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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.'"
LINDSEY COLLINS: 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!
COLLINS: 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.
COLLINS: 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."
MORRIS: Louis has been around for a long, long time.
He's a statured story artist
and fantastic creative mind.
DOCTER: 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.
COLLINS: 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?"
CORBIN: 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."
GONZALES: 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?"
MORRIS: 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?"
COLLINS: 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...
(BLOWS)
"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.
WOMAN: So, we've selected our 2020 SparkShort directors and they are...
-Louis Gonzales... -(ALL CHEERING)
GONZALES: 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. (LAUGHS)
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."
CORBIN: 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."
DOCTER: 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.
CORBIN: 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."
(MACHINE WHIRRING)
GONZALES: 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.
For me, it was really important to pull from my people.
I want my family and friends to be representative of the world,
of how the world moves and breathes.
Which is gonna be different than, you know, you or anybody else, right?
Our worlds are different.
I remember my grandma Pearl, who passed, had a lot of attitude.
And my daughter wasn't old enough to really have
a relationship with my grandma.
But my daughter, when she was young, also had attitude.
Oh, I would've loved to have seen what, together, they would've been like.
I love the juxtaposition of the complete innocent with the experienced.
But characters that are vulnerable in a real way
have to come from the artist in a real way.
The artist has to be vulnerable.
And this is the hard thing for me to do.
There was a hundred questions that come up
to try and corral this big, nebulous idea that seems simple,
so I needed that true north.
I needed something that gave me a sense of, "It could be done."
And that's when I went to London to go visit a friend of mine,
and they took me to a play, Death of a Salesman.
This life and time of this husband, and his relationship with his family.
It's that simple, but it's that clear.
And I thought, "Oh, my God, if my short could even scratch the surface
"of what the actors in that play are doing and have that kind of impact?
"Man, this is where I wanna go."
The brochure, I have it on my board
to remind me that this is about characters.
"What can I do with a grandmother and a granddaughter
"and the grandma's old dog in an apartment?"
I can just wring every drop of personality out of these three,
'cause it's basically a stage play.
CORBIN: It's interesting when people say,
"I was never good at drawing, so I didn't draw."
I don't think I necessarily knew that I was good or not.
It's something I had to do.
It was like my own way of therapy almost.
If I'm frustrated, I'm like, "I gotta go draw,"
or "I'm happy, I'm gonna sit down and draw."
But I remember, growing up,
there wasn't a lot of content with Black little girls.
The two Disney princesses that me and my sister would dress up as were
Pocahontas and Jasmine 'cause it was like, "They're brown-ish."
So, when I was really young,
I would automatically draw blonde hair, blue eyes,
you know, if you don't specify character, I guess that's what we're doing.
And I was always challenged by a family member that's like,
"How come you only draw white characters?"
And the frustration of trying to explain to your family,
"I don't even know why you're asking me.
"You know the answer to this."
"I'm drawing what I see
"and people don't want anything other than white people,
"'cause if they did, they'd be on TV."
It was hard, incredibly hard to break past that
and it took a while, a lot of unlearning.
It just took a leap of faith.
I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna draw more characters of different ethnicities."
And it felt right, and it felt truthful because it's what I know.
Then it turned into, "Unless anyone says otherwise,
"I'm drawing mainly Black characters,
"and then anything else will be a POC,
"and let's just see how long it takes before a teacher says something."
They didn't, 'cause that would've been
an extremely interesting conversation to have had.
And then it just became a norm.
When I got to Pixar, they had seen my work.
So, in my mind, I'm like, "You know what you're getting."
DOCTER: Working on Soul was kind of a revelation to me
because as a white kid in America,
I saw thousands of characters that represented my experience.
Joe Gardner in Soul is our first African-American lead.
So, trying to see the world through his perspective,
it took a lot of learning on my part,
and Aphton was a huge contributor to the storytelling of that.
CORBIN: Just going here and continuing to challenge that level of diversity
of voices and characters is important.
Asking questions...
"Why is this character white? Is there any specific reason?"
'Cause sometimes it's not, a lot of times it's honestly just
somebody drew two dots and a smiley face,
and then it went downstream and they autofilled a white character,
and just, like, challenging that and having people be more open to, like,
"Oh, absolutely, let's find some way to add some more diversity here."
We all have relatable emotions and experiences.
I am excited about people getting used to seeing common stories
through the lens of a Black character.
So, that's what I hope to do through my film.
The initial story was of a day in the life of this character, Gia,
on her 21st birthday.
In my head, the idea is,
instead of getting older and more mature,
more kids are coming into this trench coat.
So, it should be 21 of them in there.
But I was like, "That's ridiculous. I'm gonna be lucky if I get a few."
And so I was trying to narrow down what ages were pivotal.
And so it became the One-Year-Old that encompassed that baby,
just, like, raw emotion.
And then Ten, who in my mind, she kind of represents that confidence,
"Things are good,"
and just how you think you know everything at that age.
And Sixteen is, like, smack in your teenage years, that felt right.
And for me, being 16 is about being super-emotional
and insecure about everything.
Felt like they balanced each other out in a nice way.
GONZALES: I think that you can't divorce the experience of the storyteller
from the types of stories that they're gonna tell, it's innate.
That's something we all do as storytellers.
We gravitate towards the things that we grow up around,
the things that we like.
I almost feel like that doesn't go away.
Growing up, I had a strong group of friends.
They were my crew, you know, that was a graffiti crew.
I loved them a lot because it was all about art.
Those crews were made up of different nationalities,
you know, just different cultures, and it was us against the world.
I loved how art was this beacon for sharing.
And it didn't matter who you were, it was all about the art.
It was just this fun life of running around LA,
spray paintin' and runnin' from the cops, and gettin' up on buses,
and jumpin' out of windows in case the bus driver stopped or whatever.
It was fun 'cause it was mischievous,
but it was also art-related, and I loved that.
The thing was, is that this was an outlet
to kind of see yourself bigger than anyone sees you.
You're talkin' about LA in the '80s and '90s.
It's rife with gang activity on every other corner.
No one's looking at a brown kid back then and going,
"My God, you know, you're going to Harvard."
They're going, "Oh, God. You're going to jail.
"'Cause look at you, you're a graffiti artist."
And we're just going, "Look, we just wanna be seen."
I tried to apply to art colleges, but my parents, we couldn't afford it.
And I tried to get some sort of scholarship or somethin',
but I was a terrible student. I'll be honest.
I wasn't as focused on my studies as I should have been
because I drew all the time.
My parents were awesome.
