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When I was seven years old,
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some well-meaning adult asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up.
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Proudly, I said: "An artist."
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"No, you don't," he said,
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"You can't make a living being an artist!"
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My little seven-year-old
Picasso dreams were crushed.
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But I gathered myself,
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went off in search of a new dream,
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eventually settling on being a scientist,
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perhaps something like
the next Albert Einstein.
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(Laughter)
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I have always loved math and science,
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later, coding.
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And so I decided to study
computer programming in college.
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In my junior year,
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my computer graphics professor
showed us these wonderful short films.
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It was the first computer animation
any of us had ever seen.
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I watched these films
in wonder, transfixed,
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fireworks going off in my head,
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thinking, "That is what
I want to do with my life."
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The idea that all the math, science
and code I had been learning
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could come together to create
these worlds and characters
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and stories I connected with,
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was pure magic for me.
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Just two years later, I started working
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at the place that made those films,
Pixar Animation Studios.
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It was here I learned how
we actually execute those films.
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To create our movies,
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we create a three-dimensional
world inside the computer.
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We start with a point that makes
a line that makes a face
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that creates characters,
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or trees and rocks
that eventually become a forest.
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And because it's
a three-dimensional world,
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we can move a camera
around inside that world.
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I was fascinated by all of it.
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But then I got my first taste of lighting.
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Lighting in practice is placing lights
inside this three-dimensional world.
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I actually have icons of lights
I move around in there.
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Here you can see I've added a light,
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I'm turning on the rough version
of lighting in our software,
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turn on shadows
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and placing the light.
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As I place a light,
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I think about what it might
look like in real life,
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but balance that out with what we need
artistically and for the story.
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So it might look like this at first,
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but as we adjust this and move that
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in weeks of work,
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in rough form it might look like this,
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and in final form, like this.
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There's this moment in lighting
that made me fall utterly in love with it.
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It's where we go from this
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to this.
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It's the moment where
all the pieces come together,
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and suddenly the world comes to life
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as if it's an actual place that exists.
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This moment never gets old,
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especially for that little seven-year-old
girl that wanted to be an artist.
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As I learned to light,
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I learned about using light
to help tell story,
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to set the time of day,
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to create the mood,
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to guide the audience's eye,
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how to make a character look appealing
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or stand out in a busy set.
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Did you see WALL-E?
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(Laughter)
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There he is.
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As you can see,
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we can create any world that we want
inside the computer.
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We can make a world with monsters,
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with robots that fall in love,
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we can even make pigs fly.
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(Laughter)
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While this is an incredible thing,
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this untethered artistic freedom,
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it can create chaos.
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It can create unbelievable worlds,
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unbelievable movement,
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things that are jarring to the audience.
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So to combat this, we tether
ourselves with science.
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We use science and the world we know
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as a backbone,
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to ground ourselves in something
relatable and recognizable.
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"Finding Nemo" is an excellent
example of this.
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A major portion of the movie
takes place underwater.
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But how do you make it look underwater?
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In early research and development,
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we took a clip of underwater footage
and recreated it in the computer.
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Then we broke it back down
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to see which elements make up
that underwater look.
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One of the most critical elements
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was how the light travels
through the water.
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So we coded up a light
that mimics this physics --
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first, the visibility of the water,
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and then what happens with the color.
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Objects close to the eye
have their full, rich colors.
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As light travels deeper into the water,
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we lose the red wavelengths,
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then the green wavelengths,
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leaving us with blue at the far depths.
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In this clip you can see
two other important elements.
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The first is the surge and swell,
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or the invisible underwater current
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that pushes the bits of particulate
around in the water.
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The second is the caustics.
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These are the ribbons of light,
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like you might see
on the bottom of a pool,
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that are created when the sun
bends through the crests
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of the ripples and waves
on the ocean's surface.
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Here we have the fog beams.
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These give us color depth cues,
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but also tells which direction is up
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in shots where we don't
see the water surface.
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The other really cool thing
you can see here
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is that we lit that particulate
only with the caustics,
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so that as it goes in and out
of those ribbons of light,
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it appears and disappears,
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lending a subtle, magical
sparkle to the underwater.
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You can see how we're using the science --
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the physics of water,
light and movement --
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to tether that artistic freedom.
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But we are not beholden to it.
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We considered each of these elements
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and which ones had to be
scientifically accurate
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and which ones we could push and pull
to suit the story and the mood.
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We realized early on that color
was one we had some leeway with.
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So here's a traditionally colored
underwater scene.
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But here, we can take Sydney Harbor
and push it fairly green
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to suit the sad mood of what's happening.
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In this scene, it's really important
we see deep into the underwater,
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so we understand what
the East Australian Current is,
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that the turtles are diving into
and going on this roller coaster ride.
