我们都是讲故事的人

Hey, Pete. Oh, hey, Val. How's it going? You know what, I'm, I'm having a really bad day. What happened? See, what Val's saying when she says "What happened?" is "Tell me a story," and that's actually what this season of Pixar in a Box is all about. To make a movie here at Pixar takes years, but it all starts with a story. Humans have been telling stories since we could speak, probably even before. We tell stories around the campfire, we write plays, we write novels, short stories, we make

movies, we take photographs on Instagram, the list goes on. The power of story is that it has an ability to connect with people on an emotional level. One of the things you hear all the time, this advice, is write what you know. Now, as a kid, I was like, I don't wanna write about suburban Minnesota, that's boring. I wanna write about explosions and monsters and car chases. Well, what that actually means is, yeah, go ahead and write about monsters and explosions and car chases, but put something into it that talks

about your own life, how you feel. Do you feel scared? Do you feel- Alone, something from your own life will make that story come alive and not just be a boring car chase. When I started directing Monsters Incorporated, the way I would pitch it is, "It's about a monster who scares kids for a living, that's his job. He clocks in, he clocks out, he eats donuts, and talks about union dues, and we thought that was a pretty funny idea, and sure enough, when I would tell it to people, they would smile. But when we told the story

as a film, people started getting bored and restless, and they're like, "I don't understand what this movie's about." Well, what I finally figured out was that it's actually not about a monster who scares kids, it's about a man becoming a father, and that was what was happening to me. So why write about what you know? Well, it's because probably what happened to you made you feel some particular way, and what you're trying to do really when you tell a story is to get the audience to have that same feeling.

One of the big revelations for me, telling stories is how much work they are, really. I always thought you'd just tell the story once and it would be perfect, and geniuses like Walt Disney or Miyazaki, this brilliance comes out of their head once and there it is. Well, the truth is Our stories don't always come out exactly perfectly the first time, or the second time, or the third time, or the fourth, up to the thirtieth time, and so you keep going again and again and again, and only after retelling the story many, many times

does it really- Sparkle. This season of Pixar in a Box is about how we at Pixar tell our stories, in hopes that it will inspire you to tell yours. Seriously, what happened? Oh, oh, so the first thing, I get to my desk, right? It's eight o'clock in the morning.

Hi, I'm Valerie Lapointe, and I'm a story artist at Pixar. I'm going to be your host for our first lesson on storytelling. Designed to introduce you to how we tell stories at Pixar. Throughout the next six lessons, you'll have a chance to create your own stories, and you'll go from a rough idea to having real storyboards like we use at Pixar. Each lesson features Pixar story artists sharing their insights about the story development process. My name is Domi Shi,

and I'm a story artist.

Hi, my name is Sanjay Patel. I'm an animator and storyboard artist. I'm Kristen Lester. I'm a storyboard artist.

Hello, my name is Mark Andrews, and I'm a director at Pixar Animation Studios.

The goal of this video is to remind you that you already are a storyteller. It's something we do naturally and start doing as children. To kick this lesson off, let's hear how some of Pixar's storytellers first started telling their own stories.

Out on the playground where you're making up stories or playing in the backyard where we're making up whole worlds. From then on, I started drawing my own comic books, and I would fake being, sick to stay home from school so I could draw my, my comic books and come up with my stories.

What I did is I would take a drawing of Betty and Veronica that was in the comic books and I would trace it, and then I would draw- Fashion on them, and I did this thing called Betty and Veronica fashions. Somewhere in my mother's basement, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of these drawings of Betty and Veronica.

These poster assignments that my art teacher would give me in high school, and even in junior high school as well, they were, they were always around a theme of American history, and so the idea of this kind of homework of doing American history in a visual form was the kind of the first avenue into Telling stories in just one picture.

When I was really young, I would draw pictures and I would show them to people, and they would react, and I'd really like that, like I'd love getting reactions out of people with the things that I drew, and the stories that I tell, and I wanted to get more reactions out of people, so I drew more and more and more.

I have to say, like growing up, I felt like I had no ideas, like I was just the most unoriginal. Like, I always felt like artists have to have like these kind of waterfalls of ideas, endless amount of ideas, and I had like zero, I felt.

