Danielle Feinberg joined Pixar nearly three decades ago, when the animation studio had just released its debut film, “Toy Story,” the first-ever feature-length computer-animated movie.
“I used to say, ‘I work at a place called Pixar. We make computer-animated films,’ because no one had any idea what Pixar was,” she said at a recent Dean’s Speaker Series, in conversation with David Bravo, MBA 25, and Punit Vyas, EWMBA 27. “We had made this new art form, and we were all making it up.”
Feinberg has since seen the company expand from about 300 to 1,300 people, lead many technological innovations in film, and navigate its acquisition by Disney. She also worked on iconic films from “WALL-E” to “Brave” to “Coco,” most recently serving as the studio’s visual effects supervisor and director of photography.
A pioneer in the computer-animated film industry, Pixar had a bit of a startup feel when Feinberg joined. In that environment she said she learned to strategize and prioritize projects, and deeply focus on stories.
At Pixar, nothing is more important than story.
“At Pixar, nothing is more important than story,” she said. “And for us, a great story is one where not only are you entertained, but you feel it. It has heart. And I think that that’s what really brings the sort of soul to our movies. So, every department after the story department is finding their own ways of sort of supporting that.”
As a leader, Feinberg says openly recognizing team members’ work around company leaders is critical.
“Even if it’s just in passing, all the time, I’ll say (to an important person at the company), did you see what this person did? They did this amazing thing. You should check it out.’” she said. “I try to do that a lot to just sort of sponsor people and make sure that they’re getting lifted up and getting recognized for what they do.”
Staying creative is particularly challenging for a company that worries about repetition by not constantly innovating and pushing boundaries, she said. That led Feinberg to propose an “innovation day,” a day after a busy movie screening where everyone gathers for a single day to complete projects that interest them using any software or art supplies. At the end of the day, 24 of 26 people showed projects. “Twenty-two projects were amazing—either really fun or really interesting or from someone who had a day to do something that was related to the movie.”
But the pressure of making the next great Pixar film is always there, she said.
“I think because we have this touchstone of making a great movie, that’s everyone’s goal,” she said. “It doesn’t mean we can always hit it. There are plenty of factors involved that can sway it one way or another. But it is certainly something we always aspire to….We all understand that there’s this phenomenon where we get kind of compared against ourselves a lot, which feels kind of unfair, but it’s just what it is. We asked for it in a way because we try so hard to make good movies.”