Did Pixar steal idea for UP? Uncategorized

By Rawls — May 12, 2010, 05:57 pm EDT

Did Pixar steal idea for UP?

 

I originally found this debate on Cartoon Brew which lead me as well over to the You thought we wouldn't notice website.

Basically, these are the details as I have found it thus far...

_____________________________

In 2005, a group of students at ESRA made a short film called “Above Then Beyond”.

In 2009, Pixar released a feature film called “Up”.

If you’ve already seen “Up”, you might find it remarkably similar to “Above Then Beyond”.

I found an interview with Pete Docter, writer and director of “Up”, and this is what he said about building the film’s concept:

Pete Docter – “We came up with this idea of a floating house, and we worked backwards from that, thinking, “How did this guy get into the floating house?” And we came up with this whole backstory of him meeting this girl, and they fell in love, and they had this whole relationship. And this failed promise, that they didn’t ever get to go down to South America to live this adventure that they always wanted to do. And so it was kind of based on that.”

The resemblance to the students’ short film made me uneasy, so I had to look into this.

I contacted Yannick Banchereau and asked:

“Did someone in your team go on to work for Pixar?”

“Did Pixar buy the rights to your concept?”

“Was this purely a coincidence?”

His response (translated by Google Translate):

Yannick Banchereau – “Well, no, none of us went to work at Pixar, if you know someone who is in Supinfgraph, you should know that ESRA has a partnership with Pixar, so we concluded that for Pixar to see our film among those that ESRA had sent them, and they “kept” (stolen?) the idea into a feature film …
Unfortunately the film does not belong to us because this was done as part of our studies, so we can do nothing …
Thank you for your interest, it’s good to see that someone has acknowledged our film (even if the quality is far from the Pixar)”

Personally, I can’t help it to think that Pixar used the students’ idea. If they did, it’s disappointing that the acknowledgment for these students cannot be found anywhere.

 ____________________________________

"remarkably similar"... I have my own opinion about that, and I think I'll keep it to myself, because I'm sure none of you want me going off on the idea of monopolizing thieves in our industry!  :S

 What say you???


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  • Sammich

  • Sammich

    May 20, 2010

    Writing on UP began in 2004, but based on the conversations I've had with people at Pixar, their ideas start developing long before they start writing.  I realize it's possible they saw this film and scrapped everything late 2005 and started the film in a new direction, as Pixar has shown they are fully capable of rebuilding a failing film concept in a short time.

    However, aside from ideas that have been in books and movies for years and years (flying houses, old people refusing to give up property while the city around them booms with business, evil faceless business putting pressure on the defenseless, crazy coot uses eccentric gadgetry to stick it to the man), I just don't see that many similarities.  A few shots remind me of shots from UP, but that's really it.  Frankly, if I was Pixar and I was stealing an idea, I'd try to avoid copying the most iconic sequence of shots from the film I was stealing from, but who knows, maybe they're a lot stupider than I am.  I really doubt it though and I'm guessing it's a combination of coincidence and the limited number of shot possibilities in filming a house/balloon rising out of a city.  What else are you going to show?  The balloon up really close?  A long shot down the street?  Looking up at the balloon from street level?

    When I was working on Pajama Gladiator at BYU, we got some guys out from Pixar to help us.  It turned out they were also working on a short that involved a guy being abducted in his pajamas by inept aliens.  We were really worried because they told us some of our early shots were very similiar to things they were doing.  It turned out in the end that the films were very different, and any similarities were due to coincidence of the subject matter (we changed our film a little to avoid similarity, but it was unnecessary in my thinking).

    At any rate, let's assume that somewhere in the writing process, one of the Pixar storyboard artists saw this film and the shots stuck in his brain (even subconsciously) when he went to board his scenes.  It could happen.  Well, Ed Catmull spoke about how people are always trying to sue Pixar/Disney for stealing their ideas, but that the lawsuits always fail because their movies are not ONE IDEA, or even a discrete set of related ideas.  They're a complex interaction of thousands of good ideas, all woven together to make the film what it is.  Was Dreamworks stealing from Pixar when they made ANTZ?  Maybe, but it doesn't matter, because they're completely different films.  And that's why, aside from a few ruffled feathers, nothing ever came out of the conflict between the two studios.

    Personally, I think people put way too much stock into the value of an idea.  In fact, "Above Then Beyond" proves my very point---good idea?  Yeah, maybe.  Good film?  No.

  • Everett

  • Everett

    May 20, 2010

    Wow, that is the same plot.
    My question (and it may be a stupid one) Is how long did it take Pixar to produce UP? Writing, Concept work, previz, modeling, rendering, lighting, animation, voice recording,   foley,  editing.....all that stuff can take a while. Is it possible Pixar was already in early production when they saw this short? 
    Four years does seem like a stretch, but hey "stranger things" and all that.

