Pixar: 25 Magic Moments

It's not just that they're playful at work, I think they encourage people to be playful about life.

25 years of movie-making history.

Creative, inventive and fun.

They've maintained a childlike devotion to tell stories about the human heart.

Really beyond belief.

11 successive box office hits.

Just their extraordinary track record, I mean, they just don't lose.

The journey to the top hasn't always been a smooth ride.

I get this call, and he said, "Your employment with Disney Studios is now terminated."

But perseverance and talent eventually paid off.

-Mostly, they've been around for a long time because they keep winning.

-Really amazing people.

This is truly going to be timeless and forever,

and will always land in the consciousness of yet another generation of moviegoers.

And it all started with a little lamp.

Three words to describe Pixar -

gift from God.

Pixar. We all know what they do. No?

Well, they're responsible for this...

..and him, and them.

-Nemo!

-You get the idea.

-Yeah!

Tonight, we'll look back at 25 magic moments from the studio's 25-year history.

-I guess we could use a little entertainment.

-Exactly.

Along the way, we'll see just what it takes to make a Pixar feature film.

These guys are professionals. They're the best.

And we'll be joined by all of the key players involved.

They encourage a kind of stress-free environment,

and that filters into all of their movies.

It feels to me like it's kind of a college campus.

You feel like it's new every time.

Every time you show up for something, there's a great energy in the room.

You're suddenly surrounded by a bunch of young geniuses,

who understand what they're doing, while you don't.

The secret to our success is we have a blast making these films.

If you're having fun making a film, it's going to appear on the screen.

Now, there's only one place you'll find a studio making blockbusters like these.

We're going to Emeryville - an unassuming, quiet suburb

of the Golden Gate city, which just happens to be the home

of one of the world's most successful film studios -

Pixar.

It's a big...kind of a family.

A lot of people hang out together, both at work and after work.

We collaborate with each other.

It's a group effort, and the building and culture reflects that.

Yes, these are a unique gang of film-makers who strive to be different.

We did not want to do what Disney was for Little Mermaid,

and Beauty And the Beast, and all those films.

They had their thing going and we wanted to be different.

OK, Pixar. You want to be original? You want to be ground-breaking?

Let's see what you've got.

YOU ARE A TOY!

Yep. That should do it. Toy Story, their debut hit.

The story drove everything. It was so refreshing, because

we were making the movie we wanted to make.

So, our first magic moment is the Toy Story scene that brought these two lovable characters together.

Oh, and gave children the world over a new playground catchphrase.

-We're all very impressed with Andy's new toy.

-Toy?

T-O-Y. Toy.

Excuse me, I think the word you're searching for is "Space Ranger".

The whole struggle between Buzz and Woody was largely about Buzz's delusion.

He's not a Space Ranger.

He doesn't fight evil, or shoot lasers, or fly!

Buzz and his cluelessness just aggravates this guy Woody.

THEY ALL GASP

Oh, impressive wingspan!

I remember, that was one of those scenes that was just

so much fun, because of the read that Tom Hanks gave us.

These are plastic. He can't fly!

They are a terillium-carbonic alloy, and I CAN fly.

No, you can't.

Yes, I can.

-You can't.

-Can.

-Can't, can't, can't!

I could fly around this room with my eyes closed.

OK, then, Mr Lightbeer. Prove it.

All right, then. I will.

We wanted to create two characters that were so fun that, even if they were locked in an elevator

for the whole movie, you'd want to see what happens next.

To infinity...

and beyond!

-Can!

-CHEERING

A great magic moment to kick off with. And after the critical and commercial success of Toy Story,

the pressure was on for Pixar's second film.

And, if a handful of toys proved tricky to animate,

what were they thinking with thousands of insects?

I think we bit off maybe more than we could chew in terms of the scale

of the movie, and how many characters there were.

And it wasn't only the number of characters that challenged the animators.

We had this tiny little camera, that we could put on the end of a stick and put it down into the grass

and see what our world kind of looks like from an ant's perspective.

Research was literally done in our own backyard.

OK, technological advances made, all that's needed now is a bit of humour.

Anyone who's ever spent any time looking at ants knows that they walk in a straight line.

And then dealing with the chaos

of a leaf falling down and blocking the line,

and none of them being able to decide what to do.

"What do we do? Do we go around?" It's just complete panic.

Oh, no! Oh, no!

I'm lost!

Where's the line? It just went away!

-What do I do, what do I do?!

-Help!

-We'll be stuck here forever!

Do not panic!

It was just a funny way of showing that no individual ants have their own thoughts.

That's it, that's it. Good!

You're doing great. There you go. There you go.

Watch my eyes. Don't look away.

And here's the line again.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Soil!

-Good job, everybody.

-'It was a very ambitious film.'

It ended up bringing a lot of us to our knees, because it was very difficult to make.

Having conquered crowd shots in A Bug's Life, every Pixar film since

has pushed the boundary of what computer animation can create.

And, in 2009, they treated us to a visual feast of grace and beauty,

all tied together in thousands of balloons.

That's typical. He's probably going to the bathroom for the 80th time.

You'd think he'd take better care of his house.

