Story Telling In Business - Pixar Story Teller Mathew Luhn at CIMC

Hey, there, you forgot one thing, the guy who makes people cry, that's really my job title, right, because if you've seen a Pixar movie, yeah, I'm one of those people who makes you cry and laugh and They make you feel something good. I've been doing all these years creating stories, that's what I love to do. I love creating stories. I love

telling

stories and I love helping people become better

story

teller

s, so it makes sense that I start with my

story

, as strange as it may be. It seems that it does start in a toy store, Jeffery's Toy Store, because when I was born, my parents owned the largest family-owned toy store chain in the San Francisco Bay Area.

What a bummer it is that I was instantly put into buying toys for the rest of my life! my life, it's your birthday, go to the store, buy whatever you want, the only problem was later trying to figure out who your real friends in life are. I think I still have a pretty good collection of toys that I still deal with. but my mom and dad weren't the ones who started the toy store chain my grandparents owned and operated Jefferies toys before my parents before my grandparents my great-grandparents owned and operated the toy stores and then my great-great-grandfather did, Charlie, the guy with a cigar in his mouth he actually hated toys and he hated children he actually owned a cigar store in San Francisco we don't talk much about Charlie that's fine but here we have my dad with a sneak and my grandfather who I'm very Me I am happy to say that he is 92 years old.

I know he will start at 92 this month. He was a Marine in World War II and could still beat me up today if he wants, but my dad didn't really want to start driving the toy anymore. stores not Smurf the other guy when my dad volunteered to go to Vietnam and came home he said to his dad the Marine dad I want to be an animator I want to work for Walt Disney and be a Disney animator this is what my dad always wanted to do since he was a kid, he was that kid that always loved to draw cartoons, loved to write stories, it's just that, he is, but when he came back from Vietnam and told us to add the Marine I want to be. a Disney animator, you can probably guess how that story ended, first, artists don't make money, second, we have the family

business

, you need to help me, so just think about the first Star Wars movie, you know?

Luke says: I want to be a fighter pilot Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru casino you need to work on the farm except my dad is not a Jedi, that's pretty much what the story turned out and my dad continued running the family

business

es, the toy stores and it still does today in San Francisco and in Berkeley, today it's 80% off for anyone, so if you have time, you can do it. So when I was about three years old, I should also mention that my mother is from Germany, hence the girl in leather pants here, when I was about three years old, my father was at home. the toy stores with a sick stomach and in order to cheer him up I made a drawing of him, it was a drawing of him with a stomach ache and you can see by the swirls inside you know it's a very good representation of my deck when my dad saw this drawing and instantly He said, "You're going to be that animator, you're going to live that dream, whether you want it or not, this is your future, so luckily I liked to draw and my dad did the usual things that other parents did." I'd like to take your kids to see animated movies, sure, take them to museums, try to give them some culture, but my dad took it to the next level when my mom dropped me off at school in the morning.

Elementary school, my dad at least once a week. she would pick me up around 11 a.m. to take me to see the movie of the week because I was his movie partner. Now sometimes they were animated, but most of the time they were what he felt were really good movies that we needed to see like poltergeist. when you're five years old, but all this love for movies and animation rubbed off on me and when I was 18, maybe 17, I knew I wanted to go to this specific animation school called Cal Arts in Los Angeles. That was the animation school of the time throughout the United States.

It was a school that Walt Disney started before he passed away so he could train the next generation of animators your teachers would be the kids who animated Bambi and Pinocchio, it's crazy, I wasn't the only one who wanted to go to school, everyone who loved animation wanted to get into this school and the number of our animation department was 113 these three guys here are three guys that I've worked with for a long time John Lasseter director of the Toy Story cars, you've probably seen those Andrew stand up here, director of Wall-e, someone watches Wall-e and Finding Nemo and then Pete is there as the director of Inside Out Monsters Inc.

Up everyone, that's fine, quit, quit, we all went to this school and Pixar culture . comes from CalArts comes from our animation department a 1 1 3. If you're a Pixar nerd like me, watch those movies again because a113 is in every one of them and we're not the only ones doing this. everyone else who has gone to the animation department at Cal Arts like Tim Burton also includes it in every film and while I went to Cal Arts, thank God they accepted me. I made a student film called Steward Skyler Saves the Day, no. It's not on the Internet.

It was a four-minute animated film that I made. I painted it on cells. I put music to it. I made voices and a small SOT animation company called The Simpsons. They had only been on the air for two years. They were my favorite TV show and they offered me a job to be. animator in the third season of The Simpsons, which is a very good season. I was only 19 years old when I took the job. I did what was totally logical. I left school and stayed in Hollywood and started working on The Simpsons and was animating every day.

