As Pixar readies the release of "Inside Out," we pay a visit to the animation studio's Bay Area campus (pictured); former NBA star Baron Davis co-directed a documentary that takes him back to his basketball roots; the Ojai Music Festival presents the West Coast premiere of a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams.
Inside Out: Touring Pixar headquarters to find out what makes their movies special
One of the most successful movie studios in Hollywood is actually located 374 miles north of Los Angeles. Pixar Animation Studios is headquartered in Emeryville — across the Bay from San Francisco. Its physical distance from the center of the movie business is just one factor in why this studio doesn’t seem to function like all the others.
At its start, Pixar was a technology company that branched off into computer effects for live-action films. Then, almost 20 years ago, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, Pixar released a movie called “Toy Story” and began its long run of both critically and commercially successful computer animated films.
As the studio preps to release “Inside Out” next week — its first film since 2013 — we visited Pixar to find out what makes this movie studio so different.
The first thing that strikes you when you arrive at Pixar is that it looks more like a private college campus than a studio lot. There’s a peaceful, tree-lined walkway, a swimming pool, a beach volleyball court, and an outdoor amphitheater. (On the day we stopped by, hundreds of employees were enjoying a gourmet chocolate festival).
Outside the doors into Pixar’s central building, there’s a giant statue of Luxo Jr., the animated desk lamp character that jumps on top of the “I” in Pixar at the start of every one of the studio’s films.
As we entered the main building — a massive two-story steel and masonry structure, with plenty of skylights and a central atrium — we met with someone who’s spent his whole adult life at Pixar after starting work there as an intern many years ago.
“1994. It was the last year of the production of 'Toy Story.' So, yeah, it’s been a while," says Jonas Rivera. He's currently a producer on "Inside Out," as well as our tour guide for the day.
We begin by walking across a sky bridge overlooking the expansive atrium and cafeteria — run by the chef that the company says it stole away from Google.
All around us are other signifiers that we’re not in Hollywood. Pixar is a blend of technology and creativity and Jonas sees this in the design of the main building itself.
"I think about it almost like a brain, where there's a left brain and a right brain. I mean, if you stand in the middle of the atrium and you look to the left side, the west side of the building is mostly engineering, programming, computer science, and the modeling. If you go to this side, the east side, or the right side literally, it is animation, art, story," Rivera says.
That metaphor extends to the people themselves.
"You might notice that the halls are a little messier on this side, and things are a little bit more put together on the left side. I always thought of it as those two groups of people wouldn't necessarily hang out at the same parties, so Pixar is built by design to collude that. So that the peanut butter gets in the chocolate, so to speak. And the meeting and the collision of the computer science and the art is what equates to the imagery and stories that we produce," Rivera says.
As we walked with Rivera across the sky bridge we had a view of a enormous glass-walled meeting room where Pixar’s top creative talent was gathered for one of their famous "Story Trust" meetings, where some of Pixar’s top directors were reviewing a planned sequel to “Cars.”
"This was obviously built and designed by Steve Jobs," Rivera says. "I call it the cathedral to animation."
They were having some fun — John Lasseter threw up a non-PG hand gesture at our group while "Inside Out" director Pete Docter waved.
"What's happening in that room is they're having a Story Trust meeting. They just had a screening of one of our films in development, as we do on 'Inside Out,' we do on 'Up,' we do on all the films. They're having a meeting where they watch the story reels, and they get the Brain Trust, with Andrew Stanton, and John Lasseter, and Pete Docter, and they kick around the ideas," Rivera says.
Those thoughts help produce the trademark Pixar final product.
"And they go around the table and they give each other notes on all the films, and then that's the process. Then the film is re-written, and re-cut, and re-boarded to make it work," Rivera says.
The fact that the Brain Trust was working on a third “Cars” movie reflects one criticism of Pixar — that the studio, like the rest of Hollywood, has become too reliant on sequels rather than original stories.
We later met up with Pixar producer Galyn Susman — who is currently in pre-production on another sequel, "Toy Story 4" — which is not slated for release until 2017. Looking at the Story Trust meeting, we noted that among the several dozen people in the conference room, there were very few women.