That moment in Up when the house lifts off, that's the centrepiece of that movie.

Of course, one of the first things that the technical directors did was to calculate, given the average

weight of a house, how many balloons would it realistically take to lift the house?

I think they came up with 25 million or something.

We ended up with around 20,000.

So we cheated.

The buildings were literally growing up around him,

and so when he finally broke free of that,

we were hoping the audience would really feel that, that he was finally off on an adventure.

CAR ALARM BLARES

HE LAUGHS

So long, boys. I'll send you a postcard from Paradise Falls!

It wasn't a chase scene. It wasn't an action scene. It was just a soft, lilting journey,

-the start of this guy's adventure.

-Ha!

So, we've seen talking toys, an army of ants and a flying house.

On paper, ludicrous ideas.

But somebody has to think them up.

People typically only see the final movie. They think,

"Somebody had an idea, a script, and then they made that movie."

That's actually not how it works.

It's more of a discovery, really, the whole process.

We do take risky things.

For instance, Ratatouille, about a rat that can cook.

Or Up...

These are unusual ideas.

So we don't shy away from an unusual idea.

Some people want to tell it to you across the table.

Some people move around the room.

Some people want some visual aid, with a stick, and they're pointing to it. Some people have slide shows.

But, at the end of the day, it really comes down to,

do you have that Monday morning by the water cooler at the workplace

gift for making me riveted?

Unlike other film studios, Pixar is unique in that it will only accept script ideas from its own employees.

Which is a shame, really, because I've had a great thought about an animated hamster called Trevor.

Any takers?

Anyone want to give it a go? No?

OK, let's move on.

The second animator, after me, who was ever hired at Pixar, was Andrew Stanton.

And then Pete Docter was soon after that.

I knew right away that these guys were good enough to make their own films.

When Toy Story came out, I was surprised at how many people said,

"I really thought that my toys came to life, too."

And I thought, "Wow, I wonder how many other

"things there are like that, that we all sort of believed in as a kid?"

And one of them, I knew that there were monsters in my closet.

I remember trying to get to sleep and the door would be open a bit,

and you'd see part of a shirt - is that a shirt or a tentacle?

And so that beginning of the film really came out of my own experience as a kid.

In 2001, Pete Docter's pitch finally became Monsters, Inc.

But before we enjoy a laugh-out-loud scene, here's something you might not know.

Morning, Ricky.

See you on the scare floor, buddy.

I'm the dope who turned down Toy Story.

Is that a joke? Tell me you're joking.

Really stupid.

So now the truth comes out, doesn't it?

A couple of years later, the phone rings.

My assistant says, "John Lasseter's on the phone." I picked it up, and I went, "Yes."

KLAXON BLARES

And with that "yes", another classic comedy duo was born.

Less talk, more pain, marshmallow boy! Be a leopard.

You call yourself a monster?

Mike and Sully's relationship is a Laurel and Hardy kind of relationship.

'All those classic comedy teams live together.

'They have a great affection for each other

'and that's what is so fun about it.'

Sometimes two minds without a single thought.

'But they're real guys.

'And they need each other.'

-Twins! In a bunk bed!

-They work together, they live in the same place.

-I thought I had you there!

-That's the relationship set up,

and it provided a lot of fun. Especially with those two actors.

# I don't know, but it's been said

# I love scaring kids in bed. #

'We mostly record each actor individually.'

But because we wanted them to have this relationship, that they could complete each other's sentences,

and jab each other, and kind of riff on each other, we got both the actors in,

and the energy just went up.

-I don't believe it!

-I'm not even breaking a sweat.

-Not you.

The inseparable Mike and Sully, proving that there's nothing more important in a Pixar movie

than the love between characters.

And, in 2003, our hearts were warmed yet again by this father and son.

-What's the one thing we have to remember about the ocean?

-It's not safe.

-That's my boy.

My son was about four, maybe four or five.

And I felt I hadn't seen him in at least a week and a half, if not two weeks, and I just felt so guilty.

And I said, "On Saturday, we'll go to the park."

-Whoa, hold on, hold on. Wait to cross.

-And I spent the entire walk going, "Don't touch that.

"You're going to fall into the road. Put that down."

Here I am, a good father, with all the best of intentions, and I can't get out of my own way,

and do what I really need to do and connect with my child.

And I thought, "That's got to be a universal dilemma."

-My dad says it's not safe.

-Nemo! No!

-Dad?

-You were about to swim into open water!

We worked on the scene quite a bit, and it never really had heft

to it, until we got the idea to really bring Nemo to a rock bottom place, and saying...

-I hate you.

-'It's a classic kid/parent moment.'

Not one of the moments that you want to remember, but the kind of thing that happens.

You are in big trouble, young man! Do you hear me? Big!

I loved that, maybe me as a scuba diver, just going down to take pretty pictures,

is the equivalent of Godzilla invading Tokyo.

No, no! Dad!

The idea of being separated from your child is pretty intense.

Nemo! Nemo!

But the impossible task of finding a needle in a haystack,

that seemed like an insurmountable goal that I wanted to see somebody conquer as a moviegoer.

No, no! Please, no!

Now, from one protective dad, to one incredible mum.

