How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs
geekosystem.com
geekosystem.com
They recently committed to making of Monsters 2 and Cars 2. Story outline for Cars 2 is just terrible. It seems that financial concerns under Disney leadership are prevailing and bits of integrity are slipping away.
As another commenter pointed out, Pixar rarely pumps out sloppy sequels -- while the motivation to make Toy Story 2 or 3 may be money initially, they make sure that the sequels have legitimate stories and are generally enjoyable. If they didn't, they would quickly become just-another-studio worth only the length of time they can trick parents into buying merchandise based on their intellectual property holdings.
Pixar doesn't do the straight-to-DVD sequel gig. Even when they continue a franchise, they aren't sloppy about it. Even if we aren't really big fans of the "Cars" style or humor, it's evident that there's at least a cohesive storyline and technical quality. Let's remember that Pixar makes cartoons -- usually, they easily skew to adults, but the more 8-year-old oriented Cars doesn't necessary mean that Pixar is losing it; it just means they're targeting 8-year-olds.
I enjoyed Toy Story 2 and it has very decent jokes, but I think that story-wise it is quite inferior to Toy Story 1 - the entire story setup just feels artificial. I'm afraid that same thing on larger scale is going to happen to Cars 2.
As much as I love Pixar, that is incorrect. Toy Story 2 was going to be straight-to-video: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-122205888/sequels...
And yet, each and everyone of those movies were astounding, at least in my opinion, but critics and box office receipts prove my point too.
Yes, sequels have a tendency to be purely money ploys, but luckily Pixar's sequels almost exceed the originals (Toy Story 2 and 3). I'd give the future films a chance before you even see a trailer for them.
> and box office receipts prove my point too
This isn't saying much. The cost-structure of CGI and effects-heavy films is such that you have to essentially make something that will appeal to kids and/or teens, otherwise you're hosed financially.
I can think of many great stories that I'd love to see on screen that wouldn't really appeal to kids + teens, and therefore wouldn't be feasible with the current cost-structure.
(My next least favorite is Finding Nemo, because Nemo's dad is my mother-in-law, on film. Only she hasn't had the epiphany about needing to let go of worry at some point. Again, YMWV.)
Cars is obviously a reasonably simple storyline, but it's a good movie with good characters. Kids like cars shrug it's a movie about toy cars... what's not to like?
Better than an obese highly irritating boy scout kid hitching a lift on a house with an old guy :/
I couldn't stand the kid and the bizarre dog voice, but I haven't thought enough about it to see a solution.
Wall-E had some nice moments -- mostly when it was trying to be Star Wars. The Eco-story and human characters were ludicrous.
I want to see what Brad Bird makes next. Incredibles and Ratatouille are by far my favourite Pixar movies.
Incredibles on other hand is perfect in every way. BTW, given the premise of this movie it's possible to make good sequel for it without resorting to "international spies in the world of racing cars".
It's a company and the only goal of it is to make profits for its investors and its employees. If you believe that making artistic movies and maintaining a company's good reputation is a good way to run their business, let it happen with starting up your company and risking your own money or career.
My point is that commenting on how some company's business decisions didn't justify your expectations is tad garish.
This is a classic problem: to be really successful you need to create a kind of brand mythology. The problem is once you do that, people stop honestly appraising your work, until it's too late.
Ed Catmull (Pixar CEO) is a huge inspiration to me, and he seems to understand the importance of getting accurate feedback (especially negative feedback). The problem is that once you're Pixar/Disney, the audience isn't really providing you with accurate feedback on the time-scale of a single release.
If your quality is slipping, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt, until it's too late to ignore.
In contrast, the digital animated movies from other companies (Dreamworks, etc) have been so BAD that I won't even consider seeing them unless I hear great word of mouth.
Both companies (Pixar and ^Pixar) have earned the reputation they have.
In general, we don't have strong opinions on how to run the chemical engineering companies but everyone is eager to tell Pixar what movies to produce. This is a good manifestation of the Bike shed rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_shed
There is a lot about film (as with any art) that is subjective but there are specific and measurable qualities of a film that can be measured and in each of these Pixar struggles (I say struggle because they set themselves a very high bar) to exceed the qualities of their previous work. In this way they are very different from the Disney of the 1980's/1990's where quality was liquidated as a way to increase the revenue of films who's value lies solely in brand and character recognition.
I agree that the level of merchandising associated with these films is absurd, but I don't know how much the filmmakers have to do with this and we could point to plenty of examples in the software sector who have a hard time saying no when a few million dollars are waved in front of their faces.
