Catmull, who has a Ph.D. in computer science and five Academy Awards, and previously worked at companies like Boeing and LucasFilms, dreamed of being a Disney animator ever since he was a kid watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” on television. The successful completion of “Toy Story” stirred mixed emotions. The movie soared at the box office, and forever changed the face of animated film. But Catmull was left with a sense of “What’s next?”
7 comments:
I cannot believe it will be twenty years since Toy Story was released, that is not even in my lifetime. It is wonderful to think how far the world of animation has come with CGI and the type of interactive animation that people are experimenting with now a days. The firs thing that comes to mind is the movie Avatar, it seems to be the big milestone in the animation world, the release of the movie was HUGE and the level of effects was remarkable (at least according to the Academy Awards' voters). That was released only a few years ago, imagine in 20 years, how far will we come?
I agree with Simone: Holy crap, Toy Story is older than I am!
This is really interesting in the fact that this is an interview of a person who has been with Pixar for a very long time. It is not often that big companies keep the same employees for an extended amount of time. It is good to see how far they have come with animation, and it is probably because they kept the same people on board; they never had to start over from ground zero. It is pretty cool to see that they have those inspiration spikes as well! Sometimes an idea just evades you and then you are talking to some people about it and then WHAM! it hits you in the face and you know exactly what you are doing. I'm glad that this is a legitimate experience in the working world. I hope they continue to improve the animation styles and such, but not too far advanced. I mean, we don't want them to look like real humans walking around, then we wouldn't have any place for human actors in our film industry.
One of the best quotes about the process of taking a show from the rehearsal room to the stage was told to me by one of my old dance teachers. She said, "It is always great to see that the show works in the rehearsal room. However, once we get into the theater I just expect it to be a disaster. I am actually concerned when I go into tech and everything works right. With each layer of the process being added on I the production will fall down and the challenge then becomes to integrate the elements. Then by opening night I've seen a whole better production than the one I saw in the rehearsal room." The disasters are what make shows so special. The outcome of disasters are learning opportunity that challenge us. And they really do make the production better.
This article is a testament to the value of focusing outside oneself for artistic and commercial success. So many movies and television shows that are being pumped out of Hollywood rely on a bunch of CGI and other advances in technology and other pyrotechnics to draw the audience in with an "exciting" visual display, but many fall flat because they are not designed with the intention of resonating with the audience on a universal, gut-hitting level. It is so odd to think Toy Story is getting old, but as a true masterpiece, it's ability to affect people of all ages remains throughout time. Pixar really is a wonderfully creative, provocative, and well-intentioned production company.
I didn't realize Toy story is older than I am! I'm glad that in this interview they addressed the importance of making entertainment that not only looks good but has an emotional connection. At this point Pixar could probably put out some pretty mediocre movies and get by on its reputation alone, but they're still pushing for the best way to connect with their audience and to make good movies, not just pretty movies. It's too bad they don't record their meetings, since that would be really interesting, but I understand that that would change the dynamic in room in an unproductive way. Perhaps this is because of the thing that he mentioned that people are hesitant to speak their minds and that they are always pushing to get past that. I've noticed this in some group projects already this year, and I'd be interested if there were any techniques to use to work around that.
In high school, we had one of the assistant rendering programmers for Pixar come and talk to our AP Science classes. He talked about the mathematical and computational problems involved in making an animated movie, at the time I remember thinking about everything he said being so far over my head that I didn't understand how they could develop something like that. Now, the impressive thing to me is that they could develop an advanced new technological medium, and not loose site of the art and emotion that they were really trying to create.
"One of the points I always want to make is that all of our films start out as disasters". This quote really says something about what it takes to make something that is amazing and the expectations and mind set that artists need to have when they are going into a project. I feel like so many people try to make something amazing right off the bat, but in reality it takes time, trial and error, and failure to finally create something that is worth it. Nothing will be the best during the first run of the creative process. Going into the final weeks of arcade, this idea has become ever more apparent and I think every group is going to find that they are going to be changing little bits of the project right up until the very last day. This is just the creative process at its best.
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