They were always supportive of me drawing.
But they drove buses for a living.
My parents would be like, "Totally. Drawing is great.
"We're gonna support you.
"However, think about driving a bus?"
And I was like, "I'm not gonna be a bus driver
"'cause that feels like I'm settlin', Mom."
But the thing is that it always kind of pushed me into trying
to hustle up drawing for a living.
My spectrum of what it could've been was
doing designs for T-shirts, storefronts with graffiti,
like, it was like this, you know, airbrushing.
It was a small thing that you could maintain a business.
I don't know if you could support a family with that.
I was looking for the right fit,
and I figured comic books was gonna be my fit.
I started getting into comic books in high school.
I loved the Brothers Hernandez. Jaime, Berto and Mario,
and I loved their work because it was this great mash-up
of these characters that lived in an area like I did.
They were Latin, mostly.
It was grounded in a world like mine, but they'd have adventures.
They would go into outer space.
It was like, "This is fantastic, different."
Comic books made me double down and go, "I want to tell stories."
My daughter loved costumes when she was younger.
She had this Tigger costume.
And she loved dancing around, being Tigger.
She would wear it for days on end.
When I started to explore ideas of this little girl,
I initially started her as a little girl that dressed up in a cat costume.
I just wanted her to be a pure little 4-year-old
with the energy and excitement and imagination
that kids of that age usually have.
Little kids, their emotions are unbounded,
so you can have, "I'm happy, I'm sad, and I'm angry and I'm playful"
all within five or 10 minutes.
I knew I had this tough grandma
who was gonna be visited by her granddaughter, who is super energetic.
I wanna engage, engage, engage with my grandma.
And the grandma's like, "Yes, I love you, but I'm trying to do something right now."
I had to kind of figure out why she would go to
the lengths to keep the little girl away from her.
As I was exploring the grandmother,
not baking cookies and not doing the '80s TV show version of a grandma,
but someone that I know.
So, like, that grit that I remember in my grandmas,
it was kind of like trying to pull off of them,
you know, glean pieces of them.
Thinking about it, I was kind of like, "What if she loved wrestling?"
But that comes with the trappings of,
"Oh, you're Hispanic. Is she Hispanic?
"Oh, luchadores, am I right? She was a luchador, am I right?"
And I'm like, "No. She loves wrestling like soap operas."
It's no different. It's just more athletic.
It's the thing that she loves to watch.
So I was like, "Okay, this is sitting right."
Because it's not some sort of arbitrary decision that makes her interesting.
It's something that's rooted in something real.
So I'm like, "Okay, that's what it is." That's how it started.
CORBIN: I mostly board digitally,
but when I'm brainstorming ideas, I will draw them on paper first sometimes,
more like thumbnails.
Just so I can start to try and figure out these shots that are in my head
and they help me visualize some of the key scenes
I wanna portray in my short.
And I'm working on the intro conversation with Gia and her sister Nicole.
The creation of this sister character is based off of my sister.
My sister is my best friend, and we're only two years apart,
and so it's nice to have someone who is not too far away from you in age,
who knows what you're going through.
The idea of going out with your sister for your 21st birthday
felt so gettable and so adorable.
I just got really excited about their relationship.
Then I started thinking about settings.
I initially thought of an office.
And it started with talking to friends by the water cooler
as three characters stacked up on top of each other.
And then what if some of her friends take her out to this club,
and that's when she has this meltdown.
But as a person who doesn't work in a typical office,
it kind of felt untruthful.
And then I was like, "Okay, what if I cut the entire office part out
"and just have it happen entirely in the club?"
Being more of a homebody introvert,
there's something so truthful about going to a place
where you're supposed to be having a fun time, but you're really not.
It felt right. It was like one setting, it was concise,
and it really tightened up the rest of the story.
GONZALES: So, the grandma, she's gonna be in her early 50s, you know?
So, not too old where she's like, "My hip and my stuff."
Your thoughts around hair? It's complicated.
Well, we're... (CHUCKLES)
MORRIS: The director is the key storyteller.
And their wing-person is their producer,
they get a lot of stuff thrown at them that they aren't expecting,
and they have to be thinking of,
"How can I do this better, faster, cheaper?"
I needed my partner in the short to be someone who's gonna check me,
because I don't wanna have blind spots.
But I wanted to know who Courtney was.
You've worked in a ton of departments, right?
How do you like to work?
I think one of the biggest things for me,
to help pull up the pace, is collaboration.
My name is Courtney Kent.
I've been at Pixar a little over 13 years now.
How many editors do we have?
How does that work?
I've got a list of people that are open to it,
and I think we can sit and talk to all of them.
Along the way, I got to help on the development
of the very first SparkShort, Smash and Grab.
And since then, I have been saying,
if there's ever an opportunity for a Spark producer, I would love to do it.
Louis and I got partnered together, not knowing each other,
which was intimidating and exciting at the same time.
It feels a little bit like a blind marriage.
I was very nervous.
I think I felt like I had a lot to prove.
I think, having never been a producer before, you go into it, like,
"I don't know what I'm doing."
But as soon as we started talking about the story
being really focused on family,
and I have a young daughter,
we were able to find some fast connections
that gave us some great momentum going forward.
COLLINS: The producer is very much the partner for the director,
but also the kind of leader of the crew.
So, we'd ask that producers on SparkShorts
find people that they trust
and use them to get the director's vision up on the screen.
CORBIN: I think I was told, "You have a producer now and he is Erik."
I didn't really know him, and my initial reaction was like,
"I can handle it myself."
I just didn't know what that relationship even meant.
And then I started to get what our dynamic was going to be.
My name is Erik Langley.
I've been with Pixar since 2004.
That's about 16 years now.
And it's my first time producing a SparkShort.
From the beginning, Aphton knew what the story was that she wanted to tell,
and there's nothing better that a crew can have
than a director that knows what he or she wants.
The biggest crew that we're gonna have on a film is gonna be the animation crew.
I feel like I could see animators asking about, like,
"What's going on in that coat?" And like,
"Do you have any vision of how, you know...
"How often are we gonna cut in..."
We wanted to pitch to animation so they could have some context,
see what the story was gonna be, the characters were gonna be, the style...
-That's all you guys. -Stuff like this. Yeah.
-You can decide. Get 'em all excited. -Exactly.
CORBIN: Sometimes the animators have an option on what show to go on,
and so you want to convince them that your idea is
really exciting, and that they'll have a fun time on it.
GONZALES: All 70 animators were in this one screening room,
and animators have the reputation of being kind of hard.
Like, "Here we are now, entertain us" kind of vibe.