  • webrom

  • webrom

    May 17, 2010

    i'm a Pixar-fan, this clip just break may heart Broken HeartBroken HeartBroken HeartBroken Heart

  • jeffsimpsonkh

  • jeffsimpsonkh

    May 16, 2010

    Like it's been said before, I can see both sides of the argument I guess. 

    This reminds me of the visual style of borderlands being ""inspired?"" by that MTV short "codebreakers".

    • MiokiMilk

    • MiokiMilk

      Jan 15, 2013

      When i found the short codebreakers via youtubing the artist Fuck Buttons, I remember reading all the comments on youtube saying codebreakers stole their idea from borderlands.

      yes i ordered that right. I facepalmed my face through the back of my head that day.

  • AppleCrow

  • AppleCrow

    May 14, 2010

    The story and some of the visuals do indeed seem very similar, and I can understand and argument from either side of the issue. But when it comes down to it, in my honest opinion, there hasn't been very many truly original ideas as far as film goes for quite a while. Ideas, characters, and stories are retold and reinvisioned all the time, its very hard to find any work that doesn't have a noticable inspiration from something that came before it.

    For example someone mentioned Avatar. Though a great movie indeed, can be compared to something like Fern Gully. Very similar stories, all the way down to the massive tree that is home to a whole species, to the giant oil guzzling machines tearing apart the forest. Instead of riding bee type creatures, there's dragon like flying creatures. There are many things from movies that connect nearly directly to older ideas, thats what inspiration is. Granted, there is a fine line between being inspired and ripping off another idea, youd have to accuse every one of taking from something if you were to be so technical about it.

    That being said, the connections between Pixar and ESRA do make it easier to assume they snatched the idea. Lots of the visuals are very similar (floating house, thriving city and construction surrounding a spot untouched by the industrial growth, the scene where the house rises above the clouds even) but to Pixars credit, those are all visuals that would inspire ideas for any number of artists. Plus, not to knock Above Then Beyond, but the stories are indeed different enough for UP not to be a rip. Could they have been motivated and inspired to use similar visuals?, sure I definitley think they were. Does it mean that they stole it cause its similar?, I don't think so personally. There have been many many times where I would brainstorm ideas for my own stories and come up with something really cool that I like, and then seeing something online or a movie trailer on tv that is similar. Its a massive world we live in with millions of creative minds, to think that everyone is going to come up with something completely original is just plain ridiculous.

    Anyways, thats my 2cents, very interesting find Rawls, thx for the post.


    —
    "What I do is create images, period." - Frank Frazetta
    www.applecrow.carbonmade.com
  • Daniel

  • Daniel

    May 13, 2010

    I think that until all the artists start giving credit to every other artist and photographer they used as reference and inspiration for their work, nobody has the right to call foul and point fingers at Pixar. So are you all ready to do that? List every point of inspiration every time you post ANYthing! Ready? Go!

  • belogriviy

  • belogriviy

    May 13, 2010

    sorry for my "bright" english, but i remembered Guy de Maupassant and a fuss around his novel "Pierre et Jean":
    "In the words of Maupassant, a source of "Pierre and Jean" served as he had read a story in the newspaper. When a young writer named Edward Estonia reported to him that is working around similar work, Guy replied: "Could it be that you have read the same thing in fact the same day that I see? How many times has it happened that an event that echoes everywhere, provoked discussion and comments, generate the same excitement in two of the same kind of minds. And if it happens that, for whatever reason, one of the two previously released product, which sprang from the same seed, the second will inevitably be doomed to the charge of plagiarism."

    p.s. however, in this case is a huge time difference

  • Rawls

  • Rawls

    May 13, 2010

    The core idea (at least for the opening of UP) is identical to this (yes the main character is a woman not a man, but if you can't look past the little outward differences and can't see the identical underlying story points, you need some glasses), but I think the only reason that it's "different" is that Pixar didn't want to 'completely' rip off the idea and of course to make it "their own".  There is something to say about being inspired by an idea, then taking that idea and making it better...but then not giving credit to those who were responsible for the initial inspiration.

    Besides that, Pixar did at least make the story happier and they of course have more money and talent to make it look more appealing as well.  But in the end, I don't really care how amazing you are as an artist or group of artists... if you're work is just taken from someone else and you don't give that someone credit for the idea, you lose your standing as a professional and are now branded as a creative thief.

    But that's just how I feel about it.


    —
    www.thinkmorestudios.com
    www.rawlsy.blogspot.com
  • che-che

  • che-che

    May 12, 2010

    i like that it was a happy ending until the second ending. DEATH!


    i dont think i have really liked a pixar movie since monsters inc. 

    although i did like the very beginning of up then they started talking and then the dogs talked. and just kept going down.

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