"I think animation has traditionally been a very male-dominated environment. Entertainment directors are predominantly male. The Brain Trust is composed predominantly of directors, co-directors, heads of story, writers. Industry speaking, those are roles that are usually filled by men. It's certainly something that we're sensitive to, it's certainly something that we're working on. We are constantly looking for female talent within the industry," Susman says.
Just as in the movie business and nearby Silicon Valley, there aren’t a lot of women working at Pixar.
In 2010, Brenda Chapman — who wrote the story for "Brave" and was to direct it as well — was pulled off the project. The film would’ve been the first directed by a woman. To this day, women have produced and had writing credits on the studio's films, but none of the 16 Pixar movies — that includes the two due out this year — have been directed by a woman.
"If women are moving away from technology because they’re intimidated by technology, because technology is not being — I mean, I could go on on this topic forever," Susman says. "It's not being packaged in a way that's appealing for young girls, young women to get involved. Then all of the ones that went into art because they were driven away from technology aren’t coming to Pixar, because it’s really the marriage of the worst possible combination for them."
While that marriage of art and technology might be a barrier for women getting into the studio, the mash-up is a key ingredient to Pixar’s creative process.
"Somebody from technical might have a really smart way that they're handling some sort of rendering or imagery that could inform how one of our designers who's painting it might do it," Rivera says. "["Inside Out" character] Joy is a really good example, our character with the broiling energy. One of the images that led to how we actually did it was a mistake that someone wasn't going to show, and I don't know if it was myself, or Michael Fong, our supervising technical director saw it, said 'No no no, that's really cool.'"
The “Joy” that producer Jonas Rivera refers to is one of the five emotions inside a young girl’s mind in "Inside Out," which hits theaters on June 19.
The hallways at Pixar are lined with drawings and models of characters from “Inside Out.” There are preliminary sketches and small, three-dimensional sculptures, called maquettes, of the emotions that tell the story of the new film — Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. Also on display are artistic renderings of what the inside of the young girl’s mind at the center of “Inside Out” looks like.
The designs dramatize Pixar’s process of trial and error, and how Pixar finds its way to the final product.
In fact, Pixar has been known to tear apart a film in the middle of, and even near the end of production, basically starting all over again.
"All of our movies at some point have had either a blowup, or a reversal, or a huge idea that's born out of one of these meetings. I guess the point is that the fact that you have to screen, and put the movie up, and stand in front of everybody, in front of your peers, is part of the ignition that keeps us moving forward," Rivera says.
Whereas most studios churn out somewhere around a dozen films a year, Pixar has never released more than one movie in a single year. In fact, Pixar didn’t even made a movie last year — Pixar’s last release was 2013’s “Monsters University.”
Pixar is famously relentless about putting its storytelling under scrutiny — if something isn’t working, it’s ditched. When meetings get tense and when the Brain Trust hits a creative roadblock and a director can’t figure out how a movie can be saved, “Inside Out" co-director Ronnie del Carmen says the company turns to an unusual solution.
"I hold a mean caricature night, and we draw the most savage, mean caricatures of each other while having pizza and beer."
Yes, the Pixar team insults each other to spark creativity.
"And you laugh. It lets off so much steam! You're laughing and thinking, 'That is horrible! Why do I have three eyes? Why do I have fangs? Why do I have an elephant trunk?' Then it kind of lets off the pressure, and somehow actually helps in solving the problem."
For all of the talk about the marriage of art and technology and the chef from Google and the open atrium, the one thing that Pixar prides itself on more than anything else is storytelling, and doing whatever it takes to get that story right.
"Our process is jumping out of a plane and building a parachute on the way down. That's what we do. We’re just like, 'Here we go!'"
Ojai Music Festival: John Luther Adams writes music meant to be heard outdoors
The Ojai Music Festival has been going strong for nearly 70 years. Past music directors have included classical giants like Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez. The natural beauty of the valley town, 90 minutes up the coast from Los Angeles, has been the setting for a lot of new music during that time. This year’s festival is no exception.
