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Comment by tobyjsullivan | Hacker News Reader

I'd recommend the book Creativity, Inc. as supplementary reading for anyone who hasn't enjoyed it yet. Covers a lot including an insightful (albeit very high-level) discussion of how Pixar's stories are transformed from these simple ideas into great films (lots of iteration, lots of early prototyping and feedback, etc.).

This article leaves the impression these were brilliant ideas that came out well-formed over the lunch table. The book led me to the opposite conclusion: Pixar has such a high hit rate because they have a well-crafted process that can turn almost any idea - no matter how rough - into great film.

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The #1 message I got from Creativity Inc is the amount of luck involved, something which Catmull acknowledges in the book and even points he might have survivor bias.

Luck: Lucas let them leave as a division rather than just shut them down or have them each choose other divisions.

Luck: They didn't get sold to HP but instead to Jobs

Luck: Jobs was willing to blow 70 million over 4 years on them failing to be a computer company before letting them pivot to movies. Lots of people could probably pull some level of success from being given $70 million+ (though probably not Pixar level success)

Luck: Lassiter didn't get fired earlier for sexual harassment (not in the book)

Luck: Catmull didn't get sued for illegal anti-competitive practices. (not in the book)

Of course I love many Pixar movies and respect the amount of effort and talent that goes into them.

>illegal anti-competitive practices

Genuinely don't know what this refers to -- when was Pixar large enough to do that?

"According to the lawsuit, the defendant studios, including Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Blue Sky, schemed to avoid high wages for artists by discussing and agreeing to compensation ranges for employees – that is, pay for employees would not go above certain, agreed-upon levels, so that the studios could limit their payroll expenses." https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/federal-judge-dismisses-a...

Very similar to what Jobs did with other tech companies to drive down wages for engineers.

It was multiple studios, not Pixar alone. http://www.animationlawsuit.com/faqs.aspx

Catmull helmed an industry wide wage fixing campaign

Yeah this lunch discussion is akin to a bunch of kids deciding during recess what they want to become - one a doctor and another an astronaut. If a bunch of kids do actually succeed in all their careers then what went right is the schools methods not the creative process in that lunch break.

But it's not really just that, is it?

If you have a bunch of kids with completely unconventional career ideas that no one would try... and then they all manage to strike it big doing these strange things... then you've got something special. Sure, part of it is in the capabilities and post-meeting culture of those kids... and part of it is to have strange but actually achievable ideas from the beginning.

I note that they're not completely crazy ideas. They know the limitations of their (new) medium, and are trying to find the ideas that are barely viable, and thus groundbreaking, at the edges.

I haven’t read the book but if you ever get a chance to see one of the traveling Pixar museum exhibitions, do it! The amount of work that goes into making one of those films is staggering, as is the volume of non-digital art that is created as part of the creative process. Highly recommended!

I’ve visited the exhibits and read Creativity, inc. Both are highly recommended!

The audiobook is good, too.

>transformed from these simple ideas into great films (lots of iteration, lots of early prototyping and feedback, etc.)

I don't doubt there's lots of feedback on details, but I have doubts about how much story arcs might change, or how "rough" the originating ideas are, especially after realizing that "Toy Story 3" is just (imho a lessor version of) "The Brave Little Toaster" as fed through the "Pixar Process".

It's toys instead of appliances, an attic instead of a cabin, being repurposed at a daycare instead of a repair shop, and an incinerator instead of a compactor, but the pixar process didn't change the overall story at all.

(The idea was originally Lasseter's, but to oversimplify, he basically lost the rights and others ended up making TBLT, while he eventually got to do TS3.)

Maybe other movies saw more changes going through the process, but the only example we have to actually compare didn't.

Also read "To Pixar and Beyond" by Lawrence Levy, who Steve Jobs hired to save the company. It tells the Pixar story from the CFO perspective.

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