This was my first big pitch to a group that size.
It's scary, it's nerve-racking, it's a big deal.
'Cause how your movie lives and breathes
is gonna be that relationship between you and the animators.
LANGLEY: Anytime you have to get up in front of a hundred-plus people
and do a little presentation,
you're always gonna be, I guess, a little bit anxious.
All right, hello, animation.
Thanks for having us, letting us crash your meeting. So, I'm Erik, I'm producing.
I'm Aphton and I'm directing. So I hit this to get going?
-Yes. -Aha!
The working title we're going with right now is Twenty Something.
I was like, "Okay, I hope I just remember everything I had planned to say."
This is every time I go out, by the way,
and being overwhelmed by all these people who've got it together.
I mean, just those moments in the office
where you feel like you didn't say the right thing.
I had some embarrassing pictures of me as a kid.
I was like, "They'll like that."
(CROWD CLAPPING, LAUGHING)
"I'll hate it, they'll love it."
Note the mesh-fingerless gloves.
-(CROWD LAUGHING) -We'll just move on.
GONZALES: I think Aphton has a really interesting concept.
She was funny, she had her characters and stuff like that. It was a good pitch.
Please.
But it was that time in the process where I knew my characters
and I knew my setting, but I didn't know my story.
"What would best represent me in a story?"
And I thought, "About a 50-year-old grandmother
-"with her granddaughter." -(CHUCKLES)
And I'm just going, like, "Man, no one's gonna wanna work on this short."
Because it doesn't sound exciting.
So, I figured I need to go into this and present myself.
-Here it is. Come on! Come on! Yeah. -Yes, she loves wrestling.
GONZALES: I wanna make sure I emphasize who I am and how I go about stuff.
Little girl's dropping elbows and leg.
Get someone excited to work on this.
Grandma's pullin' her down, swinging around, upside down.
Really stuff that we shouldn't be doing with little kids,
Grandma's probably gonna be doing.
All right. Thank you!
KENT: There was a great reception. People seemed pretty excited.
We both had animators after come up
and talk about how fun they thought the story was.
-GONZALES: Daniel. -Good job.
GONZALES: Hey, right on, bro.
LANGLEY: Nice job, guys.
GONZALES: Hey, same with you guys, man.
LANGLEY: After we pitched, it got a good response.
People were excited, they wanted to be a part of it.
GONZALES: My whole career has been gettin' thrown into the deep end of the ocean
and havin' to make my way back to shore.
I didn't go to art school, and I don't have
this "get in, fit in" mentality
that you kind of develop when you go through schools
and you grow up a certain kind of a way.
It was very much about trying to see how I can figure stuff out.
Early on, when I was hanging out at the back of this comic book store
with a few other friends of mine, I met this guy, Johan,
and he has mentorship, and he's like,
"Do you ever think about animation?"
And I said, "You mean, like, watch it?" And he's like, "No, working."
"I don't know if I can do it."
He was like, "We'll put a portfolio together
and get you a job in animation."
I was like, "I got nothin' to lose and I wanna draw for a living."
I hunkered down and woke up at 7:00 in the morning.
I was on my little desk next to my bed doing these tests
and doing these drawings every day for about eight months.
You know, puttin' together this portfolio.
Going out into the zoo and drawing.
And going to museums.
Wherever I can figure out how to scoot my way in
to get some free gesture drawing.
When it was all said and done, I had a portfolio. I was like, "Whoa!"
I applied to several studios.
Some of them were like, "Thanks, but no, thanks."
But Warner Bros. Feature, they were like,
"Yes, we want you to come here as a trainee."
And I was like, "Well, does it pay?" (LAUGHS)
Warner Bros. Feature Animation was my art school.
It was where I cut my teeth, got a lot of opportunity on Iron Giant.
Because there was always learning.
Working on Iron Giant
was one of the best experiences I ever had in my career.
Brad Bird was this geyser of energy,
and he was a force that was just moving this along.
And everyone was just holding on for dear life to try and stay with him.
Brad and the crew gave me a chance to prove myself.
It wasn't a judgment. It was like,
"Here's the work, you keep doing good work,
"I'm gonna keep giving you work."
And I'm like, "Please, give me more."
'Cause the last thing I wanna do is not be in animation
'cause I love it. If it wasn't for Iron Giant,
I wouldn't have worked with Brad, right? And I wouldn't be up at Pixar.
Pixar was really weird for me when I first started.
Because when I came in, everyone was so nice that I was kind of like,
"You guys are all fake. And I..." You know, "And I'm on to you."
People here were into making great stuff, and I loved that.
But, you know, when you walk into an animation studio,
it's, like, action figures are all up on their desks,
and all kinds of fun stuff. And I was like, "Yo, that's so not me.
"I'm not that kind of guy." It just felt like a different world.
And so it just started this long process, for me, of trying to figure out how I fit.
On top of that, I would work, like, 14-hour days, six days a week, at least.
And when you have kids, you have a responsibility.
Family is everything to me.
And trying to find a balance there is, you know, it was difficult.
Either, do I choose my career, or do I choose my kids?
That's what makes it hard.
CORBIN: When I had the idea of having
three kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat,
I was like, "I'm gonna have to sell this
"as an idea that's not gonna be expensive
"and hard to do, and the best way to do this,
"and have it look appealing and gorgeous, is going to be 2D."
The difference between 2D and 3D animation
is that 3D is computer-generated and can show depth in three dimensions.
And 2D is flat, hand-drawn.
There were two 2D SparkShorts
that were done before, Kitbull and Burrow.
And so I think there was enough collective knowledge to be, like,
"Why can't we do it 2D? Let's give it a shot."
CORBIN: I really like this, Rachel. This is so fast.
-I gave you what I wanted... -(RACHEL XIN LAUGHING)
...and then you were like, "Yeah. Here you go, here you go."
RACHEL: This is my job. (LAUGHS)
CORBIN: I know.
I'm working with Rachel, my character design artist.
I had thought about doing the character design myself,
but I also really wanted to work on my new job as a director.
And directing someone in art
felt like another important thing that I needed to learn.
-I'm really liking this one. -XIN: Ah!
I think we found something fun with the hair choice.
I think I'm more drawn to this face shape as well.
Figuring out my own voice as a director became really important
in this crazy Spark process.
-Should we... -(CHUCKLES) The sticker?
-CORBIN: The director Post-its. -Yeah. Do you wanna... Yeah. You do it.
-Do you mind if I have my moment? -Have your moment.
-XIN: This is a really enjoyable moment. -It is. I like this one!
