A Spark Story

My name is Pete Docter. I'm the CCO,

the Chief Creative Officer, of Pixar Animation Studios.

I've been at Pixar over 30 years now,

but I've done all sorts of stuff from storyboarding to animation to directing.

Pixar's changed a lot, but at its core, not at all.

When we started, we were in this, like, shack of a building.

We had 112 people, I think, making Toy Story,

and yet it was a very personal story.

We were, as storytellers, telling our own experiences

in the world and figuring out, "What is jealousy?

"What do we do when confronted

"by someone who's better than me?"

And all these things that were tied up in that film.

I mean, I grew up in Minnesota, in a boring suburban town.

I realized that all the films that I worked on, about monsters,

about an old man who flies his house to South America,

a little girl who moves to San Francisco,

these are all very personal stories.

They've come from my own life experience.

And so we thought,

"How can we allow some new ideas into this

"and take the chance with people that we just have an intuition, like,

"'There's something about that person.

'They would have something interesting to say.'"

The SparkShorts program is relatively new.

We wanted to give different storytellers

a shot in a very short amount of time that tells us,

"Who are they? What stories do they tell?"

The history of shorts at Pixar is a pretty interesting one

because Pixar kind of sprung from shorts

and specifically, a short called Andre and Wally B,

which is really the first animated CG piece.

Shorts became something that was in the DNA of the company.

We would make them to try new technological ideas

as computer graphics was evolving,

all this even before Toy Story was made.

Ha!

Part of the initial thinking behind the short film projects,

it was a lot about risk-taking.

There was a bit of,

"We don't have much to lose, 'cause nobody knows who we are,"

and so we can take some risks and gamble a lot.

So we were like, "What if we did something that was much lower budget

"than our traditional short films?"

We let the filmmaker tell whatever story they wanted to tell

and we give the person six months to do it.

We started the SparkShorts program

really because we didn't know what kind of talents we were skipping over

by not giving people a chance to tell their story.

We want an unfiltered view of what these storytellers are bringing,

and we don't want to get in the way.

The only way we'll evolve the types of stories at the feature level

is if we're engaging that next generation.

We can't wait 20 years to engage that generation.

We have to be engaging them now.

My name is Aphton Corbin.

I'm a story artist here at Pixar Animation Studios.

I just always was really drawn to writing and sharing stories.

As a kid, I would do little drawing books and staple them together

and make out a whole little scenario

and give them to people as a birthday gift.

And when I was younger, I would direct playtime with my sister.

I'd be like, "The character wouldn't say it that way.

"We need to do it again this way."

Ever since I got hired here at Pixar, I knew I wanted to be a director.

I guess it's a big statement, "I wanna be a director."

I didn't know how long it was gonna take,

but I knew I wanted to eventually direct something.

Aphton made such an impression on the studio from the minute she got here.

She just got this reputation very quickly

as somebody who had something to say that everybody wanted to hear,

no matter what room she was in.

I got to work with Aphton on Soul.

She came up with the way we visualize the counselors in the Soul universe.

She's just a very talented story artist with these quirky ideas that you're like,

"Where did that come from? That's just brilliantly bizarre."

My name's Louis Gonzales and I've been at Pixar almost 20 years now.

From the moment I've gotten into animation,

I've always felt like I've been challenged constantly.

I was always excited to take on all kinds of work at Pixar

because it was an experience rather than just a job.

Over time, I've been very lucky to be a part of some very special films

that a lot of people love,

and I had my small little part in it.

But now, almost 20 years later, I was like, "What else do I need?

"Where's my career going?" Like, "What am I doing?

"Maybe making stuff as a director isn't what's gonna happen for me."

Louis has been around for a long, long time.

He's a statured story artist

and fantastic creative mind.

Louis worked on films with Brad Bird, like The Incredibles.

He's brought a really unique point of view.

And he's brought these really amazing characters to life.

I think he's a great idea generator.

So, you're always curious of,

"What is this guy gonna do when he's given the opportunity?

"What story is he gonna tell?"

A good year or so into working on my first film, Toy Story 4,

my focus was only about, "How do I do this job of storyboarding well?"

One day, I got an email saying, like,

"We just wanted you to know that

"your name got brought up for directing a SparkShort."

A little while back, Lindsey and Jim reached out to me.