At that point I had somehow reached my father's goal and then I stumbled upon the story room, this was the room where the writers wrote an episode once a week, do you recognize it? guy in the back with a can of coke, yeah, it's Conan and there were comic artists there, there were comedians there and as a team, just like Saturday Night Live, they wrote a different episode every week. I fell in love with this. It was like that, that's why I've always loved animated movies and those live action movies that I would go see with my dad, it was the big picture, it was the story, that's what really interested me, but I thought since It's not possible, they won't do it.

I can't go and join these guys, they'll never invite me, so I stayed the course. I kept cheering and I knew one thing. I clicked a little faster on that box. I know one thing I wanted to get out of Hollywood. I wanted to get back to the San Francisco Bay Area and that's when there was a small studio of 80 people that saw another movie I made called Starship space hustle no it's not on the internet and they thought it was really funny and they said we have a Dream About make the first computer-generated animated film and guess what.

There will be no princess or prince in the film. There will be no musical. There will be no happy fairy tale town. And nobody says "I want a song." So I accepted the job. I was one of the first 12 animators on this movie which was probably a failure because it wasn't your normal animated movie and the first thing I was able to animate in the movie were these little guys, the little army. Men, now the animation's treatment is the fact that my shoes may be on a board. I filmed myself jumping around the studio crawling across the floor jumping to death.

Everyone thought I was completely crazy. I was collecting data in a correct way and that. That's how I animated the army men, it was great, but again the part that really interested me was the story and as an animator they give you a couple of things when you animate, hopefully they give you the script and they give you . the storyboard these are the storyboards of the scenes i had to animate that was the part where i was like oh i was drooling over that part so i was animating my army men during the day this is before get married and have kids, essentially, I had a life and then I would go to the story room after I finished cheering and on the weekend I would help the story team with whatever they needed.

Shaved the green. I was coming up with jokes and they finally said we get it, Matthew. you want to be a story boy, so in Toy Story 2 they moved me into the role of a story boy, what does the story boy do? I help figure out what the movie is going to be about, what the heart of the story is, what the plot of the story is, who the characters are, the story structures everything into 10 movies that Pixar for over 20 years just made the story and I realized that all these years creating these movies that I didn't know at the beginning were having such an effect. to people that the reason our movies were so great wasn't necessarily because of the animation or the music or the voices because other companies were doing that, the reason why people kept coming back to Pixar movies and loving them It was because of the story.

The story was really meaningful, it went beyond the plot, but there was heart to the story and I also began to realize that the same techniques we were using to create great toy movies were the same ones my family had been using for years. to sell toys, which was using a great story, the story of Jeffrey's toys, being able to connect with the people who came to the store because all those years it was those toy stores, beyond just selling toys, we were selling an experience and That's when I realized that what makes a great movie or a great business is a great story, you've heard this before, so why are stories so significant?

Well, first because they are memorable, you know all the images they bombard us with every time. day, from a billboard to the television or something on our phone, they will only remember certain images at the end of the day of all the information they will hear every day, they will only retain part of it because Of all the data and statistics we are bombarded with every day, the depressing truth is that 10 minutes later you will only remember 5 percent of that information. I know, wah wah wah, but that's the truth. I learned this from the inside out.

Remember all memories go to the memory bin, but certain memories that stay with you even for Riley and from the inside out were the memories that were wrapped around an event, a moment, a story and an experience that you can wrap yourself in. your statistics and data around that type of experience. Remember and I'm not just talking about written story, I'm talking even more about visual story because visual story

telling

is really the way we communicate today, so everything from space to color to an image, will tell a story that you know in the future. It says that the IRS uses the same font every year when they ask us for money for taxes and when people accidentally use that same font to advertise their company, you're just pissing people off and they don't even know why they're getting mad because I don't want to. see this is because even pictures tell a story and when you use the story to be able to communicate information your chances increase 22 times now the information you have shared 10 minutes later people are going to remember 65% simply because you told a silly story about yourself family that owned a toy store or any anecdote you want to share and when you tell a story and you want people to sit on the edge of their seats, you want to impact their chemicals, one of the things I always try to do when I'm crafting a story, entertainment or business is that I want people to sit on the edge of their seats.

I want them to be excited about what's going to happen. Next in the story is that anticipation, how do I do this by impacting people's chemicals in their bodies? Because when you tell a great story and you see a character laughing or being happy, you're changing people's chemicals, you laugh with the characters, you feel good, your endorphins. it goes up and then when you see characters on a sad screen, your chemicals go down, cortisol kicks in, you know how to tell a great story, not just having happy, happy, happy moments throughout the movie or sad, sad, sad throughout the commercial . a great story is when you go from one chemical to the next, up and down, anyone can see that very emotional beginning of the movie, that's how we impact your chemicals from the beginning, we release all those happy chemicals in you by showing two people falling. in love get married build a house work together and if they are looking at the sky looking at the clouds the man points up and says look that cloud looks like a baby and the girl looks at the sky she goes Look, all the clouds look like babies and we laugh, but then In the next image we see them in a hospital and we see that the woman will never be able to have children and now the chemicals that were rising change and disappear.