If you want to learn more about how Pixar will bleed for quality, research the story behind Toy Story 2; if you can find me another company willing to risk everything for the sake of preventing even one low-grade product from reaching the market, I'll be impressed.
It's funny, that sounds more like vague generalization than something quantifiable.
I'm impressed by the attention to craft at Pixar, but that doesn't mean that each movie is better than the last. Certainly not in "every quantifiable way".
Story outlines usually sound rubbish IMHO. So I'll give cars 2 the benefit of the doubt. Glad there's a new movie with characters my kids love in it.
Wall-e and Up! catered mainly to parents/intellectuals so it's nice to see some good fun movies in the pipeline.
Both Wall-e and Up! were excellent movies. In particular, Up! was one of the few movies in many years that actually emotionally moved me in serious ways. Wall-e was also a great movie that deserves the many accolades it received.
The scene in Up! which showed the old couples life story was well done, but I doubt any child would really remember it or rate it. It was for sentimental adults and critical acclaim from adults.
Again, the scenes in Wall-E where the robot does boring things for ages without saying anything seemed to be there for adults, and to get oscar nominations, rather than to entertain children.
Just my opinion, but I'm really glad to see them revisiting Cars and Monsters Inc which are favorites with my kids, whilst Up! and Wall-E barely registered with them.
Once again, they were not kids movies. Stop criticizing them for not being fun for kids.
Thats fine. I just wish they'd made that clear in the trailers.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/greece/nonflash/e...
This is great advice that can be applied to any type of work, particularly entrepreneurial start-up activity. If you're in it just for the money and don't enjoy what you do, chances are your little start-up venture will not succeed.
It also didn't hurt that Ed and Alvy could stand up to their bosses. In my experience, one feature that separates good manages from bad is the willingness to shield their team from the crap thrown by upper management.
[1] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1813964,00....
... it translates to a 44% compounding annual increase over 20 years ...
Oh that I should do so well for anyone that would invest in me!!
The book claims Jobs purchased Pixar for $5M and immediately invested another $5M. When he purchased the company he was also running NeXT. Pixar, like NeXT, was a computer company selling computer hardware. Both companies we're struggling and taking up a lot of Job's cash.
The story goes that Pixar started to produce more 3D animated shorts, these impressed Katzenberg at Disney who agreed to part fund Toy Story. Only to even get to that point, 6 years after Jobs purchased the company, he'd had to invest a total of $60M into Pixar. He was investing close to $1M a month.
Between Pixar and NeXT jobs was nearly broke. Although I suspect his "nearly broke" is a much bigger bank account thank my "nearly broke".
Not sure how true the story is. But that's how "The Pixar Story" tells it.
So when someone opines that Steve didn't really influence Pixar, I casually mention that $100 million over 10 years gets you a lot of influence. And then ask them to read the pixar story.
A lot of leaderships like coaches are usually on short lifespans. The executives knew that by forcing the company to think about losing two top execs it was serious and maybe reconsider. In this case it was a good gamble.
Their intentions is what makes the story great, though. Honestly I would have given a list of people to layoff, but that's why I am not a great leader or a leader of anything for that matter, of any sorts LOL
If you haven't seen it, check it out before they drop it. Of course, The Pixar Story is worth watching as well (same people, I think).
For what it's worth, I got to know Alvy by running into him at various Seattle breakfast spots over the years (he's in Berkeley now). If you ever get to hear him speak, be sure to go up and talk with him. He's nothing but a welcoming, smart, and humble guy.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Pixar-Short-Films-Collection-1/dp/B000...
If your employees are valuable enough, and loyal enough, you might actually win either way in that situation.
http://www.amazon.com/Pixar-Touch-Vintage-David-Price/dp/030...
Even if we assume the managers' motives were purely economical, it's still rare. Consider that they took a risk - their own jobs - based on their own belief that their team could deliver.
The no-cold-call policy did not mean that employees were off limits completely. We hired lots of people from ILM, Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, etc, but they came to us.
The "evil" of this particular case is pretty overstated. I was there at the time, and basically understood it was happening, and it didn't bother me in the slightest. All those other VFX houses treated their employees like cattle.
I suppose that's mostly the case anywhere, but film releases are, I think, on somewhat tight schedules to hit release windows. Cause a three month delay in the release of a Pixar movie and you might remove a potentially huge summer competitor from the field.
As long as unhappy employees are able to look elsewhere on their own initiative, it doesn't seem that bad.