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Special Report
Several weeks ago, we were contacted by one of our reps at Disney Publicity to see if we'd be interested in having an inteview with some of the folks behind the magic at Pixar, anxious to discuss their upcoming DVD release of A Bug's Life. While we certainly had a few questions for Pixar, we wanted to take advantage of the interactive nature of the Internet and sent a private email to our BIG Picture VIP subscribers, asking for their input. Though many of the questions we received were aimed at Disney, we took the opportunity to ask the question at the top of everybody's list: "Why isn't the widescreen version of A Bug's Life 16x9 enhanced"? You'll find the answers to that question (sure to spark some debate on our forum) and many others in this exclusive interview. First, we'd like to introduce you to our guests from Pixar:
Bill Kinder is Editorial Supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios. Prior
to joining Pixar in 1996, Kinder was the Director of Facilities at American Zoetrope in San Francisco. There he coordinated sound and picture post production on numerous feature films (including Jack, Mi Familia, and Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey), brought innovations to Francis Coppola's Electronic Storyboard Department and oversaw film-to-tape transfers of dailies. He has also directed an Emmy-nominated documentary, produced television news and edited commercials.
Kinder studied film, sound and photography at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of East Anglia.
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Craig Good, Senior Layout Artist at Pixar began his film and computer career at
Lucasfilm in 1982. He collaborated with John Lasseter on Pixar's short films starting with the 1983 film The Adventures of Andre & Wally B, on through the stained glass knight for Young Sherlock Holmes in 1985, and then Luxo, Jr., Red's Dream, Tin Toy and Knickknack.
Good went on to produce several television commercials during the early 90's, including the Clio-winning "Conga" for LifeSavers. He collaborated with Andrew Stanton on the development of a series of commercials featuring an animated bottle of Listerine, some of which also went on to earn Clios and other awards. He has also provided voices for several Sesame Street shorts starring the Luxo, Jr. lamp character, including Surprise, Light and Heavy and Front and Back.
As Supervising Layout Artist on Toy Story, and Senior Layout Artist on A Bug's Life, Good was responsible for the camera work and basic filmmaking involved in executing director John Lasseter's vision. Working closely with Lasseter and the film's editors, he and his department constructed the film by assembling each shot, placing the characters in the scene and composing and animating the camera. The Layout Department makes the first step into 3D from the story sketches and, with the Editorial Department, makes sure that good editorial flow and continuity are maintained.
As artistic supervisor of the Reframing Project for A Bug's Life, he established the techniques that were used, and examined each shot in the film to determine which treatment was needed. As supervisor, he also provided general artistic guidance to the Reframing crew.
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Grab a bag of chips, pour yourself a cup of coffee or load a new ream of paper into your printer. This is going to take awhile. Here's The BIG Picture interview with Pixar:
TBP: You guys have kids?
Bill Kinder: I do!
Craig Good: We both do!
TBP: Well, your kids must think "man, my Dad's got the best job in the world!"
Craig Good: Yeah, especially my four and a half month-old daughter. (Laughter)
Bill Kinder: I have a one-year old -- it's not quite dawning on him yet although he recognizes characters and points to them - and my four year-old does believe that I go to work with Buzz and Woody everyday.
TBP: That's the ultimate cool. Do you guys have some special equipment in your homes to watch this stuff in hi-def or what?
Bill Kinder: No, I don't. I just have a decent home theater set up with a standard definition 32 inch Sony.
TBP: Do you guys have your own DVD copies of Toy Story and stuff like that?
Bill Kinder: No, no. Toy Story is not on DVD yet. And we haven't... There aren't any, you know, secret cool copies around.
TBP: Oh really! That surprises me. I mean, given the technology and your capabilities I would think that the whole staff would have a copy if they wanted.
Bill Kinder: That's a good idea, I'll work on it. (laughter)
TBP: And while you're at it, why don't you press another four billion copies for the rest of us.
Craig Good: Yeah, really.
TBP: How on earth did you get involved with Pixar originally and was there any apprehension that you might be walking a technology tightrope without a net? Or was the transition from your previous employment a natural step in the evolution of your careers?
Craig Good: How I got involved, was I started vacuuming floors and scrubbing toilets at Lucasfilm.
TBP: Are you serious?
Craig Good: I'm absolutely 100 percent serious. It's a rather transferable skill (Bill and Craig erupt into laughter again).
