谈皮克斯的访谈

原文标题: Interview about Pixar

背景: 1996年11月22日，史蒂夫讨论了领导皮克斯、工作室未来的战略，以及为后代创造故事的特权。

主题: "将这些故事放入文化中……是一个难得的机会"

核心概念

  1. 好莱坞vs硅谷 (Hollywood vs Silicon Valley) - 两种文化的融合挑战
  2. 权力倒置 (Inverted Hierarchy) - CEO在底部为人才服务
  3. 故事永恒 (Stories are Eternal) - 技术短暂，故事长存
  4. 迪士尼智慧 (Disney Wisdom) - 制作之前编辑电影
  5. 文化机会 (Cultural Opportunity) - 将故事放入文化的难得机会

内容

中文翻译

Q: 你需要做什么，个人（学习成为电影制作人）和作为商人，来把公司带到今天的位置？

史蒂夫·乔布斯: 嗯，皮克斯是一个工作室。我不是电影制作人。我不导演我们的电影。[……]我试图做的是帮助创造环境，让所有这些不可思议的人能制作电影。我们在行业中有真正独特的东西，最好的创意人才只会去少数几个地方工作：迪士尼、皮克斯，可能梦工厂。同样，最好的计算机图形计算机科学家也只会去少数几个地方工作。皮克斯是其中之一，但大多数工作室不是，因为他们没有[我们的]技术水平。我认为皮克斯是世界上唯一能吸引这两个领域最好人才的地方。我们花了十年时间想办法让他们一起工作，这不容易，因为好莱坞文化和硅谷文化真的不同。我们认为我们挑选了两者的最好部分。

Q: 我听说皮克斯没有合同，这和很多好莱坞制作不同。背后的哲学是什么？

SJ: 在这种[文化]融合中，我们遇到的一件事是，好莱坞文化和硅谷文化使用不同的员工保留模式。好莱坞用棍子，就是合同。硅谷用胡萝卜，就是股票期权。我们非常详细地审视了这两者：经济上，还有某种程度上心理和文化上。你会得到什么样的文化？

虽然有很多理由想在电影期间锁定你的员工，因为如果有人离开，你知道你有风险，但硅谷也有同样的危险。在工程项目期间，你不想失去人，然而[硅谷]设法发展了合同之外的另一个系统。在这种情况下我们更喜欢硅谷模式：给人们公司股票，这样我们都有相同的目标，就是创造股东价值。

但[没有合同]也让我们每天都在担心如何让皮克斯成为我们能做到的最好的公司，这样没人会想离开。当你和某人签合同时，你可以说，"好吧，我不必担心那个人五年。"你知道？如果你真的老练，你会有一个小数据库，在他们的合同到期前六个月提醒你，这样你可以开始给他们更多关注。他们在六个月里是世界上最重要的人，然后他们再次签约后，你把他们放进抽屉。

我们的系统有点不同。我们每天都担心如何让皮克斯成为更好的公司，这样没人会想离开，所以我们不会把任何人视为理所当然。因为他们如果不想在皮克斯，那么也许他们无论如何都应该离开——不管他们是否有合同。

SJ: 在技术方面，在皮克斯创意方面，你有非常有才华的人，也很稀有和抢手。如果你对他们不好，他们十分钟内就能找到另一份工作。对吧？

所以一件奇怪的事发生了：权力等级倒置了，CEO实际上在底部。我有点感觉我为这些人中的大多数工作，因为他们正在做所有出色的工作。

在软件中也是一样。同样的事情。最好的人很难找到，所以管理层的任务是支持他们，因为他们在前线做工作。

Q: 你与皮克斯的关系与路易斯·B·梅耶或其他伟大的制片厂负责人有什么不同，他们可能不是导演或制片人本身，但肯定对做什么有很大影响？

SJ: 嗯，我们是一家小工作室，所以我们不想让任何这一切冲昏头脑。

我们正在做的是建立一家伟大的动画工作室。我们非常专注于此。另一家伟大的动画工作室当然是迪士尼。他们做了令人难以置信的工作。故事片动画真的是迪士尼的核心；他们创造了所有真正为主题公园注入生命的角色特许经营。如果你看看[迪士尼]的利润来自哪里，其中很大一部分依赖于故事片动画，主题公园也是。

我们做的是纯粹致力于建立一家故事片动画工作室。我的角色是试着理解我们需要哪些部分来做到这一点，与每个人一起工作来吸引和留住这样做的人，并制定清晰的战略。还有[我]帮助与迪士尼和其他人的关系。

我非常享受。我们在皮克斯有一群不可思议的人，所以我学到很多。我学到很多。

SJ: 我喜欢进去帮忙，在我能帮忙的地方。但我最大的快乐是当我们有比我更好的人时，这样我就可以忘记它，不用担心它，去做我可以帮忙的其他事情。

SJ: 制作动画电影与制作真人电影完全不同。当你制作真人电影时，导演通常会拍摄比最终出现在屏幕上的多十到二十五倍的镜头。他们把它带进剪辑室，然后他们建造他们的电影。希望他们能做好，因为他们做不到，那就太晚了——演员走了，布景拆了。

