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Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four thirty four. Your dream doesn't have an expiration date, Take a deep breath and try again. KT Whitten broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood.
When we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
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My guest today actually teaches at at Conacademy and he's the producer for Pixar in a Box, an amazing course. It's one hundred percent free, by the way, Wink wink. And then my guest also teaches computer science. He teaches cryptography. I mean, brilliant, brilliant guy with guests cruise. Hey, Britt, thanks off for coming on the show.
Hey Dave, happy to be speaking with you.
So, you know, Britt, you have such a unique background. I mean, you know, you're involved in so many great things. So I want to know when you were growing up, did you always have this sort of this love of not only teaching, but also of creative problem solving and sort of like computer science.
Yeah, as a kid, like like most people involved in filmmaking. Very early on, I got obsessed with, you know, the home video cameras, and as soon as I got my hands on VCRs, I started trying to cut together videos, you know, starting with family vacations and whatnot. But very soon. What I realized early on is the kinds of videos I was making once I moved beyond the family videos were explanation style videos, kind of similar to what was
on TV at the time. I grew up with Bill Nye, so I kind of bent that way, and very quickly I realized that, you know, I could hand in school projects in video form. I kind of forced my teachers to do that, and I I kind of found my way into explanation style videos really early, even though it wasn't my one passion, but it's something that came up right away.
Yeah, you mentioned the home video cameras. You know, a lot of guests also had that same childhood experience where they're picking up you know, the super eight cameras or maybe even a little later like a big VHS box cam quarders and start. You know, then that's all I got their start, and you know, in making their own films totally.
I remember My setup now was I had two VCRs for editing and to mix sound in I ran I had. I had an early computer thanks to my mom, and I would run an audio cable with a mic jack going to RCA cables running diagonally across the room into the VCR, so I could next sound from the computer and video from the VCRs. And that was my first setup.
Oh, that's actually brilliant. That was fun, I mean especially for I mean, because what were you seven or eight.
At the time. Yeah, six seven.
I mean that's a brilliant idea for a kid to come up with, which explains a lot about you, Britt. Mean, it's like, I think that's why you know you're you know you're in the position you are you have to there's there's moments of brilliance. And you know when I when we talk about computers, what kind of computer was it, Britt, Was it like one of those old Apple two's or was it something similar?
No, my friend had an Apple. I had one of the early box computers. It was my Actually, my mom had an early Tandy laptop, one of the first laptops, so I grew up on dos. But then the computer I'm describing I remember it was a given from a friend of my dad's and it was a big, boxy one. I don't know, but it was before like the compact Presario Wave.
Oh gotcha, gotcha?
You know?
I mean you ever take I mean, do you still have that computer laying around like somewhere in storage?
No? No, that one's so gone.
I actually, maybe a couple of months ago, I was going through stuff and I had my I still have my first computer that I got, and I was a little late to the party with it. But I you know, my first computer was in the nineties, uh, probably the late nineties, and I remember pulling this thing out and my god, I look at it and go, how the hell did I use this thing? It's it seems so archaic and it's huge, and I'm like, you know, it's it only uses a fifty six K modem.
When you're passionate, though, yeah, nothing else anything will get you to anything will work, any tool will work if you're motivated.
That's a great saying, Brett. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep that, uh, because I'm gonna that is a a great piece of advice, you know, because mainly I use it, you know, for for writing too. And I mean I even had word processors that I remember using, and I looked at some of them, you know, the other day I was looking through I'm not not in personal online some of the old word processors, and I'm like, man, the size of these things so like a piece of luggage.
Yeah. We had a typewriter too. Yeah.
I know some people who you know, who are younger listening to this have no clue what a typewriter is. But but I've used the typewriter brand. I remember the Remember when you had to change the uh, if you made a mistake, you had to put that like a little card in to sort of backspace it out, wait it out. Yeah.
Yeah, I wish I still had a typer. Actually, it's a nice way to folk stay focused.
Yeah, you know, I was saying that somebody else the other day. You know, it's like laptops are great, you know, phones are great, but the problem is is that it's too easy to get distracted with them because of the Internet.
Yeah, the context switch is the real killer. It just that's the number one thing people waste time on. They probably if they count it in a day. When I say context switch, I mean an interruption of any kind. Doing one thing and then doing another. If you do that hundreds of times per day, it's a few minutes per switch you waste. And that's why people waste three to four hours a day. Early on, about six years ago or seven years ago, I noticed this and one day I just threw my phone out and I never
looked back. I've never owned a smartphone, and that's again one of my great time savers.
So do you just have a flip phone now or no phone at all?
I don't. I have a landline.
Oh okay, yeah. You know there was a program that I you know, I had a couple different people on the podcast, and we were always talking about this because some people have to use a laptop and for the work, and so we would need in there for the research. But you know, even when I'm trying to do it, sometimes the phone, the phone is the biggest distraction for me.
