Wonderful Q & A in the A.V. Club with Up director Pete Docter. I’ve long been a fan of Pixar’s mighty storytelling abilities, and this interview delivers sweet, juicy insights into their process. Dig this:
AVC: How late in the process do you continue tweaking the story? Is it set in stone before you start animating it?
PD: Ideally, it’s set in stone. But the truth is—and every film’s different—basically the way we work is, we divide the film up into sequences, roughly 30 of them. And the ones we feel are tent-poles, holding the whole thing up, those go in first, and we start animating those. Hopefully, everything else starts to come along. It’s weird—on almost every film I’ve worked on, the first sequence we storyboard ends up being the first sequence that goes into animation, and ends up being almost shot-for-shot the same. In Toy Story, it was the Army-man sequence, which Joe Ranft mostly boarded, of these guys sneaking out and rappelling down to spy on the birthday party. It was almost shot-for-shot the way he boarded it. Same with this one. We had Peter Sohn, this really great story artist who’s doing the short film that’s gonna be attached on this one—he boarded the sequence with Carl where the nurses pull up and knock on his door, and he says “Just give me a moment,” and then he floats his house off into the sky. We had these poetic images of him floating past stores and windows, and that is almost shot-for-shot. Other sequences, we reworked 40, 50 times, it’s crazy. But you do what you have to do to get it right.
This idea of the tent-pole is super right-on. I’d also like to add that you need to know what your tent-poles are supposed to accomplish. In the aforementioned Toy Story example, the Army-man scene establishes that these toys are resourceful and capable. Without it, then Woody leaving the safety of Andy’s room to rescue Buzz would feel like a stretch. But thanks to that scene, you’re prepared for these toys to do the impossible.
Tent-poles in plot- or action-driven stories are essential, but even literary pursuits have them. (For some reason, the unsettling Dick & Jane opening to Toni Morrison’s THE BLUEST EYE springs to mind.) Ignore them at your peril.
Some homework for the weekend if you’re interested:
1. Clear your mind of desire, expectation, and what you’ve done in the past.
2. Taking only the premise of your project (no peeking at the thing-in-progress itself) make a list of tent-poles, jotting down a few quick notes on what said TP is supposed to achieve.
3. Set aside for 14.5 hours.
4. Compare your TP list with what you’ve done so far. Where are there gaps to fill? Where are you overstaying your welcome?
5. Take a nap or eat a hot fudge sundae.
6. Get to work.
Final note:
The TP list is different from an outline. Outlining is great, but you can also outline yourself into a corner. (I’ve also found that outlines can start to justify themselves, even if they’re wrong.)
The TP list is free of chronology. It only cares about weight. In baking there are all kinds of substitutes for eggs, but chocolate is irreplaceable.
