Toy Story’s 20th Anniversary + Our Visit to the Pixar Archives #GoodDinoEvent

While in San Francisco during our visit to the Steve Jobs building where Pixar “lives”we had yet another interesting visit.  This time, we visited the Pixar archives. With the 20th Anniversary of “Toy Story” coming out tomorrow November 21, 2015, it was only appropriate we learned about archives from that movie.

Christine Freeman (pictured below) is the head archivist at Pixar.

Now I have been to the Disney Archives once for the Tomorrowland Movie, and once for Saving Mr. Banks,  but never the Pixar ones.  Things they had in common were their white gloves AND there are no pens allowed inside the room.  This is to keep any dirt or unremovable marks from getting on any of the archived pieces.

The job of the archivists is to gather, organize and preserve items for Pixar.  They have archives for A Bug’s Life, and it was after that movie that they decided to start keeping them on location. So this is when they pulled together things all over the studio.

At first the collection was tiny.  It took a bit of time to pull  things from other places.  The collections come from the art department, stories art as well as review notes from art reviews.  They also collected toys from Ruth Lassiter ( John Lasseter’s aunt).

With the collections, it is important that they are categorized properly and not damaged.  You also have to make sure they are hung correctly with their original storyboards.

          Bust of Woody (above) plus the variations of the early Woody behind him.

      Bust of Buzz Lightyear above.

With this being the 20th Anniversary of Toy Story, we learned about how they developed the characters.  Above you will see how they made a bust of Buzz Lightyear’s head. This is the original bust also, which I thought was very interesting.  The box next to his bust has information on it about it. Originally Buzz Lightyear was going to be Lunar Larry.  Can you imagine how much different that would have been? In the beginning, there were many different ‘looks’ for Buzz Lightyear. Which you can kind of see below in the drawing that Christine Freeman is holding

John Lasseter designed the logos for Buzz and Woody. They also do voice testing for the emotions,  and the colors are usually done after the decision on the character. Also, since they house these items, when they do a sequel they can come and retrieve items for the next movie.  This way they do not have to start all over again, not to mention there isn’t any variation in the look of that character. Last but not least there are 5 million pieces of artwork in the Pixar Archives.  Pretty impressive! There is so much history locked up within the Pixar archives and we only touched upon a tiny part of it.  I am glad that I was able to share with you what I did learn about.

About Toy Story (the original).

Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated buddy comedy adventure film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story was the first feature-length computer-animated film and the first theatrical film produced by Pixar. Toy Story follows a group of humanlike toys who pretend to be lifeless whenever humans are present and focuses on the relationship between Woody, a pull-string cowboy doll (voiced by Tom Hanks), and Buzz Lightyear, an astronaut action figure (voiced by Tim Allen). The film was written by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow, and Joss Whedon, and featured music by Randy Newman. Its executive producers were Steve Jobs and Edwin Catmull.

Toy Story was the top-grossing film on its opening weekend, Toy Story went on to earn over $361 million worldwide.  Reviews were positive, praising both the animation’s technical innovation and the screenplay’s wit and sophistication, and it is now widely considered by many critics to be one of the best-animated films ever made.

The film received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, as well as winning a Special Achievement Academy Award.  

It was inducted into the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 2005, its first year of eligibility. 

 In addition to home media releases and theatrical re-releases, Toy Story-inspired material has run the gamut from toys, video games, theme park attractions, spin-offs, merchandise, and two sequels—Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010)—both of which also garnered massive commercial success and critical acclaim, with a third sequel, Toy Story 4, slated for a 2018 release.

Toy Story 20th Anniversary: Joe Ranft Storyboard Pitch

Jon Favreau, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, Galyn Susman, Ralph Eggleston, at the Academy celebration of “Toy Story” on October 1, 2015 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. (Below)

You can own the special edition of Toy Story today 11/21/2015.  Purchase on Amazon.

**Disney provided Me With A Full Expense Paid Trip To San Francisco For The #MilesEvent, #GoodDinoEvent, #InsideOutBloggers  & #Waltagram Press Trip.  No Other Compensation was Given. The Opinions  In My Posts Are 100% my Own.**