When details about Pixar’s next feature film, Inside Out, first surfaced, Variety called it a high-concept gamble of a flick that will “forever change the way people think about the way people think.”
The film takes place entirely inside the mind of a young girl. Based on what Pixar has teased so far about its fifteenth animated release, the film will go deep inside the girl’s mind to focus on a multicolored group of creatures that personify different emotions. Those characters guide the child, from a “control center” inside her brain, as she goes about her day.
Already, those few story snippets have elicited near-universal praise from media outlets at the promise of more cartoon wonder from Pixar. At a recent film festival in France, Inside Out director Pete Docter made it clear the film will offer a story and characters of deep emotional resonance. The film, he explained, takes a gentle, affectionate look at the loneliness the young girl feels after her family relocates to a new city, forcing her to work through emotions of sadness, anger and joy.
Pixar’s handiwork can make it appear like storytelling magic happens effortlessly at the company. But Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull makes it clear in his new book Creativity, Inc. that the company’s films never come easily.
Catmull offers personal insights on creativity and ways to foster it in a workplace. Creativity, he explains, isn’t some lucky accident at the studio known for a distinctive brand of storytelling and moviemaking—and whose string of movies routinely debut at the top of the box office. Rather, long before audiences get to enjoy the sight of lamps that bounce with glee, robots that explore the universe and toys that go on wild adventures, Pixar takes a deliberate, measured approach to the creative process.
Failure is encouraged—embraced, even—and thanks to a meritocratic environment overseen in part by Catmull, ideas can spring from anywhere. Refining those ideas, of course, separates the studio Catmull co-founded with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter from everybody else.
Take, for example, Pixar’s refinement of Docter’s germ of an idea for Inside Out, as recounted in Catmull’s book.
“What’s inside the mind?” Docter asked Pixar’s so-called “Braintrust,” assembled before him at one point. (The Braintrust is Pixar’s group of writers, directors and executives who shepherd a film’s development.) “(It’s) your emotions—and we’ve worked really hard to make these characters look the way those emotions feel,” Docter went on. “We have our main character, an emotion called Joy, who is effervescent. She literally glows when she’s excited.”