This one. I'm really liking this. I love this head.
So, I started to go back and look at those things
that made me "me" and brought me here.
Growing up, I always loved animation and cartoons.
Especially Disney cartoons.
When I got to high school, I took an animation class.
And I would just sit in my room and try to draw stuff and staple paper together.
Seeing a drawing come to life grabbed me, and from there,
I learned about different schools that taught it.
I really gravitated towards CalArts
because it was a school founded by Walt Disney.
And so I was like, "I gotta go to this school."
As soon as I graduated, I applied to CalArts,
but I didn't get in. Instead, I went to a community college.
And I wound up working a lot of hours at McDonald's to earn income for myself.
And I was like, "Oh, my goodness! Am I ever gonna make it into animation?"
But I was still working on my portfolio.
And during that year-and-a-half, I thought a lot about who I was
as an artist.
I was really inspired by Japanese anime.
And so I tried to draw
these very delicate anime line drawings with a mechanical pencil,
and then on the other side,
I was trying to do really beautiful, rough Disney style.
Every once in a while,
I'd kind of just do little scribbles or something
for myself, a silly comic,
and people would be like, "We really like that."
I'd be like, "No, that's not how I wanna draw.
"That's, like, not good." (CHUCKLES)
But people kept reacting to it and, like, really loving it.
And that's when I started to get more okay with where I was at.
And I put together a portfolio and I applied to CalArts again.
They really responded to it and I got into CalArts.
The plan was to get out as fast as possible
because the tuition was crazy expensive.
And so I was like, "I'm gonna be there for, like, a year.
"Maybe two years.
"And Pixar's just gonna love my stuff, I'm gonna get swept up,
"and then that'll be that." But that's not what happened.
And I was, like, just sweating that entire whole four years thinking,
"How come I'm not getting noticed?" Like, "What am I doing wrong?"
And, "What do the studios want?"
I really needed to grow some more.
I needed time to actually learn how to be more of myself in my artwork.
And I needed to find my own voice.
One of my teachers was like, "Get a Tumblr and start putting art on there."
So I kind of used Tumblr as, like,
"I'm gonna upload something on here every week,
"and who cares if it's ugly. It's going on there."
And that's when I started drawing myself
in comics for the first time.
And my experiences growing up in the Sacramento area
which is majority white.
Living there as a Black family,
there was a lot of weird awkwardness that comes along with that.
These comics were really rough and scribbly.
And I would post them at the stroke of midnight.
And then go hide in my dorm room, like, "Oh, my God, what did I just post?
"That was so, like, revealing."
People who'd message me back
or stop me in the hallway
and feel the need to share their story with me was a lot larger than I expected.
And just being like, "I felt the same way" and "I agree"
and "Here's something that happened to me,"
and I thought that was something that was very powerful and unexpected.
It just continued to give me courage to share my own stories in my own way.
I just felt like, "Oh, why have I been wasting my time trying to be
"anything else but myself?"
And that's how I actually was noticed by Pixar.
They reached out to me. And I was like,
"Of all things that I thought Pixar would be interested,
"I didn't think it would be my Black girl comics."
But I was able to tap into a truthful story
and help people see my point of view,
and that's what Pixar is really passionate about,
is telling stories from an authentic place.
(WATER SPRINKLER WHIRRING)
GONZALES: When I'm telling a story, I wanna make something that feels honest.
The story was gonna be the granddaughter comes over
and wants to be around the grandmother.
And the grandmother is trying to do something
that the granddaughter interrupts.
So, how does that play out?
And I wanted the grandma having some sense of imagination,
because we know little kids do.
So, I wanted to find that bridge of... Yeah, they're alike.
And how we can do that visually without them saying, like,
"Oh, boy." You know, like, "You like wrestling?
"I like wrestling. This is great, we're such great grandma and granddaughter."
I didn't want dialogue. No, I wanted to just play it out and see
what I can do. 'Cause, like, I've made so many movies that have dialogue,
it's kind of like, "Can we just stop the talking?"
I love animation that says less.
COLLINS: One of the truisms here is the belief
that you should be able to turn the sound off on any of our films and follow it.
The storytelling should be that clear and the visual should be that impactful.
(CHIRPS)
COLLINS: For WALL-E, we were always being told,
"Oh, kids won't sit and watch
"a dialogue-free 25-minute beginning of a movie,
"they'll lose interest." But the reality is,
kids spend their first four or five years of their life just observing and watching
and trying to understand what's happening.
(WARBLES)
And they have no problem understanding the language coming their way.
So, it's kind of this handshake
you have to make between the story and the visuals,
which is like, "This should work without dialogue."
WALL-E: WALL-E! EVE: WALL-E!
Now, it might work better when you have dialogue to it.
But it should work without it.
LANGLEY: When we kicked off, we were told,
"On a SparkShort, you probably wanna just do two characters,
"minimal dialogue, and keep it to, you know, a set or two."
But Aphton's short has five speaking roles.
I knew that to sell this idea, it would need some dialogue
because you get so much personality out of how people speak.
Whoo! Let's party!
CORBIN: So, I asked Erik, "Can you give me a rough idea of how much dialogue
"have been in the past shorts?" And he was like,
"Oh, you know, just, like, four pages." And I was like, "Okay." (CHUCKLES)
"I think mine's gonna be longer."
Because the idea of feeling insecure about being an adult, it's a little complex.
MORRIS: When we make a film,
we go through a process of making what are called story reels,
which is basically a rough, hand-drawn version of the film
that has temporary voices and temporary music in it.
We screen those and then try to identify what's working and what's not.
They start out and you think, you know, "This is gonna be great."
And then you put it up in reels and look at it and you go, like,
"Huh. Not as great as we thought."
Reads to me like Joe knows exactly where he's going,
and he's done this before. (SMACKS LIPS)
So, I feel like we need to adjust it.
And then you try to tear it down and see what's not working about it
and put it together again.
KENT: Louis came from stories,
so he was comfortable drawing all of the storyboards himself.
And so that's kind of him sitting and really thinking
about the story that he wants to tell.
And creating kind of key moments that he feels like would help tell the story.
So, you have a grandmother sitting down to watch her wrestling show,
and then the next key moment, her granddaughter shows up.
They have some conflict.
The TV falls.
They kind of wrestle on the floor and then they hug.
And once he has some of those things fleshed out,
those drawings would get sent over to editorial
and they would cut them together and kind of time them out.
I just wanted to throw some boards up really fast, to see if we had something.
Gave it to my editor, so I can get a sense for the story.