沃尔特·迪士尼几十年前就意识到，动画太贵了，你买不起比你需要的多十倍的镜头。事实上，你甚至不想比你需要的多动画10%。因此，你唯一能得出的结论是，你必须在制作之前编辑你的电影。迪士尼开创了很多这样做的技术，并在过去六十年里完善了它们。

与迪士尼合作让我们获得了无法购买也无法用金钱购买的智慧：制作数十部故事片动画电影的智慧和经验。我认为我们学到了很多。

SJ: 十年前，当我们制作里程碑式短片《小台灯》时，平均每帧渲染大约需要三小时。快进到今天。计算机快了一百倍，然而在《玩具总动员》中，平均每帧渲染仍然需要三小时。原因是这些镜头在很多情况下复杂了一百倍。

我们在第二部故事片，代号《虫虫危机》，上投入的计算能力是《玩具总动员》的五到十倍。每帧仍然需要三小时渲染。我们的视觉抱负随着技术能喂养它们的速度增长。所以我认为我们将能够创造的视觉世界会随时间变得更加丰富。

但在创意方面，我认为讲故事的艺术非常古老。再多的技术也无法把坏故事变成好故事。[……]讲故事是一门真正的艺术，那是我们将非常非常努力工作的东西。我认为它很久以来没有改变，我不确定它是否会。而且我不认为技术与它有任何关系。

SJ: 你很难再找到Apple II了。你仍然可以在学校找到，但仅此而已。不清楚五年后你是否还能启动麦金塔。所有这些技术盒子和所有软件：它的寿命是一两年，如果你很幸运。如果它有五年的寿命，那就非凡了。偶尔，某样东西有十到十五年的寿命——我很幸运地与其中一些产品相关联。但迟早，它们都成为沉积层的一部分，这是新创新的基础。

[相比之下]迪士尼在1937年发布了第一部故事片动画电影《白雪公主》。那是六十年前。几年前，他们重新在视频上发布它，卖了2800万份，赚取了大约2.5亿美元的利润——在最初发布六十年后！

我有一个小儿子。我们买了《白雪公主》，他很喜欢。他看了三十、四十次。这真的让我震惊，我认识这个世界大多数大陆上的人，我想我认识的每个人都知道《白雪公主》的故事。我想我不认识一个没看过它的人。

看着我儿子看它，这真的让我震惊，这些故事在每一代幼儿中更新自己。你读约瑟夫·坎贝尔；这些是我们的神话。这是六十岁的东西，在我儿子和其他幼儿中更新自己。

而且我认为人们会在六十年后看《玩具总动员》。不是因为计算机图形，而是因为关于友谊的故事。那对我来说真的很神奇，非常不同于我过去工作的行业。

如果我们可以非常努力工作，一次又一次地幸运，有机会将这些故事放入文化中，是一个难得的机会。而且我认为皮克斯的每个人都真的、真的感到有这种机会的特权。

英文原文

Interview about Pixar, Make Something Wonderful

Interview about Pixar

"To put these stories into the culture … is a rare opportunity."

On November 22, 1996, Steve discussed leading Pixar, his strategy for the studio's future, and the privilege of creating stories for future generations.

Q: What kinds of things did you need to do, both personally (learning to become a filmmaker) and as a businessman, to put the company where it is today?

Steve Jobs: Well, Pixar is a studio. I'm not a filmmaker. I don't direct our films. […] What I try to do is help create the environment where all these incredible people can make films. We've got a really unique thing in the industry, in that the very best creative people will only go to work at a few places: Disney, Pixar, possibly DreamWorks. In the same sense, the very best computer scientists in computer graphics will only go to work at a few places. Pixar is one of those, but most of the studios are not because they don't have [our] level of technical culture there. I think Pixar is the only place in the world that can hire the best from both of these areas. And we've worked for ten years to figure out a way to have them all work together, which is not easy, because the Hollywood culture and the Silicon Valley culture are really different. We think we've picked the best from both.

Q: I've heard that there are no contracts at Pixar, and that's different than a lot of Hollywood productions. What's the philosophy behind that?

SJ: In this blending of [cultures], one of the things that we encountered was that the Hollywood culture and the Silicon Valley culture each use different models of employee retention. Hollywood uses the stick, which is the contract. And Silicon Valley uses the carrot, which is the stock option. We examined both of those in really pretty great detail: economically, but also sort of psychologically and culture-wise. What kind of culture do you end up with?

And while there's a lot of reasons to want to lock down your employees for the duration of a film, because if somebody leaves, you know you're at risk, those same dangers exist in Silicon Valley. During an engineering project, you don't want to lose people, and yet [Silicon Valley] managed to evolve another system other than contracts. And we prefer the Silicon Valley model in this case: give people stock in the company so that we all have the same goal, which is to create shareholder value.

But [not having contracts] also makes us constantly worry about making Pixar the greatest company we can, so that nobody would ever want to leave. When you sign a contract with somebody, you can sort of say, "Well, I don't have to worry about that person for five years." You know? And if you're real sophisticated, you'll have a little database that tickles you six months before their contract's up so you can start paying them more attention. And they're the most important person in the world for six months, and then after they sign up again, you put them in a drawer.

