[HN Gopher] That famous Pixar lunch of 1994 (2014) ___________________________________________________________________ That famous Pixar lunch of 1994 (2014) Author : BerislavLopac Score : 100 points Date : 2022-01-10 08:51 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (gointothestory.blcklst.com) (TXT) w3m dump (gointothestory.blcklst.com) | thedougd wrote: | For another incredible look into the creative process, check out | this transcript of tapes from the brainstorming sessions for | "Raiders of the Lost Ark." George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and | Larry Kasdan sat down for four or five days to develop George's | idea: | | http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconferenc... | subsubzero wrote: | Finding Nemo was so far ahead of its time in terms of beauty of | the animated undersea world and just the incredibly vivid colors | that pervade that whole movie. Its extremely surprising that it | was filmed in 2003(almost 20 years ago) and comparing it to | finding dory it still looks better than its sequel. | omarhaneef wrote: | Does this anecdote make the point the author makes? | | It makes the opposite point to me: if a lot of smart people pour | a lot of their energy into making an animated movie, it doesn't | matter what the initial idea was. | | Note: This does not apply to features or startups. Features are | time limited because the cast has to move on so you have to | capture what you capture, and can't just fix it in post. And | startups you can't just rely on your intuition that you're making | what the audience wants. | david422 wrote: | I would agree - it seems like if you do a well done animated | movie you could have any type of plot and still succeed. Pixar | to me is super high quality. | | Look at Illumination - another super high quality production | with random/funny ideas. | subsubzero wrote: | The ideas themselves were not earth shattering, its the | technology behind the ideas and the drive of the teams behind | that to make the 'dreams' a reality. Also not having some soul | sucking hollywood producer trying to make every character and | scene 'edgy'. | furyofantares wrote: | I agree. Not much work went into the initial concepts of these | extremely successful movies, because that's not what made the | movies successful. Not to say the concepts weren't good, or | these folks aren't experts, but it is to say that what set them | apart was the massive amount of highly skilled work on | executing the idea. | hondo77 wrote: | > And startups you can't just rely on your intuition that | you're making what the audience wants. | | Studios do not rely on intuition when making animated movies. | Work-in-progress screenings for staff and the public are held | during production. Even Pixar. | ramraj07 wrote: | I'd argue this is the same case with tech startups - you decide | on some rough idea and riff on that topic there's probably | money to be made. I like to contrast it with biotech, where | you're limited by the laws of nature. | mikepurvis wrote: | Pete Docter has always been my favourite Pixar director. I feel | like he doesn't get the limelight as often as the others, but his | movies (Monsters Inc, Up, Inside Out, and Soul) I think go | considerably deeper than the rest of the Pixar catalogue as far | as offering tender and humanizing insights about people and | relationships. | jb1991 wrote: | I'd be curious if they also had a lunch when they decided that | all software engineering interviews should require the candidate | to implement a binary search tree from scratch. | planetsprite wrote: | At a lunch meeting after seeing Cars I came up with the idea that | there should be two more Cars movies. Still Pixar hasn't sent me | any royalties for my idea. | mabbo wrote: | "A Bugs Life" - Box office: $363.3 million | | "Monster's Inc" - Box office: $577.4 million | | "Finding Nemo" - Box office: $940.3 million | | "WALL-E" - Box office: $521.3 million | | $2.4B worth of ideas, not counting two sequels and eight theme | park rides/attractions. | | Imagine if they'd taken the whole afternoon instead of just | lunch! | dave5104 wrote: | > and eight theme park rides/attractions | | (1) Heimlich's Chew Chew Train, (2) Flik's Flyers, (3) It's | Tough to Be a Bug, (4) Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor, (5) Mike & | Sulley to the Rescue!, (6) Living Seas w/ Nemo & Friends, (7) | Crush's Coaster... | | What am I forgetting? | mabbo wrote: | You know even more than me. I was just going off the wiki | pages for Monsters Inc franchise and Finding Nemo franchis, | which list 3 and 5 attractions each. | illwrks wrote: | I remember one of my lecturers in University, who at the time was | probably 50, state that he 'had the idea for Toy Story in the | 80's but the difference is that he did nothing with the idea, | while the Pixar guys did.' | | Over the years I've taken this to mean that everyone has ideas, | but it's doing something with those ideas is the valuable bit. | Yes you might fail but you'll learn something, but you can lower | the risk of failure