And then problem-solve, in the cut.
I was, like, excited to see what we had,
but we watched the cut and it was terrible.
(CHUCKLING) And my heart sinks.
I had lot of ideas that were kind of, you know, jockeying for position.
So, the story wasn't clear.
But I could tell, even as bad as it was,
that there was something here.
I just needed to find it, and that's when I kind of went away.
KENT: Louis went radio silent,
and when you don't have your director having a defined vision,
it's very, very challenging.
I was like, "Oh, okay. Are we gonna make this film?"
GONZALES: I set my brain on findin' the story.
So, my brain's trying to figure it out and it doesn't stop.
I'm waking up at 3:00 in the morning and sittin' in the dark.
You're just mining your soul for things that,
on a different level, will resonate.
It's the level that none of us see, but we all feel.
That human truth.
Write that down, explore it throughout the day,
watch it go from, like, in the morning it's glorious
and, like, this solved everything, to, like, noon, I'm not so sure,
I'm scratching my head, to, like, right before you go to bed,
put your head on the pillow, and it's like, "Oh, my God. This is terrible.
"That's not gonna work. What am I gonna do?"
Based on the story and where I was at, it was seismic in terms of
feeling like, "I'm gonna make the best short ever,"
to, (CHUCKLES) "I am going to look like the biggest fool in the world."
It blew up more and more each time I wrote it.
I was in a super downward spiral.
Writing, creating, felt very isolating, and you feel alone.
It was the darkest period I had.
I was like, "I don't know what to do. Just give me some more time, Courtney."
KENT: The fear of not knowing what's going on in his mind was really hard,
and I thought, "Do we have a story to tell?"
MORRIS: Story is at the heart of what we do.
And since I've been at Pixar,
I've seen the unfaltering intestinal fortitude to pursue it
until we get it right.
It's not like you sit down and figure the story out all at once.
It takes a long, long, long, long time.
And when we realize the thing isn't quite working
and we need to tear things down, change it,
that's just part of the process.
Because if things are going smoothly,
you're probably not trying hard to do something great.
COLLINS: You're just going back and through something
and trying to perfect something again and again and again.
On Finding Nemo, for the longest time,
nobody liked Marlin, who's the dad.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on, hold on. Wait to cross.
COLLINS: They're like, "He's annoying."
(GRUNTS) You were about to swim into open water!
No! I wasn't gonna go out!
-It's just a good thing I was here. -But, Dad...
And so we were like, "Okay, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite."
And the initial conceit of that movie
was that the traumatic moment of the barracuda coming in
wasn't at the front of the movie.
It was spelled out in flashbacks throughout the film.
CORAL: We still have to name them. MARLIN: I haven't forgotten.
CORAL: You know what name I've always liked? Nemo.
MARLIN: Great! One down. Only 99 more to go.
COLLINS: The problem was you had no sympathy for this dad,
because you're like, "What is his deal?" (CHUCKLES)
And so it was very late in the game,
before it was like, "You guys, this flashback thing is not working.
"You have to put that story upfront."
(GASPS)
COLLINS: Because you're not sympathetic
with the main character and you have to be.
Coral!
Daddy's got you.
When you go to tell a story, there's a lot of reflection.
'Cause I'm really asking myself,
"Why do these characters in this idea matter,
"why is it always present in the back of my brain? Why do I like this?"
And you have to ask yourself the hard questions.
"What does this mean to you? What is it trying to say?
"What are you going through right now?"
One of the things that inherently was a game changer for me
was a moment in the short when the TV breaks.
The grandma used to always be super pissed off at the little girl.
And I thought, "What a jerk. Like, who wants to watch that character?"
I realized with that, it can't just be a character
that wants to watch wrestling over her grandchild. That just makes no sense.
And so we had to dig deeper and find out what wrestling means to her.
Because we needed to know on an emotional level
why wrestling was the thing that she
was shutting the world out for, on this day
and why it's an annoyance when anybody comes over.
And the question, to me, was like, "What's a scary reaction in that moment?"
And for me, her being vulnerable
was the most scary thing that I could put out there.
(SIGHS)
(CRYING)
If she just starts to break down and bawl, you know, just cry,
and just, you know, be genuinely upset by this
interruption with her routine...
That was a really big moment for me
because it was like, everything in my gut tells me it's right,
but I'm hesitant because I don't want her to seem weak.
I was like, "Okay, we have to do it,"
'cause it's about being vulnerable with the characters.
And I don't see how you can tell a story if there isn't an aspect
of vulnerability from yourself as well.
Nona needed to have a reason why this was special
and I had flirted with the idea of a deceased husband.
Like, "Maybe wrestling is something that she celebrated with her husband."
But he's passed away,
and so now we're starting to lean into, like,
this was her taking a day to celebrate the love of her life.
Now we're digging a little bit further to find what this meant.
And so once I brought the husband in,
we now understand that this is about him and her.
And now there is an emotional weight to it
that it didn't have when it was just wrestling.
DOCTER: The advice that I have for SparkShorts filmmakers is,
"Remember that this is not for your benefit.
"You're not here making a movie for yourself.
"You're making the movie for the audience.
"And so if you think it's great, but the audience doesn't, guess who wins?"
(CHUCKLES)
-(DOOR CLOSES) -(FOOTSTEPS RECEDING)
(OWL HOOTING)
DOCTER: Every one of our films try to present the characters
and a situation that immediately grabs your attention.
DOCTER: Like the beginning of Monsters Inc.,
you know, there's a kid going to bed,
and then immediately you start to see strange things happening in the room.
(GASPS)
DOCTER: You're drawn in because this is something
that everybody has experienced as a kid or even as an adult.
(SCREAMING)
(SCREAMING LOUDER)
DOCTER: And then we reverse it by saying,
"Wait a minute, yes, there are monsters, but that's their job, to scare kids."
And so it's got this intrinsic kind of tie-in
with what we know to be true with a twist.
(ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYING)
Uh, she's legit. In fact, it's her birthday today!
Congrats.
CORBIN: When you're doing an animated film, there's an excitement
of, "How far can we push this and still be believable?"
Get whatever you want. I'm buying.
Oh, milk then. (CHUCKLES) Kidding.
CORBIN: Gia is very ambiguous in the beginning,
and there's a long period before you realize,
"Oh, it's just a woman having a freak-out about her adulthood."
-(BABY COOING) -(GASPS)
No! You had sweets earlier!
-Uh, Gia, are you feelin' okay? -Yeah, yeah. (CHUCKLES) Totally fine.
LANGLEY: We had two screenings and people came back with opinions...
