Can you imagine what it would be like if the adventures of ‘Toy Story’ just disappeared? In 1998, that almost happened. Know the story!
The Toy Story franchise is one of the most beloved across the world, with its four films making movie history. You will hardly find anyone who doesn’t know the adventures of Woody, Buzz and their friends, or some of their most famous catchphrases, such as the legendary “To infinity, and beyond!”.
But, have you ever thought what it would be like if part of this iconic story was lost? Thanks to a former Pixar employee, this nearly happened in the year 1998, when virtually the entirety of the second film was deleted from the studio’s archives. The desperate story was told by Pixar co-founder, Edcatmullin the book Creativity Inc., released in 2014, where he wrote alongside the author Amy Wallace.
catmull begins the story by saying that the production of Toy Story 2 yielded major headaches from the beginning. John Lasseterthe director of the film, was already tired because he had just released two big projects (Toy Story 1 and A Bug’s Life), while the creators were experiencing strong creativity problems — but all that would mean nothing after what was about to happen .
On a certain day, one of the Pixar employees ended up putting in a command that deleted everything from the files where the movie was stored. Scenes, backgrounds, character animations… Everything was lost in a matter of seconds.
To make matters worse, the backup system was also not working and the team saw all their work and effort go down the drain. Just to get to where it was already would take another year of production, plus a new investment of thousands of dollars. However, after much desperation, one person managed to save the day after so much chaos – and it wasn’t Buzz.
The name of the great Pixar heroine is Galyn Susman. At the time, she was working as the film’s technical director supervisor, and was on leave as she had just given birth to her second child. However, even being on maternity leave, the woman decided that she would not stop working and took a copy of the production to her home. Her insistence on continuing to work was responsible for saving the project.
In the book, catmull says that when they found out, they looked for the computer of galyn at his house, and they took him to the studio wrapped in blankets and as carefully as possible, transferring all the files as quickly as possible. Although the backup does not contain everything that was lost, Ed claims that the content was enough to significantly reduce the damage. Ufa!
Source: Recreio