if you surround yourself with the talented | people. | headmelted wrote: | I love that this was written like 8 years ago, and that if it | gets further up the page it will get the HN lovehug. | | The author won't know why or what's going on, just that there's a | lot of news.ycombinator.com referrer traffic for an old article | from nearly a decade ago that hardly anyone read. Then he'll | maybe drop by and say hello on the thread. | ripvanwinkle wrote: | I read this and was left wondering if this might be making the | case for working on site as compared to remote work. | | However as I think about it some more, it seem like there is no | reason we can't hangout and have free form discussions over a | video call except that I rarely it happen. | | Are there folks who have experienced these kinds of discussions | over remote hangouts | quartesixte wrote: | It happens all the time on discord servers everywhere. It's | just that the random freeform discussions that happen on | discord over voice chat happen to not be something companies | want to implement yet. | tobyjsullivan wrote: | I'd recommend the book Creativity, Inc. as supplementary reading | for anyone who hasn't enjoyed it yet. Covers a lot including an | insightful (albeit very high-level) discussion of how Pixar's | stories are transformed from these simple ideas into great films | (lots of iteration, lots of early prototyping and feedback, | etc.). | | This article leaves the impression these were brilliant ideas | that came out well-formed over the lunch table. The book led me | to the opposite conclusion: Pixar has such a high hit rate | because they have a well-crafted process that can turn almost any | idea - no matter how rough - into great film. | pimlottc wrote: | I haven't read the book but if you ever get a chance to see one | of the traveling Pixar museum exhibitions, do it! The amount of | work that goes into making one of those films is staggering, as | is the volume of non-digital art that is created as part of the | creative process. Highly recommended! | ramraj07 wrote: | Yeah this lunch discussion is akin to a bunch of kids deciding | during recess what they want to become - one a doctor and | another an astronaut. If a bunch of kids do actually succeed in | all their careers then what went right is the schools methods | not the creative process in that lunch break. | mlyle wrote: | But it's not really just that, is it? | | If you have a bunch of kids with completely unconventional | career ideas that no one would try... and then they all | manage to strike it big doing these strange things... then | you've got something special. Sure, part of it is in the | capabilities and post-meeting culture of those kids... and | part of it is to have strange but actually achievable ideas | from the beginning. | | I note that they're not _completely_ crazy ideas. They know | the limitations of their (new) medium, and are trying to find | the ideas that are barely viable, and thus groundbreaking, at | the edges. | spoonjim wrote: | I don't know how great this lunch was. It doesn't take a Pixar | legend to say "let's make a movie about toys coming to life." | Even I could do that. What it takes a Pixar legend to do is to | take that idea and create Toy Story on time and on budget. | paxys wrote: | Wall-E is by far my favorite Pixar movie, and IMO one of the best | in any genre made in the last couple of decades. Really speaks to | Pixar's creative genius that they can strike gold from even the | most random premise. It is literally about a romantic trash | compactor living in a post-apocalyptic Earth. | | Fun fact - the film took so long to produce because Andrew | Stanton knew Pixar couldn't realistically animate space when he | conceived of the idea. Good thing they waited too, as | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPW3mvAN0Rc was the final result. | | I will say though that after decades of Pixar basically defining | the standards of what computer generated animation should be, | studios are starting to catch up to and even leapfrog their | style. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Arcane are two | notable examples of this. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > Bugs, like toys, would be easier to animate and thus an easier | option. | | > In one of his trips to Marine World (Six Flags Discovery | Kingdom), he saw a shark which he thought could be done so well | in animation (like Bugs Life and Toy Story, at that time | animation was restricted and advance materials could not be made) | | What is interesting is that these directors knew the limitations | of the technology well and let that inform their decision making | as to what stories they would undertake. | | Because of that, these stories never entered the uncanny valley. | 2bitencryption wrote: | And the first Pixar film that focused on human characters was | The Incredibles, which is very smart since the characters are | highly stylized and angular, like something from an Ayn Rand | book cover. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-11 23:00 UTC)