Ed Catmull Quotes
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Everything's interconnected. That's the way life is.
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Creative ideas aren't like Jenga blocks, where they fall apart and you've got to start from scratch, though it can feel that way.
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We have to evolve, we have to change, and in order to do that, we have to initiate the change.
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A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They're in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing.
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Communication needs to be between anybody at any time, which means it needs to happen out of the structure and out of order.
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One reason for keeping Disney animation separate from Pixar was that by solving their own problems when they finished a film, Disney could say, 'Nobody bailed us out; we did it.' And it's a very important social thing for them to do that.
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Virtual reality's been around for 40 years. People have been talking about storytelling in that world for all these years, and there have been experiments around of people trying to do that, and always excited about it.
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At Pixar, we believe strongly that filmmakers should develop ideas they are passionate about. This may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact in Hollywood, the big movie studios have whole departments devoted to acquiring and developing projects that will only later be paired with a director-for-hire.
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The Braintrust developed organically out of the rare working relationship among the five men who led and edited the production of 'Toy Story' - John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and Joe Ranft.
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When companies are successful or not successful, they almost immediately jump to the wrong conclusions about how they got there or why they got there.
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We'll fund a project even if I'm skeptical because I'd rather be proven wrong by somebody on the inside than by somebody on the outside.
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The desire to avoid meltdowns actually is one of the things that screws up live-action films.
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After Pixar's 2006 merger with the Walt Disney Company, its CEO, Bob Iger, asked me, chief creative officer John Lasseter, and other Pixar senior managers to help him revive Disney Animation Studios. The success of our efforts prompted me to share my thinking on how to build a sustainable creative organization.
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Sometimes a leap of faith doesn't pan out.
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When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I wanted to be an animator and even took art classes. But by the time I was in college, I realized I couldn't draw well enough.
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At heart, we believe that the films that work well are the films that do touch people emotionally.
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For me, one of the great tragedies is the conclusion studios have drawn about traditional animation. I believe that 2D animation could be just as vital as it ever was. I think the problem has been with the stories.
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In life,you're going to have risk, so you have to say, 'My attitude going forward is how to I fix the problem.' And it's not trying to cling onto the past. When I look around, most problems happen because people are trying to cling onto the past.
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Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.
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Are the Simpsons cool? They are, and that is crude 2D animation.
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If you see a bad live action film, what are the conclusions you draw? Typically, it is that they made a bunch of mistakes, a bad script, wrong casting. You get into 2D, and you get a few films that are not strong films. And what is the conclusion? That it's 2D? I beg to differ. It's a convenient excuse, but it's just wrong.
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It doesn't even matter how successful a movie like 'Up' is: you'll never sell a lot of toy walkers. But that's the way we spread out the risk.
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We encourage our people to build their ideas from scratch, and we give them the resources - and, crucially, the candid feedback - that are required to transform the first wisps of a story into a truly compelling film.
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I worked closely with Steve Jobs for twenty-six years. To this day, for all that has been written about him, I don't believe that any of it comes close to capturing the man I knew.