Chapter 339: An Unrealistic Plan
Chapter 339: An Unrealistic Plan
Although the studio had undergone earthshaking changes over the past year, Pixar’s employees had not changed their working style at all. It was still just as casual as when Eric first saw it a year ago.
Other than when they passed through the office area and a young female employee recognized Eric, calling over a group of girls to ask for autographs, his arrival did not cause much of a reaction.
Inside a screening room, Eric watched the completed footage of Toy Story together with John Lasseter and several other Pixar executives.
Although there was no sound, the completed footage was already extremely entertaining. At the very least, Joanna, seated beside Eric, watched it with complete fascination from beginning to end.
Compared to the version in Eric’s memories, this version of Toy Story had indeed improved greatly in terms of detail. The visuals were more delicate and realistic, and the movements of the toys were far more lively.
After watching the completed footage, Eric chatted with John Lasseter for a while and gave the finished material considerable praise before John Lasseter finally asked:
“Eric, I assume you didn’t come here today just to see the results of our production work, right?”
Eric smiled slightly and pointed at Pixar’s Chief Technical Officer seated beside John Lasseter.
“Of course. Actually, I came to see Mr. Ed Catmull.”
Ed Catmull had not seemed particularly interested the entire time. If not for Eric being the big boss, he would already have buried himself in his office researching technology. Compared to socializing, he much preferred work.
Only when Eric suddenly pointed at him did Ed Catmull snap out of a technical problem he had been pondering.
“You came to see me?”
“Yes. Let’s talk in the conference room instead,” Eric said as he stood up.
The group moved into the conference room. Eric sat at the head of the table while Allen pulled out a stack of documents from his briefcase and distributed them to Ed Catmull and John Lasseter.
“Originally, Mr. Stan Winston was also supposed to come, but he got tied up with some matters and couldn’t get away, so I had no choice but to come discuss this as an outsider. Although I’ve reviewed some materials beforehand, if there’s anything unrealistic about this plan, feel free to point it out at any time.”
Hearing Eric speak so seriously, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter both nodded solemnly.
Eric quickly continued:
“This is a plan I came up with during the filming of Ghost with Stan’s assistance. It’s a software engineering proposal for film and television special effects technology. Take a look first, and we’ll discuss it afterward.”
Only then did Ed Catmull and John Lasseter open the documents Allen had distributed.
As they read through the material, John Lasseter remained relatively calm, but Ed Catmull revealed a shocked expression.
After all, he held a doctorate in computer technology, so he had a much deeper understanding of the enormous scale of the plan Eric proposed with just a little imagination.
In the documents, Eric proposed what Ed Catmull considered a somewhat unrealistic concept.
He wanted to create a top-tier technical team that would software-engineer the computer special effects technologies used in future films.
Normally, in a movie requiring computer effects, when a director encountered a problem—for example, wanting a living human figure in a shot to melt like a heated candle—the engineers in the computer effects department would specifically develop corresponding program code to solve that problem.
Under ordinary circumstances, once the problem was solved, that code would become useless data.
But in Eric’s vision, he wanted to further process that “useless data” into fixed software packages so that if the same type of special effects problem appeared again, they could directly reuse the software.
Although many films had already begun using computers to create special effects, the industry overall was still in an era dominated by model effects.
Therefore, in the eyes of industry insider Ed Catmull, Eric’s proposal was extremely unrealistic and tremendously wasteful.
After all, simply developing code to solve special effects problems already consumed enormous amounts of time and effort. Turning those solutions into software afterward would waste even more time and money.
Moreover, whether that software could even be used again in the future was a major uncertainty.
The two carefully finished reading Eric’s proposal before looking up.
Eric shrugged.
“All right. If you have any questions, just ask directly. John, you first.”
“Eric, I think this is completely unnecessary. It’s too wasteful,” John Lasseter said bluntly.
“And you, Ed?”
“My opinion is the same as John’s. This is a very wasteful endeavor,” Ed Catmull said.
“Take Toy Story for example. In order to make Cowboy Woody’s facial expressions appear more realistic, our team spent an entire month writing corresponding program code before solving the issue.
But if we wanted to turn that set of code into software, the time consumed would definitely exceed the time spent writing the original code.
And after turning it into software, we’d also need to continuously upgrade and maintain it as computer hardware evolves, which would become another major expense.
As for whether that software could be used again in the future, that’s very difficult to say clearly.
Even if Toy Story gets sequels, the software could only be reused three or four times at most. Maybe four or five.”
Eric nodded.
“I understand what you mean. But I’ve already provided a solution for that issue in the proposal.
We would establish a highly professional evaluation team to assess the usability of special effects programs, categorize the code developed by technicians to solve effects problems, and then select the programs most likely to be used again in the future for software engineering.”
John Lasseter still asked:
“Eric, I want to know why you want to do this. Right now, very few films use computer special effects, and compared to computer effects, model effects are far cheaper and often far more realistic.
I honestly can’t imagine any producer abandoning cheap and realistic model effects just to use expensive computer effects that don’t even look very good.”
Eric replied:
“Because I have a feeling that computer special effects will become the mainstream of future film and television effects.
Right now, I can’t prove what I’m saying.
But it won’t be long before you understand. Once James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day and my Jurassic Park project are completed, you’ll definitely realize it.”