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So we pushed the visibility of the water
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well past anything you would
ever see in real life.
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Because in the end,
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we are not trying to recreate
the scientifically correct real world,
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we're trying to create a believable world,
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one the audience can immerse
themselves in to experience the story.
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We use science to create
something wonderful.
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We use story and artistic touch
to get us to a place of wonder.
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This guy, WALL-E, is a great
example of that.
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He finds beauty in the simplest things.
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But when he came in to lighting,
we knew we had a big problem.
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We got so geeked-out on making
WALL-E this convincing robot,
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that we made his binoculars
practically optically perfect.
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(Laughter)
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His binoculars are one of the most
critical acting devices he has.
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He doesn't have a face or even
traditional dialogue, for that matter.
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So the animators were heavily
dependent on the binoculars
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to sell his acting and emotions.
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We started lighting and we realized
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the triple lenses inside his binoculars
were a mess of reflections.
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He was starting to look glassy-eyed.
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(Laughter)
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Now, glassy-eyed
is a fundamentally awful thing
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when you are trying
to convince an audience
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that a robot has a personality
and he's capable of falling in love.
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So we went to work on these optically
perfect binoculars,
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trying to find a solution that would
maintain his true robot materials
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but solve this reflection problem.
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So we started with the lenses.
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Here's the flat-front lens,
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we have a concave lens
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and a convex lens.
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And here you see all three together,
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showing us all these reflections.
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We tried turning them down,
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we tried blocking them,
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nothing was working.
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You can see here,
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sometimes we needed something specific
reflected in his eyes --
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usually Eve.
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So we couldn't just use some faked
abstract image on the lenses.
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So here we have Eve on the first lens,
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we put Eve on the second lens,
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it's not working.
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We turn it down,
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it's still not working.
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And then we have our eureka moment.
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We add a light to WALL-E
that accidentally leaks into his eyes.
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You can see it light up
these gray aperture blades.
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Suddenly, those aperture blades
are poking through that reflection
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the way nothing else has.
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Now we recognize WALL-E as having an eye.
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As humans we have the white of our eye,
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the colored iris
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and the black pupil.
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Now WALL-E has the black of an eye,
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the gray aperture blades
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and the black pupil.
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Suddenly, WALL-E feels like he has a soul,
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like there's a character
with emotion inside.
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Later in the movie towards the end,
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WALL-E loses his personality,
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essentially going dead.
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This is the perfect time to bring back
that glassy-eyed look.
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In the next scene,
WALL-E comes back to life.
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We bring that light back to bring
the aperture blades back,
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and he returns to that sweet,
soulful robot we've come to love.
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(Video) WALL-E: Eva?
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Danielle Feinberg: There's a beauty
in these unexpected moments --
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when you find the key
to unlocking a robot's soul,
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the moment when you discover
what you want to do with your life.
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The jellyfish in "Finding Nemo"
was one of those moments for me.
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There are scenes in every movie
that struggle to come together.
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This was one of those scenes.
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The director had a vision for this scene
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based on some wonderful footage
of jellyfish in the South Pacific.
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As we went along,
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we were floundering.
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The reviews with the director
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turned from the normal
look-and-feel conversation
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into more and more questions
about numbers and percentages.
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Maybe because unlike normal,
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we were basing it on
something in real life,
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or maybe just because we had lost our way.
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But it had become about using
our brain without our eyes,
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the science without the art.
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That scientific tether
was strangling the scene.
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But even through all the frustrations,
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I still believed it could be beautiful.
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So when it came in to lighting,
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I dug in.
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As I worked to balance
the blues and the pinks,
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the caustics dancing
on the jellyfish bells,
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the undulating fog beams,
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something promising began to appear.
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I came in one morning and checked
the previous night's work.
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And I got excited.
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And then I showed it
to the lighting director
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and she got excited.
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Soon, I was showing to the director
in a dark room full of 50 people.
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In director review,
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you hope you might get some nice words,
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then you get some notes
and fixes, generally.
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And then, hopefully, you get a final,
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signaling to move on to the next stage.
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I gave my intro, and I played
the jellyfish scene.
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And the director was silent
for an uncomfortably long amount of time.
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Just long enough for me to think,
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"Oh no, this is doomed."
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And then he started clapping.
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And then the production
designer started clapping.
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And then the whole room was clapping.
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This is the moment
that I live for in lighting.
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The moment where it all comes together
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and we get a world that we can believe in.
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We use math, science and code
to create these amazing worlds.
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We use storytelling and art
to bring them to life.
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It's this interweaving of art and science
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that elevates the world
to a place of wonder,
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a place with soul,
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a place we can believe in,
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a place where the things
you imagine can become real --
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and a world where a girl suddenly realizes
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not only is she a scientist,
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but also an artist.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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