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I hate posting about Pixar stories because the Steve Jobs omerta still lives strong in me... but what the hell. I couldn't watch the video because I'm on a tra

by far33d 17y ago

I hate posting about Pixar stories because the Steve Jobs omerta still lives strong in me... but what the hell. I couldn't watch the video because I'm on a train - however, I worked at Pixar from 2002 - 2008, so I'm pretty sure I know exactly what this video is about. This story was legendary inside the studio - I never thought it would get outside the gates. In some ways, the fact that this had happened in the past, when the assets for a film might actually fit on a single workstation, was great. Everyone was more careful. The Systems group was great at backups, recovery, and did an amazing job the whole time I was there, and I'm sure this story always sat in the back of their minds as a reminder of why they spent all the extra time and money. The one time I accidentally locally deleted a day's work, I had a recovery in my home directory in less than an hour.

jakarta 17y ago
Have you read The Pixar Touch? If so - what did you think? The feeling I got from the book, was that Steve Jobs was really bad when it came to the vision for Pixar. He had 0 faith in their movie making abilities, but the Pixar team managed to 'wag the dog' long enough for them to actually produce movies and validate their reason for being to the rest of the world.
- yardie 17y ago
  The guy wrote million dollar checks every year for 10 years to keep that company running. If that's not a big leap of faith ( losing money for a decade?!) then what do you consider faith.
  - jakarta 17y ago
    The vibe I got from the book, which is why I asked the OP's opinion was that Steve Jobs did not believe in their movie business, his vision was that Pixar would market computers capable of producing Pixar-level graphics to ordinary consumers. He didn't see Pixar as a movie studio. But the folks at Pixar wanted to make movies. So what they did was convince him that by doing work on movies and commercials, they could advertise the capabilities of their tools. Eventually, they were able to buy enough time to get their work recognized and the Toy Story deal going which validated their vision and won Steve Jobs over to the movie studio idea.

by far33d 17y ago

jakarta 17y ago

Have you read The Pixar Touch? If so - what did you think? The feeling I got from the book, was that Steve Jobs was really bad when it came to the vision for Pixar. He had 0 faith in their movie making abilities, but the Pixar team managed to 'wag the dog' long enough for them to actually produce movies and validate their reason for being to the rest of the world.

yardie 17y ago
The guy wrote million dollar checks every year for 10 years to keep that company running. If that's not a big leap of faith ( losing money for a decade?!) then what do you consider faith.
- jakarta 17y ago
  The vibe I got from the book, which is why I asked the OP's opinion was that Steve Jobs did not believe in their movie business, his vision was that Pixar would market computers capable of producing Pixar-level graphics to ordinary consumers. He didn't see Pixar as a movie studio. But the folks at Pixar wanted to make movies. So what they did was convince him that by doing work on movies and commercials, they could advertise the capabilities of their tools. Eventually, they were able to buy enough time to get their work recognized and the Toy Story deal going which validated their vision and won Steve Jobs over to the movie studio idea.