Every Compelling Disney Pixar Story Begins with This Formula | Ed Catmull

0:00Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this. Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:42What I'm curious about is how were you able to tap into the human mind and create emotional connections with audiences through these animations? How was this studied and executed for the last 30 years at such a high level?

1:01Ed Catmull:Well, I will say that for the first movie, it's one of those things where there is some luck in that group that first came in. We had always, in the history of both at New York Tech and then at Lucasfilm and then at Pixar, was to say we really want to hire the very best. And so I would say, well, we want to hire people who are smarter than I am. And I know other people say that, but because like, like, what does that even mean? But it means that you don't want to be threatened by the people that you hire. And they just have to have these extraordinary skills. When we were building out our technical group, they were just really good.

1:42Ed Catmull:I mean, they were, they had passed me in terms of their understanding of all the technology. and John understood that too so when he did his first hires the first person he hired was Andrew Stanton and then the second was Pete Docter and then Joe Ramf came in and then brought in really to be an editor except he turns out to be like one of the best storytellers ever is Lee Unkrich this is this amazing group of people that came together Part of it was we really had established a culture where this was the right thing to do. You weren't even thinking about them as, okay, who's going to be second to me?

2:30Ed Catmull:It's like, okay, who's really good? And it turns out that Andrew had this extraordinarily structural sense. We didn't know that. Right, right. It emerged because of the challenge. and Pete Docter had this incredible emotional core, getting the emotion right, it's like who he is. People aren't often aware of this, but the lighting is really important for conveying the emotions. The artist that we had, Ralph Eggleston, had a color palette for the movie because it turns out the basic color changed throughout the movie and it's this subtle thing that's affecting your perceptions. Wow. So, like, this is this amazing group of people.

3:22Ed Catmull:And the interesting thing about it was that none of these people had ever made a feature film before in their life. Oh, my goodness. So we hadn't used computer graphics, but they also hadn't done a 2D film. They hadn't done any film. Everybody is a beginner. They all had to figure it out. And you're leading them. Yeah. The emotions you're able to pull out of people, you know, in these films, through the text, through the art, through the color, through the lighting, through the sound design and the music, through the tonality of the voice actors, and bringing it all together to create a cohesive emotional story is unbelievable how you guys did this.

4:06But how did you know how to put it all together? I mean, the way I thought at the time was, how do you have a group that works together?

4:16Ed Catmull:Because I'm not a filmmaker. Over time, we developed a way of helping people, which ended up being called the Brain Trust. But my view was, how do we make sure this group works together? Like, what are the things that make it work together? What takes them off the rails? So as to work out some principles for that, The truth was, there's only one movie in all those movies that I gave a note that I felt so strongly about that I had to push really hard to get it in there. What was that? It was in Monsters Incorporated. What was the note? The note was, at one point near the end, the monster, Sully, has to scare this dummy, which is being video, that's like a training video.

5:01Ed Catmull:and you may recall that when he does this, he then looks up and he sees that the girl's right there and he scares the bejesus out of this little girl, the one he loves. And he didn't mean to do it. But the original thing, what she saw was that she saw him on the monitor. So I looked at this and I said, you can't do this because anybody that has a child remembers their times when they may have done something that where their child was was in danger either because of themselves or it happened to them and when that happens it sears into your soul and you never forget it for as long as you live wow and that for Sully, he needs to see that he was the cause of the thing that scared her, that it was not good enough to have her see it by the monitor.

6:02Ed Catmull:And so I could look and say, well, I did one at least. One note in 30 movies, yeah, yeah. But that wasn't my job. Yeah. They're the filmmakers. It wasn't my job. And so that was the whole time and then when Jim Morris came in, we were both like, you know, we're in there just looking at the process and what works, what doesn't work. Right. You're just evolving it. Right. So for time.

6:29I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier. You want to make it flow. You want to feel abundant. then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

7:10Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:00Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

8:30informed conversation with her doctor. The doctor will see you now. That's us, Mom. You too can visit advancedendometriocancer.com and learn more about a treatment option.