The laptop not so much because the phone, you know, you're always being You're always at someone's beck and call, which I think you some days, I say to myself, but I go, you know what if I could take a vacation and not carry my peh with me, I don't think, you know what I mean, I think that would be a real vacation because if I went on a vacation somewhere and I had to carry my phone or my laptop around, it would it would there be
no point to it. No, So you know, taking a break from the phone as is something that you know, I I have found is important, just leaving it in another room, turning it off completely. And for the laptop, there's a program I found called Antisocial and there's also another one called I forget what it's called, but it's it's about the same people who make anti social and basically it just blocks out certain websites so that way you can't access them.
Yep. And I often just have days where I turned the Internet off and it's really it really helps.
Yeah, it definitely does. And you know so, so, but what does a normal day for you look like?
Like?
What? What?
How is your day structured in terms of when you're creating and teaching and all and doing all the things that you do.
I try to break up my day into two halves, So I really hate scheduling meetings and breaking up a day into hours and half hour chunks. I only work well in half thinking about a day in two runs of creation. So there's a morning creation phase and there's an afternoon creation phase, and then otherwise I try to bucket all my natual meetings on one day. That's what
I really try to do. So I have a day where I'm just sitting around on meetings, and then the other two days the other four days of the week, if things are going well, I am just locked into one task and staying on that for two to three hours, then a break bike ride two to three hours. Now your day is done. Now I have two kids. Now
I don't work past four o'clock. If you're working. I used to work late at night, and once I stopped doing that, it really helped because it helped focus me so that at the beginning of the week, if I know I'm done at four, I really have to write out the day before what I want to accomplish the next day, and that has kept me very organized.
So it seems to be that you know, if you can if you start working at four, we'll be right back.
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You're so focused on getting it done, meaning that there is it's like you have a window of opportunity, and in that window of opportunity you say, Okay, it begins here, it ends here, And in the middle is where I have to do all the where I have to do all my work because once four o'clock hits the windows closed exactly.
So I really cherish those two to three hour chunks, and I'll and during those chunks all either depending on the type of work I'm doing. If I don't need a computer, I'm out on my bike, bike to the river, sit by the river, work on paper. That's where I get my best work done. Often I'm on the computer. If I can, I take my laptop somewhere, I go to the coffee shop and work. And otherwise, when I'm stuck in an editing hole, then I'm at home in
my office editing. I will one caveat is yeah, when when you're anyone who is at an editor, it's very hard to stop working. So there are the days, there are the very scary weeks where you can't even count how many hours you spent editing. And that happens to me. So it was all night, So.
Britt when you're using that pen and paper, so are you just grabbing a notebook and just a pen, you know, and you're just you know, you know, writing ideas as they come, and you're working on projects. Do you ever have a problem maybe transcribing that back to the laptop.
No, actually I never, But I often do things in layers, So I'll write a bunch of scribbles that don't always make a lot of sense. What I find is just the process of writing is more important than what you even have on that page, because it's my form of building memory. So I'll go out write something down, and I'll have six pages of chicken scratch, look like a crazy person. But then I I'll just leave that in my bag. The next day, I'll go out and write
again what I was working on. I'll try to simplify it into some sort of bullet point thing, and then by the time I get back to the laptop, I usually have, you know, a readable piece of paper. But even if those papers blew away, it would be fine because the process of writing on a paper for me helped me build and clarify my thinking. And then I can just sit down on that laptop and bang out, you know, a script of whatever I'm doing in a
very focused flow. Thinking Now just out loud. If I was trying to do that on a laptop from the beginning, I would never get anything done because again I would be switching context. I wouldn't be on the page.
Yeah, you know, the only because I mean, I love notebooks and writing using an actual pen. The biggest challenge that I mean, I've I face is trying to get that writing back onto a laptop, you know, I mean, because now you're transcribing, you know what I mean, And now I always find it it's a little it feels a little redundant sometimes to me because you feel like you're doing the same work you just did, if you know what.
I mean, totally. I guess I should clarify. When I'm writing, I'm often just drawing pictures and doodling. I'm not actually writing down sentence for sentence and then transcribing. Yeah, that wouldn't work. Once I'm at that level of I can actually write down the words of for example, the narration, I'm on the computer, So it's really that brainstorm phase, structure phase. I stay on the page.
So what are some of the bigger projects that you can talk about that you're working on right now?
