President of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios Ed Catmull talked of the role of failure in creativity as he shared experiences creating movies such as Frozen, Toy Story and Up on Tuesday at BYU.
“Failure is the consequence of trying something new,” said Catmull as he address the campus community in a Forum address.
“As students learn to see, they can begin solving problems with creativity,” he said. “Creativity is about solving problems.”
Catmull told of the dream that drove him for two decades: to create an animated film. In 1995, when that dream was achieved with the release of Toy Story, Catmull was without a goal and felt like he had lost his ‘ability to see.’ Over the years he has seen others suffering from a lack of creativity and drive, often for reasons that weren’t obvious.
“Very smart people were missing something that was essential to their survival – these creative people became uncreative,” Catmull said.
Finding the missing piece becomes crucial to creativity. Catmull suggested three things to do to overcome systemic and cultural forces that could hinder our creativity.
1. Question Your Honesty
“Why aren’t people candid about addressing their problems?” Catmull asked, acknowledging that it is often hard to look past the inherent power structures of an organization and address the actual problem.
“If you know you are exposed, you can talk to others more. We need to think about the actual problems and not just address the symptoms.”
Catmull gave an example from the creation of the movie Frozen. The work had become stuck in the creative process. But when they changed the dynamics of the team, when egos were removed, they were then able to focus on the real problem and that’s when their ideas began to move.
2. Accept Failures and Mistakes
The second key building block of creativity, according to Catmull, is failure. One kind of failure we often learn about in school is when we fail a test or a class, we feel dumb.
However, the other kind of failure actually helps our creativity: accepting failure as part of the process will allow us to learn from the experience, he said.
“A lot of things we learn in life are from our failures,” Catmull said. “Failure is not a necessary evil, it is a consequence of trying something new.”
3. Protect New and Fragile Ideas
The 2009 film Up started as a story of a king, his two sons and a floating castle in the sky. The people in the castle were at war with the people on the ground. During the fight, the two sons fell overboard and then met a large bird.
“This version didn’t work,” Catmull said. “In the final version, all that was left [of the original ideas] was the bird, and the word Up.”
Catmull said as the team moved through the many iterations of the story it would have been easy to give up on the project because individual ideas just weren’t working. But as the team was given space to make mistakes, they were able to keep refining and improving the story.
“Relentless means that we will screw up, and it’s okay,” said Catmull. “We don’t look backwards for excuses, we look backwards for lessons.”
At times the work will be challenging, but that’s exactly the point said Catmull.
“Solving the problems we face is not an impediment to the job: it is the job,” he said. “Ease isn’t the goal, excellence is.”