Straight down, when you change the chemicalsinto people's bodies so fast, you'll make adults cry, it just happens and then you take people and go, wait, wait, wait, boogers so bad that one day they'll go on an adventure. they're going to go to South America they're going to save money they're going to go to South America Paradise Falls and then we see that they can never make enough money and then we take you back and sell her pocket watch, buy those tickets, take her to her favorite place up high off the hill with a tree and then we'll take you down when you see that I'll ruin it for you right now if you've done it.

I haven't seen the movie where she passes away and this is a children's home, plus this tension of ups and downs and the release of chemical changes is what makes a great story. How many times have you heard that when it becomes a great story it's a rollercoaster ride, that's what great speakers do when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 10 years ago, he came out and said, I have something revolutionary that's going to change the world. world. We are all excited. He says it's a smartphone. Like, then he knocks you down and says smartphones exist and they're stupid, why are you telling us this?

Because then when you go to the next high point, it'll be twice as fun and he's like, but mine is smarter than your computer. at home and then he takes you down and says, but all those smartphones out there have a stylus, they are very difficult to use, uncomfortable, ugly like all of them, but then he takes you, let me introduce you to the multi-touch function and then the applications they're hard to get, I can make them easy, this up and down releases tension and releases this is what impacts people chemically impacts people's chemicals and makes them sit on the edge of their seat wanting to hear more and when you do This if the character in the movie, like Woody, is the character that takes us through this journey, then we connect personally with a toy, if it's a CEO like Steve Jobs, we connect personally with that CEO, whoever that is. tell that memorable and impactful story, we connect with them personally and believe them if they tell us we should go buy something new we do it if they say let's watch the next movie we do it because we are personally connected anecdotes are one of the best tools you have in the world of marketing. the world of being story

teller

s sharing non-professional moments of people where you have been successful or people who have used your product or your company have had a positive experience when you share it impacts people makes it memorable and makes it personal that we use anecdotes all the time in our movies, Woody, which is about being there for your owner when he has time in Toy Story 2 and they take him to this strange department of toy collectors and it is said that you are the Woody from the Woody summary, everything you want to do. is to go home, he wants to go back to his best friend, but when Jessie, the cowgirl, tells him that he wants to have an owner who abandoned her, the anecdote is so powerful that he decides that he doesn't want to go home.

I don't want to go back to my best friend, telling an anecdote, a story can be so powerful that you can change the way people feel great leaders do this all the time. Working with Steve was one of the highlights of being at Pixar because he was a great storyteller who made a personal connection with people, so I'm already very short on time, but I'm going to follow some steps here, some of the ways to to be a better storyteller. First, you have to have a great hook if you can't hook people in one second you've already ruined it, but how do you hook people?

What is shock value? What do you do based on my experience? It is creating something unusual, unexpected, or has some kind of action or conflict. from the beginning, in those first eight seconds, whether superheroes were prohibited from saving people in eight seconds or whether a rat wanted to be a French chef in less than eight seconds or even if you could put a thousand songs in your pocket when Steve Jobs introduced the iPod it was when there was only the Walkman you know 10 20 songs on a cassette tape this was a great cook a hook that is unusual unexpected or creates a conflict or action catches our attention but you know what once you hook people, you want to keep them, you want to keep them sitting there watching the movie, right?

I know that when people go to the movies they want to pee, they want to eat, I want to prevent them from wanting to use their phone. to stop them from doing that, but after I hook them, the next thing I do is make them a promise that what you're about to watch for 90 minutes will change your life. It's a big promise, but that's what people want. To go through a transformation, people don't like to change personally, but we like to go through a transformation through a hero on a journey. You can do this one-on-one with a client by sharing with them how you changed through an experience. true or how someone you know has been changed to an experience, but the next thing people want to know once you hook them is how what you're talking about will make me richer and happier faster or in a movie pie Pixar.

Make me remember how wonderful it is to fall in love or that no matter how bad life gets, there is always a way to regain enthusiasm for life. An adventure that is what makes those Pixar movies great. It's not just a special effect of their characters. changing is a monster who is the number one scare in the world of monsters discovering that he doesn't want to scare anymore it is about a car that is so focused on winning the Piston Cup that he is so arrogant that he learns about friendship and compassion is That change and change whether in a movie or in the real world catches our attention.

I know you guys know this, but don't we hate it so much when all the companies just create ads that look the same? All images look the same, whether they are cars from the healthcare industry. shoes in the industry, but the ads that stand out, the images that stand out are the ones that create a change, like when uber came up, they create a change, that's the next thing you want to promise people, but the problem is that many Sometimes we create a great story that has a great hook, a great twist, but we totally connect with the wrong audience.