She just extended her mothering instincts beyond the normal reach,

to protect her family.

-Kids, you're all right!

-You're all right.

'Every power matches the character.'

Dad is a strong guy who just wants to push his way through things.

The mom is a housewife with three kids, so she has to stretch in a lot of different directions.

A teenage girl wants nothing more than to be invisible

and put force-fields up around her.

-How are you doing that?!

-And Dash is a 10-year-old hyperactive kid.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hey, time out!

Careful.

And bringing the idea of character relationships

bang up-to-date is a couple of star-crossed lovers in Toy Story 3.

Ken? Where is that boy? Ken?

-New toys!

-Far out.

Down in a jiff, Lotso.

'As soon as they said Ken...'

So, who's ready for Ken's dream tour?

..I knew what they meant.

The phone fell out of my hands and I just kind of bent over and laughed.

I don't know why, my first reaction was, "This is really funny."

I'm not a girls' toy! I'm not! Why do you guys keep saying that?!

And I kind of immediately got it.

'Actors like to play, generally speaking. It's just really fun.'

Hi, I'm Ken.

Barbie. Have we ever met?

Nuh-uh, I would have remembered. Love your leg warmers.

You only know Ken in relationship to Barbie, cos she's huge. Ken, not so much.

But when I look at you, I feel like we were...made for each other.

He's a tad groovier than I had seen him!

Yes, sir, well-groomed man.

The latest Toy Story adventure let us enjoy

Ken and friends in stunning 3D, but as always when it comes to the initial plot outline and direction,

it's back to the storyboard with good old 2D sketches.

We kind of make our movies the same way that

the industry's been making them since Walt Disney made Snow White.

A script is done, but then the movie doesn't truly come to life until you visualise it.

We create very elaborate storyboards.

It's a visual medium, and when a storyboard artist takes it,

they then essentially become the actor, the editor,

they become the cinematographer for a while and they take that written word into cinematic form.

It's a long process. We spend about two and a half years

working on the screenplay and the storyboards for any given film that we make.

-Whoa!

-Two-and-a-half years?!

Mind you, storyboarding does give the creative team the chance

to experiment, which is a good thing, as Woody would never have been the character we love today.

We made the mistake of thinking that

Woody was a character that should go from being selfish

to selfless, and we took it that literal.

So we just created a selfish character.

Thinking, "It'll be fine because he's going to turn nice."

It was smart-alecky,

it was like a brand of insult humour, it was negative.

All right, that's enough!

We learned right away that if you don't like somebody or...

I guess the proper way is you can't empathise with them...

Hey, you want to be Mr Mashed Potato Head?!

..then you've lost the audience.

You button your lip. Nobody's getting replaced.

So we found out after quite a bit of work that...

Woody was very off-putting.

So, after years of development, Woody's character was softened,

becoming the likeable cowboy seen in the final film.

-It's just a mistake.

-Well, that mistake is sitting in your spot, Woody.

-Have you been replaced?!

-Hey, what did I tell you earlier?

No-one is getting replaced.

Woody was a pendulum swing from being comfortable with his position to him being threatened.

The big epiphany for me was that everybody

can act like a nice person,

and that became a real learning for me as a writer for how to treat Woody.

He could be the nicest guy, the perfect guy, the best leader, as long as he was on top.

Now, how many of you remember your old art class at college?

Yep, me neither. But the animators at Pixar sure do.

I went to California Institute of the Arts. It was started by Walt Disney towards the end of his life.

They have this animation programme. The original room

where the whole programme was held was in this room, A113.

There's a few times in my life I feel like I've been in the right place at the right time,

and definitely when we were at Cal Arts, that was it.

Most of the Pixar films have some little reference to A113 in there.

It just became a good-luck charm that we just don't want to not do.

Once you know about A113, it just jumps out at you, it's so obvious now.

OK, maybe obvious was the wrong word. It didn't take us long at all to find this one, or that one.

It's getting a bit cryptic in The Incredibles, but it's there.

So just Monsters, Inc. then. Where's that one, Pete?

It might be one of the offices. As they run down the hall...

We've got to get out of here now!

..there's all these different departments.

-I think it's one of those offices, but I'm not sure which one.

-You're not sure?

We've got no chance then! Come on, give us a clue.

I can't remember! It's been so long. Do you know?

Oi, Pete, no conferring!

Staying with the college theme, it's time for a history lesson.

So notebooks at the ready, as we're about to chart the origins of Pixar.

It was the early '80s and by today's standards, the modern technology looked anything but modern.

And a computer-animated feature film was just a twinkle in Pixar supremo John Lasseter's eye.

Whilst working at Disney, Lasseter watched Tron, a breathtaking feature film which

mixed live-action with CGI, and this proved to be the catalyst that

inspired Lasseter's imagination.

The computer animation excited me so much. Not excited about what I saw,

but the potential I saw in this, I was just amazed by it.

He had the right kind of eyes to suddenly see Tron at that time.

I was just a whippersnapper, I was just a geeky kid still

going to the movies, not knowing

what to do with my life. I remember being just as wowed by Tron.

John had an epiphany that was too early.

He was just ahead of his time about where it should go.