Bill Kinder: What a segue! (more laughter)
Craig Good: The job actually hasn't changed that much... (laughter again) No, the nice thing is that there was that there was someone teaching a computer programming course for employees and even as a janitor I was allowed to take that -- I was also doing security work. The people in our department love to say I only did security, but I much preferred the reaction I got when I say "oh yeah I used to scrub the toilets at Lucasfilm."
TBP: Well sure, exactly. That indicates a higher IQ, generally. (laughs)
Craig Good: The programming course turned into a opportunity for an entry-level operator position with the computer division, which is essentially being a digital janitor, and then I fell in with this bad crowd that was then known kind of as the "graphics group" Ed Catmull (Chief Technology Officer for Pixar), Alvi Ray Smith and ne'r do-wells like that. (Catmull and Smith were the original co-founders of the Lucasfilm Computer Division in 1979) And one thing led to another and here I am. So my education is all O.J.T. (On the Job Training).
TBP: This sounds like the story of the NBC Page that went on to become a major network star or something. That's incredible.
Craig Good: Yeah, something like that. Well, there are other people who've done better. Ian… Ian...-- I just blanked on his name... he started parking cars at the Egg Company which was their office in L. A., and now he is a producer of films.
TBP: Wow. Well, if this Website thing doesn't work out for me, are there any positions open for scrubbing the toilets at Pixar? (this time, I'm the only one laughing). Bill -- what's your story?
Bill Kinder: Before Pixar, I was at Francis Coppola's company, American Zoetrope. I was running his post-production facility and seeing a lot of feature films through the place both in picture and sound post. It was actually a really good springboard for a couple of reasons. One just in general, Francis Coppola is very interested in advancing the technology of filmmaking. In fact, I think it's fair to credit him with coining the phrase "Electronic Cinema" back in the '70s. There's a great Saturday Night Live skit, actually, circa late '70s. I don't know if it's Belushi or somebody pretending to be Coppola, talking about editing or watching movies on an airplane but the extension cord wouldn't be long enough. He was kind of viewed as a "kook"for having these ideas that you could bring filmmaking into the electronic age. Of course, now in hindsight, we see it as fairly prophetic and right in tune with it all. And so there were a lot of really great toys and processes at Zoetrope for me to gain experience with that are very applicable, now that the whole world is editing films in these nonlinear editing machines.
TBP: So how did you go from Zoetrope to Pixar?
Bill Kinder: Pixar called me up and said are you interested in working here?
TBP: Boy isn't that nice... How involved is Steve Jobs with the company these days, and has he shared any opinions on DVD?
Bill Kinder: Yeah! I would say that he's very involved -- wouldn't you Craig?
Craig Good: Yeah, we see him somewhat regularly now. And he seemed to at least... I know I heard him mentioning DVD at company meetings back when DVD was still a pretty darned new thing...
Bill Kinder: Absolutely, yeah he's a big fan of DVD.
TBP: That's good to hear. Any idea why Disney chose your film as its first full-animation entry into the Region 1 DVD market?
Craig Good: That's probably really a Disney question. Of course, we're thrilled they did.
TBP: Does it take less time or more time to author an all-digital feature as opposed to analog? Do you really sweat the details, like what the opacity level of a shadow should be and things like that? Or can you specify those kind of settings in the computer and let the processors do the rest in rendering?
Bill Kinder: We are a company that tends to sweat details no matter what we're doing. We produce for film -- for the theater. That's the main thing we aim at and we have a very skilled lighting crew that essentially tweaks all the parameters of the shaders and lights for rendering and get things looking the way we want. I mean, you know, you can't get all the details. If I told you where, you'd probably find bugs in "Bugs". One of the things John (Lassiter) says in talking about animation, he says the last 10 percent is what takes 90 percent of the work. Pixar spends a lot of time on that last 10 percent.
TBP: What kind of horsepower and OS platforms is your animation/rendering computer equipment using to make these digital features -- is it gigabytes (or terrabytes) of disk space, how much RAM, that kind of stuff.
Craig Good: Oh boy, we've got... our desktop machines are SGI's (Silicon Graphics) running Irix, which is something a lot like Unix. Now what we are up to with our machines is about a gigabyte of RAM each for animators and people like me to work with. On A Bug's Life it was more like a half a gig -- and then I guess usually 4 to 6 gigs of disk space on each workstation -- but the real horsepower is off in the render farm... I'm trying to remember how many of those we had … those were Sun Microsystems machines - big sparc jobbies, multi-processor machines and... It was a boat load. I'm sure... I don't have the number here with me to give you something accurate. It's probably on a fact sheet that the publicity folks have.
