Gadgetory

we're here in Emeryville California at Pixar Animation Studios you might have heard of Pixar it's the company behind Toy Story A Bug's Life wall-e Finding Nemo monsters incorporated hop and the company's latest movie monsters University I know you're a princess and I'm just a stableboy mom would it do grubby paws in my bed were you kissing my hand ha ha ha no I want to bun you with all your shedding I don't shut really I had just started a Pixar when the first movie came out so I mean I was a fan of Monsters Inc and just the idea of telling a college story and and the idea of telling a story about a character that doesn't get exactly what they want was really appealing to me I think with any Pixar movie that's the thing that gets us excited is the thing where we think that could come off bad where that could be like the dangerous part the parts like are we really going to try to do that because that could be that's where I think we all get excited like well we don't have we don't know but I like that about whenever I hear what the new Pixar ideas I think I think oh how am I gonna sell that and that's good because it hopefully means its original and taking a risk right Ricky and I both worked on the first monsters incorporated and if you ever go back and watch the first one again you'll notice that the same like 12 background monsters are everywhere we just like repurposed them and put things in their hands and stuff so I think you know we always said that we really use all the parts of the Buffalo making that movie and so I think both of us really want to make sure that we you know populated the world more densely this time around normally is a process of Pixar's we would do as the background characters later as the story evolved and was kind of changing we knew that we need to populate this camp because we did it so early it would help influence story so story would come up with gags based upon some of these design and then vice versa they would come up with a gag and hopefully we can cast someone from this group we need a slug for that okay let's look at all the slugs I can't be late on the first day Pixar isn't structured like a traditional movie studio instead of bringing people together on a project-by-project basis as a group of talented folks in house across every single discipline I worked in the industry for 10 years before I got here so I worked a lot of different places I was down in LA and you kind of jump around a little bit more down in LA here you just kind of stay I've worked in places they're out the opposite we have a term where you know oh yeah well you're basically just a wrist there and all you're doing is drawing you're not thinking which is really limiting you know you're really you're really stunting the growth of the film or whatever you're working on if you're not allowing an environment where creative ideas can rise to the top and get the best product that you can get from the very beginning John worked really really hard to form a studio that wasn't higher up a crew for one film let them all go restart again and and do that every four or five years he wanted people to stay that's you know one of the reasons we do short films because we have projects that people can work on in between you know the time on features and I think he just he he really really believes that it's important to keep people here and keep giving them new opportunities and new learning experiences the studio's movies have a distinct look and feel almost immediately you can tell that you're watching a Pixar movie that makes the need for fresh creative voices with different perspectives even more important one of those voices is the director of the blue umbrella the short film that accompanies monsters University I started in 2008 a pizza in the camera and staging department which basically does the virtual cinematography of the phones is an open door policy epic so about pitching ideas for short films so anyone can pitch as long as you have three ideas and I just thought well I should as well just try it it was based on a test I had shot just just for fun on my phone actually of faces in the city and then I had loaded them up my computer one weekend and animated them and that was part of the pitch I showed just to show what I mean with a city coming to life you talk to picks our employees and this isn't a fly-by-night kind of place people are here for 10 years 15 years 20 years the studio does a lot to let employees explore different creative avenues and different disciplines they may not have the chance to look at otherwise it's kind of a nice playground to have people try out new roles and new positions and even sometimes in different departments to kind of be a bit more playful with that I've been animating since I was a kid drawing on the cards and I was studying animation at RISD Toy Story came out my senior year they came and brought it to RISD and they were said they were looking for an intern and I was the first animation intern you worked on the monsters Inc as well he said yeah I was that was the first film I was a lead I was a directing animator which means I was kind of a deputy to the sheriff on that one and then I've supervised two cars up and now monsters University so what you have a next one lined up are you like this stoked for vacation at this point I am stoked for vacation I actually I'm in-between I'm gonna try some storyboarding and and just approach animation from another angle and and I don't know we'll see what what happens next it is an incredibly supportive environment so so while it's a little bit scary we have the confidence that we have this amazingly talented group of people around us to help us when we get in trouble Pixar's recorded actors in this room for every film since monsters incorporated and it's about to get even busier the company has six films lineup over the next four years the only question is can Pixar's approach to filmmaking hold up under the volume we've developed a collective style almost because it is so collaborative here and because the same people are working on the films for years and years we are under an umbrella but it's a very big umbrella it's exciting as new people come in they change that a little bit I'm riding on a couple of things but I'm also helping out on the upcoming features in the current staging department so it's a mix of tons of different things because we always like everyone works together to make the features happen and then on the side you're doing other things as well there's a desire to say bring something new here you know what what what do you want to do it will all get filtered into you know what I mean into a process that feels somewhat familiar but that's all the more reason why you need a variety of people it's all the more reason why you need a new outlook well find out over the next couple of years how Pixar's aggressive new pace will work out but inside the studio walls the focus is the same as it's always been on creative collaboration and story story story sometimes we throw the whole movie out and start over completely it's really a process of not falling in love with your work if there is a problem with the film we're all gonna get together and fix it and we're not going to let go until we know we fix it and if that means pushing a release date or if that means delaying things on other shows we'll do it and the most important thing is we're not really scaling up or changing the amount of time for the story which is the one thing I think we need the time for we're creating more movies and putting more people on them but we're back we're back up so that we still give ourselves the amount of time for story development that we need right Oh