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It was a small company founded by a group of rebels … and it became one of the biggest animation studios in the world.

The powerhouse behind "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo" is now screening its latest animated film, "Elemental," at the Cannes Film Festival. This is the story of Pixar.
Transcript
00:00Meet the residents of Element City.
00:07Watch this!
00:31He took that little computer division at Lucasfilm
00:36with some other kind of rebels that he was working with
00:40and built it into what eventually became Pixar.
00:42It was the beginning of Pixar.
00:44Music
00:55Steve said, OK, now we are going to revolutionize this industry.
01:01Music
01:17My name is Woody. This is my spot.
01:20No!
01:22It was a dream of Ed and mine to do a feature film with this new technology.
01:29But it was like we had to invent the technology in order to actually do it.
01:34But we always knew that it was about the story and the characters.
01:37It was going to entertain audiences, not just the technology.
01:40Music
02:03So she ran off and played and we just grabbed the mic and followed her.
02:07And we played with toys and we had talked with her puppets and did things.
02:12And then the editors took those sounds and created a performance that feels so real because it is.
02:18It's a real little kid.
02:20Music
02:33Most of us came from a 2D background.
02:35We were trained and learned and fell in love with it.
02:37It's what got us into this business.
02:39And so we have no desire to see it go away.
02:43When we started getting into 3D, it wasn't to replace it.
02:46It was just to add another color to the palette.
02:48Music
03:07We can do things like hair and fur because that's something that's tangible that makes it feel rat-like.
03:15But the rats, while they do some realistic rat behavior, they're not realistic rats.
03:20They've got big cartoon eyes and they're very caricatured.
03:24Their hands are more like cartoony hands.
03:26So it's a blend of really tangible realism and real fantasy kind of all stirred together.
03:35Music
03:53This film was a sound designer's dream because you had to create a whole world of sound.
03:57And you had a lot of freedom since it's a science fiction world, a place we haven't been before.
04:02Music
04:20In a way, this film is a tribute to the great films of Disney in the past that I grew up with.
04:29101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp and all those great, great films that I loved growing up.
04:35Music
04:42I saw her looking a lot less energetic and more kind of quiet and reserved.
04:47And I thought, what's going on in her head?
04:49And that's really what started us working on this film.
04:53And I think all the films we do, whether they be about monsters or fish or cars, we want to project something of our own lives and put them on the screen so that the audience recognizes their own experience in the movies that we make.
05:05Music
05:34OMG!
05:43I feel so honored but also responsible for being the one of many to come as well.
05:50Yeah, it's just a really exciting time at the studio.
05:53Music
06:21That pipe squished me all out of shape.
06:24Dang.
06:26That's better.
06:27Oh.