Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
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Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
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Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#2What people don't realise about Pixar is how much iteration goes into their stories - they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good. And there's a process there that can be taught. I think that's contrary to the way some people imagine storytelling - it's almost never the case that some creative person has a brilliant story come out perfect in the first draft. Storytelling requires creativity but it isn't magic. You can also see the lack of this process in so so many films - George Lucas famously drafted out the Star Wars prequels under pressure, no one had the nerve to challenge him and they just ran with the his early drafts every time. Those drafts should have been a starting point, not the end product. And you can say this for many films that come out - there are good ideas somewhere in them, they just had to work on the story a bit more and that's often at odds with studio pressures, release date deadlines etc.
This course looks lovely. It's great for KA to have this kind of material and not just calculus tutorials (as much as I personally appreciated the calculus).
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#3What people don't realise about Pixar is how much iteration goes into their stories - they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good. And there's a process there that can be taught. I think that's contrary to the way some people imagine storytelling - it's almost never the case that some creative person has a brilliant story come out perfect in the first draft.…
> they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good.
Except when their stories end up not being very good at all. There's a lot of variability in what they produce, to be honest, so I am not sure if their "process" is a robust as they would like us to believe.
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#4I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all).
My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between characters is déjà-vu, so many times a conflicting parent/children relationship, where the parent is reflective but wrong and the child impulsive but right and they end up reconciling and admitting they were both partly right in the end. In "Soul" they play a bit with this pattern although I would hardly call this creativity.
And finally many animation movies are also shameless green washing (here thinking of Wolfwalkers). Remember the critical tone of Wall-E?
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#5What people don't realise about Pixar is how much iteration goes into their stories - they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good. And there's a process there that can be taught. I think that's contrary to the way some people imagine storytelling - it's almost never the case that some creative person has a brilliant story come out perfect in the first draft.…
> they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good. Except when their stories end up not being very good at all. There's a lot of variability in what they produce, to be honest, so I am not sure if their "process" is a robust as they would like us to believe.
I can't think of any original Pixar stories that were "not good at all". Brave is probably the only one I might put close to that category. Which ones would you include?
Edit: Added "original"; some of the sequels are not great
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they're very comfortable with taking some idea and working on it from different angles until it's good. Except when their stories end up not being very good at all. There's a lot of variability in what they produce, to be honest, so I am not sure if their "process" is a robust as they would like us to believe.
I can't think of any original Pixar stories that were "not good at all". Brave is probably the only one I might put close to that category. Which ones would you include? Edit: Added "original"; some of the sequels are not great
I also think most of their originals are good. I thought The Good Dinosaur was awful though, and can't understand how it could have come out of this kind of long process of iterative refinement.
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#7I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all). My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between…
Là-haut = Up
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#8I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all). My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between…
Là-haut = Up
OK edited :)
To summarize my mind, I think the only american animated movie that's worth saving in the last 10 years is Disney's Frozen. It has some harshness, complex character relationships and appeals both to adults and children.
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#9I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all). My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between…
> My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds
It would be interesting to see a Pixar take on Stalker, a famously slow film, discussed just recently [0]
Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling
#10I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all). My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between…
I would be curious to see your list of movies, primarily aimed at children, where there are two protagonists who disagree in the beginning and don't end up reconciling in the end.
("Up", which you cited as the last Pixar movie that was 'worth it', is in fact largely a conflicted parent/child relationship)
It reads as if what causes you 'grief' is actually the intended format of the content you are consuming. Yes, it's nice that Wall-E had a layer of critique of rampant consumerism (among other things), but it also had a joke about an unkillable roach too.
My hunch is that the -primary- intended audience for these films spends a lot of time dealing with "conflicted parent/child relationships", and that you are simply not the intended audience.
I don't mean to be overly critical of you here, I think if you take two steps back what you're saying is "the majority of these kids movies don't speak to me."
A movie being "worth it" is pretty different from a movie "speaking to me", which is so subjective that it is hard extract actionable insights from. It's a hop, skip, and a jump from saying "I don't know why you like this flavor of ice cream, because I don't like it."