Keen to share his vision of a fully computer-animated feature film,

Lasseter pitched an idea to his employers.

It was a meeting he would never forget.

We'd pitched the whole thing and he stood up and he asked, "Well, how much is this going to cost?"

I said, "Well, it's with computer animation.

"It's going to be no more than the regular budget of a film."

And he went, "The only reason to do computer animation is if we can do it faster or cheaper."

I was like, "What?!" And...

So about five minutes later I get this call,

and Ed Hanson calls me down to his office.

And I come down and he said...

"Well, John, your project is now complete, so your employment with Disney Studios is now terminated."

Not one to sit twiddling his thumbs, Lasseter hooked up with Ed Catmull

and began working for this guy.

In the beginning, they were primarily put together

as the computer division at Lucasfilm to design technology,

to make it easier for people to be creative.

John is just a born animator.

He's extremely talented, loves what he does, and was absolutely

fascinated with moving it to the next level and doing computer animation.

Unfortunately, George Lucas didn't have the capital to take it

to that next level, so decided to sell his graphics division.

I said, "Look, I know you guys want to make a movie, so I'm not going

"to sell you to General Electric," which is who really wanted them.

But with computer animation in its infancy, who was willing to take the risk?

-They found Steve.

-Steve who?

Oh, Steve Jobs, the guy who gave us the iPod, right.

And with the purchase from Lucasfilm, Pixar was born.

I rode up to Lucasfilm and that was the first time I met Ed,

and he shared with me his dream to make the world's first computer-animated film.

And I, in the end, ended up buying into that dream,

both spiritually and financially.

These were hard years, those first years, and there were times when all of us about threw in the towel.

So as we went through the hard times, we finally got the opportunity in 1991

with Disney to do Toy Story.

Whoa, there, Ed, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Before Toy Story, there was a magic moment involving a little lamp.

I think for me the film that really did it, that made me go, "Wow, there is something here," was Luxo Jr.

It was just a held camera and two characters.

It was just this great little story. And I said, "Who did that?

"Man, wherever that guy works, that's where I want to be."

I had a big drawing table and I had this...angle-poised lamp,

a Luxo lamp.

And I just, literally, took the lamp and just started measuring it

and drawing it on graph paper and then modelling it into the computer.

I started moving it around,

because I love bringing inanimate objects to life.

One of my colleagues brought his little baby into the graphics room.

He was so cute and I just love little guys,

and I sat him down and I was playing with him on my knee...

..I started staring at this lamp and I thought to myself,

"What would a baby lamp look like?"

When the Pixar credit comes up right before the movie,

there's a little lamp that hops out and in a sense, that's me.

We were playing with a ball. Of course, I don't remember this,

but it was a little tennis ball and John Lasseter was with us and

started playing with me and kind of looking at my proportions, how as a baby your head is much bigger

compared to your body than as an adult.

The things that are the same in babies to us are the eyes,

so the rest of the head is smaller, but the eyes, you perceive them as larger.

So in the lamp, the eye is the light bulb.

You have the same size light bulb in both the adult and the kid.

And so just little things like that really bring these things to life

in a way that you would believe, that when I had my back turned,

when I'm not looking, this is what's going on.

And so thanks to Spencer Porter... Luxo Jr was created

and thanks to Luxo Jr...

we have Pixar, I guess.

You know, it's my 15 minutes of fame.

The interesting thing about the lamp was when people watched it,

they didn't ask about the technology or the computers or anything like that.

The first question was, "Was the big lamp the mother or the father?"

And it was all about the story.

And I knew at that point, that's when we were actually on the right trail.

Have you been paying attention?

Good, close your exercise books because it's exam time with the Pixar quiz.

In Monsters, Inc.,

what nickname does Mike give his girlfriend Celia?

Mike's girlfriend's name is Shmoopsie-poo.

In Toy Story 2, what's the name of the group

that consists of Prospector, Woody, Jessie and Bullseye?

I think it's something, sort of Woody's something round-up,

I don't really know.

Close. It was the Round-up Gang.

Round-up Gang. Interesting, that implies some sort of...

nefarious behaviour, though, doesn't it?

In Toy Story 3, what's the name of the day-care centre where Ken lives?

Sunnyside.

What's the full name of Buzz Lightyear's arch enemy?

God, is it, er... The Evil Emperor Zurg.

In Wall-E, the captain makes a morning announcement

to the ship's passengers. How many days have...?

Oh, I will never...!

He's asking me how many days!

In Monsters, Inc., what's the code number to call

for the child contamination unit?

What is the code number?!

I have no idea.

I used to know this.

In The Incredibles, what was Syndrome's first alter ego?

That's a good question.

I have no idea, what is it?

It's code 23-19.

23-19? Boy, I tell you something, get a life!

When he was younger, yes, he was...

Incrediboy!

This is the mighty BBC is coming up with

"Give us the phone number that they call for the kids?"

If I got it, what would I get? A present?

Nothing, which even makes the question more ridiculous.

23-19, I won't get that wrong again.

All right, you lot, you might not be trivia experts, but there is something you get an A* in.

To infinity...and beyond!

# You and me, you and us together. #

My master made me this collar.

