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.
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.
If you try to target a movie at kids, you end up with something that makes parents take a nap.
We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That's why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.
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.
If it's not working, you can't polish a turd.
I think the moment you try to make a movie for kids, you make garbage.
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.
Kids don't have the same sense of their own mortality as adults.
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.
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.
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.
