Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.
J.K. Rowling
(Shamelessly stolen from Advice to Writers, a great inspirational blog. Follow them on Twitter.)
I received Motion 5 for Christmas, and sat down to check it out last night. While I can’t really speak to its new features, as long-time Motion user I am extremely happy to report that the interface is updated and yet immediately familiar. I whipped up this little animation in a couple of hours, and quickly felt right at home among the darker shades of grey.
For only $50, how can you resist? Check it out.
On a side note, Tumblr’s video player is pretty much terrible, and I shan’t use it again!
The world needs artists who are Christians. People who will start with an honest perspective of the world as it is, but refuse to leave the story clinging to the status quo. They need fresh voices who can paint or show or sing about hope in the midst of deep sorrow.
The world needs to see the Art of Lament.
Lessons from a week at Pixar.
When I accepted my new position at Pixar, I came home to find a spread of Pixar toys on the kitchen table, with a large card that said “Can!” on the front. It was an echo of the words of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story, and an affirmation that I can fly. I’ll always cherish that card and that moment.
I’ve now spent one week at Pixar Animation Studios. An editor I recently worked with called it “the Valhalla of animation”, and he was right. Though I’ve only been there a week, I can already see how special a place it is, and indeed what a privilege it is to be there. The culture, the environment, even the work itself is so different and infused with creativity and meaning. It’s palpable, something you can see in the brick and taste in the water.
A place like Pixar is a place where one can learn. Steve Jobs once told a potential employee, “You’re like a small sapling, and we can take you and make you into a great tree.” Pixar is a place where that can happen, if you let it. And I’m determined to let it, soaking in everything I possibly can.
Here is a sample swatch of the color Pixar is painting in my life:
- Always be both a teacher and a student. You always have something to learn, and often the person you learn from can surprise you. Have the humility to always be open to instruction, along with the confidence to share your expertise with others. Everyone stands to gain from this.
- Be responsible for yourself. In many ways, Pixar still operates like the small company it once was, and this is possible because it trusts its employees to be responsible for themselves. When people are given responsibility rather than rules, they’re empowered to rise to the occasion, rather than live in fear of making a mistake.
- People matter more than ideas. Pixar’s president Ed Catmull is brilliant, and I admire him more than anyone else in animation. In this video, he explains how in filmmaking people are more important than ideas. After all, it’s from people that ideas spring. This philosophy is engendered in Pixar’s culture, where relationships are encouraged alongside creative and personal development.
This merely scratches the surface of the densely rotating mass of Pixar that my brain is still attempting to sort out. But it’s a solid foundation for anyone in any line of work.
To infinity…
Day one.
Today is my first day at Pixar.
Since setting out for California three years ago with wide eyes and a narrow wallet, my life has consisted of one surprise after another. I’ve sat in the room as LOST was cut, been in meetings with John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, talked with Zachary Levi after a Bible study at his house, and said hi to Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek) as he walked down the street with his wife.
All of that was great fun—but what resonates most deeply is how God has watched over Brooke and I. After those memories have blurred, I’ll still remember how the church that we had only recently joined provided for us when we were jobless, without even being asked. It was shocking, and a blessing spiritually even more than financially.
God is good.
In the documentary Art & Copy, advertising legend Hal Riney says something like this:
There are very few good people in this business, and it’s rare to get the opportunity to do really great work.
I’ve had the incredible opportunity to twice be a (small!) part of great work: first on Tangled, and then on Wreck-It Ralph. Now I’ll have that opportunity once more at Pixar. It’s a rush, and a ride I’m constantly surprised and excited to be on. I nervously wait for the day people realize that I don’t belong, and throw me back to the desert of local TV from whence I came.
Until then, I wonder. What’s around the next curve?
I have no idea. But I’m excited.
I owe a lot to Steve Jobs.
One evening my parents came home with a mysterious white box: our first Mac. My dad told my sister and I to “set it up”, and watched with a smile as we excitedly unboxed it and figured out where the few cables went. Then came the inviting startup chime—and with it, an explosion in my creativity. On that humble little Mac I drew pictures, made simple animations, hacked the OS to change system icons, went on the Internet for the first time, and made my own computer games. Now anything was possible. If I could dream it, my Mac could help me do it.
That became my subconscious mantra over the years, as I modeled and rendered my own worlds, built web sites, and eventually edited my first video. That short 3d animation I cut in iMovie (1.0!) started me down a new path of codecs, file formats, and cinema. A path that has brought me here, an assistant editor at Disney Animation.
Steve Jobs changed the world. And in a direct way, he changed my life: both through the technology he created which ignited my creativity, and through Pixar, whose leadership brought Disney Animation back from the brink, and with it a job for me on Tangled. I wouldn’t be sitting in this office were it not for him.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Apple. I tore their ads out of magazines and hung them next to the “Think Different” posters in my bedroom. I counted down the days to every keynote address and watched them live. I went to Macworld Expo, and even got a black mock turtleneck as a Christmas gift. I know, this is all a little crazy. But it’s because I became one of the Crazy Ones, the misfits and troublemakers that Apple immortalized in their “Think Different” ad (which I memorized).
That ad is a self-portrait of Steve Jobs. It’s also true.
My younger self loved Apple and Steve for their innovation and life-changing products. And while those things remain, over the last few years I’ve come to realize how rare people like Jobs are. He is atop an elite group of personal heroes, people like Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, and Walt Disney. People who see potential in everything, and have the drive and insanity to go after it. They are visionaries, and we need them—not because of what they produce for us, but because of what they produce in us. They inspire us to push harder, to have hope in the future, to see.