He is good and smart and he made me this collar so that I may talk...

Squirrel!

Yes, there's more to a Pixar movie than just animation.

To bring the characters to life, you need other talents.

When we're creating our characters, at the beginning we really don't know who will play them or who they are.

We get to do the temporary voices.

Pete generally does Buzz.

Andrew Stanton usually does Woody.

-Hi, pal, what you doing?

-I'm Tempust from Mars!

Yeah, what's this button?

Say, you weren't thinking of flying, were you?

Every now and then, John Lasseter will come and say,

"That's working. Keep that guy in there."

A lot of people here at Pixar are really good actors.

So I got to do Roz in Monsters, Inc...

Wazowski.

..Mr Ray in Nemo...

I wonder where my class has gone?

..and I got to do Doug the dog. Squirrel!

When the actual actors come in, when Tom Hanks comes in and when Tim Allen comes in,

it's shocking how much better it gets.

When we first started out, he was a radio voice -

"Hi, everybody, Buzz Lightyear to the rescue." What are you talking about?

John's first thought was more of a disc jockey.

Buzz Lightyear mission log, stardate 4-0-7-2, my ship has run off course en route to sector 12.

-Over the last 25 years, Pixar has amassed an amazing collection of voices.

-He can't fly!

Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Morning, Sleeping Beauty!

-Ants don't serve grasshoppers!

-So you can be Mr Incredible again?

-No!

-Then what?!

-To infinity and beyond!

We always do the recording of the voices before we do the animation

and that's really important, because these actors

have a tremendous influence on how the characters are animated.

Welcome to day 255,642 aboard the Axiom.

They didn't want me to do anything with the voice or put a spin on it.

They wanted me to keep the same voice.

-Hello, I'm Trixie.

-Shh!

-Shh!

-Shhhh!

They do try to track lots of emotions, and I think you

can discover those more if you're comfortable in your own voice.

There was nothing for it but to be a posh English girl...

Oh, you've got to be joking.

..and go with it, and I really enjoyed it.

I did my posh voice,

which is roughly...this.

We tried a bunch of different things and we ended up with a high-pitched thing like this,

so he was always excited. # You and me, me and you

# Both of us together! #

Pete, to me, was just very measured, is the way I thought of him.

Why, the prodigal son has returned.

And then of course when he raged, he got a little more like what I sound like.

Oh!

Take that, space toy!

They videotape you while you're rehearsing.

Hey, good evening, how are you? Nice to see you.

So they could watch my body movements, and then Mike moves like me.

I tell you it's great to be here in...your room.

I'm looking for a car. HE GASPS

-If you look closely...

-It's McMissile!

..at Finn McMissile, the mouth shapes that he does

are really inspired by Michael Caine.

It gives you a chance to have a lot of fun because you can do it

100 times, each line, it doesn't matter.

It's like every take was fantastic.

You do that, sort of, every three, four, six months...forever.

He was such a professional, it was unbelievable.

I said, "How long have I been doing this?" He said, "Two years."

You don't get to act with other people, so it's a lot of play pretend.

Tom Hanks asked me if I thought, when I did Wall-E,

how hard I thought it was.

This is mutiny! Eve, arrest him!

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

Ha-ha-ha!

-My voice is still blown out from Wall-E!

-Well, you're not the only actor

to have given everything to the role.

Yes, I'd like your heart... roasted on a spit.

Classically-trained Peter O'Toole turned in a mesmerising performance

as the acid-tongued food critic Anton Ego in Ratatouille.

Love it.

If I don't love it, I don't swallow.

A film about a restaurant kitchen run by a rat.

A restaurant run by a rat?

Have I told you about my idea of a super hero hamster?

They must be joking!

I'm certainly not joking.

Anyway, back to the film and the man who was won over by a rodent.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy.

We risk very little, yet enjoy a position

over those who offer up their work, and theirselves to our judgment.

Peter O'Toole, he has a way...of saying any sentence

and caressing the words that make them Peter O'Toole's.

The average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

He's so appealing, he's so smart, he's so wonderful at his deliveries, and very thoughtful

about his performance, that it balances what could be a very unlikeable character.

So, we know Pixar value their different voice artists, but using the same performer

in more than one film is either a sign of their laziness or a brilliant improvisational actor.

-John's a brilliant improvisational actor.

-I love working with Pixar, are you kidding?

Oh, let's just cut to the chase.

The beauty of working at Pixar

is that they're a very high standard company.

Come on, let's see how much we're going for on eBay.

He's had a little part, at least, in every film we've done.

-John?

-Yes, John Ratzenberger's been in them all.

It's in your contract. Hey, hey, you like impressions?

The Underminer! Snowcone? It was a critic!

What do you say to that?

John, I think, was really chosen on Toy Story because he is such

a character, you get, in his voice, he paints such a great picture.

I seriously doubt he's getting this kind of mileage.

Instantly, you feel like, "Oh, yeah, I know that guy," you know?

So then, when it came time to find a voice for PT Flea, we thought...

Flaming death!

-..well, there he is.

-Oh, not again.

-And then the tradition just continued.

-He's a lucky charm for a lot of people.

I've heard that rumour and I'm glad that they feel that way.

