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Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

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Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#61

Post by hondo77 »

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...

> I wonder how easily a Marvel or Starwars movie could be re-rendered like this.

Fortunately we don't have to worry about 4:3 anymore.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#62

Post by acuozzo »

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.

Disney did this with "Lady and the Tramp". Cinemascope and an academy ratio versions were animated individually in order to make the best use of the frame shape.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#63

Post by outside1234 »

geocrasher wrote: post #11

My favorite part of this account isn't the "test your backups!" lesson. It's the "Have an amazing team" lesson. In one weekend, a team of actual humans sorted through thirty thousand files by hand. Surround yourself with amazing people, and you will find amazing solutions.

and then make sure those amazing people are testing their backups. :)

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#64

Post by Consultant32452 »

asciimov wrote: post #59
serf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I decided to look it up. In 2000, 51% of households had a computer a 41% had internet. https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/computers-internet/u...

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#65

Post by Keyframe »

hondo77 wrote: post #61
bee_rider wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> I wonder how easily a Marvel or Starwars movie could be re-rendered like this. Fortunately we don't have to worry about 4:3 anymore.

There's wider adopted 16:9 aka 1.78 aspect target and then there's everything from 1.85 to 2.39 and ridiculousness like 2.44. Most common three today being 1.78 (aka 16:9), 1.85 and 2.39 (2.35 instead sometimes). 1.85 to 1.78 is usually a fit frame type of crop and call it a day, but 2.39 to 1.78 for home/TV release is same story all over again - do you do the letterbox or are we gonna play re-frame this shot game?

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#66

Post by diskzero »

skunkworker wrote: post #35
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.

In college I remember hearing from one of my animation professors that DreamWorks switched between NURBS and polygons for How To Train Your Dragon, I'm unsure which direction it was but I don't envy the artists tasked with that if true.

I don’t know about that. I would need more info. The PDI tool chain used for Dragon used the same clamped p-blend curves that had been used for several generations of movies. Technology was almost never the issue for delays. It was usually story, direction, editorial, etc. If you get more context, maybe I can find out more.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#67

Post by hinkley »

diskzero wrote: post #25
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.

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.

Thanks for nothing, you useless reptile.

Seriously though, did they have to record the voice acting three times, or partially again several times?

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#68

Post by tomcam »

LanceH wrote: post #48
raldi wrote: post #20

I'm reminded of the time I was on the InfoSec team at a company you've all heard of where all software development was done on a handful of Unix servers with a shared network file system. I reached out to the Systems team to suggest they look into mounting the home directories with the no-setuid option, and one of them invited me over to pair at their desk. They explained that there was a trick, where you could leave…

I was one ROLLBACK away from the Users table in production. Mid 90's, we fixed things in production all the time, and I left the where clause out. There were no soft deletes back then, we just deleted the row, and that would trigger the deletion of user resources elsewhere... I'm sure we had backups, but it would have been bad and resulted in a lot more fixes in production. I guess the upside of the "seat of the pant…

Good story although there were indeed soft deletes in the 90s.

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#69

Post by hinkley »

coding123 wrote: post #47
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.

The dragon looks exactly like one of my cats. Thank you for iterating.

I have since seen a number of voids named Toothless. Some of them weren't even bitey (which seems like false advertising to me).

Re: Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 (2012)

#70

Post by hinkley »

chx wrote: post #54
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody comes into a digital movie with all of their tools already written and running at top speed, right? Isn't this typically a process where frames per hour is pretty low at first and ramps up as you go?
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