They inspire us to think different.
The world is a bit smaller for Steve’s passing. This day came much too soon, and I’m praying for his family. And yet, in the midst of my sadness I’m also thankful and inspired. Inspired to push forward and be a crazy one, to not stop until it’s insanely great. This isn’t the end, but only the beginning, because there’s still One More Thing. Steve’s final announcement isn’t a phone that will change how we live, or a Mac that will enable us to be more creative. It’s the news that we too can change the world.
Here’s to the crazy one.
At Disney’s D23 Expo last weekend, Wreck-It Ralph was officially unleashed! (Though the expo seems to have escaped unscathed. Perhaps we can thank Fix-it Felix, Jr. for that.)
I’m really excited about both the logo and the reaction that the film has been getting. I can’t tell you how hard we’ve been working on the movie (no really—I can’t), but I can say that I think it’s going to be something really special and unique when it wrecks theaters next November.
Here’s some info on the story (warning: spoilers!), and here are some great pictures of the arcade cabinet that was on the floor of the expo.
As for me? Back to work!
The real serious advice is you’ve got to listen. You’ve got to listen. None of us have all the answers; none of us have even half the answers. And if you find yourself in a really good room with really smart creative people who all become not threats to you, they just become extensions of your vision of whatever you’re working on, and they can help you tell a really good story. And I just have always opened it up for anyone’s ideas, if they’re good enough to go in the movie.
This video uses blockbuster films to extol the benefits of “postvis”, or previsualization of visual effects. It’s interesting and has a lot of neat unfinished effects footage, but it’s producer Rick McCallum’s refreshing comments at about seven minutes in that really stole the show for me:
…They’ll spend five or six days, instead of one day, working to make these changes. And then they wonder why everything costs so much!
— Rick McCallum
Films really are getting pretty stinking expensive. This summer featured Thor ($150 million), Pirates 4 ($250 million), Cars 2 ($200 million), Transformers 3 ($195 million)… you get the idea. It seems all we are ever given is bombast and spectacle, and I think that’s one of the reasons attendance and revenue may be dropping. The expense of these films also makes it that much more difficult to make a profit. $150 million dollars at the box office is a decent hit, but with budgets like these, it barely covers your production costs, much less marketing, prints, and gross points.
One film this summer bucked the budgetary trend: J.J. Abrams Super 8. Made for a quite modest $50 million, the film nonetheless had great production value and effects. But most importantly it delivered on story in a big way, and went on to earn a tidy profit both here and abroad. By contrast, Captain America has already earned more money than Super 8, but will be lucky to break even.
The problem with these monster budgets isn’t that they don’t have monstrous production value; it’s the emphasis on spectacle rather than story. The films suffer for it. In a sense, they enters the market handicapped: a high budget film without the story to draw an audience is one that won’t be a success, financially or otherwise. To paraphrase C-3PO, “They’re doomed.”
Rick McCallum’s comments in the video above hit on one of the reasons for balooning budgets: directors who obsess over visual effects shots without considering the ramifications of low morale and escalating costs. There are two kinds of films that are subject to such endless tweaking and fixing: films without enough money and films with too much money. Only one kind has an excuse. It seems that McCallum takes his complaint (and job as producer) seriously: his latest producing effort, the upcoming Lucasfilm release Red Tails, has a reported budget of $30 million—and still features 1500 effects shots.
Decisions matter more when you don’t have money to throw away. Limitations force better decisions.
This discussion is really part of a larger one about the effect digital tools are having on the way films are made, which is itself part of a larger discussion on the effect of digital technologies in our own lives. I won’t get into those now, but suffice to say that digital filmmaking tools have removed practically all limitations from the process. Money is really the only limitation left—and on big studio films, it’s a practically nonexistent one.
If cinema is to remain viable in a world of Netflix on your cell phone, there seem to be only two paths: globalization and smaller budgets. The studios have thus far chosen to pursue globalization, which explains their intense focus on tentpoles and franchises. It’s also why films are no longer expected to be financially successful in the U.S. alone, instead relying on overseas profits. But if we follow this road to its conclusion, it leads to a homogenous cinematic world, one with all films tailored for the lowest common denominator and possessing little honesty. The second path is the one taken by Super 8, Red Tails, Cloverfield, and others, where they embrace their smaller budget but refuse to compromise their vision. The results may not always be great, but they push filmmaking forward, even while making every dollar count.
Maybe because they have to make every dollar count.
Rick McCallum, you’re ok in my book.
All you can do sometimes is just press harder on your pencil to try to make the drawing express what you’re feeling in your heart, and you hope that the audience can feel it as they’re looking at it.
— Glen Keane
The stunning animation of the characters in this video quickly make you forget that you’re watching pencil tests, scribbles of graphite on paper. And hearing Glenn Keane explain his process makes you realize why he is a master animator: there is thought and emotion behind every stroke of the pencil. There is nothing random about the work you see here.
There’s an interesting parallel between bringing animated characters to life and infusing characters on the page with spirit. Both mediums, even at their most simplistic, are capable of stirring emotion in an audience. A screenplay is a lot like a pencil test, in much the same way that a frame of film is like an animation cel. And yet both forms can affect us.
There should be thought and emotion behind every keystroke of our screenplays. That will give our characters shape and solidity, transforming them from vaporous imaginings into real people.