Wait a minute here, they're just using the same actor over and over.

What kind of a cut rate production is this?!

The standard is right there, and that's where it always

was from the very beginning, And that's why they're Pixar.

OK, let's take a look at John, I mean, Hamm, in action.

-Oh, well, we tried.

-We'll have to cross.

What the...! You're not turning me into a mashed potato.

I can't remember who came up with it, but the idea

of putting them in traffic cones was such an immediate inspiration.

You get the logic, from their world,

nobody can see me, but every time the cones move, it changes the road map.

The brilliance of Pixar is their sense of timing.

This is a comedy timing. The car goes right over the cones and they stop,

and they lift up and you see the feet run.

This is a stand-up's perspective of life.

You can tell when ideas like that are gold because people can't stop laughing

and they're laughing ahead of the thoughts in their head

and you're stepping on each other in the gag session

trying to get it all out before

it leaves your head about all the possibilities you can do with that.

I mean, you basically will sit in a room for days hoping just to

stumble across something like that once or twice.

Oh, that went well.

Choreographing a scene like this takes patience and skill.

And thankfully, the people at Pixar don't cut corners when it comes to animation.

The thing that we always say, which is true, is that nothing in computer animation is for free.

Every single thing you see on the screen, we have to build and design.

When we're making a feature film, it is a culture of collaboration.

These films cannot be done by one person.

It is a really huge process from art to set design,

set dressing, and complexity of layers. That is no easy feat.

Characters are designed in art and then they're sculpted, so they can be seen in 3D.

I mean, traditional sculpture.

There are people here that just do nothing but sculpting.

They give you, essentially, a 3D character that is going to be in your film.

And for the first time, it sort of occupies a space.

And then those sculptures are digitised in some way.

So we make these digital puppets, essentially.

Once you have the shape of it, then they have to add all the controls, to make the puppet dance.

He doesn't exist...

anywhere.

It's in the computer.

We have lots of controls to move the character around, so kind of like how Pinocchio might

have a dozen strings on him, Woody's literally got thousands of these controls, and here's just a handful.

You've got, you know, everything to control the bend of the neck,

to turn the whole body around. You can see what's going on with the whole character down here.

You have dozens of animators working together on a film.

A good animator animates here...

maybe a couple of seconds a week.

What usually happens is you have an animator who's on a film for a year, a year-and-a-half.

They'll animate anywhere from a minute and a half, two minutes

of work to three and half, four minutes of work. But that's why we have so many animators.

A good animated film looks like one person animated everything.

A great animated film looks like no-one animated it at all.

Yes, the animators are known for pushing the boundaries

and in Cars, the audience was put firmly in the driving seat.

I had cameras hanging off the side of cars, under cars, actually right on the track with the cars

-roaring overhead, to create a really crazy dynamic sequence.

-This is it, we're heading into the final lap.

John Lasseter's in love with racing and he has his own race cars.

Research is everything here, and so the animators got behind the wheels

of those cars...

to understand what it felt like to be on that track, going 180mph.

All of that research ended up on the screen.

John really wanted to accurately depict what it feels like to be at a huge car race like that.

I am not coming in behind you again, old man!

Whenever we come up with something that we want to do in our films that's very difficult,

we found that the best thing to do with our technical guys is to say,

"That's probably going to be too hard for you to do."

That immediately lays down the gauntlet.

It's kind of the foundation of Pixar is that art challenges technology

and technology inspires the art.

Yeah! Woo-hoo!

Listen up, Cars fans,

the sequel is out this year

and I, for one, can't wait. And it seems I'm not alone.

I'm dying to see the completed film, I can't wait for it.

Mainly because I'm just going to be such a hit at my son's school.

-Oh, you've got to be joking.

-Whoa!

These Americans are clearly master spies.

Ha! Haa! Hiyah!

Cars 2 is so different than Cars,

because it's a spy movie.

I started my career as a spy.

And now I'm a very flash car, I think it's great.

I think that's really me. I like the idea of being a '60s Aston Martin.

-Finn McMissile - he is so cool.

-There he is!

Michael Caine - when you look at that voice coming from this

cool car design, it's like... It's just like fantastic.

Finn McMissile, British Intelligence.

Tow Mater - average intelligence.

Lewis Hamilton actually appears as a car, a really, really cool race car.

I was very nervous building up to this. Incredibly excited,

probably the most excited I've been for anything.

My heart was racing. I really enjoyed it.

I saw three-quarters of the movie in New York,

and you just sit there in wonder. You go, "How did they do that?"

It's quite extraordinary and I still don't know how they do it,

and I've done one of the movies, I've been to where they make them

and I still don't understand it.

Right, from lovable mechanical cars to mechanical robots in love,

-the 2008 story set in space, Wall-E.

-Eva!

You have two characters that can't say exactly what they mean

and we purposely made it that they spoke different languages electronically, too.

So that it would force them to get across how they were feeling

about things so that the audience could benefit.

I knew that Eve would have this moment of thinking he was dead, and that tends to be

when the truth comes out about how you felt about somebody.

Wall-E!

Somebody had found video of exhaust being spit out of the shuttle.

