The first chapter of the book is history behind the company Pixar and it’s founder Ed Catmull. He had the idea of making animations with computers about 20 years before starting Pixar. During those years Ed took the idea from company to company to create what he imagined and after he gets investment from Steve Jobs he achieves this at Pixar.

I learned why certain stories are emotional. The book talks about a team at Pixar that reviews scenes. The review is done by couple of people who are good at creating animations and by the end they leave suggestions for the director to make. One of the things they do is to ensure movies are emotional, if it’s not they add small touches to the story to make it emotional. You can’t make the audience feel the love between two people just by saying they love each other. Showing good memories makes the audience feel the love between the characters. I think the idea is simple but seems universal. I haven’t found a counter-example yet.

Unfortunately after this section the book turned into a management book with obvious tips. Things like be honest, give credit to people, and other advice that I categorize as “Sounds nice but cannot follow.” Or another example, Ed talks about how telling one manager that whenever a new detail is added to a movie another details gets removed. Well this is obvious. You have a finite time to animate the story. There are infinite details to fill. So you have to choose what detail gets more attention.