You are a toy!
You aren't the real Buzz Lightyear!
You're-- you're an action figure!
This is Pixar.
And they are second to none when it comes to producing
an animated feature film.
Whether or not you think that every single Pixar
movie is an absolute masterpiece is
a matter of personal opinion.
But it's hard to argue that any of their films
are objectively bad.
This is largely due to Pixar's unique production process,
where most films are made by a few people in suits trying
to justify their ridiculous salaries, Pixar's
creative process functions like a technological beehive
with a ton of overlap and responsibilities between areas
of production.
These processes allow Pixar to stand unchallenged as one
of the most efficient, consistent,
and most importantly, successful studios currently in operation.
But before we jump into this, be sure to like
and subscribe to Nerdstalgic if you haven't done so already.
Pixar didn't just make 3D animation popular.
They invented it.
Toy Story was the first entirely 3D animated film ever made,
and it's actually Toy Story 3 that we're
going to use as an entry point for this video.
Hollywood is rife with so many production nightmares.
As the old saying goes, the business often
gets in the way of the art.
More often than not, this is true.
Rushed production practices, panicked studios, and egotism
are all frequently hindering films
from reaching their full potential.
Hey, there's probably a movie getting
made right now that is having a major problem
between the creatives and the executives.
This is almost never the case at Pixar,
because at Pixar, the technical staff and the creative staff
are one and the same.
This all starts out the same as any film.
With an idea.
During the conceptualization of Toy Story
3, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich,
Pete Docter, Bob Petersen, and Darla K. Anderson,
basically everyone at the top creative level of Pixar,
all went on a writer's retreat to a cabin north
of San Francisco.
This was actually the same exact cabin
in which the idea for the original Toy Story
was conceived.
And after just two days, they chose
to create a story that aged in real time with the audience.
10 years in the real world would equal 10 years in the Toy Story
universe.
Andy would be going off to college,
and his toys would face the fears of obsolescence
and being totally and completely disposable.
To have six different minds like this
come to an agreement on a story in under 48 hours
is an accomplishment in and of itself.
But this sort of harmonious and collaborative brainstorm
demonstrates that Pixar's success starts at the top
and trickles down throughout the rest of the production process.
While this brainstorm was going on,
Pixar Director Lee Unkrich was working
with an up and coming Hollywood screenwriter
named Michael Arndt.
You may be familiar with his breakout film Little Miss
Sunshine, but Unkrich was working with him
prior to that film's release.
In 2006, after a strong showing from Little Miss Sunshine
at the Sundance Film Festival, Pixar
hired Arndt to pen the script of Toy Story 3.
This is another strength of Pixar's process.
They know how to hire the right talent for the right jobs.
Pixar has a formula for creating their stories as well.
A former Pixar story artist Emma Coats
outlined it as, "Once upon a time there was a blank.
Every day, blank.
One day blank.
Because of that, blank.
Until finally blank."
This is called a story spine, and yes, it
is incredibly simplified.
This is actually the fourth rule of Pixar's 22
rules of storytelling as outlined by Coats on Twitter.
Naturally, we aren't going to dive
into the entirety of the list of story guidelines,
but among them are some really amazing suggestions like,
come up with your ending before you figure out the middle,
and putting an idea on paper allows you to start fixing it,
because if it stays in your head,
you won't tell anyone about it.
We strongly recommend taking a peek at the entire list,
so we'll put a link in the comment section below.
You can map this simple outline over any Pixar film,
and you will find that they are all
built using the same framework and having
a ton of fun with just how much story that framework can
support.
The next order of business for Pixar
is to get their script written, and that
is a process that doesn't end until the film is completely
finished.
Their writers are rewriting elements of these films
until they achieve absolute perfection.
According to Michael Arndt, just the opening scene
of Toy Story 3 had to be rewritten almost 60 times
during production.
If at first you don't succeed, try
60 times doesn't sound like a recipe for success,
but it is absolutely imperative that these scenes deliver
the intended story elements in the intended way.
After receiving the script, Pixar then basically breaks it
down into a series of sequences that they then assign
to various production teams.
By sequences, we mean easily identifiable moments.