Under music director Steven Schick, there will be several premieres of new orchestral and percussion music. The main event, though, is the West Coast premiere of a piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams. (Not to be confused with the other Pulitzer-winning composer John Adams.)
John Luther Adams has been writing music inspired by nature for the concert hall for four decades. But a few years ago, out in the Anza Borrego Desert, he had an epiphany.
“I heard my percussion work 'Strange and Sacred Noise' performed outside for the first time,” he recalls. “[It’s] a concert-length piece for percussion that celebrates noise — noise as a metaphor for elemental violence in nature, noise as a gateway to ecstatic experience. It’s this big, powerful, almost frightening piece, that’s intended to be heard in a concert hall.
“Within a few minutes, I realized that my big, scary noise was really not so big, and not so scary, and most of it just blew away in the wind. And it was right about then that I realized, 'Oh, after 40 years of making music inspired by the big world, but heard in the small world — indoors, in concert halls — maybe it was time to step outside, and make music that’s intended from the start to be performed and heard, experienced, out of doors.'”
Adams responded by writing a piece called "Inuksuit" for up to 99 percussionists, which had its West Coast premiere at the Ojai Music Festival in 2012. This year, Adams was commissioned to write another piece for the festival.
“'Inuksuit,' the percussion piece, is earth,” he says. “And after earth, I decided it was time for air. And the result is 'Sila: The Breath of the World.'”
“My image of the piece is really quite simple,” he explains. “It comes up, very slowly, out of the earth, out of these very low sounds — of bass drums and double basses and bassoons and tubas. And over the course of an hour or so, it just gradually rises up through this series of harmonic clouds and goes out and rises, and blows away in the wind.
“'Sila' is an Inuit word that means ‘the breath of the world.’ It’s an experience that exists, of course, in cultures throughout history, all around the world. For the Navajo people, it’s Ních'i, it’s the holy wind. In China, it’s qi. It’s the wind. Yes, it’s the weather. But it’s also our awareness of the world, and the world’s awareness of us. So the idea of this piece is that it’s difficult to say where the piece begins, and where the world takes over. It comes out of the never-ending music of the place, and it recedes back into the breath of the world.”
Composer John Adams with the winds and reeds section before rehearsing "Sila" in Ojai's Libbey Park. (Tim Greiving/KPCC)
"Sila" will be performed in Ojai’s Libbey Park by 80 musicians, made up of CalArts students, the percussion group Red Fish Blue Fish and ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble). Musicians will be stationed throughout the park in clusters based on their instrument, and audience members are encouraged to walk through the park during the performance, stick to one spot — or do whatever they want.
“I think a piece of standard classical music, played in a concert hall, postulates an idealized experience,” says Schick. “It’s what it’s all about. 'This is the way the piece should sound.’ But you can’t really say that about 'Sila,' because there’s not a single way that piece should sound, and therefore there’s not a single way that people should perceive it.”
Schick has been friends with Adams since the ’90s, and was key in commissioning "Sila" for the festival.
"The thing that I love about his music is it helps people learn to listen in a more intense and penetrating way,” says Schick. “One of the most beautiful things about 'Sila' are these boundary moments, where things shift, where a new sound comes, or when an old sound dissipates. The biggest of those boundary moments is the end of the piece, where it starts to fade into the sounds of the environment. And when you’re listening that intently, you’re listening to this as music, and you bring the intensity of that listening.”
It seems risky to premiere a relatively quiet piece of orchestral music in a public park. But Adams says there’s really no such thing as unwanted noise.
“As John Cage pointed out, most of what we hear, wherever we are, is noise,” says Adams. “And when we try to ignore it, it disturbs us. But when we embrace it, when we listen to it, we find it endlessly fascinating. So the idea here, I guess, is that the whole world is music. So, rather than concentrating our listening inward, it’s an invitation to open our awareness, to listen outward, to hear as many different sounds as we can hear at once — to hear as far as we can hear, to hear things that we can’t see. It’s a fundamentally different relationship to music, to listening, and I would say it invites a different mode of awareness. You might say it invites ecological listening.”
The Ojai Music Festival runs through Sunday, June 14.
