The All Things Digital Conference video honoring Steve Jobs has just been posted. Pixar’s Ed Catmull and Oracle’s Larry Ellison speak of their friendships and partnership with Steve Jobs.
“Steve built the building (Pixar Studios) which I think is one of the most extraordinary work environments that I have ever seen and it was Steve’s design, it’s very cultural and he thought about what it meant to say that your people are the best and that your culture is the best and it translated into an environment that was unlike what other CEO’s would do that were using the same words…Steve had a deep understanding” said Ed Catmull.
What I found interesting is that Ed Catmull knew that Steve’s passion was in Apple but Steve knew when to be supportive of Pixar. An example that Ed gave was during the production of A Bug’s Life. A production designer wanted the film to be marketed in wide-screen, which wasn’t done at that time like it is today.
The marketers were against the wide-screen movement and Steve Jobs agreed. At this time the production designer and Steve butted heads and began to argue over this. After the argument fizzled, Steve left and the production designer approached Ed and was scared as he just yelled at Steve. Ed said, “well, you won”. Steve wanted to see that the production designer had a passion for his idea and the movie was released in widescreen.
