Pixar Studio

Today I got to tour Pixar Studios, located in Oakland. Last year when Kiira was at the Mountain School, our good friends JJ and Danny bid on a tour there (one of the Mountain School parents, Guido, works there) - and consequently won. They asked me along for the tour. I willingly obliged! It was pretty amazing. The building itself brought back wobegone memories of the successful dot.com era. Big, soaring spaces with "cool" materials. Being a designer, I can't help but notice all of this.

The content of the tour - also pretty spectacular. Guido has worked on a variety of Pixar films, the Toy Story's, Cars, Ratatouille, Up and several that I haven't heard of because our kids are too scared of movies yet. Scattered along the halls were memorabilia that was part of the movie making.



Also scattered were one of a kind drawings that employees, very talented employees at that, displayed. We saw screening rooms, the huge server room (and I mean HUGE), campus amenities (think pool, volleyball court with sand, workout room), and general workspace. Along the way we learned about making a movie, editing a movie and the unexpected joy of being IN a movie (Guido ended up being the voice of the the car "Guido" in the Cars movie). Apparently they often just leave the "scratch" voice of the character - ie. the voice of one of the employees. Soooooo cool! Thanks JJ and Danny for including me!