So in the in one world. I am working on year three of Pixar in a Box, which is a really big, very exciting project. The goal here of this project is to show how the movie making process that Pixar works, but more specifically, how things that kids are learning in school are used at Pixar in the making of their films. So Pixar in a Box has been structured over three years. Year one we focused on the math connections, So what do you learn in math class
that they actually use at Pixar. For example, in particle simulations to make water, they're using Newton's equations from physics. So you know that boring stuff you're learning in school that seems boring when it's presented to you, is used in this very exciting domain. Year two of Pixar in a Box focused more on science, the connections, the connections to science. Right now, I'm working on the last lesson, which is a hair simulation lesson. How they simulate hair
at Pixar. Well, it uses a mass spring system, which is Hook's law. Another thing you hit in school. But most exciting and we're writing right now is year three. I Picks are in a Box is really the whole point of it is going to be called the art of storytelling, so that will be a storytelling curriculum. We purposely push that one last because I always knew it would be the hardest one to make work online.
Yeah, you know what that's actually, you know, from from just my standpoint, that's the one I would really like to be to see, not because I'm not interested in an animation or how Pixar does everything, but just from you know, a writing, storytelling perspective. You know, everybody is always interested to see how Pixar does what they do.
Yes, and we're all so excited about the pressures on to make sure this is really strong. And the one hard part is with year one and two. With the cool thing about Pixar in a Box is it's a fully interactive, very engaging experience. You're not just watching a video and doing a test. You are watching a short clip, then playing with a piece of interactive software you saw on that clip, and then you follow along video exercize
video exercise. You're participating throughout and creating throughout. So, for example, with that water simulation lesson, not only are you learning how they do it, you are making your own particle simulator along the way. That's easy to kind of conceptualize in math and science, but in the storytelling world again, it's very hard to think about online activities you're going
to do in between learning about their storytelling process. So that's really the challenge is really figuring out, Okay, it won't be too hard to make really great videos that communicate how storytelling works at picks are and how the individual storytellers, what their process is. What will be hard is the handoff to the user to say, okay, now it's your turn. Now it's your turn. Because the goal
of our storytelling curriculum is pretty ambitious. It is you start with nothing, you go through six lessons, and at the end you have storyboarded your own short. So that's that's the scope. Is people leave this lesson with a storyboarded short on paper, and so that's the goal and that's where we are still working on the steps to get you there.
That's absolutely amazing, brit Is that is see you know, I see a less screenwriting courses online from all different people and all different places. And the crux of it is, at the end, you don't really do you know what I mean? You should be in my opinion, creating something as you're going you know, even if if it's a treatment, if it's an outline. That's why when you said it's going to be a storyboard for your own short, that
is killer. That is key because you should be creating as you're learning, so you you know what I mean, Like you learn and create, create and you learn right exactly.
It's it's exciting to hear your excitement and it's got some goosebumps because I'm like, yes, we got to push forward on this.
You could go back to Pixar and be like Dave Bullis really likes and we'll say who is that? But uh but uh, you know, I mean it's amazing, what what what what Pixar is doing? And I wanted to ask you, but you know, as we talk of Pixar on a box, you know, how did you become a producer of Pixar in a Box?
Backing up, I was, well, immediately I was working at con Academy and and what I was doing there at the time is thinking of how we could co produce content with partners. And I dip my feet a little bit in with NASA the year before where we kind of looked at all of NASA's content and thought, okay, what can we do to kind of curate this and make it work on con Academy so it will just you know, aligned to standards. And it was, you know,
an interesting linear flow. But the NASA project was really a curation one looking at what they had and then and NASA is such a big organization. There's just all these different departments that make educational content, so it's like grabbing from a thousand things trying to find the twenty that work and putting that into a lesson format. That was like a baby first step in experimenting how we
could work with partners. And then right around that the time that ended, someone at con Academy kit Heraski used to work at Pixar, and said, you know, there's someone at Pixar who's you know, interested in maybe doing something
with us. And at the time, Tony DeRose is the chief scientist at Pixar, was doing a TED talk and he has a talk called Math in the Movies, which is like a one hour talk talking about you know, what you learn at school is relevant at Pixar, and he they were working on a physical exhibit the Science behind Pixar, which is now traveling around the US. I saw it in Boston last so he had this he
had this one hour talk, which was successful. Then it became a museum exhibit with a bunch of interactive things you could do. But then his next vision was, we wanted to reach more people by creating some sort of online version of what I'm trying to do in the museum. And what was really exciting is in that first meeting when they came in, I was like, yes, I have to be in that meeting. They didn't have any idea what they're going to do yet. It was just like,
we know we want to do something online. We know our guiding principle, but we don't know what the thing we're putting online is. So it was this opportunity to work on an exciting project that was a blank slate from the beginning. And that's and I was like, no one could stop me at that point, jumping in and grabbing the reins. Yeah.
I mean, because you know, you look at Pixar in a box.
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And it just looks, you know, so well put together. There's so many talented people working on that. You know, has there ever been a challenge we're working on Pixar in a box that that it's almost beyond sort of a resources standpoint, or if you know what I mean?
