The early starts of the creative process

- This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - We'd love to dig in and explore some of the creative process and sure. And I had to admit upfront a lot of times people ask what is your favorite Pixar movie? And some people can't respond. I can't respond. - Okay. - It's up? - All right. Good taste. - I'd love to talk to you about that one. - All right. Yeah, fine. - So I listened to watch one of your interviews that you did for, I think it was the Minnesota national public radio Westminster. - Oh yeah. - And you said something that was, I found really interesting. And you talked about the movie "Dumbo," tell me why "Dumbo" is one of your favorite films. - I don't know. "Dumb" is just a, it's deceptively simple is the thing. You look at it and it seems like very basic and cartoon and whatever, but it's so emotional. You know, everybody always cries when they the Baby Mine saw him. And so what, they were so high able to take the complexity of this relationship, the mother-kid relationship and distill it down into really like candy coated fun to watch, but deep and interest. I mean, it's really just very well told. It's a good story. And weirdly I was doing some research about it from the very pitch until it came out with like a year and a half. So it puts us to shame on so many levels because they did it so fast. That's like 1/3 of the time - As you can imagine, Pete was a kid who was just entrenched by stories, animation and technology from a young age. And he brought that same enthusiasm when he began working on his early film projects. - Yeah. I mean, I definitely liked making stuff. You know how there's always the kid who's drawing stuff in the backs of his notepads. And everyone's like, "Wow, look at that." That was not me. I wanted to be that kid, but I really struggled with drawing really couldn't, I guess I had ideas of what I wanted to achieve and I wasn't that good. And so I worked hard at it but then I also like to take apart tape recorders and make puppets and do all sorts of dorky things that nobody, none of the other cool kids did but I guess it's ultimately what got me here. I draw something like, "That doesn't look like a photograph that's..." I wanted to look like a photo, you know 'cause some people can draw like that. They just have the shading and everything. But ultimately, you know you realize in the long run, it's not about that. Right? It's about the deeper ideas. That's what makes or breaks you because given enough passion for something, I mean I definitely want to stand up and defend you against people who say you don't have it. Because I think there is a certain amount of like, okay the world's not fair. That guy has an amazing God given talent, I don't know how, but the thing that gets you further is passion. The idea that you just every day show up and do it again and again and again. And I think for those of us here at a place like Pixar, we get paid to do it. So it's, it's even easier to support that habit. - Yeah. - That is you have to, and so you get better you you're given this great gift of the opportunity to test it out and it's like practicing, you know you'd never give a kid a violin and say, "All right you're playing at Carnegie hall tomorrow." You know, it's like, no you have to play for years and years and years. And it's the same with filmmaking. - So how did you get from Minnesota to, and where did you go to school again? - I went to the California Institute of the arts in Valencia, California. And I went to, I was lucky enough. I went to this school in Bloomington, in high school that had a program that placed you with areas in which you were interested in. So like a friend of mine worked at 3m in the artificial intelligence lab and I worked at a cartoon house making commercials for like banks and you know, stuff like that. But it was a great chance to just see how the whole thing works. How does it get from a drawing onto film and how do you synchronize the sound and all this? And it was through that. I started asking around like, how do you know if I were going to do this for a living? How do I learn? Because there were a place to go to school. And Cal arts was one of very few at the time that that offered that school that actually trained you to to make animated films nowadays there's a lot of, 'em a lot of choices, but - So what, who was your portfolio like then? Did they have some sort of courses that you had to have so many drawings or you know, you know, show some sort style? - They had guidelines on their on their site and I think most schools too and they'll give you even little examples of things that they like to see drawing solidity and things but you know, ultimately, and this is true of almost everywhere I think and Pixar included. There's lots of stories where people turned in what they thought Pixar wanted to see. And then finally in out of desperation just said you know what, I'm going to put in what I want. And that's ultimately what got you. What gets you in like having some ability to kind of expose part of who you are, a deeper sense of you in your work, that's I think what got me in there and ultimately here. (upbeat music)