Former NBA star Baron Davis's 'The Drew' goes back to where he started playing ball
Former NBA star Baron Davis is honoring his roots with his new documentary, "The Drew: No Excuse, Just Produce." The film focuses on "The Drew," a venue and league located in South Central Los Angeles, which acts as a safe haven allowing basketball players from all walks of life to come together for the love of the game.
Interview highlights
I first went down at the Drew and played — I think I was 13 years old on that Thursday — and it was grown men playing, and I was just like, "Yo, I want to be here." It was the closest thing I had seen to an NBA game. So to be able to do that and then to be put in the game and to play, I felt like it was going to be my destiny to play basketball. The Drew was like that introduction as a kid. It was a very hostile environment.
What do you mean hostile environment?
You know, it was a Thursday night outside the middle school. There are maybe four or five different gangs that surround the school and the neighborhood. In that period of time, gang violence was at an all-time high. Anytime you're outside — especially at night time, anything can happen.
But what happens inside the Drew, if you are familiar with L.A. gang culture, is that you have a head coach who is a Blood, his assistant coach who is a Crip, and you have players from different gangs on the same team. So the basketball court in some ways is a level playing field.
Yeah, it's a safe haven. The great thing about L.A. is that all these guys went to high school together, and basketball is the thing that kind of claimed their innocence. So in a place like the Drew, you get these guys that are adults and who have had different problems in their lives able to come together on the weekend, relive the innocence of their childhood, and do something that ultimately helps them better themselves as people.
You are the director and producer of the film, but you are also a participant in it. There is a lot of footage of you playing in it. Why did you want to make the movie? You talk about this "hidden oasis." It's not just about showing people what happened on this basketball court. It's really about what what happened on this basketball court represented in terms of possibility in your life and in other people's lives.
Absolutely. It was a sense of community. This was the one time when all the pros in L.A. were going down to the neighborhood and shining the light on the neighborhood. That allowed for everybody to have a positive impact and an effect. So for me it came across as, I need to capture this.
It's clear that this environment changed you as a person, but did it change you as a player? There is a style of playing Drew that I would call muscular and physical. This is not Steph Curry shooting three pointers from the perimeter. This is a physical, in your face, very tough game. Did it change you as a player?
Absolutely. I mean even at the age of 13 when I first started , I was playing on the court with grown men and turning the ball over in the clutch. You know, you're going to get cussed out. You think you're going to get beat up after the game.
It toughens you up.
You talk about being tough, and then when you finally become something and you become somebody, there are always guys who didn't make it or guys that you looked up to, and when you finally get a chance to play against them they just take it to you, you know? There are a lot of guys in L.A. that didn't make it — that even when I made it were always tough for me to play against, and it made me a better player.
You grew up in South Central, but you went to school at Crossroads, which is a school where there are a lot of industry people. Did that at all have any bearing on your wanting to be a filmmaker? Were you around any kids whose dads were studio executives, filmmakers or directors?
Yeah, for sure. Growing up in South Central for me, I kind of lived through books and lived through stories. When I got to a school like Crossroads, I was around people that were actually making these stories happen and responsible for this television. So for me it became a matter of finding a place where I love storytelling. It was just a great school that kind of nurtured everything that you wanted to do, and being so close to it and having these stories — it was just something that always burned in the back of my mind. That is why I always took the opportunities that I did at this school.
You could see it was possible.
Yeah, for sure. Like, "Oh, wow, your dad did that?" or "Your mom made that?" To sometimes be able to go on set or be with a friend, and they're going to their parents' place and it's in a studio, it's like, wow. It's crazy how if you feel something, touch something, or are in a place, you can actually dream your way there.
Do you ever go back? What does it mean to you? What does that neighborhood represent? What are its challenges going forward?
It put me back into the state where I was a dreamer, and allowed me to basically become grounded. So anytime, no matter where I live, I go back to my neighborhood, because it grounds me, and there are so many stories that tell the story of people who live in impoverished communities.
These could be positive stories. These could be great stories that give people hope, and those are the first few that I wanted to tell.
Davis's documentary screens June 13 and 15 at the Los Angeles Film Festival.