GIA: I gotta go potty... I mean, restroom. I gotta go to the restroom.
LANGLEY: And almost everybody asked,
"Is she literally three kids and a trench coat or is it a metaphor?
"I think you need to really make that clear,"
and, "How's the audience gonna take that?"
DOMEE SHI: Is it everything you imagined, being a director?
-CORBIN: I guess. -(CHUCKLES)
CORBIN: Think, overall, people are getting what I'm trying to say.
SHI: Have you gotten any notes that have been not that?
CORBIN: It's important to be clear, there's a time and a place for it,
but also knowing that some ambiguity can be fun and more mysterious.
I knew it was something I really wanted to try.
SHI: Just being in the audience in the dark
and hearing them laugh and gasp, it's kind of cool.
-Yeah. -It--
And then you get kind of addicted to that,
and you wanna keep making audiences feel things and react and scream.
CORBIN: Domee is a director here at Pixar and she directed the short Bao.
She's just someone I wanted to get advice from,
because she was able to take risks which were very interesting in her short.
SHI: I always feel like, working here,
they kind of hammer it into you, like, "It's all about clarity."
But it's mostly about feeling.
I remember on Bao,
there was always some people that were a little bit confused by the ending.
Bao is about a lonely old Chinese lady
who one day discovers that one of her dumplings
has come to life as a dumpling boy.
And of course, she immediately adopts it
and goes through the trials and tribulations
of motherhood with the dumpling.
It's semi-autobiographical based on my own life growing up as a smothered only child.
(CHUCKLES)
I just felt like, I just needed to make this.
At that time, I was living away from home
and I was feeling guilt of being far away from my mom,
and I just needed something to work through that dynamic.
I remember when I first pitched the idea to Pete Docter just casually,
when I got to the part where the Mom character
eats the baby dumpling 'cause she didn't want him to leave her,
he was so shocked by it, but he loved it so much,
and he was like, "Keep this ending.
"It's so unique and weird and cool."
That gave me the confidence to defend that ending,
even when I would get notes of, like, "That's dark." "That's weird."
Or like, "Don't you think you'd scare some kids?"
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
And the Oscar goes to Bao.
-(ALL CHEERING) -Yes!
SHI: Thank you to the Academy.
To all of the nerdy girls out there who hide behind their sketchbooks,
don't be afraid to tell your stories to the world.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
You don't have to explain everything.
As long as the feeling that people have at the end of your short
is the feeling that you want to leave them with.
That's a scary thing to do.
Sometimes you just gotta go for it.
And, you know, seeing your reels, I feel it.
So, I wouldn't sweat it.
CORBIN: Getting that affirmation of, like,
"Yeah, go for it. Don't be afraid to have it be a little weird."
It was very helpful.
Like, nope, that's the point.
It's just like we're enjoying this abstract adventure.
And then, at the end, we come to clarity.
DAVID LALLY: I'm curious about the garments.
What's the thought with sim?
I feel like, when I was talking to Ana
about like the idea of prioritizing movement, right?
LALLY: Mmm-hmm.
GONZALES: What's Nona's priority? It's her T-shirt.
With the little girl, her primary symbol
will probably be whatever you do with her hair.
I was even going, like, "The dog moves so slow."
-I don't know if I need something on it. -KENT: You have the collar.
-If it has a dangly piece... -Or we could probably animate it.
-I think... Okay. -We can lose the collar.
I love animation because of the collaboration.
And I really, truly think that if you have your team invested
and you have a story that you wanna tell,
I just think that it can only be good.
But there's a difference
with how you wanna approach the SparkShort versus a feature.
Bold lines are gonna help direct the eye.
Feature films,
they're all about having time and money to smooth out imperfections.
And I want imperfections.
LACAZE: If we simplify the models a lot,
we might be able to be more graphical and more,
-have intent on what the wrinkles are. -Right.
GONZALES: I want us to be like a band starting out.
And they have a rawness, you know what I mean?
(ROCK MUSIC PLAYING)
GONZALES: I kept relating our short to that.
I'm like, we are the best garage band in the business.
So, let's do our thing and make it dirty.
Don't polish it.
Let's be broad and bold with our choices.
And then we'll see what happens.
Story is problem solving.
So, I always feel like,
whatever falls in your lap is there for you to make something with.
But it's more than that. There's an alchemy.
There's a sense of magic to it.
The screen has gotta move and dance in front of your eyes
to really concoct something that evokes an emotion
that takes you on a ride somewhere, and when it's all said and done,
it reaffirms the beautiful things in life.
KENT: Some of the earlier iterations of the wrestling scene
between Nona and Renee,
they took a moment to go around and get things from the apartment
to make themselves look like wrestlers.
And they'd wrestled there on the floor.
It was all in this real world.
But Louis felt like the scene wasn't pushing it enough.
-(CROWD CHEERING) -ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the main event!
In the blue corner, Nona the Hammer!
GONZALES: I wanted to see what it feels like for them to play wrestling.
Not make it literal.
We get to see it how the little girl sees it.
And we know that Nona has that kind of imagination too.
KENT: We were really trying to see,
how far can you push it before you start to lose your audience
with how unusual and crazy this imagination can get.
But some of the ideas felt like they were just a little bit too much.
It should feel like a kid's playground.
But yet still feel grounded and real.
KENT: And so then I think we tried to find what's in the middle.
It was still Renee bringing in her stickers
and then Nona getting to do her big wrestling move.
GONZALES: So, now the two worlds that were bumping off each other
have now harmonized in this scene.
And they're both sharing a place in time that made 'em both better,
that made 'em both stronger.
LALLY: ...from up here, just paying attention more to the eye, so...
MORRIS: When I think about what's different between
an animation director and a live-action director,
I've often thought that a great live-action director
has a script and then they bring their actors on the set,
just kind of working like a jazz musician.
(JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING)
MORRIS: And sort of taking the pieces and making it fit and improvise.
And by contrast, an animation director is more like a classical composer
who is going and painstakingly writing that score
and changing that note from a 16th note to an eighth note,
and that process is very long.
DOCTER: Just takes a lot of work.
And oftentimes what it is, is making mistakes.
You know, trying something and going, "Well, that didn't work.
"They didn't laugh at that at all. Why was that?
"Let's go back and figure it out."
And then you do it again and again and again.
JOY: Let's do this.
DOCTER: By the time you see it on screen,
you're seeing probably the 10th version of that film.
FEAR: Oh, potential friend spotted.
-JOY: Not this again. -Maybe we should talk to them.
