People talk a lot about Pixar going off the rails. A lot of people are saying they aren't happy that we are making sequels. But for every one of those people, there is one that is happy because they fell in love with the worlds we created. We hope we've proved that a sequel can be every bit as enjoyable as the original.

Lee Unkrich

Categorized in : People Love Happy Hope

You can tell a story clearly in the storyboards, but if you don't keep the correct focus in the animation, it can be ruined.

Lee Unkrich

animation focus stories

It's one thing to make peace with the idea of something that's going to happen someday; it's another to find yourself at that day.

Lee Unkrich

someday finding-yourself ideas

I think the moment you try to make a movie for kids, you make garbage.

Lee Unkrich

trying kids thinking

If you try to target a movie at kids, you end up with something that makes parents take a nap.

Lee Unkrich

parent naps kids

If it's not working, you can't polish a turd.

Lee Unkrich

turds polish ifs

We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That's why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.

Lee Unkrich

screw-ups essentials goal

I'd like to drill in a little more detail into one aspect of cutting which is particularly close to me and that's dialogue editing. It is a vital part of editing especially in animated film, but in the end it is usually completely transparent to the audience. The vocal performances are reported for over several years and the actors are very rarely in recording studios together. That's why the editor has got to all these different performances and edit them together to create the illusion of spontaneity and real action.

Lee Unkrich

cutting real editing

Kids don't have the same sense of their own mortality as adults.

Lee Unkrich

mortality adults kids

Whether I'm directing live action or animation, my responsibility is the same. I have an audience sitting in a theater with their popcorn, and I've got to show them a good time and make them feel something.

Lee Unkrich

popcorn sitting responsibility

If you're working on something and it's not coming together, it's easy to say, "I don't want to show this, until I've figured it out." But a lot of times you don't really solve the problems, and then you start getting into a bad situation because you don't have the time to fix it.

Lee Unkrich

problem together want

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota.

Lee Unkrich

bad-day looks thinking

I wanted the Andy of Toy Story 3 to be right on the cusp, straddling childhood and adulthood ... I wanted to find this sweet spot where he had gotten tall and had clearly grown up but still retained many boyish qualities, including a boyish charm.

Lee Unkrich

childhood quality sweet

I looked long and hard at third films in series to see if there were any good ones that I could learn from. And there weren't any that hadn't just gone off the train tracks by their third film. Until, that is, I got to the third 'Lord of the Rings' film.

Lee Unkrich

good see hard long

If we can tell a good story with characters audiences can care about, I'd like to think that prejudices can fall aside and people can just experience the story and these characters for the human beings that they are.

Lee Unkrich

good experience care people

'Coco' is shaping up to be one of the most beautiful films we've made.

Lee Unkrich

most-beautiful up made beautiful

How about a good comedy? 'Raising Arizona.' Remains the funniest movie I've ever seen in my life.

Lee Unkrich

my-life good comedy life

It wasn't the first film to show a kind of alternate vision of suburbia, but it left an indelible impression, I think, on everybody, and all films like that will forever be measured against 'Blue Velvet.'

Lee Unkrich

will think vision blue

My favorite film is 'The Shining,' mostly because it was the film that inspired me to become a filmmaker myself.

Lee Unkrich

become myself me film

Every one of us at Pixar is worried that we're going to be the one to make the dud.

Lee Unkrich

going us every make

After we finished 'Toy Story 2,' we talked about going right into making 'Toy Story 3,' because we had an idea that we thought had some promise. But there were a bunch of boring contractual problems going on between Disney and Pixar at the time that kept us from making the movie.

Lee Unkrich

problems thought boring time