So I get most of my stories, and my ideas from, from my life. I think about a lot of stuff that's happened to me, like what was, when was the last time I was happy? When was the last time I felt really sad? Like, when was the last time... You know, I cried or I got really angry.

Most of my stories originate from my own personal experiences, and I think there's a touchstone there That is very important to the storyteller to, to find because it makes it, it makes it honest. I'm not just gathering kind of ideas and chucking them together and there's a story. No story comes ready-made.

One way is that I think long and hard about my experiences in life and, moments in my life where I've had what I kind of consider to be an epiphany. I have gained some sort of insight, or learned something that I think is really important to share with the world. I think those are the kind of stories that are really fun because they are-- they only can come from you and your experience. Nobody else can have the same insights

as you because they haven't lived the same life as you.

No two people will experience life the same, so no two people will tell a story the same way. Think of this as a superpower we all have, your unique perspective. Only you see the world this way. Now, I want you to think about a memory you have. It could be your most embarrassing memory, frightening memory, or a time you were very surprised. Whatever it is, it's a memory you remember vividly. In this first exercise, you'll have a chance to express this memory in various ways.

There are many ways to tell a story and in simplest terms a story is a sequence of events or narrative which unfolds through time. It begins,

something happens,

and it ends.

But some stories, no matter how they're told, have a special quality. You've probably felt this. Some stories grab you emotionally, engage your mind, and pull you in. Now let's hear from our artists what stories pulled them in.

These little stop motion specials on at Christmas, and I remember seeing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the first time, and I knew the song. That's one thing, but then to see it illustrated and play out in the city, the, the Island of Lost Toys, how all these things were not what people expected or not of the norm, and I remember being very, very affected, affected by the injustice, and that really touched me as a kid.

In the case of The Little Mermaid, I remember It was the first animated movie I had ever seen that took me somewhere else, and I remember just like being so transfixed with the idea of going under the ocean and swimming and living a whole kind of other life.

A movie I saw Called The Killing Fields. It was a war movie, and there's this whole section of this movie where the protagonist has to escape from bad guys, and it goes silent for like thirty minutes. It felt like twenty, thirty minutes. And it's just so arresting to see this character trying to survive that I was just riveted, and when he finally finds his friend at the end, like, I just remember

Yeah, like breaking down, it was, felt incredibly emotional.

The Lion King, and I remember I was five years old and watching Mufasa fall to his death, and I was so traumatized that I had to leave the theater. It hadn't hit me before, but when I saw Simba nudging Mufasa's body and he wasn't moving, and Simba was telling him to, to wake up, but his dad like wasn't waking up, and he'd just lay there, and that- That like stayed with me for a really long time. It traumatized me a little bit, but

I think like I, I grew a little bit after watching it too. Imagine you're cast away on an

island You can pick three of your favorite movies to bring with you. What would they be? In the next exercise, you'll have a chance to think about what you would bring and why these particular stories made such an impression on you. You'll reference these three stories in the exercises throughout the next six lessons, so Take the time to find your favorites.

Although our movies involve hundreds of people and take years to make, they all begin with a simple idea about some world and character. What if there's life out there in the universe? What if?

A rat wanted to cook hot cuisine. What if the, our toys that, you know, are all around us actually were sentient and can come alive?

These "what if" questions invite the imagination into a story we want to explore. Let's hear how our story artists use what ifs.

so what if questions kind of really drive That imagination. The best what ifs are questions that, sort of, they feel like a key that unlocks a door.

It really shuts down the logic part of your brain, and it lets you engage the dream part of your brain, and somehow it opens up the doors to imagination, or at least for me it does. And what if sort of seems to ask this question to let yourself wonder. So when it came to writing and directing Sunday Super Team, the thing that I- I came to first was what I wanted to say. What if we could finally see what my father was seeing in his mind

with his spirituality and his faith? What if we could show that with vivid three-dimensional Pixar technology to this little boy who worships cartoons? That was the big what if that I challenged the art department with.