Britt Wait, can you repeat the question just so I'm clear. When you say resources, what do you mean, like.
Maybe there's not enough people, maybe there's enough time, you know, just something that maybe like there was an element to pick her on a box that maybe somebody wanted to implement but they just couldn't, you know, either through time or just didn't have enough you know, time or people to do it.
Yeah, it's hard. I mean everything about the project has been a challenge, but they're all great challenges because the project is fun. So it started right with a Getting funding for this project was difficult, but once Disney eventually funded it, that gave the freedom to actually spend some time conceptualizing what the lessons would be. And that's that is where we wasted. I don't want to say wasted, because it was development. That's where the majority of our
time went. Initially what does this lesson look like? And we actually just a small group of us rebuilt the same lesson, which is our environment modeling lesson like four or five times over and over and over until we could find a model that worked. So the and the challenge there is, i Icon Academy, We're about, you know, producing stuff fast, low quality. It's not about production value. It's about you know, being clear and being engaging and
being personalized content. Pixar came in needing a very specific bar to be hit in terms of production values, and the hard part was finding that middle ground between something that Pixar thought was visually appealing enough, but con Academy thought was, you know, fast enough to produce that we could actually scale this out and not waste all year one on video And finding that middle ground blending live
action and blending graphics was really hard. But once we found that middle ground in terms of production, we were able to crank out the other lessons fairly quickly in terms of uh lessons I've worked on before, Like, we really managed to find a system that we could crank these out.
And you also, Picture on a Box has a podcasting element, which I think is a phenomenal idea as well. Mm hmm, because I think podcasting, you know that it's sure they can get the you know, there's a video element through the you know video and audio through the con Academy.
There's there's lessons and then also I mean having that that audio element so that way, you know, if someone's out for a walk at the gym, they still put that on and hear a whole other aspect, you know, because it's just you know, they're busy doing whatever, but they're either they can have time to listen.
Totally, and that reminds me that one of the again, it's just all challenges. Another challenge was who would be in these videos and would it be one person through out would it be multiple people? Having multiple people it's
a very tough scheduling problem. Ultimately we went for someone different in each lesson and ultimately two or three people and that was very difficult to schedule, but it was so worth it because it's so nice now to look at that content and anywhere you dive in, you're going to meet somebody new and it's very authentic.
So, you know, as we talk about challenges with Picture on a Box, you know, what was the biggest challenge that you've faced and how did you overcome that?
I think for a moment.
So well, you know, while you're thinking I'll just you know, just add you know, I a creative problem solving. You know, somebody once told me that anybody can write a check, you know, but the real sort of mark of a good producer or a good anybody is the creative problem solving. And it sounds like to me, Britain, that you're full of creative ideas and full of just genius ways to sort of figure out problems that don't require you know, just okay, you know, we'll just you know, here's money.
We'll use it that way. If I think you're a guy that sort of puts his you know, thinks not only analytically, but also thinks on different planes about how we can actually creatively solve problems.
That helped me think of what it was.
Thank you, rob My ramblings help somebody. I'm glad bright No, I'm just kidding.
In terms. So, one thing was at the time, kon Academy's exercise platform only allowed certain kinds of questions, right like from multiple choice to dragging a point around a grid ordering boxes, the type of questions you do when you do a math test. But we clearly wanted the exercises to be very different. We wanted you to actually be doing things and working on simulated pieces of software that people that Pixar used. That was my goal, like, let's look at the software you guys are using and
let's build a stripped down version of that. And we've done that for things like we have a color correction suite, we have an animation suite. We have all this stuff, but it was stripping them down to the very core elements. So you know, any animation suite has a billion buttons, takes forever to learn. We had to build an animation
suite that would work within like a minute. So we stripped everything away except you know, there's keyframes and a play button and you can do linear interpolation or Bezier interpolation. What are the functions the essential functions needed to simulate that software. Then figure out a way to actually make those simulated environments work on Kon Academy, which is a whole issue in building that out on the back end.
But coupled to that, the opportunity I saw in that in working on these very complex interactive exercises is there was a free thing that came out of it, which is the graphics we needed in the video which is I was always worried about, how are we going to do graphics for two hundred videos. It's so much work, is and with iteration, it's just a nightmare. Real. I put a stake in the ground and said, all the graphics in all our videos will be screen captures of
the exercises. So the pieces of software we build that you get to play with going through the exercises, that's the visuals you see in the video about ninety five percent. There's some other ones you have to make on top of it. But it was really great because it meant there was a ton of legwork to build the software for the interactive exercises that are really fun and visually appealing.
But then when it came to video production, it was really just a matter of cutting together a live action shoot with screen grabs from an exercise and then boom, it just eliminated a whole job of having a full time graphics person.
Yeah, and that see, that's that amazing creative problem solving.
