Who doesn’t love Toy Story? First of all, it finds inspiration in a classic child’s
fantasy: toys coming to life when their owners are not around. Second, it meant a revolutionary
event that changed the film industry forever, as it was the first feature film digitally
animated. And last but not least, the story between Woody and Buzz Lightyear is a fun
and emotional ode to friendship. However, being a pioneer has its inconveniences,
and a lot of water ran under the bridge until the movie was finally released.
Talking about Toy Story implicates talking about Pixar and John Lasseter.
Born on 1957, Lasseter studied in the California Institute of the Arts, a.k.a. CalArts, where
he was in the same classes as Brad Bird (future director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille,
among others) and someone called Tim Burton. Just as the future director of Edward Scissorhands
did, after graduation, Lasseter got a job in Disney. There, he was part of the team
of animation and special effects of films such as The Fox and the Hound and Young Sherlock
Holmes, which includes one of the first digitally animated characters. From there, he went to
work in a company specialized in that technology: Pixar.
Founded in 1975, Pixar started off as a humble group of computation experts led by Edwin
Catmull. Four years later, George Lucas’ company, LucasFilm, absorbed Pixar, as they
required their services to develop digital technology for their productions. Under the
wing of LucasFilm, Pixar worked on industrial films until it was acquired by another strong
name: Steve Jobs, who was looking where to invest part of the 120 million dollars he
earned after selling shares in Apple. In the beginning it was hard to keep Pixar
afloat, which survived thanks to Job’s subsides and some works for advertising and the creation
of the software, RenderMan. However, Catmull and his crew had creative freedom and dreamed
of someday making an entirely digitally animated feature film.
Lasseter couldn’t have joined the team in a better moment. His studies in traditional
animation allowed him to develop short narrative films that the company financed to promote
its technological advances. And they got more than they intended: besides coming to life
thanks to a more detailed 3D animation, Lasseter creations had soul, were alive. Short films
such as Knick Knack, Red's Dream and Luxo Jr. are examples of dynamic stories and lovable
characters. In fact, the lamps on Luxo Jr. inspired Pixar’s logo.
But the short that launched them to fame was Tin Toy. The plot is simple: a tin toy, surrounded
by instruments, wants to run away from its owner, a baby that seems to want to hurt it.
Five minutes of pure humor, imagination and rhythm. The idea of Lasseter and his teams
was to try a new advance that would allow them to make smoother movements in human figures
and toys. Tin Toy won the Oscar for Best Animated Short
Film and got the attention of the entertainment industry. More advertising agencies were asking
for Pixar and it opened up the possibility for them to have their own animation studio
and start working for television. One of the companies delighted by Tin Toy
was Disney. In the late 1980s, Lasseter had his first contact with Joe Ranft, responsible
for founding new talents back then. In that meeting it was made clear that the concept
and characters had potential and decided to make a one-hour Christmas special.
Lasseter got together with his indispensable co-workers, Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton,
and together they came up with the story that would be titled, A Tin Toy Christmas. According
to the storyline, Tinny (the tin toy protagonist of the short) wakes up in the warehouse of
a toy shop. As to not feel lonely in Christmas time, he’s determined to get together with
his band. Along the way, he would meet other toys and characters, including a ventriloquist's
dummy with whom he becomes friends. The artists in Disney shared the excitement
with the ones in Pixar, but it wasn’t the same with rules and the company’s policies.
First, the project seemed more expensive than a standard animated film. And second, Disney
didn’t work with companies they couldn’t control.
Consequently, Lasseter and all of Pixar focused on their previous routine with advertisements,
while thinking that Jobs was probably going to lose hope in his investment.
And then an old acquaintance of Lasseter came to scene: Tim Burton.
After leaving Disney, Burton had triumphed as a director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure,
Beetlejuice and Batman. But before all the glory, Disney had bought one of his ideas,
about Halloween characters in Christmas. Burton contacted the company so they could hand over
the material and make the movie somewhere else. In that moment the studio was going
through its new golden age of animated films thanks to The Little Mermaid and, even though
they wanted fresh and new material, they didn’t want to make another traditional animated
film. In the end, Disney and Burton came to an agreement: the director would be able to
make The Nightmare Before Christmas —for which he founded his own film production company,
Skellington Studios—, under the condition that he used stop-motion, motion capture technology.
Without planning on it, Burton changed Disney’s rules, which was now open to produce projects
outside of its offices. That’s how they contacted Pixar once again for the Tin Toy
universe and its adaptation to the cinema. Before engrossing himself into making his
baby, Lasseter had one condition: he needed his team, starting with Docter and Stanton.
Besides, it was clear it wasn’t going to be a fairy tale, they were not going to make
a musical as the ones Disney had been working on and there would be no traditional villain.
The studio accepted and everyone got to work. Lasseter knew that, regardless having the
resources to make a revolutionary animation, the soul of the project were the plot and
characters. But when the sketches and ideas for A Tin Toy Christmas arrived, they noticed
that several characters and scenarios were antiquated, and decided to expand the concept,
though it would mean making many changes. That is why they kept some idea from the Christmas
special, but with other characters and a different environment, somewhere more familiar for the
audience. Tin became a space ranger, the dummy became a cowboy, and the warehouse turned
into a little kid’s room that happened to be the toy’s owner.
The first title the came up with was You Are a Toy, after one of the key quotes in the
movie, but eventually they chose the one they used provisionally: Toy Story.
Each character went under detailed work, the cowboy was baptized as Woody, to pay homage
to the Western actor, Woody Strode. The space ranger was going to be called Lunar
Larry. Then it changed to Morph Lightyear, and finally Buzz Lightyear. The nickname Buzz
comes from astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. As for the physiognomy,
Lasseter used his own face as model, including his chin dimple.