I thought they were gonna tell me I'm fired, really.

But they were like, "So, what do you wanna do next?"

And I was like, "I have the option to even say that?"

Like, it was not even...

It didn't dawn on me that I had a choice in my future.

Then they floated it out to me, like, "What do you think about a SparkShort?"

One of the great things about the SparkShorts is

it puts you in a place of enormous vulnerability.

You kind of have nowhere to hide, like, "You're the show,"

and the pressure of that is significant, weighing on you,

and trying to figure out, "How do you show up in that?

"And how do you let your guard down enough to let others contribute?"

When we start to walk directors through

what the rules are to do a SparkShort,

we tell them, "It needs to be a narrative story...

"It can be CG, it can be 2D,

"and it needs to be for all audiences."

We try to get it done in about six months.

But beyond that, there really aren't any rules.

So, we've selected our 2020 SparkShort directors and they are...

-Louis Gonzales... -(ALL CHEERING)

When they announced us in the company meeting,

I didn't expect that kind of outpouring of love.

It just felt, "Oh, my God, the people here at this company

"are rooting for us to succeed."

"They want to see us tell stories."

That, to me, was amazing, truly.

And it also added, like, pressure.

When people support you like that,

it's like, "I don't wanna let anyone down."

Because when I was initially asked, "What do you think about a SparkShort?"

I said, "You know, probably not, I'll think about it."

But eventually I realized that

I was just genuinely afraid that I would suck

and smash face-first into the wall, teeth everywhere.

I was afraid of failure.

And once I realized that I was afraid to fail in this regard,

in a creative regard, in the thing that I pride myself on as a story artist,

I was like, "I need to run head-first at this wall 'cause I'll break through."

It was kind of crazy when they announced us on that day.

I was still really insecure about being chosen.

I knew the fear of it happening too soon,

also I was a little uncertain of how I was gonna lead a team.

And I was like, "What are people gonna think?

"Are they gonna be like, 'Aphton? She hasn't even been here that long.

"'What is she even gonna make?'"

And then Louis is, like, such an amazing story artist,

and he's worked on a bunch of movies that I grew up watching,

it's like, "We're going at the same time? That's cool. No pressure there."

Lots of times people are curious, "How do we make films?"

The answer is, "There's no one way." Every film is different.

They all, of course, start from an idea,

but from there, it might be that you try to write it up as a script

or an outline.

It might be that the artist sits and draws the idea, as a storyboard,

even just single images that are enough to convey the concept.

After being surprised and freaking out,

I was coming up with ideas for my short.

For a minute, I was like,

"Maybe I should do something scary, a horror-related thing."

And there's very few animated horror shorts.

So, I was like, "Now, this will be fun and edgy."

But I was like, "It's hard enough to make a film.

"I don't think I need to challenge myself

"with an entirely different genre that I haven't dabbled in quite yet."

I always knew it was gonna be

a story about becoming an adult and how awkward it is.

For me, I guess, as a 20-something,

the feeling of, "I'm not doing it right at all" is so prevalent sometimes.

I had made a comic about it forever ago.

Sometimes, when you're 26, you feel like an adult,

and sometimes you feel like two kids stacked in a trench coat.

But that's just a one-line comic,

how do I make that into a full fleshed-out story?

I thought about that feeling of,

"Okay, today everyone sees me as a little kid with thick shoulder pads

"and I'm not living up to my adult potential."

Or the moment at work where I snap at someone

and I was like, "I could've said that so much more eloquently,"

and instead I just went back to that teenage part of myself.

Those little sparks kept popping up in my head.

"I think there's a story here."

I love having parameters.

When you have a short window of time,

you have minimal amount of people,

there's a real strategy to how you approach every Spark.

The safest thing I could've done is went for a big concept.

Like, the parents drink the potion and they become stuffed animals,

and in the end, they'd learn how to be better parents to their kids.

"Wow, animating teddy bears. Love it. Cute."

But I wanted to go somewhere deeper.

I knew I wanted to do a story with a grandmother.

Like, grandmothers that I grew up with.

There was a grit and a toughness, but a lot of love.

They'd give you the shirt off their back, do anything for you,

but they don't look like they're completely approachable. (CHUCKLES)

So, I started circling around this idea of generational divide.