I was talking about you seem like a guy, Britt, Well, actually, I know you're a guy who can just think on the fly like that and just sort of you know, even when you're in brainstorming sessions, you know, because I think with projects like Pixel in a Box, I could see a lot of sort of you know, obstacles and just that you're just both creatively financially like you said, you know, you know Disney had to finance it, and you know, and just just I think, you know, having
those that creative ability at so much that it's almost you know, it's unquantifiable, you know what I mean.
I think, I like my definition of creativity is ability to deal with unknowns. That's my working definition of what a creative person is. It's it's not even like are you a great writer? It's can you deal with unknowns? And do you do you embrace unknowns? So this project
was great. It was all unknowns, but the driving force was that vision of what it will be at the end was so strong that it was like this this project was me saying, I'm sending back to my twelve year old self because I remember, like anyone, when the first time you see toy story, everyone has a story about that. I was in grade eight toy Story came out.
I told my teacher we got to do animation, and he's like, we don't even know where to start, and I remember going to buy three D movie Maker, which is a really old three dmodeling program, great, great software, and like convince my teacher to buy it, and you put it on all the computers. But then there's a question of like, now what do we do, and that whole headache of a year with toy story and trying
to integrate it into the classroom, like regurgitated. When I had this Pixar meeting, and I'm like, here's the chance to actually do something that is fully aligned to those films that inspire kids. So that having that end goal allows you to just blow through all the challenges because you're just like you know where you're headed.
You know, I really like that definition of creativity. So so your definition of creativity is how you deal with unknowns, I.
Would say, a billet, sorry to cut you off. The definition would be the ability to deal with unknowns, the ability to deal with unknowns.
So let's just say we're you know, we're writing, you know, Britt, and you know, as we were writing, so we're sort of putting pieces of a puzzle together, you know, you know, both both consciously and subconsciously. You know, we're trying you know,
we're trying to fit all this together. Do you think that, you know, maybe creativity is sort of as we're going actually writing in that moment and just things are coming up naturally, you know, do you think that would probably be like the purest form of creativity.
Yeah, because at every step it's like there's a branching effect. At every step there's a multiple options, which is a branch of things, and then each option leads to other options, and it just branches out so quickly. There's so many avenues you can go down, and you can't be intimidated by that. So like one thing some people might do, I'm just trying to make this up. Let's just imagine a hypothetical person who isn't quote unquote creative, which is silly.
They might have an idea and then stick to that just because they had a new idea that was connected to that. And if you change the new idea, then I'd have to go back to the old idea. And if your seven ideas deep, it's so scary to go back and rip it up and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild.
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But if you're not afraid of those unknowns and how those unknowns connect to each other, I would say if there was this other quote unquote creative person, they would be more than willing. And they even enjoy that process of breaking it down and starting again and again and again. And like you say, I like that puzzle analogy, I guess yeah, they would enjoy rearranging the pieces again and again and again to see how they fit together.
You know, when you're talking about branching out, you know, that's something that I've seen too. You know, when you're writing, you have a lot of you know, options, you know what I mean, and you sort of go, well, okay, I can go option A, but if I or I can go option B, and then they sort of have their own sub branches, you know, and then sort of there's a there's a phrase that I hope I remember correctly.
I think it's called decision fatigue, where eventually you get so tired becau you're like, okay, well if I choose a you know, let's just say a two like branching, and and you know, and this is this is I mean, whether we're coding or whether's screenwriting. You know, I mean, you know, we're we're always sort of whether either way. You know, there's I think there's a lot of overlay. But if you choose like option A, for instance, and you say, okay, we have two branches, I can go
A one or a two. If I choose A two, well that makes that changes everything else I already did. But if I choose B two, you know, and I think eventually I think as we're writing, I think a lot of times decision fatigue causes us to stop more than you know what I mean. I think it causes us to go, oh geez. But if I did this, you know what I mean, where you're sort of sitting there going, oh, man, what should I do next? I
don't know, man. And I think that's when people sort of go online just sort of trying to figure it out, you know what I mean. I think they have to go all right, let me just check Twitter real quick and i'll see if I'll see if you know, the decision comes to me.
One that's interesting. I like decision fatigue, and that's where those distractions are nice because you can having to make decisions for a second and just zone out completely. But telling me about decision fatigue reminds me of the So another project I'm working on is my YouTube channel Art of the Problem, and that's an hour long video series which explores the origin of modern fields of study and
the way to do that. But my approach to doing that is looking for an ancient question that humans have always been solving and follow that question through time because the question never goes away, just our way of solving it does. And in writing those episodes, they're definitely the most difficult thing I've ever done. It's really a process of trying to rewrite history, and that is something that I find most draining in the writing process.
