[zach]

One of the most memorable moments of my career was when I joined a project and, the very first day, had the equivalent of a “showrunner” sit me and another engineer down and pitch the project to us.

It was mostly the same pitch that the showrunner gave to get the green light for the project, and it was crackling with energy, excitement and potential. It was magical.

So many other times, I was kind of tossed into a team and had to piece together what we were making and even why and how. This time, though, I went from knowing almost nothing about this project to having a clear view of where we wanted to go and being thrilled to be on this journey.

Speaking of which, I can’t resist sharing a fantastic metaphor of a creative project as a journey from Pixar director Andrew Stanton (the following are all his words):

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.

[neilv]

> "I want to see that movie made whether I make it or not"

I think this is an important idea, there and elsewhere, for a few reasons.

Besides it being a gut-feel check on the real benefit of a project (separate from money/career potential), and how that might motivate others... being able to want to see something done, even if one's own money/career doesn't benefit, seems a good sign, in an industry culture that sometimes seems mercenary.