So, the director and his team reworked the story, over and over, iteration after iteration, until they found just the right formula. Catmull built Pixar on the idea that the first question is not “What are the great stories to bet on?” The first question should be “Who are the great people to bet on?” Catmull understood that a visionary idea with the wrong people makes a bad film, but great people with the wrong story will change the story to make an excellent film. Despite the fact that nearly every Pixar movie endured episodes of crisis, Catmull’s “first who” strategy led to fourteen number one movies in a row.

The first principle was “Story Is King,” by which we meant that we would let nothing - not
the technology, not the merchandising possibilities - get in the way of our story. We took
pride in the fact that reviewers talked mainly about the way Toy Story made them feel and not about the computer wizardry that enabled us to get it up on the screen. We believed that this was the direct result of our always keeping story as our guiding light.

The other principle we depended on was “Trust the Process.” We liked this one because it was so reassuring: While there are inevitably difficulties and missteps in any complex creative endeavor, you can trust that “the process” will carry you through. In some ways, this was no different than any optimistic aphorism (“Hang in there, baby!”), except that because our process was so different from other movie studios, we felt that it had real power. Pixar was a place that gave artists running room, that gave directors control, that trusted its people to solve problems. I have always been wary of maxims or rules because, all too often, they turn out to be empty platitudes that impede thoughtfulness, but these two principles actually seemed to help our people.

In any given Pixar film, every line of dialogue, every beam of light or patch of shade, every sound effect is there because it contributes to the greater whole. In the end, if you do it right, people come out of the theater and say, “A movie about talking toys - what a clever idea!” But a movie is not one idea, it’s a multitude of them. And behind these ideas are people. This is true of products in general; the iPhone, for example, is not a singular idea - there is a mind-boggling depth to the hardware and software that supports it. Yet too often, we see a single object and think of it as an island that exists apart and unto itself.

The specific procedural changes will sound mundane to anyone who doesn’t work in animation - we implemented a faster, more secure way, to cite a tiny example, of delivering the latest cuts of films to directors - but when you add them all up, they mattered. In the weeks after Notes Day, we implemented four good ideas, committed to five more, and earmarked still a dozen more for continued development. All of them stood to improve either our processes, our culture, or the way Pixar is managed.

Coats has argued that every Pixar film shares the same narrative DNA, a deep structure of storytelling that involves six sequential sentences:

Once upon a time ______________________________.

Every day, _______________.

One day _________________________.

Because of that, ___________________.

Because of that, _______________________.

Until finally ___________________.