Yeah, the old logic questions. I like that a lot because there's one question that is you know, I always go back to whenever I'm writing, and that question is why just literally w h y question mark? You know, And it's sort of I think that, you know, that question has plagued philosophers throughout time and every and every culture and all of the planet. And I think that
you know, why why question mark? If you could sort of figure out or maybe I shouldn't be use term figured it out, if you can sort of create an answer to that question, it will be your answer. But it's like you just said, it's sort of like the you know what, everyone's going to have a different answer to that, and how people have answered it throughout time totally.
That's really fascinating when you think about things through the lens of what is the driving question? And again that's exactly what I do with the problem. It's a great way to look at the world. And what you do find is it's amazing how the same question will have the most like opposing decisions are almost orthogonal to each other. And then but the answers or the when I say decisions,
I guess I mean solutions. The solutions to problems through different eras also reflect the era that you're living in, which is just I find very interesting.
Yes, yeah, and you know what, what does a culture say at that point? You know what, what is the country going through at that point?
Uh?
Because personally, Brett, I think right now in America it's like a reflash of the seventies, just just culturally economically. It just feels that way to me. Probably completely wrong, but uh, I think that's why why cinema is getting back to that gritty, grind house. You feel, at least in the independence of the independent side of things. Uh, you know, and I also you know, just just in general, I think, you know, I see a lot of parallels.
But but but you know, yeah, I mean, you know, problem solving and our perspective how we solve those problems, especially when we're writing a perspective as we go into the to write. You know, it's it's so important because I think, you know, when our perspectives we go in, that affects every decision we make. M hm, yes, So you know, Brett, So you know, as we're talking about you know, storytelling, you know, and we're talking about Pixar
in a Box. You know what if somebody was going to take the course which is on con Academy, if someone was going to take the course, what's what's one thing you know you want them to take away from from the course.
I would say one is. One interesting thing is that every topic on Pixar in a Box is featured, is taught by a different host, and the people we got to teach each lesson are actually the people who work in that department. So it's a rare case to really dive in. And if whatever your department you're interested in, whether it's rendering or whether it's storytelling, you can zoom
in and actually get to meet that person. And we've included, aside from the lesson itself, which we've tried to make as gaging as possible, there's getting to know videos, which I find really valuable. There for a minute video how what did you do as a kid? How did you get here? And watching all of those getting to know videos are I find really fascinating because you see a lot of parallels. But it also can help you build a mental model for you know, your own path.
Yeah, you know, I I started taking I actually watched the intro video and I was looking around to with the different lectures. I like, how I think it's I think it's labeled Class two or level two. It's much more detailed and algorithms and computer science and you know sort of you know, the real real like atom level, uh of how things are actually created Pixar, And the first level was actually getting you know, getting an intro class.
You know, you're seeing how, you know, all these things happen, and you're you're sort of you know, seeing how on the on the on the surface, you know how things are created too.
Oh, you just reminded me of the the The challenge with Pixar in a Box we faced was just that what level of difficulty would these lessons be? And we batted that around a lot, like if we're getting into math, when do you get into the math? And we finally landed on a model where we would break every topic into two pieces, and lesson one would be all about getting you comfortable with a process or a tool that
they use. So with animation, you get you actually use a keyframe editor and you learn how to make an animated, realistic bouncing ball. And then it's the second lesson where we peel back the layer of the onion one layer and we show you how those tools work. And that division was really important because there's a lot of people who actually don't maybe care how the tools work, They
just want to see what the tools are. So with this model we were able to appease both crowds, and I'm really happy we did that because every lesson one on Pixar in a Box and every topic you don't have to be worried about, Like rendering might sound really scary, but guess what. Our rendering lesson doesn't require any mathematics, but the second part does, so you don't have to worry about dipping your feet in anywhere.
So and that's great. I'm glad I can remind you, by the way, brand I'm glad again my my ramblings help somebody out. But but you know, you know, when I saw Pixar on a Box, I mean, it's just phenomenal. And you know, do you have an anticipation date an anticipated date of when you know the whole storytelling part of Pixar a Box will be.
Up in twenty seventeen. We'll start rolling it out. We'll do it sequentially, so there'll be six lessons in that storytelling unit and by the end of February we will be rolling out our first one and then that'll roll into the summer. So by September next year, that whole storytelling curriculum will be finished.
That is That is amazing, Brett. You know, and I'm going to link to Pixar on a Box in the show notes again. It's on con Academy. And you know con Academy is an is an open source worst online Uh what is is Is it classified as an moc brit No.
It's not classified as a mook because you know, mooks are all about creating packaged courses you can take, where kon Academy is really trying to be there to help you with the concept you need so you can fill in the gap you need on whatever journey you're on.
So it you know, it's a resource, a free resource that spans many many concepts, and it's designed so that you can you know, jump in and out to get the thing you need that you need help with, versus you know, a collection of packaged courses like like you see on the mooks. So it's different in that way.
