Thursday, August 16, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Monday, September 19, 2011
Innovate the Pixar Way for Filmmakers
The PIXAR Method: Tricks of the Hit Machine
By John Ott
photo by: JD Hancock
At the time of writing, PIXAR has released its 12th number one box office film, Cars 2. In an industry that expects one out of ten releases to be hit films, their critical and box office track record is unprecedented. Not even the early Disney studio had such a run of success.
You could credit the talents of people who work there, from Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter on down. They are immensely talented people, to be sure. But there are plenty of people with talent in Hollywood. Why has no other studio had the same success?
I believe that PIXAR has certain unique methods that help them craft superior films. And the good news is, because PIXAR began as an outsider company, many of these methods are well within reach of the indie filmmaker. Here are a few new tricks from the old toys…
Perturbate the Model
While a single writer/director is usually the prime creative force behind each PIXAR film, all of the films are regularly subjected to “brutally honest” critiques while in development from a group known as the Brain Trust. The original members of the Brain Trust were Lasseter, Pete Docter (Up, Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) and the late Joe Ranft. The group now reportedly includes other directors and creatives like Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) and Brenda Chapman (The Prince of Egypt). As you can see, the story must withstand scrutiny from a collective with a massive movie IQ.
Finance wizards have an expression: to perturbate the model. They test how models of markets would react in this or that extreme situation. The creative wizards at PIXAR do exactly the same thing. Before they ever start animating a story, it has been rigorously tested. Does this or that plot point make sense? What are the characters’ goals? Is this unique and original? While the ultimate creative decisions rest with the filmmaker, the ones that survive the perturbations from PIXAR’s Brain Trust ultimately result in a stronger story.
But what can an isolated filmmaker do without access to the PIXAR Brain Trust? Start your own. Regularly focus-testing projects with other filmmakers whose opinion you respect is invaluable and now, thanks to social networking, simple to do. Go to some local film festivals or filmmaker events meet other filmmakers and start your own Brain Trust.
Be Willing to Set Projects Aside
If you put years of your life into developing a project, but it just wasn’t ready, would you be willing to put it aside? Walt Disney did this — many times. As someone with the privilege of going through Disney’s archives, I’ve had a chance to see many projects that were delayed or never came to fruition. Disney often resisted commercial pressure to rush a film into production, and guess who else has this habit? John Lasseter, Disney worshipper.
“I’ve got Disney blood running through my veins,” he has been quoted as saying. “I do what I do because of Walt Disney.” [The Sunday Times October 2009] Even before PIXAR had a track record, he threw out the original story for Toy Story and started again from scratch, even though doing so jeopardized a deal with the Disney Studio to help release it. We know from our perch in the present that it all worked out, but at that time, the pressure must have been enormous.
Following Walt Disney’s lead, Lasseter and other executives at PIXAR have taken steps to make such a hard call a easier. They keep a lot of projects in development. This is expensive, but it means they get a choice of projects when the production pipeline is ready.
Most successful indie filmmakers do something similar, if on a smaller scale. They “keep irons in the fire” and are “willing to kill their babies” if it serves the ultimate creative goal: making a great movie.
Play in the Sandbox
When bestselling business authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson analyzed the corporate culture of PIXAR, they observed a childlike sense of fun in every aspect of the company. One of the keys is the way collaboration is used to constantly “plus” projects. PIXAR employees build on each others’ ideas like kids working to build a massive sandcastle.
Their takeaway: “Innovation does not come from a miraculous revelation … it comes from habitual, nonstop collaboration.” As PIXAR employees eat breakfast cereal (provided free), they can sit around like kids at the breakfast table and bounce ideas off one another. Then they can adjourn to a secret room with a hidden door that opens by pressing a button under a statue (I’m not making this up) as they continue to work on it.
As a filmmaker, you have to feel free to experiment, unleash the imagination that was so strong in childhood. I’m not saying a bowl of Frosted Flakes is the best way to do that. But whatever sort of environment is a creative sandbox for you, make it happen.
There are plenty more PIXAR methods that deserve to be cloned by filmmakers, but I’ll leave it here for now. See you in the sandbox!
John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and founder of the website Making the Movie
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Wednesday, December 15, 2010
SALESFORCEXP FEATURES INNOVATE THE PIXAR WAY
To Infinity and Beyond
Pixar-inspired innovation can make your meetings a hit
By Staff
As published in: SalesForceXP - November-December 2010
In their book Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons From the World's Most Creative Corporate Playground (McGraw-Hill, 2010), authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson latch on to Pixar Studios' commitment to excellence through imagination.
"It makes no difference if you are making a movie that takes four years or serving a customer that takes four minutes, you have only one chance to deliver that magical, magnetic, enchanting experience for your customer," the authors state.
Because a company's creativity begins during planning sessions, here are three ideas from Capodagli and Jackson that will help your team improve its innovative process during team meetings:
1. Take field trips. Some may be related to particular projects you're working on, while others will feel completely disconnected. In preparation for the animated feature "Cars," Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter and 11 animators rented white Cadillacs and traveled Route 66. To obtain ideas for designing the "Cars" movie characters, Lasseter visited the actual design studios of several automotive companies.
