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Hey, Pete.
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Oh hey, Val.
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How's it goin'?
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You know what? I'm—I'm havin' a really bad day.
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What happened?
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See, what Val's saying when she says, "What happened?" is: "Tell me a story."
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And that's actually what this season of Pixar in a Box is all about.
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To make a movie here at Pixar takes years, but it all starts with a story.
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Humans have been telling stories since we could speak, probably even before.
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We tell stories around the campfire.
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We write plays, we write novels, short stories.
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We make movies, we take photographs, tweet to each other.
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The list goes on.
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The power of story is that it has an ability to connect with people on an emotional level.
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One of the things you hear all the time, this advice is "write what you know".
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Now, as a kid, I was like, "I don't want to write about suburban Minnesota. It's boring.
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I wanna write about explosions and monsters and car chases."
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Well, what that actually means is:
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"Yeah, go ahead and write about monsters and explosions and car chases,
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but put something into it that talks about your own life, how you feel."
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Do you feel scared?
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Do you feel alone?
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Something from your own life will make that story come alive and not just be a boring car chase.
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When I started directing Monsters, Inc., the way I'd pitch it is:
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"It's about a monster who scares kids for a living. That's his job.
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He clocks in, he clocks out, he eats donuts and talks about union dues."
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And we thought that was a pretty funny idea.
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And sure enough, when I would tell it to people, they would smile.
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But when we told the story as a film,
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people started getting bored and restless, and they're like, "I don't understand what this movie's about."
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Well, what I finally figured out was that it's actually not about a monster who scares kids;
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it's about a man becoming a father.
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That was what was happening to me.
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So, why write about what you know?
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Well, it's because probably what happened to you made you feel some particular way.
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And what you're trying to do really, when you tell a story, is to get the audience to have that same feeling.
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One of the big revelations for me telling stories is how much work they are, really.
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I always thought you would just tell the story once, and it would be perfect.
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And geniuses like Walt Disney or Miyazaki—
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this brilliance comes out of their head once, and there it is.
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Well the truth is, our stories don't always come out exactly perfectly the first time,
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or the second time, or the third time,
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or the fourth time, up to the 30th time.
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And so you keep going again and again and again,
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and only after retelling the story many many times does it really sparkle.
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This season of Pixar in a Box is about how we at Pixar tell our stories in hopes that it will inspire you to tell yours.
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But, seriously, what happened?
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Oh, oh, so the first thing.
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I get to my desk, right?
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It's eight o'clock in the morning....
