Finding Pixar
It is an animated film fans Mecca.
Stand at the front gates and peer through the steel and brick fence shielding it from overzealous fans, you feel like little Charlie Bucket looking at Willy Wonkas mysterious chocolate factory.
The 1,000 employees in the modern, 20,000 square metre glass and steel complex are responsible for some of the most loved and profitable animated films of all time, beginning with Toy Story in 1995 and followed by A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and this years favourite for the best animated film Oscar, Ratatouille.
The eight films combined have made more than $US3.5 billion ($NZ4.49 billion) in theatres worldwide a profit per film ratio unmatched by any movie studio.
Often visits to movie studios are disappointing because, as working facilities, they dont emit the magic that is captured in their films.
The Pixar facility is magical.
Once visitors pass through the intimidating front gate and are cleared by security guards, they are confronted by large glass doors.
Open the doors and inside is an atrium large enough to park a Boeing 747.
The building sits on huge rubber isolators, allowing it to literally surf jolts during San Franciscos regular earthquakes.
Standing guard just inside the front doors are giant models from Monsters Inc, Sulley the fluffy blue monster and Mike, the green-skinned creature with one big eyeball.
Walk a few metres inside the atrium and on the left is a large cafeteria filled with enough sweets to satisfy Charlie Bucket and on the right is a recreation room scattered with computer games and a ping pong table.
Two male Pixar employees, aged in their early 30s, are engaged in a fierce game of table tennis.
The facility also has a swimming pool.
If the stress gets too much for the employees and its too cold for a swim, they can take part in a pilates or yoga class or work out in the Pixar gym.
There isnt a dress code, although most are dressed in shorts, jeans and t-shirts.
Some dont walk.
A guy in his mid 20s with ginger curly hair and a goatee glides past on a scooter while talking on his mobile phone.
I almost got hit by one this morning, laughs Brian Green, a 39-year-old father of four from Melbourne who realised a childhood dream in 1997 when he left Australia with his wife to work for Pixar.
Pixar, as the leader in animation, attracts the most talented animators from around the globe.
Green studied computer science and engineering at Monash University and began his animation career at Melbourne firm Video Paint Brush creating special effects for TV advertisements.
In the mid-1990s he moved to Sydney special effects studio Animal Logic and one day found himself playing with the companys new email system.
It was 1997 and email was a novelty.
I thought What can I type in? and I knew about Pixar so I knew I could type in my resume and send it to them, Green chuckles as he recalls the email that changed his life.
That was the first email I sent off.
Then I went off on holidays and got this phone call saying We got your resume, we want to fly you over and interview you.
I had this terrible interview.
I was totally jet-lagged after the 14 hour flight.
I think it worked in my favour because they took sympathy on me.
In the middle of my interview I had to lie down on the ground because I couldnt take it any more.
Pixar was ramping up production on A Bugs Life and Green was thrown in the thick of it, charged with creating modelling, rigging and shading for the film about a misfit ant recruiting bug warriors to save his colony from grasshoppers.
Impressed with his work, Pixar assigned Green to work on the characters in Monsters Inc and then as a character supervisor on Finding Nemo.
Next up was Ratatouille, a film about a rat named Remy who becomes a chef in a once great restaurant in Paris.
Green spent three years on the film, helping build the characters, creating digital clothes for the humans and hair and texture on the rats.
It has been an incredible journey for the Australian, who grew up in Melbourne in a home without a TV set.
The man credited with transforming Pixar into the globes elite animation studio is John Lasseter, a pudgy, 50-year-old filmmaker born, not surprisingly, in the movie-making worlds capital, Hollywood.
Fond of bright coloured Hawaiian shirts, Lasseter wrote and directed Toy Story and has had a dominant influence over Pixars slate of blockbusters.
We basically focus on telling a great story, explains Lasseter, wearing a bright red shirt that appears to be Hawaiian in style, but look closer and the patterns that appear to be flowers are characters from the Pixar film, Cars.
Every one of our movies has been original.
We dont do focus groups.
We dont research what subject matter might appeal to people.
Were a group of filmmakers who are dedicated to making great movies.
All have been risky.
There were a lot of people who said when we were making Toy Story that no-one would want to sit through a full-length computer animated film.
We disagreed.
It has been Pixars success with computer generated films that has almost made two dimensional, hand drawn animated movies pioneered by Disney extinct.
Disney and Pixar have had a love-hate relationship since 1991 when the companies entered into a production agreement that ended in 2004.
After courting other studios when the deal expired, Pixar, looking for a greater share of profits for its films, entered into new negotiations with Disney.
In 2006, Disney, after much animosity, agreed to buy Pixar for $US7.4 billion in an all-stock deal.
Despite Pixars success, there were critics who thought Lasseter and Pixar were loony for making Ratatouille.
The theory the doubters had was audiences who packed theatres to watch the cute characters in Cars and Finding Nemo would not stomach a film about a rat cooking food for humans.
Lasseter and Pixar were right, the doubters were wrong.
Ratatouille cost Pixar $US150 million to make and has so far earned $US618 million worldwide in cinemas and will likely make that again from DVD sales.
Ratatouille was a story about a rat that wants to be a chef in Paris finest restaurant, Lasseter, Pixars chief creative officer, said.
Its not an easy pitch.
Its not one where people say Oh yeah thats a sure fire winner.
But, to me it was so exciting because what I look for in initial story ideas is the potential for heart.
The heart comes from the growth of the main character.
When I heard that pitch I loved it because it was the most extreme fish out of water story I could imagine.
Within the story its someone following their passion against huge odds and huge risks.
Lasseter speaks with passion and is jovial during the interview, but another side comes out when a question is asked about a sequel for Finding Nemo, the film set in Australia about a young fish on the Great Barrier Reef who gets lost and finds itself in a gold fish bowl in a dentists surgery in Sydney.
Finding Nemo is Pixars most profitable film, reaping $US865 million in box office dollars the 15th biggest earner in film history so a sequel appears inevitable.
Theres nothing to say about that, Lasseter abruptly replies.
So Finding Nemo 2 is not on Pixars drawing boards?
I cant really talk about that. Sorry, Lasseter, shutting down the question with a look that says do not ask anything more about it.
Pixar is famously secretive about future projects, so the terse response adds to speculation Finding Nemo 2 is indeed on its way.
Green says Lasseter has built an atmosphere and facility that breeds success and creative people.
The perks are great.
Australia is kind of tough because you have to work for less money and longer hours, Green said.
Here, theres more money and they take care of me a little nicer.
The Pixar facility is full of tricks to recharge its workers.
Its quite a neat complex isnt it? Green says, looking out a glass window on the top floor of the facility to the atrium below.
I love the gym.
Its got a pool and you get to do all of these other activities like pilates and yoga.
When Green and his colleagues were assigned to work on Finding Nemo, Lasseter came up with an idea to boost their creative juices.
One of the fun elements for me was when I was working on Nemo they gave us all scuba diving lessons and we all went off to Hawaii for a research trip, Green laughs.
Theres that aspect. Its constant creative change.
Greens next Pixar project is Toy Story 3.
Its a nice circle for me, the Australian says.
I wanted to join Pixar because I loved the original, and now Im working on the third.
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Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 6:05 pm under