Using Toy Story 3 as an example, this
would be the opening sequence, the garbage truck sequence,
the intro to Sunnyside, and so on and so on.
The number of sequences that Pixar
is looking for in any given film usually
sits right around 25 to 30.
Breaking the film down in this way
allows the production staff to basically split off
into teams responsible for the execution and delivery of each
of these moments.
They are essentially working on every moment in the entire film
simultaneously, like some sort of CGI hivemind.
They also enroll all of their employees
into improv courses, which keeps everyone
collaborative and sharp.
The storyboarding process is the next piece of the puzzle,
and it begins almost the same moment
a writer turns in their script.
Because this process occurs at such a rapid pace,
they are able to discern very quickly what is working
and what isn't working.
It's like an anthill of computer animation geniuses
all working together to deliver the best possible result.
This is where the filmmakers get a really solid idea of what
their film is going to look like and how all those sequences
start to fit together.
During the production of Toy Story 3,
Michael Arndt spent over six months
in a room of story editors figuring out
how to structure their film.
During this process, he was able to put pretty much anything
he wanted into the script, because Pixar allows
the writers to work with total creative freedom and almost
no oversight.
Arndt was told, "let your imagination run wild and make
the best film that you can."
And that was pretty much it.
This was kind of shocking to Arndt.
Normally studios have their writers
on stringent deadlines and notes and changes
coming in almost daily.
But Pixar's process gave him creative freedom.
This liberty that Pixar affords their writers
may very well be what attracts top tier talent
to work on their projects.
After the storyboarding process, Pixar basically
creates a rough draft of the entire film,
which is probably the craziest part of the entire endeavor.
They use in-house employees to record scratch dialogue
so that the animators can get to work before the cast even
steps into the recording booth.
Some of these employees even go on
to voice characters in the final cut of the film.
Incredibles director Brad Bird famously voices Edna Mode.
You are Elastigirl!
My God, pull yourself together!
Kevin from Up is voiced by director Pete Docter.
Bird!
[KEVIN SQUEALING]
And Pixar's technical director Sonoko Konishi
shows up briefly in Cars 2 as the voice of Chuki.
[SPEAKING JAPANESE]
After the scratch dialogue is created,
Pixar creates a rough animation of the entire film.
This is something that separates animation
from live action in terms of quality.
When you're making a live action film,
you can't really film an entire rough draft
with the key grips standing in for the performers.
It would take forever and cost millions of dollars.
With live action, you are essentially stuck with whatever
you film that day.
With 3D animation, if there's something you don't like,
you can adjust it on the fly.
You can stop time to adjust a character's reaction
to the exact liking, change angles
without altering performances, or even adjust the lighting
of the scene to fit the mood.
Creating a rough draft in this way
is how Pixar really sets themself up for success.
They aren't just forging pathways for their projects.
They go back and pave the roads three times over
and put signs every 20 feet so that nobody strays off course.
Everything is done with an extremely low margin of error.
After making their movie in its entirety,
Pixar then sits down to actually make the movie.
Kidding aside, now that the film is set up for success,
all Pixar needs to do is bring their talent
to record their voiceovers.
Contrary to popular belief, this is a relatively fast process.
Whereas a normal production can get through four to six pages
of script on a miraculous day of filmmaking,
voiceover artists can get through 30 pages of dialogue
in an hour.
This gives animators plenty of time
to make adjustments to various facial movements,
they match performances.
After all these processes and even a few more like color
correction or scoring, the film is then finally ready
for theaters.
Michael Arndt's account of what his experience was
like working on Toy Story 3 gives us an insight
into how Pixar delivers quality animation time and time again.
The moments that Pixar creates throughout their films
are the result of hundreds of hours and hundreds
of days worth of incredible attention to detail
paid by hundreds of employees at every stage of the production
process.
Every second of every scene requires
the work of hundreds of people to get right.
The directors work with the writers,
the writers work with the animators, the animators work
with the actors and the composers
and then go back and work with the directors and the writers.
It's a circle of hard working harmony that
elevates Pixar's films from something
enjoyable to something legitimately magical.
They aren't just telling us stories.
They're giving us the ability to experience real emotions, which
is something so purely human that it resonates immediately
with all of us.
That's it for this episode.
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section below.
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