They even thought of every aspect of the human character that stands out the most in the
film. Andy, the toy’s owner, was given that name after Andries "Andy" Van Dam, professor
from Brown University, pioneer in digital animation and professor to many members of
Pixar. Although the script was already shaped, Disney
called other writers to finish it: Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow and Joss Whedon. Nowadays, Whedon
is famous for creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer and for directing blockbusters such as The
Avengers; though, at that time he mostly worked as script doctor, fixing scripts from other
writers. One of his contributions was creating Rex, the shy and insecure tyrannosaurus.
From the start, they wanted Tom Hanks to play Woody. He accepted immediately, motivated
by his childhood fantasy that his toys came to life when no one saw them. The actor recorded
his dialogues in between filming Sleepless in Seattle and A League of Their Own.
The role of Buzz Lightyear was offered to Billy Crystal, but he rejected the offer.
Later on, when he saw the movie, he admitted his mistake. Lasseter knew about his remorse
and offered him to give voice to another emblematic character from Pixar: Mike Wazowski, from
Monsters Inc. Coming back to Buzz Lightyear, the role was also offered to Chevy Chase —who
also declined— and they even consider Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Dan Aykroyd and Jim
Carrey. Then, comedian, Tim Allen, Home Improvement protagonist, kept the role of space ranger.
Toy Story had a budget of 30 million dollars and 110 people working on it. A very low number
considering that Disney, at the same time, was making The Lion King with 45 million dollars
in budget and 800 employees. The twenty-seven Pixar animator artists working
on the movie used storyboards to animate each character. The technological advances the
company had been making allowed them to give movement to unanimated objects, and the compromise
was absolute. First, they would sculpt the characters in
clay or drew them using a computerized diagram, and based on that sketch they did the animated
design. Once ready, they codified the articulation controls, to start giving them movement, including
speech. Woody was one of the most challenging: he required 723 movement controls.
As for synchronizing the actors’ voices to the characters’ mouth movements, it took
them a week or so. The animators had to imagine how the movement
of every toy would be. In the case of the plastic soldiers, Pete Docter tried walking
with his snickers glued to a wooden table. His method was tested by his co-workers as
well. Altogether, the animators spent 800,000 hours
in the computers, gathering 114,240 animation frames in total.
Even though Lasseter and his team mostly showed toys of their own creation, they also wanted
to add some existing ones. For example, Barbie, who would play a role similar to Sarah Connor
in Terminator 2 and would save the protagonists from Sid, Andy’s destructive neighbor. Which
was Whedon’s idea, by the way. But Mattel, the company that makes the doll, denied them
the license saying that Barbie speaking and moving, with a determined personality, would
alter the value each girl could give her by themselves. Mattel changed its mind regarding
the sequels, which did include Barbie. Another company that didn’t want its products
in the film was Hasbro. In this case, the G.I. Joe soldiers, as they were informed that
one of those was going to explode in Sid’s hands. But Hasbro didn’t mind them using
Mr. Potato Head. Mattel as well as Hasbro made the mistake
of giving up the rights to manufacture the movie’s toys. Eventually, the Canadian company,
Thinkaway Toys gain the license. Steve Jobs paid close attention to Toy Story’s
production. At first, he wasn’t so convinced about the project, and he even considered
selling Pixar. But as he saw the work Lasseter was leading, Jobs was delighted and was convinced
that it would mark an era. Apart from the plot, the characters and the
animation, there was another factor that would be key in the final product: the soundtrack.
Although Jobs moved some string for Bob Dylan to join the project, Randy Newman made the
music for the film in the end, including You’ve Got a Friend in Me. It took Newman just one
day to compose that hit. The first Toy Story short was shown to Disney’s
executives on November 19, 1993. The verdict was concise: Woody seemed unpleasant to them,
too sarcastic as he looked down at other toys. Peter Schneider, Walt Disney Animation Studio
president, ordered to stop the production until the script was rewritten. Lasseter followed
the directives, and working in parallel on other projects, he and his team retouched
the text. The production was resumed on February of 1994, with a more likeable Woody. A month
later, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and rest of the cast came back to record their new dialogues.
Toy Story was released on November 19, 1995 in California, and three days later in the
rest of the United States, that happened to be Thanksgiving’s weekend. It was an immediate
success, which grossed more than 350 million worldwide. The public was fascinated over
what was possible to do with computerized animation, but above all, and just as Lasseter
wanted, everyone was in love with the characters and story. The Academy was among those who
enjoyed the film, as Toy Story was the first animated film nominated to an Oscar for Best
Original Screenplay. It lost against The Usual Suspects, but made history anyway.
Toy Story gave an opening for three sequels, tons of merchandising and, since June of 2018,
a theme park, Toy Story Land, in Orlando. The movie’s success entitled Pixar to gain
significant recognition as company and more trust in their future projects, which opened
doors for everyone involved. Lasseter directed Bug’s Life, Cars and Cars 2, apart from
being executive producer for all the films in the company. Andrew Stanton directed Finding
Nemo and WALL-E. Docter was in charge of Monsters Inc. and Inside Out. And let’s not forget
editor, Lee Unkrich, co-director of Toy Story 2 and 3; and who recently directed Coco.
Toy Story was created based on idea for Tin Toy, but soon acquired identity of its own
and set a role model in the entertainment industry. All of this, without losing its
essence. Just as Lasseter intended from the beginning when directing the first shorts
for Pixar; Woody, Buzz and every toy still demonstrate to kids —and adults as well—
how to carry on the value of friendship... “to infinity and beyond.”