TBP: Roughly speaking, how much time does it take to produce one minute of film footage?
Craig Good: That's kind of a hard one to answer. If you're talking about final compute after the animation and everything is done -- where each frame was taking somewhere around two hours to four hours I think as an average -- it takes 24 frames to make a second. But before you can get to that point, someone has to build the models and place the models, then animate everything. Animators can take -- for a normal shot that's made a couple of seconds long of average complexity -- it will take an animator from two to five days just to do their work on it.
TBP: How long did it take to make A Bugs Life - from concept to completion? And how much additional time did the transfer take including the rearranging of some items for the pan and scan version? Or is it full-frame?
Craig Good: We coined our own name for that -- we call it "re-framed". It was something that really hadn't been done before. Pan and scan didn't really quite fit as a name. From concept to completion was what -- probably four years. But actual production work was just over two years, 2 1/2 years I think. There's a fair amount of work done by a small group of people in story before the film actually goes into production, of course.
TBP: Given the new reformatting or "re-framing" of the movie to also fit standard TV's ... how does the art department feel about the change of composition in the layout?
Craig Good: Well, what I think we managed to accomplish is that we ended up with good compositions -- we were willing to go back and redo is much of the movie as we had to and we ended up going back to re-computes 55 percent of the film.
TBP: Now how isn't that she didn't have to go back and recompute the other 45 percent? I don't understand.
Craig Good: Those were shots that were amenable to something closer to the normal pan and scan -- we did what we call cropping or scanning. Sometimes it's actually what you want because we're not just making a version for a different aspect ratio but for smaller screens. Widescreen was designed for screens that are 20 or 30 feet across. One of the things that changes when you go to television is that it just gets smaller and we could've ended up with situations were you just simply can't read the expression on a character's face or see what you are supposed to see. So many times the right thing to do was actually crop because you get -- as a side effect it's like you're magnifying or zooming in on the picture a little bit and it's what you need for a small screen and there are many shots that you can crop or scan without making sacrifices in the composition.
TBP: How do the artists feel about the "seamless integration" of digital characters into movies like 'The Phantom Menace' for instance? Are you impressed or do we still have a ways to go?
Bill Kinder: I haven't seen it yet, have you?
TBP: No, just the trailers like everyone else. But I was just using that as an example. Certainly other films have used the technique.
Bill Kinder: I would say it's cool -- you know, it all depends on what the story is and what makes sense. I don't think it's cool in and of itself anymore than... I don't really think it's whether the Pixar is animation is cool in and of itself, I think that question is "how is it applied" and "what is it put in the service of"?
Craig Good: The saying at Pixar -- the mantra is: "story is king". Every decision we make whether it's how you frame the shot or build the character or animate it or something is all in service to the story. So if someone's making a story where the story really calls for a synthetic character then fine! If it's better with a guy in a suit or a puppet then do it with a guy in a suit or a puppet.
TBP: Do you think that a guy in this suit or the puppet though can still be improved to look even better than what we've seen so far? More realistic, I guess I should say? Although that's a tough question though because a lot of times these creations are fantasy characters so who's to say what fantasy looks real and what doesn't. I guess what I'm trying to say is, do you think there are still improvements to be found in the technology of digital characters themselves?
Craig Good: Any technology that isn't constantly getting better is a dead technology, so I would imagine that things are going to get better. It happens to not be something we do here, though. Contrary to some people's opinions we're not particularly interested in reality. (laughs) We don't try to make realistic in terms of making it look like the real world, what we try very hard to do is create a world and make a consistent one. If you paid attention to the physics in A Bugs Life, you know darn well that we don't care about reality.
TBP: Does this direct digital to digital transfer mean that the image is going from your computer to DVD with no additional processing or filtering? What allowances or compromises have to be addressed when dealing with DVD mpeg compression? Or is the original A Bug's Life master already compressed, requiring no further processing? And if that's the case -- is there any noticeable increase in quality over some of the best anamorphic titles we've seen on DVD so far?
