Communications - December 2010

CaTmuLL: They didn’t get enough
protection, so I started it up again and
put a different person in charge. A year
later I came back and found that group
had been entirely subverted by produc-
tion again. So, I thought, “OK, the forc-
es here are much more powerful than I
realized.”
When we did this the third time we
actually put in really strong mecha-
nisms, so basically we set it up to pro-
tect it. We also did one other thing: we
brought in a person from the outside
who was very experienced in deliver-
ing bulletproof software. As we went
through this, however, we found that
everything was on schedule, but that
the deliverables were shrinking in or-
der to stay on schedule. At some point
you don’t deliver enough to make a
film, and in that case the schedule
slips. We had someone to keep things
on schedule, but he didn’t want to de-
liver the software until it was perfect.

Now we had gone to the opposite extreme, where the protection was keeping it isolated from engaging with the user. That’s when we put Eben Ostby in charge because Eben knows what it means to engage. Now we’re going through the bloody process of taking new software and putting it in production. But we’ve been through this before, and we know it’s a painful, messy process.

To me the trick is that you’ve got to realize you have two extremes—full engagement and full protection—and you have to know what you’re doing to be able to move back and forth between the two. For me, R&D is something you really need to protect, but you don’t set it up with an impermeable wall. There comes a time when you need to go into the messy arena, where you actually begin to engage.

hanRahan: It seems this is true not just in your business but for any software project.

CaTmuLL: Yes, this idea can be applied everywhere.

hanRahan: Among the many things that are inspiring about Pixar, and one way you’ve had a huge impact on the world, is that you changed many people’s views of what computing is all about. A lot of people think of computing as number crunching whose main application is business and engineering. Pixar added an artistic side

on moVinG To LuCaSfiLmS:
What we had—
and this is very
important—was
protection. When
you’re doing
something new,
it’s actually fairly
fragile. People don’t
quite get what it is.
Sometimes even
we don’t necessarily
get what it is.
When people don’t
get it, and they’ve
got their immediate
concerns, it’s hard
for them to see
the relevance.

to computing. I’ve talked to many students who realize that art can be part of computing; that creativity can be part of computing; that they can merge their interests in art and science. They think of computing as a very fulfilling pursuit.

I think you’ve inspired them because you have these incredible artistic people here, and you have incredible technologists here, and you obviously have an interest in both. What’s your view on how art and science interact in a place like Pixar?

CaTmuLL: Two things pop into my mind. The first one comes from being in a position where I can see world-class people on both the art and technical sides. With both groups of people, there’s a creative axis and there’s an organization axis of managing and making things happen. If you look at these criteria, the distribution of creative and organization skills is the same in both groups. People might think that artists are less organized. It turns out it’s all nonsense.

hanRahan: I agree completely. Most people think scientists are these really precise, rational, organized people, and artists are these imaginative, emotional, unpredictable people.

Ca TmuLL: What you find is that some artists actually are that way, and some are extremely precise and know what they want. They’re organized. They lead others. They’re inspirational.

hanRahan: There’s an incredible craft to it, too. Both the craft of programming and the craft of art can be very detailed and precise.

Ca TmuLL: If you think about the craft of laying out a major software system, you have an architect, and you have a lot of people contributing to it. Well, in a film the director is an architect who is orchestrating contributions from a lot of people and seeing how it all fits together. The organizational skills to do that are similar. We have production people on films. Well, we have production managers in software who help organize and put things together. They’re not writing the code, but they’re making sure that the people work together and that they’re communicating. There are good ones and bad ones, but the structure is the same.