[HN Gopher] That famous Pixar lunch of 1994 (2014)
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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)
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| 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.
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