Bill Kinder: I would say that the quality of the video on A Bug's Life DVD is far superior to what would have resulted from a film to tape transfer. So I can say that much. Compared to how most feature films are brought to DVD, there's no question when you see this thing that the lack of film grain and weave and dirt and jitter and defects in the negative being absent helps the quality of the image tremendously. I can't speak so well to mpeg compression tweaking because I'm not an expert in that area. However just knowing a little bit about compression I have to believe that our method helps. By the way, we did not deliver a compressed master so mpeg compression for the DVD was done directly from a full resolution, uncompressed digital master of our video.
TBP: So you did not do the actual authoring of the DVD then?
Bill Kinder: No. Buena Vista Home Entertainment did that. So both from knowing what little I know about compression but also judging from the results when you see this thing, I think you'll recognize the clarity and the quality from the opening logos of the thing. It's so crisp and stunning. People at Pixar who have seen the disc say that it looks better on DVD then it did in many theatrical film presentations they saw.
Craig Good: That's possible. I can address part of your sub-question on whether we compress in-house. We do use our own version of a .tiff -- it is compression, but it's a lossless compression so you can think of it virtually is not being compressed in terms of quality. But we just used our own software -- non-real-time stuff to re-sample the images down to the correct video resolution and then it was all just laid off on D-1 digital.
An example of Pixar's "re-framing" technique
TBP: If the digital transfer then as good or even better in your opinion -- sounds like you think it's better than what we've seen so far -- is this the reason that you did not go ahead and do a 16x9 (enhanced) transfer, or was it simply a Disney decision? If so, does Pixar agree with that decision?
Bill Kinder: I think there are a couple of things to consider on the anamorphic front. One is with this release -- you know, there are two versions of the film on the DVD. There is both the re-framed version which Craig described to you so well and there's also the letterbox version. It's a dual-layered disk so the viewer has the option to watch either or -- you know, go back out and select both. So there's an interesting consideration here that most, you know, disk makers wouldn't have to consider. Because of our 1.33:1 aspect ratio version is not a half-baked pan and scan but actually a version of the film that stands on it's own. For many people without Widescreen televisions -- this is a good version to watch. I know that many people at Pixar preferred to watch the re-framed version on standard definition television as compared to a letterbox version, for instance. So if you think about the user interface and going in and out of the two versions and selecting one or the other -- or going back and forth... If you had to change or player to 16:9 and back every time you may the selection to traverse the two versions on the layers, you'd be adding a step for the viewers experience that otherwise wouldn't be there. And because again the 1.33:1 version isn't a compromised version -- it's a full version of the film that was directed by John Lassiter and stands on own -- we didn't necessarily think that in this case the letterbox version was the one to watch and therefore you want to be in 16:9 if you had a 16:9 televisions set. The second thing to say about 16:9 which I'm sure you know, the DVD player that's presenting the 16 x 9 anamorphic material on a 4:3 screen has to apply a letterbox filter to that material. One of the first things we talked about in this conversation was how attentive to detail we are Pixar. We didn't necessarily want our material going through the filtering or line merging and being dependent on the quality of say the lowest quality line filtering device out there. Reasonable people could argue that it makes sense actually in this day and age to release a letterbox version flat, as well.
TBP: Bearing in mind that The BIG Picture was originally designed for large screen front projection owners that would prefer to generally watch things 16:9 enhanced… Although I realize the 4:3 version has no compromises, does that imply that there are some compromises in terms of image quality on the widescreen side?
Bill Kinder: Nope. I don't think so.
Craig Good: Not beyond just normal letterboxing.
Bill Kinder: Yeah, that's exactly why the 4: 3 version is so interesting because if you want talk about lines of resolution here's one where we used them all! And it looked great! And as Craig said, some of the time you wind up with sort of a magnified look at the characters and just anecdotally, I know that people who were working on the film so long... Of course, we were looking at letterbox all along -- the first version of the film we worked on was the film version and when people started to see these re-framed images, full-frame on the TV sets, they had been working on, they were like "Wow! This is great! The impact of these images is enormous". Comparably, it's bigger in the North-South direction. The impact comes from the use of those lines of resolution.
TBP: I'll take you guys off the hotseat now and move on. I appreciate your candid responses. The region 2 DVD release of A BUGS LIFE is slated for release late fall. Our European readers are wondering if you will use the same authoring master that's being used for region 1?
Bill Kinder: That might be a better question for Disney. …I'm sorry, I honestly don't know.
TBP: How feasible would it be to produce a multiple angle DVD of a film such as "A Bug's Life" - since the animation is produced completely by computer in the 3-D world you've created? Couldn't you could run just about any scene from any angle, given that it's all computer generated?
