Research into Pixar.

Pixar.

In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios started to make a big impact on the film making business with their first release, Disney·Pixar's Toy Story. Pixar was founded in 1986 but Toy Story was their biggest and best (most popular) piece of work and was loved by all. Toy Story reflected years of expert animating and enthusiastic work done by some of the leading scientists and creative team members. The making of Toy Story was heavily influenced by President Ed Catmull and Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter. The first production by Pixar went on to get the highest profit of a film in that year, with $362 million worldwide. The director of Toy Story, was awarded with a Special Achievement Academy Award for his exceptional work on Toy Story which was the first full length animation.

Since Pixar was founded the high firing animation company has also created and produced a number of successful box office films which include: A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009) and just now in 2010 the long awaited Toy Story 3. The afore mentioned films came together to earn a combined gross of $6 billion at the worldwide box office. Most of Pixar's success came from some of these films which 35 Academy Award nominations, 9 Oscars, 6 Golden Globes.


Within Pixar's creative team they have given audiences of all ages some of the most memorable characters ever to grace cinema-screens and home television. Some members of the Pixar team that made Toy Story in 1995 have gone on to great things that have massively impacted the world we know today. One of these is Steve Jobs who is now the CEO of multi billionaire company Apple who rivaled Bill Gates' company Microsoft with their computers and other technology.  Jobs no owns 5.426 million shares of Apple.


Pixar also collaborated with some huge household names such as: Disney who worked on Toy Story, The Incredible, Up and many more. They also are in progress shooting the brand new film and sequel to Cars 2 which is set to hit screens soon.

Short film by Pixar

Disney announced on January 24, 2006 that it had agreed to buy Pixar for approximately $7.4 billion in an all stock deal, which pushed aside majority share-holder Steve Jobs, but also gave him the individual majority share-holder and also granted him a seat and a place in their board of directors, this simply added to the massive amount of shares and wealth of Steve Jobs.

Up (2009)

WALL-E (2008)

We think that our animation would be perfect for Pixar to distribute as it strongly fits in with there other productions such as Toy Story and Monsters inc. We think this because of the target age group for the productions and the over-all style of the animation. although ours and Pixar's films are similar in the genre and style we also realise that our productions budget is a far cry from the millions of dollars that were pumped into the making of their films. Our film would also massively benefit from the input that Pixar would be able provide as their expertise, equipment and the budget that would be available.
our film also has some major differences to Pixar's films mainly to do with budget reasons, like the animation that was used.

Toy Story 2 Pixar (1999) evaluation

Toy Story 2 Pixar (1999)

We have chosen to compare our film to Toy Story 2 produced by Pixar. We feel our film has many similarities and differences which will be outlined in this evaluation. 

Buzz Lightyear - Toy Story

First of all, both films are animated and mainly for children. We can tell this by the use of bright and simple colours. Also the characters of both film opening are likable, interesting and friendly. The characters from Toy Story 2 are good as children can relate to them and they look up to them, whereas in our Children's Film the characters are living their dream as their hero has come to visit them, but Toy Story 2 is basically the lives of Toy's from their owner Andy.   

The music of the Toy Story 2 opening titles fits well with starting action, this music is dramatic and exciting, however the music for Jericho is more calm because there is less action. But this music fits with our style of film and the action on screen. When the main title of Jericho comes on screen the music changes and becomes more entertaining and upbeat.

Toy Story 2's classification is the same as our film which is Universal 'U' as the film basis for Toy Story 2 is for 4 and above, but our film age range is from 2 to 8 years old which falls under the Universal category.

Uses typewriter for part of intro text, whereas we use normal text on FinalCut and use motion keyframes.

Toy Story 2 uses fades at the beginning and end of the sequences and use continuity editing during the opening scene. We only used fade at the beginning of our sequence and the scene we made used limited continuity editing as it was mostly one camera angle. Toy story 2 used a full range of shots including Close ups, long shots medium shots. They also used camera techniques such as panning and tracking. We did not use these camera techniques in our scene.

Close-up shot

Low angle shot

Point-of-view shot

                                                                      Toy Story 1, (1996) Disney, Pixar

The film that we have chosen is Toy story, which we feel is most similar to our animation. This is because it includes fictional characters coming to life and having an adventure, it also includes small children who have some kind of love for the fictional characters. Another similarity would be that in both ours and toy story the soundtrack to the film starts during the first title sequence before the film has started properly. The soundtrack to the film also tells the mood of the characters and the film, for example when Jericho the superhero comes out of the T.V screen. both films have a rather light-hearted theme and atmosphere, with a simple plot beginning to reveal itself to the audience. both films have a similar target audience, ranging from around the ages of 3 - 8 although Toy Story and Jericho alike would probably be watched by a varying audience of young and old. One similarity that we noticed was that from the very start we got to know the main characters for the film, including Jericho from our sequence and Woody from Toy Story.

However between our film and Toy story there are some differences such as, Toy Story's title sequence is rolling over the top of the beginning to the film.

This sequence introduces the main people who were involved in the making of the film. In our film we chose to use one type of shot throughout the opening sequence, whereas in Toy Story they use various shots, including panning, close ups and long shots. This would have been harder to perform in our animation as we did not have the time or a sizable budget like the makers of Toy Story would have had. In our film we chose to use narration to tell the story of our film, but in Toy story they used the characters to start telling the story. Toy story also simply used the events to tell us what was happening whereas this had less of a part in our film. Like in Toy story the young boy's birthday tells us what might happen.

Toy Story uses a lot of CGI (this helps to give a good flowing motion picture, as we could not use this facility ours was much more jumpy) in the film to give a very professional effect to their animation, however we did not have the budget or time that they had, and maybe to improve our film we could have used this. we used 'Istop motion' animation in our production which was very good for a simple and effective opening sequence.

Final Cut, iStop and Garageband Screen Grabs

From this project we have learnt to use the following

• To use titles in our sequence
• Fade in and out
• Use of iStopMotion
• Use motion keyframes to animate letters/text of the title sequence
• Adding Text to our film
• Using the volume control in Garageband
• Using motion keyframes to animate text
• Adding markers in FinalCut to make timing more precise
• Fading in/out music on GarageBand

Jericho - comments.

Camera-work, All establishing shots no close ups or other shots included.
                      , All very steady camera-work
                      , All mostly one angle, could experimented with other angles.
                      , No movement in camera-work
Sound, No unnecessary sound
          , music fitted well with the fact it was a childrens film and theme.
          , No unwanted background was captured during the sequence.
Conventions, title clearly shown
                   , showed all names involved clearly
                   , story and characters introduced well
                   , could be more info on characters names.
Mise en scene, use of animation is smooth but sometimes jerky
                      , title movement smooth
                      , lighting was natural
                      , location and setting easily established
                      , colours bright good for kids
Target Audience, 2 - 8 simple story line but still some action.
Edting, The editing is very smooth and makes it look very professional. the editing in continual.

It would be suitable for local film festivals as a small independent production company would be welcome there and gain comunity support

Jericho - Children's Film Final video