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发表于 2016-7-13 00:11:15
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When you're telling a story, have you constructed anticipation? In the short-term, have you made me want to know what will happen next? But more importantly, have you made me want to know how it will all conclude in the long-term? Have you constructed honest conflicts with truth that creates doubt in what the outcome might be? An example would be in "Finding Nemo," in the short tension, you were always worried, would Dory's short-term memory make her forget whatever she was being told by Marlin. But under that was this global tension of will we ever find Nemo in this huge, vast ocean?
In our earliest days at Pixar, before we truly understood the invisible workings of story, we were simply a group of guys just going on our gut, going on our instincts. And it's interesting to see how that led us places that were actually pretty good. You've got to remember that in this time of year, 1993, what was considered a successful animated picture was "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "Lion King." So when we pitched "Toy Story" to Tom Hanks for the first time, he walked in and he said, "You don't want me to sing, do you?" And I thought that epitomized perfectly what everybody thought animation had to be at the time. But we really wanted to prove that you could tell stories completely different in animation.
We didn't have any influence then, so we had a little secret list of rules that we kept to ourselves. And they were: No songs, no "I want" moment, no happy village, no love story. And the irony is that, in the first year, our story was not working at all and Disney was panicking. So they privately got advice from a famous lyricist, who I won't name, and he faxed them some suggestions. And we got a hold of that fax. And the fax said, there should be songs, there should be an "I want" song, there should be a happy village song, there should be a love story and there should be a villain. And thank goodness we were just too young, rebellious and contrarian at the time. That just gave us more determination to prove that you could build a better story. And a year after that, we did conquer it. And it just went to prove that storytelling has guidelines, not hard, fast rules.
Another fundamental thing we learned was about liking your main character. And we had naively thought, well Woody in "Toy Story" has to become selfless at the end, so you've got to start from someplace. So let's make him selfish. And this is what you get.
(Voice Over) Woody: What do you think you're doing? Off the bed. Hey, off the bed! Mr. Potato Head: You going to make us, Woody? Woody: No, he is. Slinky? Slink ... Slinky! Get up here and do your job. Are you deaf? I said, take care of them. Slinky: I'm sorry, Woody, but I have to agree with them. I don't think what you did was right. Woody: What? Am I hearing correctly? You don't think I was right? Who said your job was to think, Spring Wiener?
AS: So how do you make a selfish character likable? We realized, you can make him kind, generous, funny, considerate, as long as one condition is met for him, is that he stays the top toy. And that's what it really is, is that we all live life conditionally. We're all willing to play by the rules and follow things along, as long as certain conditions are met. After that, all bets are off. And before I'd even decided to make storytelling my career, I can now see key things that happened in my youth that really sort of opened my eyes to certain things about story.
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