Word: pixar
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...Catmull, one of the true pioneers of computer graphics, now heads up the story-development department. "There aren't a lot of closed doors," says TS2 co-director Ash Brannon, 29. "I can't think of another place where people feel so free." Or so involved. Everybody at Pixar is a "filmmaker," including Greg Brandeau, who runs the 1,700 computer processors known collectively as the RenderFarm...
...oddly hesitant to call himself a filmmaker is Pixar's chairman and CEO, Steve Jobs. With Apple consuming so much time these days, he is rarely at the studio--which is just fine by employees, who both fear and respect him. The truth is that without Jobs, who bought the company from director George Lucas in 1986 and now owns nearly 65%, Pixar would simply not exist. He is credited with wangling an extraordinary fifty-fifty profit-sharing deal with Disney in 1997 for five pictures. "It's his vision. He's the real deal," says Thomas Schumacher, president...
...Silicon Valley apologist. He sees the beauty--and the beast--in both places. "What Silicon Valley thinks is creative is a bunch of guys sitting around on a beat-up old couch thinking up jokes," he says. "It's also true that Hollywood thinks technology is something you buy. Pixar is the only place where both cultures exist under one roof. It's why we're so far ahead...
Boasting aside, Pixar does seem to be light-years ahead technologically. Pixar's animation software, RenderMan, created the dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park as well as the battle droids in the latest Star Wars. Jobs spends more than $5 million a year on computer R. and D., and it shows in TS2--in more realistic skin and fur, more flexible characters, more sophisticated lighting and better depth of field...
Despite the movie's three years of development, however, Pixar's creative team woke up one morning last January to a sinking realization: the story just wasn't good enough. Lasseter stepped in full time as director to help his two younger co-directors. More than half the movie had to be redone. Buster the dog was added, as was Wheezy, the damaged penguin. Tensions rose as the workload increased. The company stock was on a yo-yo ride, with merchandise income from the $358 million megahit Toy Story trickling out and home video and merchandise sales from...