At Pixar, these what-ifs aren't only fun, but they're a simple way to communicate a story idea and kick off our entire creative process. So it's important to be able to communicate stories in this concise way In the next exercise, you'll reframe your three favorite films in terms of what-if statements.

A what-if statement is ultimately connected to a world and a character. When we say world what we really mean is the environment or set of rules in which our story will take place. It can be literal, like a coral reef, or figurative, like the mind of a young girl. Character, of course, refers to the subjects or individuals we follow on the journey of the story. What if there was one last robot left on Earth? Let's hear about some of the worlds and characters that inspired our Pixar story artists.

Star Wars has this great "what if" question, which is, "What if there was a band of rebels that were trying to- Be the guardians of the human spirit, and let's say there was this great war that was going on between this non-feeling technology trying to wipe out this kind of subtle human Feeling, and it just has this great, powerful what if question that really drew me in to that world.

The great thing about the world of Toy Story is that it's this really beautiful metaphor for, Growing up, and it's so genius because it's so, from the sort of the outside, it looks so simple, but from the inside, it's so complicated and so beautiful, So I think that's a really good example of, a world sort of leading the story and a world, containing a metaphor within it that we can all sort of grasp and hold onto.

One of my favorite movies is Raising Arizona by the Coen brothers, where the world takes a backseat to the character of this protagonist who wants to sort of steal a baby so him and his wife could have this family. that character is so incredibly alive to me that- You know, he could just stand there on the screen and it would still be really compelling.

Personally, I always think character Should come first and then, and then the world comes after. For example, a blind person forgetting his pants and going to work will have a completely different story than a seeing-eyed person forgetting his pants and going to work. Two characters will have completely different stories, but all of the objects and the setting and everything else is completely the same. So for me, characters came.

Everybody works a little differently. So for me, I like to come at it from world first and then- find the character to go into this world or who that character is going to be. I needed to set the stage for a bunch of other characters to go through, and then that was the equation for stories to come out.

Sometimes the world comes first, and sometimes the character comes first. Either way, the story's born when both things, world and character, meet. Let's get warmed up in this next exercise thinking about characters and worlds in the stories you love.

Remember, the goal of this lesson is to get you thinking of yourself as a storyteller. As you'll discover, telling stories can be challenging, so let's get a bit of advice and encouragement from our artists.

My high school art teacher pointed out the drawings of Michelangelo to me, and she pointed out specifically that, "You see all these marks that he's left here? These were the errors. These were the things where he was searching for the right mark, and then he found the right line to draw the hand. But he didn't have to erase them. That was part of the search. And it's okay, it's actually part of the process. And so that's when, in fact, she was like, "Get rid of your erasers. In fact, use your eraser to draw, not Because if you're messing up, then at least you're like assured

that you're actually making progress to something that can be better than where you started.

It's okay that your idea isn't perfect right out of the gate, and it's just About like identifying like, is there something there emotionally that is drawing you to it? And if there is, then there's something there, and you can just keep working on it and changing it, but always remembering like what was that initial like feeling that drew you to that idea?

Ideas really usually when you first come up with them, they're kind of more like notions, That's kind of like in the what if, right? What if, and then the way you get to sort of a solid, actionable idea is that you just keep working on it. And every time you do a version of it, every time you do a pass on it, you get closer to the idea. It's a lot

of hard work, and it takes trial and error to get that story right, because one thing that may affect you and you may have an idea isn't necessarily going to speak to somebody else. And that's where Figuring out the best way to get them out of their head and intellectualizing what's being told them to, feeling it and, and getting in touch with their, their emotions so that they're invested in what's happening to the character.

You know, the good news is that if you love it, if you like telling stories, if you like- Communicating, if you like drawing pictures, you know, you won't wanna stop. That's the great part, and even if it feels like you're not making progress, like you'll see a stack of drawings or you'll see a bunch of pieces of paper that have your words on them and I mean, that's really impressive because you're making progress. So

you gotta keep practicing. It's as simple as that. I, I-- There's no easy way, and in fact, it's really fun if you really enjoy it.

Hopefully now you have a sense of a few what-ifs you want to explore and some worlds and characters to go with them. And in the next lesson, we'll dig deeper into developing characters and how we approach that at Pixar.