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Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

khanacademy.org

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Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#41

Post by smogcutter »

kinghtown wrote: post #14
superbcarrot wrote: post #2

What 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.…

I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group. They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad,…

Yeah, it’s worth pointing out that ditching the auteur for storytelling by committee is a choice, and often a commercial one.

You can write a lot of good stories that way, but you’ll never produce, say, Aguirre.

A heavily structural approach is also better suited to teaching in a video series. Much easier to teach craft than vision.

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#42

Post by inanutshellus »

jerome-jh wrote: post #27
KineticLensman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26126004

> Stalker Sounds like I'll have to watch it ... someday. With young kids you are pretty much limited in terms of what can be watched. Maybe one of the reason I am so angry about american animation I find so shallow ;)

So wait, what're these non-US-made, deep, family-friendly films of which you speak?

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#43

Post by kinghtown »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #29
kinghtown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group. They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad,…

Interesting; I feel it depends on the movie - they have a large portfolio now so some sort of averaging is inevitable. I feel e.g. Cars franchise has limited vision. They're "allright", but not spectacular. I'm OK never seeing any of them again, even the first one. On the other hand, I find Monsters Inc. a unique movie with a unique premise, and I can rewatch it regularly - with or without the kids 0:-). I also don't…

Around the time of Wall-E and The Incredibles, I was very much a fan of their work and felt like they could do no wrong. Now I’m not so sure- I did love Coco but they have been absorbed by Disney at this point and are satisfying investors. Also, I find the low key arrogance about having mastered storytelling more than a little obnoxious. You can see a bit of this in Andrew Stanton’s Ted talk.

Before they sold to Disney, they were going to start making more mature films alongside their children’s entertainment. I was very curious about Ray Gunn. I think if Disney wanted it then Pixar could definitely make an incredibly compelling animated movie with mature themes. I mostly find myself disappointed with them these days.

(I find whenever I bring this up online quite a few people come at me with this idea that they are making mature films, and that the line between children’s entertainment and adult is imaginary, as though most kids could sit through something like The Rules of the Game or Tokyo Story.)

But to be clear, I’m still mostly a fan of their work but mostly for their technical mastery.

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#44

Post by AlwaysRock »

onion2k wrote: post #32
superbcarrot wrote: post #2

What 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.…

Pixar does this iteration using a technique called "plussing". When you see someone's work you accept it regardless of whether you think it's good . You're encouraged to do what you can to make your colleagues look good. Work is always a starting point for the next iteration. When you do need to be critical of something you should always add something about how to make it better. There's a good video on YT about it -…

This skill, or at least the ability to consider pulsing, is so valuable. A lot of things in life are not good. Even more are just okay. Very few are good and almost none are perfect or great.

Having the ability to be in a situation or see something that is just okay and go, "Okay well it's not perfect but that is okay. Can I make it a little better?" is really helpful. It also makes life a lot less frustrating.

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#45

Post by kinghtown »

smogcutter wrote: post #41
kinghtown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group. They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad,…

Yeah, it’s worth pointing out that ditching the auteur for storytelling by committee is a choice, and often a commercial one. You can write a lot of good stories that way, but you’ll never produce, say, Aguirre . A heavily structural approach is also better suited to teaching in a video series. Much easier to teach craft than vision.

I agree about Aguirre and I’m glad you mention that because you very quickly got to the core issue I have with Pixar. They have “mastered” crowd pleasers which are marketable to any age group. That’s fine- but artistic vision is also so crucial. It’s the reason they look up to Miyazaki in the first place.

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#46

Post by kinghtown »

pitt1980 wrote: post #23
kinghtown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group. They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad,…

fwiw, ‘Storytelling’ is just one node of the larger ‘Pixar in a Box’ offering from Khan Academy. Most of the other nodes are more technical in nature. Might be closer to what you were hoping to find. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/pixar

Thank you for that. I wasn’t aware they went into their production pipeline on this course. I will definitely be checking it out!

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#47

Post by kinghtown »

klmadfejno wrote: post #26
kinghtown wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group. They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad,…

Hmm, no I disagree strongly. I quite like Pixar's stories. In particular I appreciate how differently they come off to adults vs. children in ways that feel meaningful to both. As a kid, I completely missed what were obviously concerns of Mr. Incredible's infidelity. In the emotions one, kids see the obvious narrative that the emotions control the child, whereas adults are likely to see the emotions as a metaphor for…

I like Pixar a lot. But maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste.

Letting go is a unifying theme in Up but my problem with the movie isn’t that it’s bad but that you had a table of all the guys at Pixar spitballing scene ideas and then glueing them all together. The result just feels episodic, in a bad way, and commercially manufactured. Up is a really good movie but I don’t want every CG film to have the Pixar preproduction process. (And I still think they are a bit overrated and that the technical side of their creative teams are doing most of the heavy lifting.)

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#48

Post by NortySpock »

onion2k wrote: post #32
superbcarrot wrote: post #2

What 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.…

Pixar does this iteration using a technique called "plussing". When you see someone's work you accept it regardless of whether you think it's good . You're encouraged to do what you can to make your colleagues look good. Work is always a starting point for the next iteration. When you do need to be critical of something you should always add something about how to make it better. There's a good video on YT about it -…

Sounds similar to the improv skit mantra of "Yes, and...", where any improvisation ("and then I found the cat on the shelf!") must be accepted and built on.

(e.g. "Oh BooBoo, how did you get on the shelf you silly cat?")

If an actor instead said "No, the cat wasn't on the shelf, the cat wasn't even in the room" the skit ends awkwardly.

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#49

Post by andygcook »

For anyone looking for a deeper dive into how Pixar iterates on their movies and how highly-functioning creative teams can work in general, Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull is a really interesting book.

It goes into the history of Pixar and some of the detail of how they work with actual stories from the movies they've made. One of my favorite anecdotes from the book is how they nearly almost lost all the work they did on Toy Story 2 and almost went under.

One caveat is that the book doesn't cover the news about John Lasseter's misconduct, so it's not all roses, of course.

Re: Pixar in a Box: the art of storytelling

#50

Post by ekianjo »

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #5
ekianjo wrote: post #3

Earlier 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

Toy Story has been on a very slid downhill after the second episode. 3 and 4 were both unnecessary and not very good. The same can be said for the Cars sequels, and the more recent Pixar productions in general - they had much better ideas in the very first years.
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