We thought, "What if he had the fire extinguisher and was able to propel him with a fire extinguisher?"

It had such a beautiful look to it,

just for dealing with such visual beauty. We thought,

"It's a dance number, it's what Fred Astaire and Ginger

"always did to show that they had fallen in love."

That might be my favourite scene in the movie.

It was all so moving to me.

-So many stars...

-'Our movies are so dense and so busy, it was a chance to let music just breathe.'

Yeah, that's six months of my life just watching that thing up there.

Ah, Wall-E and Eve...

I can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation!

It's not a graduation, he is moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade.

-It's a ceremony!

-But the course of true love never did run smooth.

-Even superheroes have a tiff once in a while.

-..genuinely exceptional.

-This is not about you.

-Making that family believable was really important.

Parents have arguments, real arguments that children overhear.

This is going to be rough!

One of my favourite moments

is where they're all in the van and they're landing in the city.

John said, "Wait a minute, there's an opportunity here."

And he goes, "What if they argue about the exit?"

And I said, "Don't say another word!"

-Which exit?

-Traction Avenue.

-That'll take me downtown. I take seven, no?

Don't take seven!

I said, "I've got it, let me run with it."

-Get in the right lane. Signal!

-We don't exit at Traction!

-You're going to miss it!

The thing is recognisable as being truthful, the family life.

That's what people love about the movie.

It operates on so many different levels.

It appeals to such a broad spectrum

of viewers, but Pixar does that.

-Super-duper, Dad.

-'We're just doing what makes us laugh.'

To be honest, the big myth that we keep dispelling is that we ever,

at any moment, separate the grown-ups from the children. We never have.

Don't you people realise we are swimming in our own...?!

-Ssh! Here he comes!

-So it's just a reflection of us.

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

-Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

-Mine.

-Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

-Oh, would you just shut up?!

When that scene comes up, I think of Andrew running

into my office and saying, "I got it, I got it, what the seagulls can be."

He grew up on the East Coast of the United States where the seagulls

would steal his lunch and steal his food and they were like bandits.

And once they would steal food, they would then fight amongst themselves,

and so he came in and just did that voice for me. "Mine!"

Mine, mine!

-Mine!

-That's what I remember, is Stanton's face. "I've got it."

-Mine.

-Speed.

-Marker.

-And action.

-Whoo!

And it's not just within the body of the films

that Pixar likes to have a laugh.

Who can forget their famous out-takes?

Shall we just...?

Should that just be part of the movie now, he lost his string?!

-Actually, it wasn't even my idea.

-I'm sorry,

I'm sorry, is the camera broke?!

Just the idea of a boom mike making it into a CG film was pretty new at the time.

Oh, no, oh, no, I think I swallowed my squeaker!

I imagined Prospector Pete to be some old sort of lecherous guy who was relentlessly hitting on extras.

So you two are absolutely identical?

You know, I'm sure I could get you a part in Toy Story 3.

I'm sorry, are we back?

It's just silly and naughty, and so...

You know what I loved? I got to sing. I made up a song.

# She's out of my hair

# And just when I dare to care

# She says "Au contraire". #

It's like you're seeing

a little glimpse behind a fake curtain that doesn't really exist.

Where are you, Frederikson?

But these films aren't all fun and laughter.

-You sly dog.

-I'm a hugger!

-I mean, you have to have a villain in every movie.

Yes, you do, and they don't come more menacing than this.

-He was a guy who was bullying his way through life.

-Someone could get hurt.

We never tried to think villain, just, "What's this guy's thinking?"

This guy's thinking that in nature, if you're not taking advantage of the situation, you're out.

One of those circle of life kind of things.

But let him be condescending, let him just be the best at putting people down.

Are you saying I'm stupid?

-No.

-Do I look stupid to you?

By the end, you know, the audience is sort of rooting for him to get

his just desserts, and in fact, he becomes kind of a dessert!

A lot of us were traumatised as kids by other films.

This is our way of giving back, you know, passing it on!

-Sully, what are you doing?

-That's one villain taken care of.

Now let's see if we can out-run Randall. Hold on tight.

The door chase in Monsters, Inc. is amazing.

But it's the concept behind it that's even more amazing.

It's every kid's bedroom door around the world.

The cool thing is the audience discovers this place

along with the characters, which is a lot of fun when you can do that.

-Whoa.

-Oh, boy.

-Hold on!

And from there, it's like a roller coaster.

THEY SCREAM

I love that in one movie we can have quiet,

tender, emotional moments, but we can also have crazy action moments.

When I saw Monsters, Inc., I couldn't breathe.

I'm going to be sick!

This is the best action sequence. It's amazing!

It's so complicated.

I had terror about how we were going to get it done.

But when we saw what we had accomplished, I was blown away.

That's when you go, "OK... I honour you. I'll just step back.

"Call me the next one."

Throughout the show, we've seen heroes, we've see villains, we've had laughs and we've had scares.

But no Pixar film would be complete without this.

# It's the time of your life

# So live it well. #

Music's a vital part of any movie.

The most exciting time in making movies

is when you're finished and you go, "Score!"

We've been lucky enough to work with a lot of great composers over the years.