You know when you're planning a fundraiser, you know you want to get an investor for your company, you could completely miss the mark if you read the audience. the wrong way if you're telling a story that doesn't speak to them on their level, right? They are teenagers, they are young adults or they are retired. You have to make sure you connect with the right audience for me, although it's tricky. who is my audience is everyone not only in this room but the whole world that we call that the four quadrants man woman young old is a broad audience what do people have in common with a raft what do people have in common with France or with the kitchen I hate cooking she catches but you know what we have in common this guy dreams of doing something that is bad his family his culture his species says you can't do it that's why we love that movie because we can all relate to someone's passions and struggles who wants to do something and they tell me no, you can't do it because of your gender because of your culture of color, whatever it is that you can identify with, but if I want to make sure that I connect with a specific audience, then I want to make sure that that regardless of the ads I connect to that group, so for me I have three children.

Plus, one of them is only three weeks old. What the hell am I doing here now? I think I left the baby in the car. Thanks, moms, no sick days. take dayquil and naik, well dads don't take sick days, they take both at the same time and it's great, you have to make sure you connect with the right audience, know their passions, know their struggles, know their weaknesses, even for people in animation. In the film industry we collect data and I'm not just talking about going out and having people watch your film and give you feedback.

We want to meet our audience with all of this, although you can create a great story and it has no heart. Seeing them, they just feel like you are tricking me into buying more metal carts. You need to create a story with heart. You need to be authentic. How do we do this? How we have done it in so many movies. It's because we make sure. that every story we create is personal, that means every one of these stories is something that happened to us personally, they come from our hearts in Finding Nemo, what inspired the whole idea of ​​the father and son, it's because each of us in the story department we worked on that movie we all had our first children and they were all boys and we were that dad who was doing this the helicopter dad on Inside Out Pete Docter the director the tallest animator I've ever met and also the happiest The most disgustingly happy entertainer I've ever met, his whole family was happy until his daughter turned 12 and Pete didn't know what to do, she was so emotionally sad all the time so people's reaction is: I'm going to be super happy. all the time and you can imagine that turned into a train wreck, but through the experience, Pete realized that you need all the emotions in life.

His daughter just needed to cry, she needed to be angry, she had to be upset with him, she needed to be afraid and she wanted to share with the world that experience of being able to help others. He is joy and his daughter is sadness, that's what the story about one of the best advice I've ever received: don't be smart, don't try Create a story thinking this is what people want to hear, speak from your heart. I know it's difficult, we are programmed from an early age and if we take risks, if we speak from our hearts, we are going to fail, but do you know what it is? the best leaders the best directors are those who are storytellers who speak from the heart they are authentic you know we will never tell the theme of our film you would never hate us if we told you the theme of our films because it wouldn't be authentic.

You want people to feel the theme. You want people to feel the theme. If you never let anything happen to Nemo, nothing will ever happen to him. You don't want to say it. You never want to tell him the mission statement. clients or potential clients, that's for you, you want people to feel the mission statements, you want them to be authentic and then you want to make sure that you wrap all of these great story tools in a way that has good pacing and timing so that when you deliver the information when you make the presentation when you make the presentation at the board meeting you do it in a way that has a setup, a build and a reward.

I can't tell you how many times people have wonderful content. You know, it's a great way to connect, but the delivery was horrible because for thousands and thousands of years we've been delivering stories the same way with a beginning, a middle and an end. Why are we doing this? Because that's how the world has been a beginning. the day, the middle of the day and the end of the day, a cycle of life, that's why we love act 1, act 2 and act 3, the hero's journey, so you need to make sure that when you search share stories, whether they're three minutes long, whether they're 90 minutes long, they have a beginning where you set up the ordinary world and then you create a problem, for example, Woody's favorite toy in the problem room.

The Pulip toy reaches the center of the room. Woody tries to get rid of the buzz, but it causes both. of them are kidnapped by Sid, a boy who likes to torture toys for fun. Woody and Buzz hate each other but they have to work together and in the end Woody has learned to be less selfish, Buzz has learned that although he is not the real Buzz. Lightyear is still an important toy and they give its owner back a beginning, a middle and an end, and you know what a great story does, a great story makes you feel something because we are way beyond marketing to sell people things that we are selling a feeling.

We are selling a story, we want people to feel something. I want to leave you with a video and then we're going to finish here, Dad, I'm ready. Did you look outside? Here it is going down. In fact, I could make you feel my love. my afternoon shadows and the stars appear there is no one there to taste tears I could hug you to make you feel my love caught you the end of the tears to make you feel we are cigarettes Ben is the best or you know nothing The story works when your eyes are full teary eyes, you get goosebumps even watching a Mercedes commercial because in the end people won't remember what you said, people won't remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. thanks guys