Riley's been at the school for over two months,
-she doesn't have a single friend. -What about Bing-Bong?
FEAR: Bing-Bong's imaginary...
DOCTER: A version of Inside Out that we had for a long time
is that Joy was paired with Fear throughout the entire journey.
FEAR: You're not coming back to headquarters.
-Riley's better off without you. -Wait, I...
Get her, boys.
DOCTER: And late along the way,
we realized for this story to make sense,
Joy has to be paired with Sadness.
(SNIFFLES) I miss home.
(SOBBING)
DOCTER: Well, that meant we had to go back,
retool the whole film, throw out a ton of stuff.
Thousands of drawings, hundreds of hours spent recording and editing.
But they were all very valuable in that
they taught us things about the characters,
the world and the story, and what it was supposed to be.
LANGLEY: Yeah, so this is great. So, this is the first time
we're seeing this with all the scratch cut in.
RIZK: Yeah. This is all scratch temp dialogue,
LANGLEY: All right. Let's take a look.
NICOLE: Okay, hurry back. After this, we're hitting the dance floor!
GIA: I can't wait. Whoa!
CORBIN: One of the challenging parts about this short
was selling the idea of these characters being certain ages.
TEN: Jeez, we're a mess. What happened?
SIXTEEN: Hey, first off, who died and made you boss?
CORBIN: Ten being 10,
Sixteen being 16.
But while using scratch voice talent.
TEN: Way to go, Sixteen. How stupid could you be? (GASPS)
SIXTEEN: Can't believe you blew it.
And scratch is your rough draft voice actors
who are reading lines,
so that we all get an idea of what it sounds like and how it plays.
I have a question about Ten's audio.
Like, do you feel... It's definitely not reading as a 10-year-old.
Right.
We didn't have any kids to do a scratch recording,
and so selling the idea of Ten being 10 was kind of hard.
I was thinking that too.
And I'm not sure how much of it to, like, be nitpicky about because it is scratch.
But it would be nice if it sounded a little bit off.
Like, if she sounded a little younger and it's like, "Oh," "Uh..."
LANGLEY: In the screenings,
people were having trouble believing that the Ten-year-old was a 10-year-old
because we had a 30-year-old woman doing the temporary dialogue.
TEN: We're an adult.
We have to keep it together 'cause that's what adults do.
-SIXTEEN: All right! -Yeah!
CORBIN: The voice I knew was really gonna
The minute we had Kaylin do the voice of Ten...
LANGLEY: Okay, so count us down three, two, one. Record.
And press the button record as you're saying, "Record."
Okay!
CORBIN: She brought so much charm and innocence to the character.
We are a beautiful, strong, mature, 21-year-old woman!
We are going to go shake our bottom on that dance floor,
-we're gonna stay up past our bedtime... -SIXTEEN: Yeah!
...and we are going to kiss our youth goodbye.
'Cause this is Gia's night!
-Yeah! -Yeah!
-(ONE GURGLING) -(SIGHING GRIMLY)
KENT: So, I think we've finally gotten somebody to come on for sets.
GONZALES: Oh, good. Yeah. KENT: Trianne's gonna jump in,
-to start doing the modeling. So... -Okay.
-Um... -(CHUCKLES)
What does she have to get started with?
-Okay, well, we need a map, right? -Yeah.
I have the floor plan, I know how that works.
I'm picturing like a... (CLICKS TONGUE)
Like LA villa-style homes, you know what I mean?
The white stucco walls so you have that texture,
so we don't have to have flat walls.
But I do like the idea of the lived-in space kind of being curated.
Trying to find a couple of the right details to make it feel full.
There's an energy to it that you want to get it right.
Because to me it's how legit the world feels,
or how that the character fits into it.
There's cultural details that we have to put in to make it feel true.
I know it's West Coast,
and that has a rhythm and vibe to it, you know?
And I kind of wanna make sure I pay attention to that.
We brought in a set designer to make Nona's apartment right,
'cause we manufactured that apartment.
That's the only set we built.
I gave her some broad details, like,
I want it to feel like in the Spanish revival style in LA.
So, warm wood floors, arches, stairs with wrought-iron railing.
And she got the tone. She got the heart and soul into it.
She's like, "Oh, my granny has this in her house.
"Like, a cutting board hanging."
And I'm like, "I love that."
She just put herself into it. All the decor, all the frames.
So, it feels lived in and the details are there
without detailing everything out, 'cause we couldn't afford it.
CORBIN: When the rubber meets the road,
the people who make the film shine are the animators.
This is what you see on screen.
You don't see my crude stick figure drawings,
you see the beautiful animation.
This film was set in a club, so that means crowds.
Because we're a CG studio,
if you're doing CG,
there's a whole department dedicated just to do crowds for you.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -(SIREN WAILING)
CORBIN: But for us in the Spark program doing 2D animation,
we had to come up with creative ways to make this club feel full and lively
without animating over 70 people.
LANGLEY: She was inspired by old cartoons,
like the UPA films where the environments in the backdrops
would just be a couple lines,
just to indicate that something was there.
So we decided to have a lot of background characters,
but they're not moving.
But we strategically put a few characters here and there
that were moving to give the audience the impression
that there were a bunch of people dancing and the club was populated.
(PANTING)
CORBIN: I feel like I really threw
the kitchen sink at the animation department.
-(GROANING) -Woah!
CORBIN: There's so much going on with these characters.
There's some scenes with six different
characters that one animator had to do.
(GROANING)
CORBIN: And they're pretty complicated characters.
Sorry
CORBIN: I felt like it was kind of like a trial by fire.
Uh, well, I...
So, my animation supervisor, Lucas,
would ask me if I was willing to modify some things,
like extra earrings and bags,
things that the animators would have to account for over and over,
that could end up being very challenging over a large course of time.
But one of the things I really wanted to keep
was the different hair that the characters had.
It's a huge thing in Black culture.
There's a lot of different, unique hairstyles.
And I feel like it's a very good indicator of how old you are.
It's like the difference between
your mother doing your hair for you as a child
and then you getting it done at a salon.
I was like, I know that some of these braids and hairstyles are gonna be a lot,
but I think it's a huge story point for these characters.
TEN: The plan, remember?
CORBIN: We did some things to modify the hair so it wasn't as challenging.
Girl, where are you? Gia?
CORBIN: But these animators are amazing,
and I was so excited because we were so crunched on time...
I know you are, but what am I?
CORBIN: ...but it looks so good.
SIXTEEN: You don't know what you're doing.
(WHIMPERING)
GONZALES: Now, being in the industry for 20 years,
for the first time, I'm really feeling like the older cat.