Craig Good: Possible yes, feasible no. There's a number of things that come into play there. One is the amount of compute time that is involved. Another is animation. Animation is done to the camera. If you look at it from another angle, you won't get the same acting and you can sometimes break a scene pretty badly. But the most important is that among the details we sweat a lot around here is editorial flow of a movie. And the way shots hookup together is very dependent on how they are composed and from what angle they are. We spent a lot of time getting the camera in the right place, so we're not motivated to go find another place for the camera to be.
TBP: Have there been any plans to prepare "Toy Story" for DVD release? If so, will the same digital to digital process be used for that transfer?
Bill Kinder: We haven't heard anything about those plans.
TBP: Well, being optimistic, if and when "Toy Story" finally arrives on Open DVD, do you think it might include the test CGI animation that was part of ABC's airing of "Toy Story"? Or is that putting the cart too far ahead of the horse?
Craig Good: We don't know. I think it would be cool too, I agree with you. But I don't know...
TBP: What can we expect when we go and see "Toy Story 2" this winter?
Bill Kinder: Laughs, laughs, and more laughs.
Craig Good: It's awsome.
Bill Kinder: I will at some personal risk, give you a direct quote from John Lassiter from one of our meetings who came in and sat down and said "You know, this is going to be our funniest movie yet".
TBP: What lessons were learned from the production of "Toy Story" that were later applied to "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2"?
Bill Kinder: Oh boy (laughter) where to start?
Craig Good: Just in general, we learned a lot about refining our production process. It would take forever to go into the details but we essentially got better and making movies -- I think you can see the difference between Toy Story and A Bug's Life. To me A Bug's Life has a more polished, complete feel to it. Also we learned that we didn't want to do a film to tape transfer for home video and we learned that we didn't want pan and scan -- and I think that's pretty relevant for this discussion. Those decisions were directly out of the experience with doing a pan and scan version of "Toy Story".
Bill Kinder: We knew it would be more difficult, because we went although way to 2.35: 1 on this film. That was not a trivial decision.
TBP: What's next to improve upon? Is there anything better for DVD mastering than an all-digital transfer? Can the process be improved? What, if any, refinements for future generation DVD authoring do you see?
Bill Kinder: I think just watching the whole evolution of the format in the marketplace is what will probably wind up driving the answer to that question. I'm naturally -- I'm with you -- I hope that 16:9 sets start to populate the marketplace and that digital television starts getting widely transmitted at some improved definition and we get to the next level of seeing hi-def DVD -- whatever that is.
TBP: What are some of the other projects (not necessarily DVD-related) that you are working on?
Bill Kinder: Toy Story 2 is all the rage (laughter).
TBP: Is Toy Story 2 "in the can", so to speak?
Bill Kinder: Oh, not quite (more chuckles). We've still got work to do on that. Still working.
TBP: One of our readers wanted me to ask if your characters always have human models for features?
Craig Good: Anthropomorphic?
TBP: I guess! You're going to have to spell that one for me, ha ha.
Craig Good: I guess not -- I guess to varying extents. I mean, we had an RC car and a pair of binoculars (laughter)... The only human features were eyes.
TBP: Do you model the characters after the voice tracks have been laid down? In other words, do your animators tailor the image to suit the voices? Or do the actors have to sync up with the images?
Bill Kinder: Animation is done to the recorded voice. That doesn't necessarily imply that the models are created to look like the voice actors. Very commonly, the model is designed, and then the voice actor is chosen. But then animators can use -- they do have access to videotape of the actor working to look for gestures and inspiration, things like that.
TBP: How much of "A Bug's Life" was based upon "Seven Samurai" and the later
remake "The Magnificent Seven"?
Craig Good: You want a number? (laughter) A percentage? I think by the time you get to the circus, it's pretty obvious that we've strayed quite a ways from Kurasawa's film.
TBP: Will the short film of the old man playing chess with himself be included on
the DVD?
Bill Kinder: Yes. It's called Geri's Game and yes, it will be included.
TBP: Will the disc contain both of the outtakes at the end of the movie?
Bill Kinder: Yes.
TBP: How about other computer animations from Pixar? Many of our readers have expressed an interest in seeing a compilation of your short features on DVD, like Geri's Game, Tin Toy and Lamp have also been mentioned to us… Any chance of seeing a "best of " DVD in the foreseeable future?
