Founders · Ed Catmull (Founder of Pixar)
Acquired · Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire
David Senra · Jun 14Building Pixar, Working With Steve Jobs, and Cultivating Creativity | Ed Catmull
Completed 21 of the 22 films it started, using the Braintrust to keep feedback honest and about the problem. It built a culture treating technical and artistic people as peers, had no mission statement, and put quality ahead of cost.
Tips
- Steve Jobs fired two Pixar board members because they never disagreed with him▶ 2:17Jobs fired two board members in the 10 years between the 1995 IPO and the Disney acquisition.
- Catmull built the Braintrust so feedback stays about the problem, never about who is right▶ 4:28Pixar completed 21 of the 22 films it started.
- Catmull kept powerful people quiet for the first 10 to 15 minutes of Braintrust meetings▶ 12:46Jobs often gave notes that others had already given, yet directors heard them as a revelation because his clarity broke through.
- Catmull saw his job as watching the dynamics of the rooms where films get made▶ 19:30
- Steve Jobs bet Pixar on Toy Story to create Eisner's worst nightmare: a competitor▶ 24:25Toy Story won awards and was the highest-grossing film of the year; the new deal was five pictures, with sequels not counting.
- Pixar refused to treat the Toy Story sequel as a lesser direct-to-video film▶ 28:21Toy Story 2 was a huge theatrical success, though Eisner still refused to count Toy Story 3 under the letter of the contract.
- Disney had the right to see everything Pixar did and never once asked how▶ 39:30Pixar's culture was built on a clear logic and hidden from no one, yet nobody at Disney asked.
- Catmull chose hard problems because difficulty is what makes a film different▶ 43:03Pixar completed 21 of 22 films it started, and Disney Animation completed 10 of 11 under him.
- Pixar's rule was that a director can screw up but cannot lose the team▶ 44:38The one film not finished by its original director was reassigned to Pete Docter and became Inside Out.
- Pixar never had a mission statement because it wanted to keep asking questions▶ 49:24
- Pixar put quality ahead of cost while Jack Welch era companies chased short-term growth▶ 51:55GE today is split into pieces after being named manager of the century in 2000.
- After Toy Story, Catmull moved from a finished goal to building a culture that could last▶ 1:14:52Reviews spent only one or two sentences on the computer animation and the rest on the movie.
- Pixar made technical people and artists peers so nobody felt second class▶ 1:26:23Three times in Pixar's history a group felt second class and leadership missed it at first.
- Catmull restored Pixar's sense of fun through instigators instead of top-down orders▶ 1:29:50
- Catmull avoided adding rules so people would not ask permission for everything▶ 1:31:51The truck is still in the animation area, and staff keep redecorating it as their own.
