From Toy Story to CT Scans: Lessons From Pixar for Radiology

Abstract

DR ED CATMULL My hope with this talk is that my experiences and the lessons I have learned over the past 40 years in the computer graphics and movie industry might be valuable for other industries, including medicine. I spent 20 years trying tomake the world’s first computer-animated fulllength feature film, then 10 years working to solidify the creative culture at Pixar, and the past 8 years trying to turnDisney Animation Studios around. During this time, I have learned a lot about the pursuit of excellence, commitment to a vision, and, most important, hiring the right people and inspiring them. Todate, we have had 14 consecutive hit movies at Pixar, and consequently, people have the misimpression that these films all began as complete successes. Toput it bluntly, every one of our films (with the possible exception ofToy Story 3) has had challenges when starting out, and a big part of our job at Pixar is transforming these films from “challenges” to “successful.” I don’t mean to say this in a self-effacing way—the movies truly are horrible when they start, and we go through an iterative process to get the films into their final state. A prime example of this process was the movie Up, for which our initial version of the film had virtually nothing in common with what you saw in the final film, and that initial version absolutely did not work—and had to be completely revamped. In any enterprise, new ideas and creativity must start somewhere, and just as important, mistakes at this early stage are not necessarily