Our system's a little different than that. Every single day we worry about how we can make Pixar a better company so that nobody will ever want to leave, and so we don't take anybody for granted. Because if they don't want to be at Pixar, then probably they should leave anyway—whether or not they would ever have a contract.

SJ: In technology, and at Pixar on the creative side, you've got incredibly talented people who are also rare and in demand. If you don't treat them right, they can go get another job in ten minutes. Right?

So a strange thing happens: the hierarchy of power sort of inverts, and the CEO is actually at the bottom. I sort of feel like I work for most of these people because they're the ones that are doing all the brilliant work.

And it's the same in software. It's the same thing. The best people are very hard to come by, and so it's management's job to support them because they're on the front lines doing the work.

Q: How is your relationship with Pixar different than Louis B. Mayer or some of the great studio heads who may not have been directors or producers themselves, but who certainly had a great deal to do with what was done?

SJ: Well, we're a small studio, and so we don't want to let any of this go to our heads.

What we're trying to do is to build a great animation studio. We stay very focused on that. The other great animation studio is, of course, Disney. And they've done an incredible job. Feature animation is really at the heart of Disney; they've created all the character franchises that really breathe life into the theme parks. And if you look at where [Disney's] profits come from, a tremendous amount of it is dependent on feature animation, as are the theme parks.

What we're doing is just a pure play to build a feature animation studio. My role is to try to understand the pieces we need to put in place to do that, to work with everybody to attract and retain the people to do that, and to get a clear strategy in place. And [I] help with the relationships with Disney and other people.

I enjoy it tremendously. We've got an incredible collection of people at Pixar, so I learn a lot. I learn a lot.

SJ: I like to get in there and help where I can. But my greatest joy is when we have people that are much better than I am at something, so I can forget about it, and not worry about it, and get on to something else where I can help.

SJ: Making an animated film is entirely different than making a live-action film. When you make a live-action film, a director typically shoots between ten and twenty-five times as much footage as will end up on the screen. They take that into the editing room and they build their film. And hopefully they can do a good job, because if they can't, it's too late—the actors are gone, the sets are down.

Walt Disney realized many decades ago that animation was so expensive that you couldn't afford to animate ten times more than what you need. Matter of fact, you don't want to animate even 10 percent more than what you need. And therefore, the only conclusion you can come to is, you have to edit your film before you make it. Disney pioneered a lot of techniques for doing that, and they've refined those over the last sixty years.

Working with Disney gave us access to that wisdom that you can't buy for love or money: the wisdom and experience of having made tens of feature animated films. And I think we learned a tremendous amount.

SJ: Ten years ago, when we made the landmark short film Luxo Jr., it took about three hours on average to render each frame. Fast-forward to today. Computers are a hundred times faster, and yet in Toy Story it took three hours on average to render each frame. And the reason was the frames were a hundred times more complex in many cases.

And we're throwing between five and ten times more computer power at our second feature film, code name Bugs, than we did at Toy Story. And it'll still take three hours to render each frame. Our ambitions visually are growing as fast as the technology can feed them. And so I think the visual worlds which we'll be able to create will be much richer over time.

On the creative side, though, I think the art of storytelling is very old. And no amount of technology can turn a bad story into a good story. […] Storytelling is a real art, and that's something that we're always going to be working on very, very hard. I don't think it's changed in a long time, and I'm not sure it will. And I don't think it's something that the technology has anything to do with.

SJ: You can hardly find an Apple II around too much anymore. You still can in the schools, but that's about it. It's not clear whether you'll be able to boot up a Macintosh five years from now or not. All these technology boxes and all this software: it has a life of a year or two, if you're very lucky. If it has a life of five years, it's extraordinary. And every once in a while, something has a life of ten to fifteen years—and I've been lucky to be associated with a few of those products as well. But sooner or later, they all become part of the sedimentary layer that is the foundation for new innovation.

[By contrast] Disney released its first animated feature film, Snow White, in 1937. That's sixty years ago. A few years ago, they rereleased it on video and sold 28 million份, making probably around a quarter billion dollars of profits—sixty years after its initial release!

And I have a young son. We got Snow White, and he loved it. He watched it thirty, forty times. And it really struck me that I know people on most of the continents of this world, and I think everyone I know knows the story of Snow White. I don't think I know one person who hasn't seen it.

Watching my son watch this, it really hit me that these stories renew themselves with each generation of young children. You read Joseph Campbell; these are our myths. Here's something that's sixty years old that's regenerating itself in my son and other young children.

And I think people are going to be watching Toy Story in sixty years. Not because of the computer graphics, but because of the story about friendship. And that's something really amazing to me, something very different than the industry I worked in in the past.

To have the opportunity to put these stories into the culture like this, if we can work really hard and be lucky again and again, is a rare opportunity. And I think everybody at Pixar feels really, really privileged to have this opportunity.

思考与洞察

引用此页面的内容
目录
迪士尼智慧
权力倒置
文化机会
故事永恒
好莱坞vs硅谷