Bill Kinder: That would be cool. Haven't heard of any plans.
TBP: Well, whose hands is that decision in?
Bill Kinder: I'm sure that there is a marketing component to it. Buena Vista Home Video is finally Pixar's distribution partner. The short films did make it to the supplement of the Toy Story deluxe laserdisc and those are the best transfers of those films we are ever going to get.
TBP: Well hopefully we'll see them on DVD because there's a lot of people -- myself included -- that never got into the laserdisc end of things and really probably never well. So consider this a request.
Bill Kinder & Craig Good: Cool - all right.
TBP: Getting away from "A Bugs Life" for a moment -- I'm just asking you a general question here -- because I think you answered this as it pertains to A Bug's Life, but what are your personal opinions on the importance of 16: 9 enhancement for DVDs in general?
Bill Kinder: I think it's great. It's great technology and projected video, when set up properly with good material can look amazing.
TBP: Craig, how do you feel about?
Craig Good: It's hard for me to actually give you an informed opinion because my experience with 16:9 projectors has been -- just a few minutes of it. Obviously, it looks cool. But I couldn't give you any authoritative opinion and I don't like making up answers.
TBP: I wouldn't want you to do that. How much input does Pixar have in terms of offering suggestions or requesting special features?
Bill Kinder: I think our biggest contribution to the Bug's Life DVD is that it was digitally mastered from the original digital source material and that of course was 100 percent Pixar's input and the same with the re-framing. Our contribution was really making sure that the version of the films that people saw on their homes screens was the most amazing quality that it could be. The extras and a supplemental stuff I think are interesting, but frankly we didn't really get very involved in that on this.
TBP: Are there any storyboards or unused scenes or anything like that lying around that might be thrown together for a possible future special edition or something?
Bill Kinder: That's a cool idea. There definitely are those things laying around. Maybe one day there will be a special edition version. Again, it's one of those things where I don't know what the plans are -- but as a fan, I agree I think it would be very cool.
TBP: How important do you think supplemental features are on DVD and what are your thoughts for the future of the format?
Bill Kinder: This is totally a personal opinion. But as a cinefile, that sort of aspect of myself -- if there's a disc of a film that is a very important film to me, naturally all the supplemental material that I can get on the thing, including books - I'll study the film as much as I can… and anything on the disc is great. I'm not sure how much supplemental material brings to my experience of -- I don't want a name any titles -- but you know, just like the average recent release that I go pick up at the store to see what it was people were talking about a few months ago. Sometimes I find it gets to the point where there's so much material that you need like, three nights to look at it. And it's really not worth it because all you're really looking for is a good presentation of the movie and that's the best thing that DVD has to offer. The supplemental stuff, I think is only as cool as the movie that it's supplementing.
Craig Good: I'm pretty much in the same camp. I love -- I mean having been involved in laserdisc for longtime -- that was one of the big attractions to laserdisc of course was the second audio commentary and all that sort of thing. That's great when the film is interesting and also when there's actual content in the supplement. Sometimes what happens though is to throw in a couple of out takes and a trailer and can say there's supplemental material. And then sometimes I think there is a tendency on a couple of DVD I've seen to have so many bells and whistles on it that the content of the supplement gets lost. So I'm for simple and substantial, I guess.
TBP Have you heard about or witnessed firsthand any of this digital projection technology that's being discussed for commercial theaters? You must be pretty excited about that for display of films like "A Bug's Life"
Bill Kinder: Yeah! That's definitely interesting technology that I've seen demos of. Have you seen it Craig ?
Craig Good: There are some things it does stunningly well. Among the coolest and where you have a parallel to DVD - is of course you have have absolutely stable images. You get used to the amount of weave in a film and get used to ignoring it, but as soon as it goes away it's really obvious that it's not there.
TBP: Looking past Toy Story 2, are you developing any other computer-generated features and if so, what can you tell us about them, with regards to some story concepts and themes?
Bill Kinder: Yes ...and nothing!
TBP: Well that's not fair!
Bill Kinder: Noble effort (laughter) nice try! I mean, Pixar animations studios -- that's what we do. We're going to keep developing and making these things, but...
TBP: Come on guys, we've developed a rapport here -- you can toss out those nondisclosure agreements right now!
Bill Kinder: Last time I looked, the signature on my paychecks wasn't Jeff McNeal's (laughter) …the agreement stands. (more laughter)
TBP: Fair enough. Will future features be made with consideration of a DVD transfer in the early stages of a production? Are there early decisions to be made when a film is developed for theatrical release with regards to its anticipated DVD release?