2. Bring in an outside guest speaker. Have your team spend an afternoon learning how to cultivate bonsai trees, or how to prepare an Italian dinner, or how to make classical music relevant to today's youth. The key is to get the team to expand their thinking outside their normal comfort thinking zone.
3. Conduct quarterly "Gong Shows." Years ago, the Disney organization had something called the "Gong Show," which was patterned after the old TV game show and provided an opportunity for anyone in the company to pitch new film ideas.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Fail Early, Fail Often and Learn Fast!
The message? “Fail early, fail often and learn fast.” It’s great advice for those of us who are making New Year’s resolutions! Whether it’s personal development, diet plans, or creating new products and services, there’s always the possibility of frustration and failed goals. It’s what we do with that failure that’s the key.
Ed Catmull endeared himself to the attendees by delving into the particulars of a Pixar “failure” – allowing a novice director to direct a Pixar short film costing $2 million rather than giving him or her the reigns of a feature film that could have cost up to $180 million! Ed said, “Our take on it was that it was better to have a train wreck with model trains than with real ones.”
People typically view problems and failures as unwanted events. We admit, it’s counter-instinctive for people to accept failure, much less court it by taking risks. When failure occurs, don’t ignore it – learn from it and try again. Why not give a prize for the dumbest mistake of the month! Then don’t be surprised if the lesson it teaches triggers some major success. It’s better that team members ask forgiveness for errors than beg permission just to try. Don’t forget that the first steamboat was initially dubbed, “Fulton’s Folly.” And, behind Walt Disney’s back, people referred to Snow White as “Disney’s Folly.”
As we write in our new book, Innovate the Pixar Way, Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University, explains, “You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success."
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Roy E. Disney, Walt's Nephew Dies at Age 79
In the years after Walt's death in 1966 and his father Roy's death in 1971, Roy E. became disillusioned the Walt Disney Co., which he likened to "a real estate company that happened to be in the movie business." The company had let its feature animation film business, once the cornerstone of the company, go into a freefall. The company, Roy would later say, had lost its "creative drive."
As we write in The Disney Way..."After Roy's (Walt’s brother) death, the financial and creative growth of the company came to a standstill. During the 18 years between Walt's death in 1966 and Michael Eisner's entry as CEO in 1984, a simple question would be asked among the ranks before any decision was made: ‘What would Walt do?’
In 1984, Roy (Walt’s nephew) convinced the board to hire Michael Eisner as CEO and Frank Wells as president and COO. Eisner and Wells were consummate decision makers and quickly began to transform the sleepy little movie studio into a global entertainment enterprise now worth over $50 billion.”
Upon taking over as chief executive, Eisner asked Roy what he wanted to do. Disney responded that he wanted to revive the company's sagging animation division where morale was at an all-time low.
Fortunately, Eisner granted Disney his wish. It was Roy who persuaded Eisner and Wells to invest about $10 million in a digital ink and paint system developed by Pixar. As you can read in Innovate the Pixar Way, the early Disney-Pixar relationship laid the foundation for the soon-to-be-made fortunes of both organizations in the world of computer-generated animation. Although Michael Eisner is credited with much of the Disney turnaround in the 1980s-1990s, Roy was one of the first to realize that Michael Eisner had morphed into what we term a "hero to zero" in The Disney Way. In Chapter 12 of The Disney Way, we describe the events that we believe led to Eisner's demise. For a complete history of the “fight of the century” that prompted Roy to remove himself from the company’s board of directors, you can also read James Stewart’s Disney Wars.
In Pixar’s Blog of August 19, 2008, it is written….
“I need not remind anyone familiar that the latter part of Eisner's employment was marked by extremely bad decisions that deeply threatened the company. The suit-produced movies. The sequels-mill atmosphere. Eisner endangered Disney and its shareholders by letting his great personal dislike (to say the least) of then Pixar CEO Steve Jobs cloud his business sense, putting the relationship with Pixar into serious jeopardy. Had Disney shareholders not revolted, Disney/Pixar would almost definitely have been history, leaving Disney in a very tough situation. Fortunately they did, being led by Roy E. Disney, –who coincidentally now chairs the Disney Legends committee– and, natch, the rest is history.”
Clearly, Roy Disney was passionate about protecting "the happiest place on earth." When Bob Iger stepped in as president in late 2005, he invited Roy to return to the board of directors in an emeritus role and as a consultant.
Chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, John Lasseter commented, "I really credit Roy Disney completely with the renaissance of Disney animation, beginning with Little Mermaid and all the way through that great amazing series of classic Disney films."
A year ago, we were on the Disney Magic sailing the eastern Caribbean and Roy happened to be onboard promoting his film, Morning Light - the story of a real-life crew training who competed in the 44th Transpacific Yacht Race aboard a TP52 class yacht, Morning Light, owned by Roy. After we watched the film’s debut in ship’s magnificent Walt Disney Theatre, we had a chance to hear Roy speak during the Q & A session and also had the opportunity to meet him afterwards. We found him to be gracious and unassuming… following his own passions, yes, but still remaining a true force in the entertainment empire built by his famous uncle and father. Roy’s passing marks the end of an era. But the values that Walt, brother Roy and nephew Roy so passionately upheld will hopefully guide The Walt Disney Company for years to come.
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