And there's a lot of youngsters coming up underneath me that are,
you know, got great ideas, lot of great energy,
and I'm realizing that I don't have as much energy.
But this short is about how the generations influence each other.
I always use the example of my dog, you know, before she passed.
I had a dog named Pica.
Pica was a smaller Pitbull and she was about 12.
She had hip issues.
She was old and she was not wanting to move.
Around the same time, we got my daughter a Yorkie for Christmas.
My daughter was happy,
but I actually think the old dog was happier.
Because all of a sudden she was like, "I'm gonna play."
This little puppy brought her back to life, it gave her a spark.
And that's how I wanted the relationship of the little girl and the dog to be.
When I present it to the team to have this dog,
they'll be in there, like, "You probably can't have a dog
"and you can't have a dog with a hoodie, for sure."
KENT: Quadrupeds, things on four legs,
are notoriously difficult to do in animation.
And the grandma had to pick up the dog and move the dog around,
which is also a very complicated thing to animate.
At the same time, seeing the image that Louis drew was so sweet
and made it just so much more personal to the story
that we wanted to figure out how to make it happen.
GONZALES: My team brought so much.
Sculpting the shapes, simming the dog
with a real legit terrycloth hoodie and...
touches of the dog on the couch.
In the end, we got all of it.
And the exciting thing is I can't wait to show it.
I don't know what it's gonna yield,
but it's done and I'm proud of it, so let's see what happens.
DOCTER: The first thing I think that you're looking for when you go to a movie
is to just be entertained.
But that's sort of surface level, it's like the candy coating.
Our job as filmmakers is to figure out,
"What are you giving the audience to take home?
"What are you giving them to continue to think about?"
So that that night when they're eating dinner, they're like, "Huh."
And I think the only way you can do that
is by having filmmakers who have something interesting to say in a unique way,
and hopefully in ways, ideas, concepts that have never been said before.
CORBIN: Overall, I'm super pleased with the entire film
and extremely proud of it.
And I was very emotional. Erik and I both were,
just because it felt like such a crazy road from beginning to end.
I just wanted to tell a story
that I felt like I was going through and I know everyone else goes through.
No matter what age, race, gender,
this felt like a story that touched a lot of people,
and then the specificity of it being told through a Black character,
I think makes it special and new and exciting.
LANGLEY: The story is funny, emotional,
and it's coming from a voice that has been underrepresented
and I'm excited for people to see that, and to see themselves in that,
because I think we all can.
CORBIN: I can't wait for the African-American community,
specifically Black little girls, to see it.
There's a huge want for representation,
and just to be able to watch this and see yourself
means a whole lot to a lot of people.
And so I'm really excited for people to feel seen
and know that this one is, like, specifically for them.
I'm very excited for my family to see this film as well.
Especially my sister.
And when I told her,
"There's a character in here that I, like, loosely based after you."
Whoo! Let's party!
She's like, "Oh!" and she's excited about that.
Okay, okay, back up, back up. Nothin' to see here. Go on.
-Oh, Gia. -Just leave me alone.
CORBIN: It's a film about being an adult
and accepting the messiness that comes along with it.
NICOLE: Are you in here crying on the toilet?
No.
Yes.
CORBIN: And I wanted to put in this idea of Nicole being like,
"Nah, you're being super dramatic, everything's going to be just fine."
All right. Let's do this.
That's my girl. Let's go.
CORBIN: I think kind of like the short,
I think I'm just learning more and more to trust myself,
that I am doing things right. (CHUCKLES) Or close enough.
And that I'm gonna keep growing and learning
and that's not a bad thing, that's all part of the process.
And I think that just is attributed to the fact that I did the short,
I've made it, and I survived.
GONZALES: This is my first time actually really finishing something.
I've never finished a short film, and I've tried for a long time.
You know, I've tried to figure out a way to break it up and have a team,
and it wasn't until now that I could actually do that.
It's important to finish.
'Cause you can't grow unless you finish.
KENT: We are so excited to finally get to share Nona with the world.
And I'm very excited for my family to get to see it.
My daughter is also a 5-year-old little girl just like Renee.
To actually get to sit
and watch the whole thing with her in the final state
will be also really exciting. I hope it doesn't give her any bad ideas.
GONZALES: Making the short has been a real beautiful experience.
Stories honor life, right? They honor people
and when I tell my stories, I'm honoring my family and friends.
And that's something that I love.
I love the fact that I'm doing it now. But I also had to wait 20 years to do it.
When I could have had the chance
to really try and work my way towards directing,
I stopped because I wanted to be with my kids,
'cause I couldn't choose both.
I was working after work and on the weekends.
And I have a very clear memory of this one morning,
I remember my kids telling me, "Why don't you come play with us?
"Play catch." I'm like, "I'll be right there."
I'm thinking, "Yeah, I'm gonna draw a few things and be done with it."
They came in and said good night to me.
I missed them the whole damn day, and it hit me so hard.
They only have this time once, so I wanna make sure
that they get as much as possible from me.
As I made the story and as it gets more and more specific,
you start to really realize what it means to you.
And for me, it's like, "Oh, my God.
"This is my kids wanting me to play with them,
"while I'm trying to move my career along."
I was letting them down because I wasn't paying attention,
which is basically what my short's doing.
I needed that awakening.
And it's funny how the short completely kind of turned that way.
And that's when it found its honesties,
because I could relate to it in a very specific way,
in a truthful way.
COLLINS: There's something about the more personal you get,
the more universal the story becomes.
And I think for my kids' generation, their kids' generation,
those stories are less and less your typical fantasy fairytale stories
in terms of what makes them feel
like they lean forward and it's... And it speaks to them.
DOCTER: Audiences are always looking to be surprised,
when they sit down, they turn on a movie.
If we can get filmmakers who come from different and diverse backgrounds,
I think we have a better chance
of giving them that surprise that they're looking for.
MORRIS: Given the director's newness to these roles,
given the constraints they've had in their budgets,
given the time they've had to make them in,
I'm always blown away when I see the films that get finished,
and I'm always amazed how much they pull it off,
and how good they are.
COLLINS: I see SparkShorts evolving only
in that I see the filmmakers themselves evolving.
And as we look into the future,
we need to continue to get new voices out there,
to give them an opportunity, to give them the platform,
and to challenge ourselves to be open to hearing them
as a studio, as a world, as an audience.
This program's gonna give us a preview of our filmmakers to come.
And it's gonna be the best opening act to ultimately what is hopefully
the next couple decades of Pixar filmmaking.