Bill Kinder: I think with A Bug's Life there certainly were, for Home Video in general and also DVD, both with the re-framing and direct digital sourcing of the master. And there was a lot of work ongoing from the beginning of "A Bug's Life" to figure out how we were going to accomplish that. But now that we have, I'm not sure beyond that what -- it's kind of like -- and even in the case of A Bug's Life, we made the theatrical version first and then we paid attention to having the best master of Home Video we could. It's not like we tried to work on two versions of the film that the same time. There's so many details with every single frame to be ironed out over the course of these two to three-year productions that compounding all that with what having to think of another version of the film -- that would work best for it at the same time -- would make someone's head explode. So we just had to postpone those thoughts until after the theatrical version is done.
Craig Good: Now we have the technique worked out we know how to do a re-framing project and so I think we can just proceed. The big thing it bought us, is it meant we didn't have to think about compromising the widescreen film as we went along. We didn't have to stop the think "oh this looks great in Widescreen but you know, we'll never get it to work on video, so we'd better movies actors around. It bought us that freedom. Once we have the method worked out, we just back-burnered it until the film was done and then we went back in with a smaller crew and looked at all 1,620 shots again and decided what to do with them.
TBP: Has there been changes in technology that would allow a re-rendering of
the Toy Story data better than the original without changing the data?
(like the same midi file played on a wave table card rather than on an FM synthesizer card).
Craig Good: No. It doesn't quite work that way. The final render is the final render the way we work.
TBP: No complaints on this end, believe me. It's a beautiful piece of work. With the possibility of interactive movies on DVD, have there been any thoughts to producing an all-digital interactive movie for DVD?
Bill Kinder: It's an interesting idea... You know, again, I haven't heard of any plans but that doesn't mean there aren't any.
Craig Good: I haven't heard of any either.
TBP: You guys are crossing your fingers behind your back and looking at those nondisclosure's again, aren't you?
Bill Kinder: (chuckles) The suspicion is we're not going to be in a big hurry to do that because we are traditional storytellers and interactive filmmaking is just a completely different kettle of fish.
TBP: How do you feel about the extended life of digital creations? Would you
be upset to see assets you created used in future projects, both in movies
and other media like video games, or are you excited by it?
Craig Good: We've had our characters show up in video games... I mean, the characters go on living, you know...
Bill Kinder: Both Buzz and Woody have had a nice career -- so far...(chuckles)
TBP: What do you think of Japanamation, and has there been any overatures
of a joint project with Japanese animators?
Craig Good: Well, there have been Japanese animators who have been very influential here, Miyazaki being the principal one. But I'm not aware of any plans to do any… the two techniques -- the ways we would work are so far apart, I don't...
TBP: So there's nothing on the horizon, then.
Craig Good: Nothing on the Horizon. I mean, I'm not aware of anything...
TBP: How do you feel about digitally resurrecting deceased actors for inclusion in mew media? Your personal opinions.
Bill Kinder: Pixar is not in the business of resurrecting dead actors, so you should probably ask a studio that is.
TBP: Last question. What are your thoughts about Divx? The pay-per-view DVD spinoff?
Bill Kinder: (after several seconds of silence) Uh… boy…
TBP: Gee, I didn't think this was going to be the toughest question out of all ones I've asked…
Craig Good: Personally, I don't care much for it.
Bill Kinder: Yeah I -- you know, I don't think either of us can speak officially for anybody because the question hasn't come up officially. I don't think, it's not that the...
TBP: This is just a personal question -- I want to make it clear. I don't mean for you to be speaking for Pixar on the subject, I was just curious as to what you guys thought about it.
Craig Good: Personally, I think it's a pretty dumb idea.
Bill Kinder: I agree.
TBP: Guys, thank you so much. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you, and I know our readers are really going to enjoy this. As a father of three kids, I just want to thank you on behalf of all the families everywhere that have really looked forward to and enjoyed and continue to enjoy and look forward to more of your creations -- they're marvelous.
Bill Kinder and Craig Good: Thanks a lot -- good talking to you.
We look forward to reviewing A BUG'S LIFE and as usual, will let you know how well the image quality holds up on The BIG Picture. Judging by some impressive recent efforts by Disney (PARENT TRAP, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG), our expectations are naturally high. Stay close.
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