Nicholas Stoller Quotes

One of the main things I do is focus on ideas and what stories we decide to tell, but probably the biggest part of my job I'd say is working on the storyboards.

At the beginning of a new project, often before I do any actual writing, I collect photos, quotes, song lyrics, and even objects that relate to the characters or the world I'm creating.

The whole thing with animated movies is that it's very hard to get out of your head because it's very moving through each line systematically.

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially.

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

When I'm writing the text for a book like 'Little White Rabbit,' I read it aloud, alone, in my studio, again and again and again - because the rhythm has to be exactly right. After I get my manuscript to the point where I think it is perfect, I begin to think about what I want the art to look like.

Each one of the films get built up and strengthened and reinforced, and we're not afraid to rip stuff out and redo it until we feel it's worthy of the 'Pixar' name.

Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.

Writers divide fairly cleanly into those who only work through what they hear and those who are more visual. I am the latter, where I lie down on my office floor and play scenes through my head to - cinematically, several times with different elements - to see what works. I can't write a scene until I can see it.

It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.

I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

It's fun to try and picture what exactly is in your head and translate it onto the screen. How you can take something that lives in my mind and bring it to life - but that part is fun.

I really don't storyboard unless it's an action sequence of some kind, but I plan carefully.

I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do. There's something about creating life out of things that have no life.

When I storyboard, they're just fragments of thoughts. I write in three acts like a movie, so I have my plot points up on the preliminary storyboard.

It's just my goal to deliver the best story I can, and I want to make sure each book is better than the last, and in order to do that, I have to take chances.

I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times. We used two storyboards in 'Margaret': one for the bus accident and for the opera sequence at the end.

I guess that if I was a normal cartoonist who did things properly, I'd think up the background information first and then come up with the story. Saying that, you'd think that I don't really think through anything.