What I Learned from Pixar

The most important piece of advice I learned from Pixar is how to develop a story. Many things are put into play, like the world and the character. The world is referring to the environment and the character is the subject we follow on the story; specifically a subject the watcher can grasp onto. When creating my film, I have to think what the beginning would look like and how my character acts. A tip from Pixar was to think of how our character would react if they were stuck in a elevator or pretending you are getting to know someone new. This helps envision the character in a different way and is called fully developed. Then think about what in their environment changes to put forward an obstacle and how that obstacle would help pertain to their wants and needs. This is known as a character arc; bringing the character from their basic form to their better self. Another great idea was to think what is at stake if the character doesn't succeed. The higher the risk the more interesting the film will be. This brings me to think about what hard obstacles I will need to put in front of my character to make it almost impossible to succeed but possible because they will. Last fact of the matter was the external features of the character like jewelry and clothing. This thought hadn't occurred to me because the way I thought of my short film story was through people that faces were black out. So one of my first jobs of this project is figuring out what kind of character I want and how their style compliments them.