This could have been an incredibly different story

After watching a lot of the special features and extras in the Pixar DVDs, I have a strange feeling that Pixar uses something akin to “Agile Development” methodology in their storytelling.

In the “Incredibles” deleted scenes, the villain, “Syndrome”, actually makes an appearance at the start of the movie while Violet is just a little baby.  He invades the home of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible while they are still a young couple. This scene was supposed to be the prelude to the story introducing the characters and their super powers.  It included a fully animated storyboard with sounds and voices. The dialog of Syndrome breaking into the home and capturing the family even included a mention that there was a prohibition on “supers” marrying and having children.

The final movie did not include any of this. In fact, if this was the original scene for the movie, it would have radically altered the entire story, plot trajectory, theme and mood to the narrative. This wasn’t a “deleted scene” so much as it was a complete rewrite of the entire story.  In fact, in some of the “Behind the Scenes” dialog, Syndrome was not even considered the main antagonist of the plot.  He was supposed to just be a random villain that allows the characters to display their super powers.

What Pixar appears to do is that they storyboard, voice and create the entire movie more than once and get audience feedback. This allows the storytellers the ability to refine the story ideas over and over again – scrapping bad ones, changing scene orders, and completely rewriting the story if need be. It is the “Agile Development” method of software taken to film – quick iterations, and lots of opportunities for feedback loops.

Linguini was voiced by Lou Ramano, Art and Production Design

In fact, that is how the voices for Linguini and Emile were discovered for “Ratatouille” – they were Pixar staff who did the voice work for these storyboard sessions and fit the characters so well, they kept them for the final production.

Keep in mind, this is merely conjecture from viewing a lot of “Behind the Scenes” features on the DVDs and on the Internet for the latest Pixar movies. But at the same time, I cannot help but think that a massive amount of research was done to perfect the movies that Pixar produces.

Both “Ratatouille” and “Up” stunned me in their storytelling craft. But if you attempt to describe to someone what these two stories are about, they would be incredulous to believe that someone could actually tell a good story from such a ridiculous plot premise.

It is almost as if someone at Pixar is taking bets that using their storytelling method, they can tell a good story from anything that you can throw at them: from a mouse who wants to learn how to cook in France, to an old man who strings his house up on helium balloons and wants to fly to South America.

With so much story refinement done up-front with tons of research done on audience reaction, I think that it would be nigh impossible for Pixar to make a bad movie. At worse, you won’t get a Pixar movie next year because they are still iterating the kinks out of the current story they are developing, but you will never get a bad one.

"Up" was probably created by a random plot generator