So, Britt, you know, just out of curiosity, do you ever think that these online classes are basically going to replace colleges.
I don't think they'll replace colleges. I just think colleges will evolve, you.
Know, I I've you know, I actually used to work at a college and a lot of some of the profet as we're actually talking about the mocs and basically you know, what they thought of them.
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I think the bigger colleges, like you know, the IVY leagues will never have to worry about anything, you know, no matter what I think, if if they're not actually teaching education, they'll be a there'll be a glorified summer camp, you know what I mean. I don't think if college, if those colleges like Harvard, Yale, Prison, if they adapt correctly, which they will because they usually have incredibly smart people, you know, running them, I think they'll that's what will happen.
They'll if they're not teaching education, they'll be you know, sort of like almost like a hedge fund, or or they'll they'll be like a you know, a glorified summer camp. You'll go there for a summer, have fun or whatever. I don't know, because I mean, I'm always interested about
the future of education and the place of college. You know, It's always interesting to I mean to me, honestly, I think the some people flourish at college, and there's others like myself, who struggled a lot in college, and I kind of looked back, Britt and I kind of don't really think my college education was really worth the cost, if you know what I mean.
I feel the same way. And I think that basically with free online education, what you can do is really raise the bar of what's expected of students when you enter school, and then you can focus less on making sure you know X, Y and Z and more on the collaborative nature of school and the project based learning that goes on in school, which when I look back, yeah, a lot of the information I sat through I just
could have learned online. But there were a few very specific things I do remember, and everything I remember that was valuable going back to high school were the collaborative things. So drama in high school biggest learning experience putting on place for me. And then in school I studied engineering. You know, it was working with a group of people to make a robot that could play the drums. And it's it's in those collaborative environments that real learning happens.
So I don't think that's going to go away, and and I think the colleges will learn that and they'll just go more in that direction and less in you know, lectures maybe could be replaced with something else. Yeah.
I also think micro master is going to become big. I see a lot of it, like on Edax and Corsia, you know, just about creating a micro master's course, and you know, I'm seeing that more and more but you know, it's just but I'm glad you feel that way too, Bretta, because you're an incredibly intelligent guy. So you know, there's a there's a guy. There's a book that I read. It was called one hundred or fifty or one hundred Alternatives to College, written by a guy named James Altacher.
And I got to talk to James probably about a year ago and not a lot for the podcasting. He actually said the same thing. He actually got out of college with a degree and they had to send him somewhere else at how to code, even though his degree was in computer science, and they said, you know, hey, you know we're going to send you this boot camp. We're going to do all this and that, and finally he said, you know, what the hell was it worth?
He said, I spent all this money going to college and I get bumped out and all of a sudden, you know, we can't I can't even code. I mean, what was the point of all that?
Yeah, I can relate. That was kind of the same way. It's sad.
Yeah, I mean, and my former college I actually used to teach multimedia classes because they the teachers that got hired to teach them didn't know how to do anything. And I mean that with all sincerity, but they literally one guy actually came to me and said, hey, Dave, I haven't picked up a camera in fifteen years, and they want me to teach the video the Introduction to Video Production class. So I had to sit down with him and I said, okay, so we're going to be
shooting for an SD card. We were using the Panasonic HMC one F and I hit record on the camera and I said, now when I hit it again, it's going to create. It's going to start and stop that file and that's its own digital file. And he says, whoa. He was Dave, wait a minute, you're going way too fast. Yeah, and I said, what I said, you're going to be teaching the course and and this is too fast.
He had.
His idea was he could stay one step ahead of the students by training with me. That was his secret plan.
And it's only going to the speed only increases with time on it, with technology, So it's a losing race.
Yeah, it really is. I mean, the thing I mean that was his I mean because I think if he was trying to get, you know, his head wrap around the cameras and it's just you know, I, you know, I'm so glad I don't teach them anymore or do anything there anymore. But but that that.
Was the sign.
I think colleges like that are going to go under I think all of these small private colleges that are that live and breathe through having one hundred percent enrollment are just going to all go under that.
Again. When I graduated, I did a computer science degree at McGill. I again struggled through the whole thing, and then I said, it was so painful that I started a YouTube channel to just try to recommunicate what I had learned and I had. I'm still doing that to this day, and it's been very cathartic to you know, spend months struggling on a video that was connected to months prior that struggling in school, and then recommunicated in an eight minute video that then people say, ah, you
open my eyes. You made that clear for me. And I'll hear from people who either finish school and are still watching those videos because they it feels good to have something clarified. But I'll also hear from people who haven't yet gone to university and we'll watch one of the Art of the Problem series and say like that has changed my worldview. Now I'm going to school knowing what I want to learn, and that makes me very happy because when I went to school, I didn't know anything.
I didn't know where I was going, I didn't have a firm grounding, and it's very sad that it wasn't ntil after school and communicating it back on YouTube that I fully absorb the lessons I was supposed to learn in school.
See, and that that's invaluable. I think that's why a lot of the times those online classes are are You know, if I was if I was a high school senior right now, that's all I would be doing. Would was would be doing online classes right now?
Oh man, It's just a different world now, and the quality is increasing so quickly. Just five or six years ago on YouTube, if you were trying to learn, there was not a lot out there. Now if you search anything, not only is it there, but there's probably six or seven versions of it, and the top version is probably really well produced. So things are trending in the right direction when it comes to finding online resources big time.
And also you can get the I just downloaded Unreal Engine four and it actually is the whole engine you can use to actually build video games, and it's one hundred percent free.
And legit, that's so cool. That's a rabbit hole. I'd be scared to go down, but sounds very interesting.
Yeah, I wanted to make my own little first person shooter, just something very small and fun and just have a laugh. And then that is something. I mean, I have so many film projects I want to get done, but I was like, you know, let me just try this real quick, and you know, just trying it out. But that but that is something too. I agree brit that I would be like a rabbit hole, you know, it would be hard to get back from, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I've been want I actually think that's great though, when you're stuck on something to go work on a totally different project. I have to have three things on the go. It's the only way I work. But making a video game has always been in the back of my mind. But again, I just I know the hours involved, so I haven't even touched it yet.
Yeah, it's uh, and from what I've heard, it's just very time consuming. It's like it's just one of those things. But there's so many scripts that I want to write and this and that, and you know, doing this podcast that sort of keeps up, you know, keeps me busy enough.
But uh, but you know, Britt, you know we've been talking for just about forty five minutes now, you know, is there anything sort of inclosing that we hadn't haven't discussed said that maybe that you wanted to bring up, or is there anything you wanted to do maybe mentioned Just to sort of put a period at the end of the sentence.
I would just kind of amplify something I've been hearing lately, which is this is a dawn of a new era where it is a world Sorry, it's a dont let me start again. I'm going to amplify something I've already heard a few times, which is that this is a new era that will be very friendly for creatives and people who create online where it's just starting to happen.
Where we were in a world recently where you're either at the very top of your industry and you're making a ton of money or you were a nobody and you made no money. But now people who can have generate, you know, small audience, whether it's ten thousand, whether it's one hundred or one thousand, or ten thousand or one
hundred thousand. We're getting into a world where you will be able to sustain yourself, and with things like the Internet Creators Guild, which I recommend anyone joining, which just launched the year. Creatives online are starting to reorganize and
the business models are changing. YouTube's evolving if you're in the video medium, and I do think if anyone is either starting now or they started a little while ago, and you know they're not making any revenue from their art, I think just stick with it because in about five years, I think an internet eyeball will be worth the same as a TV eyeball, and right now they're off by
like two orders of magnitude. So I think we're getting into a new year where it's very creator friendly and you can kind of build your own audience from the bottom up and not have to attach yourself to some sort of machine to make a living.
Yeah, I fall into the former. So the ladder camp nobody who makes no money. That's me. So hopefully, I mean, you know, hopefully I can I can do something.
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But I mean I would call you that, Britt, because I mean, you know you're a part of pixel on a Box. You know, you did out of the Problem, you know, all all this great stuff, Britt. So I don't I don't think you're a nobody.
I think your podcast great and it's it's it's just amazing to see people who just like plow away at something and just build it. I think the people building stuff online now in ten years are going to be very happy they did it.
Well. Thank you, Brit.
Awesome. I love it so Brit.
Where can you find you right online?
So you know, my website is brick Cruise dot com and I'm on Twitter and part of the problem. You can find me on YouTube. That's where I kind of publish the majority of my videos.
And I'll link to that in the show notes as well, everybody I'll look to also Pixar on a Box And also Brett, I gave you a follow on Twitter, by the way, and I actually found your Twitter account before you a couple days ago. I was like, oh, I'm gonna make sure to follow him, and uh, you see what we see what he's tweeting, and uh, you tweet. You tweet a lot of interesting stuff, by the way, and uh, and I like people like that who tweet, you know, really cool stuff.
Right on, I follow you too.
Okay, cool, thank you, but uh, Britt, I want to say thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to everything, uh that you that you come up with. And again I'm looking very interesting picture on a box season. Uh was it what we call season three? I guess we're gonna call it ours?
Yeah, season three, Well that's internal name, but it's the storytelling unit.
I'm really looking forward to that as well. Britt Cruz, I want to say thank you so much for coming on and I really do want to wish you the best for everything.
Thanks so much, Dave. Let's catch up again.
Oh yeah, anytime you want to come back on, Britt, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to have you on. Thank you so much anytime, buddy, Take care, cheers.
I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv for it slash for four. Thank you so much, for listening to guys as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.