Every technology that comes into filmmaking is first a gimmick. Think about sound with ‘The Jazz Singer’ or the first colour or surround sound – it takes a while for filmmakers to understand how to use it.
Quality is the best business plan.
In computer animation, every detail has to be thought out, designed, modeled, shaded, placed and lit. The more you add, the more computer memory you need.
My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts.
Toys are put on this Earth to be played with by a child.
I worry about kids today not having time to build a tree house or ride a bike or go fishing. I worry that life is getting faster and faster.
When you make these films, they become like your children. But at a certain point, they don’t belong to you anymore; they belong to the world.
The more we all help each other, the more we all benefit. So go out there. Help others.
I’m the biggest fan of animation. I love the history of animation, I know it well.
I have this saying. Quality is the best business plan. I believe so strongly in that.
What’s fun about the story development at Pixar is it’s a journey. You don’t just write a script and then that’s the movie you make. It’s just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar.
I always felt a little bit like a little kid that’s never grown up in the world of adults.
One of the things about animation is it’s so expensive to do the animation, that you can’t produce coverage. You only have one chance to make every shot.
To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry. There are so many great artists out there. And the goal is to make great movies, you know? So to be successful, quality is the best business plan as I always say.
The hardest thing to get is true emotion. I always believe you need to earn that with the audience. You can’t just tell them ok, be sad now. Humor, you can add. Even to the last minute you can be adding little bits of humor. But the true earned emotion is something that you really have to craft.
You make a movie to entertain audiences. That’s why you make a movie. The product sales is because people love the characters, and to me, that is a testament to how our movie has become so ingrained in family’s homes all around the world and that’s why I make movies.
One of the big technical advances that’s really great looking is the water.
I think that the entertainment industry and the entertainment press tends to focus on opening weekend box office as a measure of the success of a film and I think the true success is out there in people’s homes and how much they absolutely love these characters.
I always loved the idea of a spy movie and part of it came from my personal love of spy movies. It started when I was growing up as a little kid in the 60s.
I love the villains who are really hyper-smart. When at the end of the movie you find out what they were about, and it makes absolutely perfect sense from their point of view.
This is what I always tell my filmmakers-you have to do tons of research, because you don’t know where the inspiration is going come from.