Music is supposed to show you what you can't see on screen.

When you hear a piece of music, you automatically feel something.

It could be happy, it could be sad, it could be melancholy, it could be frightened, whatever it is.

So that's essentially what I'm doing. And the easiest way to explain it is to say,

"I'm just telling you how I feel."

Well, Michael, your Incredibles score made us feel so excited, we popped down to Abbey Road

and asked the BBC Concert Orchestra to give it a go.

When you're using a jazz orchestra,

you tend to write different...rhythmically.

Say, if you were looking at a big action film, you might

write rhythmic patterns within the string section...

..whereas if you're doing something like The Incredibles, you might put that on the drum set,

ta ta-ta ta-ta ta-ta ta-ta,

and it gives it a different flavour and takes you to a different time.

Suddenly you're hearing someone on a hi-hat playing this,

and then you add in a groove.

As opposed to building those ideas into the orchestra,

you build them into the rhythm section,

that'd be the piano, the bass, the guitar.

And then you surround that, of course, with a lot of brass.

Music is the one thing in a film

that can completely derail it in two seconds,

because if you're not on point, emotionally,

with what's happening in the story, not just visually,

but within the storytelling,

then it can take the audience into a place where you can never get them back.

It's a high-wire act, but it's one that I enjoy.

2009's Up was a unique opportunity for Michael Giacchino to put

his score at the centre of the Carl and Ellie life story.

I think Up was a very difficult film.

I mean, when I watched Up for the first time,

you know, even with no music in it, it made me cry.

And as we started to storyboard it, I think it was Ronnie del Carmen who

was doing a lot of the drawings, said, "This would be great without the dialogue.

"Could we just sell it with music?"

One way or another, we're all going to experience this idea

of growing older and loss, you know, and that's what it's all about.

Which then made it easy for me to come home and then just kind of spill my guts musically.

They really did this beautiful poem, in a sense,

to what life is all about, and so I had that as a starting-point for me.

They gave me that gift and then I just told them how I felt, just through music.

When you tap into what the story is really asking you for, emotionally, I think that's when it works best.

You're my favourite deputy!

# You've got a friend in me... #

Arguably Pixar's most memorable soundtrack came from their very first feature.

But for composer Randy Newman, it was just another job.

I had no idea how successful the picture would be.

Round them up, cowboy!

They wanted to emphasise the depth of the friendship

between Woody and the kid.

# And as the years go by

# Our friendship will never die... #

And so it was just, they're friends, and, "You've got a friend in me."

# You've got a friend in me. #

People know that better than anything I've ever done, I think.

# Some other folks might be a little bit smarter than I am

# Bigger and stronger, too. #

'I think people in rock'n'roll think that it's maybe a sell-out to be'

able to do things like that, it's not you or something, but it is me.

# You've got a friend in me-e-e-e

# Yeah! #

Every once in a while, you'll hit on something where you hear it

and the minute you hear it, you know...

that's it,

it's hit the bull's-eye of whatever emotional state

you want people to be in or you want a character to be in.

And all you're trying to do from then on is not screw it up.

Jessie's song was that.

'I wanted Jessie to...talk about

-'her feelings when she'd been abandoned.'

-How did you know that?

It was a cautionary warning...

to Woody.

And so I wrote, you know...

# When somebody loved me

# Everything was beautiful

# Every hour we spent together

# Lives within my heart. #

# And when she was sad

# I was there to dry her tears... #

It was a gift from Randy that...boom!

# And when she was happy, so was I

# When she loved me. #

Jessie's song, God, it was like, how do you do this stuff?

Newman, he elevates the movie. It's sad and it's tragic.

It's a brilliant song.

# We had each other, that was all

# Just she and I together... #

Tim Allen and I saw the movie together at the same time when it was all done,

and we had an understanding of what everything goes on, but then when Jessie's song came up,

we were just 40-year-old men crying our eyes out over this abandoned cowgirl doll.

# Still I waited for the day

# When she'd say

# "I will always love you." #

I just didn't expect that...

they had the courage to run it for two-and-a-half minutes.

It was really a great show of...

affection for and respect for their audience.

# Every hour we spent together

# Lives within my heart

# When she loved me. #

All right!

So, there we have it, 25 magic moments from Pixar's 25-year history.

I wonder what the next 25 years will bring?

What can you say about an organisation that hits a home run every time they get the bat?

They'll soon set a standard for animated film,

and, I think, for film in general.

They can't stay here, they're just too damn creative.

There'll be something out of Pixar that you don't expect.

Pixar keeps on making the movie in their own way until it's right.

I will have had the good fortune to say, "Yeah, I was kind of a part of some of that," because 20, 50 years

from now, people will really point to all this stuff and how it kind of changed filmed entertainment.

-There's no limit to imagination.

-Anything is possible.

People don't care what the movie's about, they see Pixar on it and they go. They trust them.

You can watch one of those films in 12 years' time,

and it'll look like it came out last week.

Our job is to make as much great stuff as we can while we've still got the lightning in the bottle.

Where are we going to be in 25 years

is really in the heads and the hearts of all of our creative people here.

The one thing I guarantee is that we're going to be continuing to make great movies.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd