
Make Something People Want - ivan
http://fareed.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/mspw-make-something-people-want/
======
nickb
Yeah, make only hits. Make only products that will sell by millions. Only
concentrate on winners.

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
~ Steve Jobs

~~~
zach
No, make only make the stuff you're DYING to see yourself and know is
something people want.

NOT because you want to be popular.

NOT because you want to make money (or worse, "easy money").

NOT because it will show off how smart or creative you are.

NOT because it uses cool technology.

This is not about extrinsic success.

~~~
far33d
The goal is something you want and you know other people want. The process is
to constantly iterate, know your story, and be flexible for change.

The rest of these (artistic merit, technical innovation, making boatloads of
money) are side effects of successful vision and impeccable execution.

~~~
zach
I liked the Brad Bird interview, but I was totally blown away by the Spline
Doctors' podcast with Andrew Stanton. I was like, yeah, the Nemo guy, I guess
he's a writer... okay, so I didn't know his backstory with Pixar or anything
about him and it just was an amazing interview to me.

Anyway, I wanted to explain the emphasis I put on just how much you want to
really desire to create what you're making, to be dying to get it in front of
people. So here's the part I wanted to excerpt from the interview that really
gives you folks in News.YC-land the sense of how driven you want to be:

\---

Interviewer Andrew Gordon: What would you say is the hardest thing about
directing an animated movie?

Andrew Stanton: The hardest thing about directing an _animated_ movie is
keeping yourself excited about it. It's hard enough to make the crew excited
about it, but keeping yourself excited about it -- trying to remind yourself
why you wanted to do it. Because it's all about the details once you really
start making the movie.

It's no different than building a house, or, building a really extravagant
mansion. There's a million details that you have to spend more time with after
the bigger ideas of where the rooms are going to go and how it's going to be
structured, and it can get you kind of bogged down.

Joe Ranft used to have this great expression that there's always a point
during the making of a movie where there's sort of the Columbus where-is-the-
land moment, where everybody on the boat is going "You promised us the land.
Where's the land? We're not seeing it!"

And people get bogged down in all the minor problems or the major problems
that won't go away, and it's all justified -- it's all legitimate to have that
response.

So, for me, to prevent that is to get really, really picky about what story
you're going to tell up front. And this is my opinion, and it's not a rule.
But if I have an idea that I kinda like, then I don't want to do it. If I have
an idea that affects every fiber of my being, like "I want to see that movie
made whether I make it or not" -- it's like that idea _has_ to get on the
screen -- that's a real good quality to start with. Because it's going to get
attacked for the next four years. And there's going to be, sometimes, weeks or
months where nothing seems to be going right.

[...]

It's like looking for oil or something -- it's like "where can I find
something that has enough fuel that's going to keep me going for years?"
Because there's going to large stretches of time where nothing is working,
nobody's happy, everybody thinks that the sky is going to fall, and what's
going to get me out of bed is just because that idea still _has_ to be on the
screen.

So I want that when I'm going to go into battle. Because it's going to be
battle. So if I don't have that going in, then I won't go into it -- I won't
make that movie. And I'm starting to try and insist on that with other
filmmakers here at Pixar, because I just know the benefits of it.

------
far33d
<http://www.zachbaker.com/articles/2007/04/09/mspw-trumps-technique>

nice followup..

~~~
zach
Wow, it may be the first time someone's read my weblog! Good post yourself
though, thanks.

