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Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

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Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#51

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

sdevonoes wrote: post #49

> In order for her to work on the movie while out, they had plugged the machine up to the local network and copied the whole file tree over. Now image the same situation in 2022: - there is no acceptable backup for the whole movie (or let's say, app) - only you know there is one acceptable copy... but it's on your personal laptop. You did copy it back in the day because, well, let's say you wanted to run the app in o…

Susman was the Supervising Technical Director and the machine was a Silicon Graphics workstation. Certainly sounds like she was given a work machine to do her job.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#52

Post by dang »

joezydeco wrote: post #31
dang wrote: post #22

Related: A baby saved ‘Toy Story 2’ from near complete deletion (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30330740 - Feb 2022 (121 comments) Toy Story 2 files wiped by accident, restored thanks to work-from-home employee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23022717 - April 2020 (2 comments) How Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was deleted twice (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271179 - June 2019 (2 comments)…

I used to flag duplicates from the new page, but realized it goes nowhere. Maybe a different flag to downgrade dupes?

Flagging from the new page doesn't go nowhere - it's handled the same way as flagging from any other page.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#53

Post by dang »

onionisafruit wrote: post #27
dang wrote: post #22

Related: A baby saved ‘Toy Story 2’ from near complete deletion (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30330740 - Feb 2022 (121 comments) Toy Story 2 files wiped by accident, restored thanks to work-from-home employee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23022717 - April 2020 (2 comments) How Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was deleted twice (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271179 - June 2019 (2 comments)…

It looks like you're saying you've had this conversation before.

'Related' lists are just for people who might be curious to read past related threads.

(Arguably this one is dupey because the last major discussion was already this year, but I decided to let it slide in this case)

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#54

Post by chx »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #38
jefftk wrote: post #8

More details on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Pixar-company/Did-Pixar-accidentally-d... The ending is sad -- that intrepid recovery mostly didn't end up used: And then, some months later, Pixar rewrote the film from almost the ground up, and we made Toy Story 2 again. That rewritten film was the one you saw in theatres and that you can watch now on Blu-Ray.

This seems to be par for the course for Pixar. I remember many of the deleted scenes from the Inside Out DVD were prefaced with explanation from Pixar that they were from a much earlier draft. They realized after working through the first draft that they now had a much better understanding of the characters, and then rewrote the narrative to match.

Zootopia was also rewritten. https://lostmediawiki.com/Zootopia_(partially_found_pre-rewr...

> This decision came fairly late in the process, as animators had been working on the film for almost a year with only 17 months until it needed to be completed.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#55

Post by gabereiser »

bee_rider wrote: post #41
jfb wrote: post #32

I remember learning that when Pixar did a pan-and-scan version of one of their movies, they wouldn't just use a floating 4:3 frame over the 16:9 original -- they'd re-render the movie , moving items around as necessary, to get a better framing. The perfectionism was palpable when we'd meet with them.

This seems like a huge advantage with mostly-digital movies. I wonder how easily a Marvel or Starwars movie could be re-rendered like this. Technically there are actors of course, but they are usually the main focus of the scene anyway...

For green screen shots this would be fine. For VFX LED wall shots, this wouldn’t work. However, movies and shows today are shot in a high resolution that you can crop/edit into most formats.

Green screen shots lend itself to resizing better due to the ability to fill in more of the scene while pulling the subject matter away a bit to fit the format.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#56

Post by serf »

asciimov wrote: post #50
sdevonoes wrote: post #49

> In order for her to work on the movie while out, they had plugged the machine up to the local network and copied the whole file tree over. Now image the same situation in 2022: - there is no acceptable backup for the whole movie (or let's say, app) - only you know there is one acceptable copy... but it's on your personal laptop. You did copy it back in the day because, well, let's say you wanted to run the app in o…

- If you can trust an employee with a $25K ($50K today) computer, trusting them with a complete source tree isn't a stretch. - I'd be more pissed off that somebody didn't have a complete backup somewhere, even if it was a personal laptop they used for work. - Back then, most people didn't have home computers. Hell nowadays a home pc isn't a guarantee, as most of my (non-engineering) coworkers only have cellphones and…

> Back then, most people didn't have home computers.

you had a much different perspective of 99 than I did.

That factoid might have been true for-the-public-at-large, but certainly not for the offices of large CGI or dev firms.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#57

Post by vlunkr »

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #36
joezydeco wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to flag duplicates from the new page, but realized it goes nowhere. Maybe a different flag to downgrade dupes?

I kind of wonder if deduping posts would be good. I find it really annoying to see reposts and if definitely makes it feel like there really isn't all that much content out there, at least much content that has enough viral potential. I suppose it's possible for a company to fingerprint content easily enough to stop dupes. Maybe it would block the post but allow a repost of the original content? But is that really go…

> I feel like a lot of social networks are relying on a an orbiting cloud of garbage that just recirculates constantly

This is definitely true of mainstream social media, but I don't think it's that bad on HN. Based on the list of duplicates, this has been posted 13 times in 12 years, that's really not that bad. Things don't live on the front-page that long, someone reasonably could have missed it every time. If people are engaging with the post, what's the problem?

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#58

Post by diskzero »

davidferguson wrote: post #39
diskzero wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we made How to Train Your Dragon three times at DreamWorks. So many rewrites, director changes, character redesign, etc. If you ever wonder why a feature length animated film can cost over $300 million dollars, this is one reason.

Oh you worked on How to Train Your Dragon ? That's my favourite movie in the world! Really random follow up question - there's a How to Train Your Dragon advert that I assume played before the first film in cinemas, advertising the cinema's popcorn and other concessions, but the only two copies on YouTube are in really terrible quality. (one in English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f37fI14Ne0I , the other in Finnis…

You could try reaching out to Kate Swanborg. That sounds like some sort of partnership deal that she may have been involved with. Worth a try!

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#59

Post by asciimov »

serf wrote: post #56
asciimov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- If you can trust an employee with a $25K ($50K today) computer, trusting them with a complete source tree isn't a stretch. - I'd be more pissed off that somebody didn't have a complete backup somewhere, even if it was a personal laptop they used for work. - Back then, most people didn't have home computers. Hell nowadays a home pc isn't a guarantee, as most of my (non-engineering) coworkers only have cellphones and…

> Back then, most people didn't have home computers. you had a much different perspective of 99 than I did. That factoid might have been true for-the-public-at-large , but certainly not for the offices of large CGI or dev firms.

> for-the-public-at-large

True. Most of the people I knew with computers back then had them provided by their work, or bought them for university.

But then I lived in a small city in Texas not near a major metro. Most people there didn't buy a home pc until the DotCom boom brought those cheap emachines.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#60

Post by jonny_eh »

bee_rider wrote: post #41
jfb wrote: post #32

I remember learning that when Pixar did a pan-and-scan version of one of their movies, they wouldn't just use a floating 4:3 frame over the 16:9 original -- they'd re-render the movie , moving items around as necessary, to get a better framing. The perfectionism was palpable when we'd meet with them.

This seems like a huge advantage with mostly-digital movies. I wonder how easily a Marvel or Starwars movie could be re-rendered like this. Technically there are actors of course, but they are usually the main focus of the scene anyway...

VFX shots are not pure CGI, it's a whole lot of layers composited on top of each other, think Photoshop but video. So making tweaks to any given shot would not be as easy.
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