It was
Speaker 1: a dumb move on Disney's part. It would be like
Speaker 1: trying to trademark Christmas or Halloween or Memorial Day, trademarking
Speaker 1: that so that you can use it and no one
Speaker 1: else can. That just it struck people as being incredibly
Speaker 1: shortsighted and insensitive. UM don't know who a Disney filed
Speaker 1: for that trademark. I'm guessing it probably wasn't John Lasseter.
Speaker 1: Doesn't sound like something he would have done, But at
Speaker 1: any rate, that did not happen. Disney dropped it, and
Speaker 1: like I said, they brought on some cultural consultants to
Speaker 1: make sure that the stuff that Pixar was developing was
Speaker 1: respectful while still being an entertaining movie. And I'm really
Speaker 1: looking forward to it. I love the artistic style of
Speaker 1: Dia demuertos and sugar skulls and things of that nature,
Speaker 1: and I'm very curious to see what story they have.
Speaker 1: From my understand and this is from a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: so I apologize if I get this wrong. If I
Speaker 1: get it wrong, it's because of me, not because of
Speaker 1: my friend. It's because I misinterpreted. But as I understand it,
Speaker 1: Coco sort of refers to the concept of a boogeyman,
Speaker 1: so that's probably going to play some sort of role
Speaker 1: within the story, which follows a character named Miguel Um
Speaker 1: And that's all I know about Cocoa, but I'm very
Speaker 1: much looking forward to it. There's some unannounced films that
Speaker 1: are on Pixar's slate. They have not publicly said what
Speaker 1: they will be, but they have said that, uh, those
Speaker 1: movies are original works. They are not sequels, which gave
Speaker 1: came as something of a relief to a lot of
Speaker 1: people because seeing Toy Story four, Cars three, and Incredibles
Speaker 1: two on the schedule, people begin to ask, well, this
Speaker 1: picks are just going to be in the business of
Speaker 1: churning out sequels now or are we going to get
Speaker 1: more original works? Because originally the idea was there would
Speaker 1: be an original movie pretty much every year and a
Speaker 1: sequel every other year, and that hasn't quite worked out,
Speaker 1: But maybe that will change after this upcoming slate of
Speaker 1: films that wraps up the Pixar Story Part three, that
Speaker 1: catches us up to present day, and maybe we will
Speaker 1: have more to say about Pixar in the future. It
Speaker 1: is a fascinating company. H It's history with other major
Speaker 1: companies Disney and Apple make it really fascinating from a
Speaker 1: technology standpoint. The business side of things incredible. Also the
Speaker 1: idea that the animator who was fired from Disney came
Speaker 1: on to Pixar became a public face of Pixar. Even
Speaker 1: though he was not the the technical leader, he was
Speaker 1: the public face and and a lot of people look
Speaker 1: at John Lassner as being the leader of Pixar. Then
Speaker 1: going over to become a chief creative officer of Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Animation, becoming an important voice in the company that
Speaker 1: once fired him phenomenal. Also, never forget he started off
Speaker 1: as a skipper on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland.
Speaker 1: We should all be so lucky, al right, guys. That
Speaker 1: wraps this up. If you have suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 1: of text Stuff, you should email me the addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter at both
Speaker 1: of those. I am Text Stuff h s W. I
Speaker 1: am out here. I will see you guys. Well probably
Speaker 1: I won't, but I will definitely talk to you guys.
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