BPS 434: How Pixar’s Story Secrets Can Transform Your Filmmaking Process with Brit Cruise

Alex Ferrari 1:49
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Dave Bullis 1:54
My guest today actually teaches at Khan Academy, and he's the producer for Pixar in a box, an amazing course, it's 100% free, by the way, wink, wink. And the my, other than my guest, also teaches computer science. He teaches cryptography. I mean, brilliant, brilliant guy with guest, Brit Cruise. Hey Brit, Thanks all for coming on the show.

Brit Cruise 2:18
Hey Dave, happy to be speaking with you.

Dave Bullis 2:20
So you know, Brit, you have such a unique background. I mean, you know, you're involved in so many great things. So I want to know when you were growing up, did you always have this sort of, this love of not only teaching, but also of creative problem solving and sort of like computer science?

Brit Cruise 2:41
Yeah, as a kid, like, like most people involved in filmmaking, very early on, I got obsessed with, you know, the home video cameras. And as soon as I got my hands on VCRs, I started trying to cut together videos, you know, starting with family vacations and whatnot and but very soon, what I realized early on is the kinds of videos I was making, once I moved beyond the family videos were explanation style, videos kind of similar to what was on TV at the time. I grew up with Bill Nye, so I kind of bent that way. And very quickly I realized that, you know, I could hand in school projects in video form. I kind of forced my teachers to do that, and I, I kind of found my way into explanation style videos really early, even though it wasn't my one passion, but it's something that came up right away.

Dave Bullis 3:37
Yeah, you mentioned the home video cameras. You know, a lot of guests also had that, that same childhood experience where they're picking up, you know, the Super Eight cameras, or maybe even a little later, like the big VHS box camcorders, and start, you know, then that's how they got their start. And, you know, in making their own films,

Brit Cruise 3:56
Totally I remember my setup now was, I had two VCRs for editing and to mix sound in. I ran, I had, I had an early computer, thanks to my my mom and I would run an audio cable with a mic jack going to RCA cables running diagonally across the room into the VCR so I could mix sound from the computer and video from the VCRs. And that was my first setup. Oh, that's actually brilliant.

Dave Bullis 4:23
That's fun. I mean, especially for, I mean, because what were you seven or eight at the time? Yeah, six, seven. I mean, that's a brilliant idea for a kid to come up with, which explains a lot about you. Brit, me, it's like, I think that's why you know you're, you know you're in the position you are. You have to. There's those moments of brilliance. And you know when I when we talk about computers, what kind of computer was it? Brit? Was it like one of those old Apple twos? Or was it something similar?

Brit Cruise 4:48
No, my friend had an apple. I had one of the early box computers. It was a my actually, my mom had an early Tandy laptop, one of the first laptops. So I grew up on DOS. But then. The computer I'm describing. I remember it was a given from a friend of my dad's, and it was a big, boxy one, I don't know, but it was before, like the compact Presario wave,

Dave Bullis 5:12
Gotcha, gotcha. You know, I mean, did you ever do you still have that computer laying around like somewhere in storage?

Brit Cruise 5:18
No, no, that one's so gone.

Dave Bullis 5:21
I actually maybe a couple months ago, I was going through stuff, and I had my, I still have my first computer that I got, and I was a little late to the party with it, but I, you know, my first computer was in the 90s, probably the late 90s, and I remember pulling this thing out, and, my God, I Brett. I look at it and go, How the hell did I use this thing? It's, it seems so archaic, and it's huge. And I'm like, you know, it's a, it only uses a 56k modem

Brit Cruise 5:50
When you're passionate, though. Yeah, nothing else, anything will get you to anything will work. Any tool will work if you're motivated.

Dave Bullis 5:59
That's a great saying. Brit, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep that, because I'm gonna, that is a great piece of advice. You know, got because mainly, I use it, you know, for, for writing, too. And, I mean, I even had word processors that I remember using, and I looked at some of them, you know, the other day, I was looking through, I'm not, not in person, but online, some of the old word processors. And I'm like, Man, the size of these things, so like a piece of luggage.

Brit Cruise 6:25
Yeah, we had a typewriter too.

Dave Bullis 6:27
Yeah. I know some people who, you know, who are younger listening to this, have no clue what a typewriter is, but, but I've used the typewriter Brit. I remember the remember we had to change the if you made a mistake, you had to put that, like a little card in to sort of backspace it out. Wait it out.

Brit Cruise 6:41
Yeah, yeah. I wish I still had a typer. And actually, it's a nice way to folks stay focused.

Dave Bullis 6:50
Yeah, you know, I was saying that somebody else the other day, you know, it's like, laptops are great, you know, phones are great. But the problem is, is that it's too easy to get distracted with them because of the internet.

Brit Cruise 7:03
Yeah, the context switch is the real killer. It just that's the number one thing people waste time on. They probably, if they count it in a day, when I say context switch, I mean an interruption of any kind, doing one thing and then doing another. If you do that hundreds of times per day, it's a few minutes per switch you waste, and that's why people waste three to four hours a day early on, about six years ago or seven years ago, I noticed this, and one day I just threw my phone out, and I never looked back. I've never owned a smartphone, and that's, again, one of my great time savers.

Dave Bullis 7:39
So do you just have a flip phone now, or no phone at all?

Brit Cruise 7:41
I have a landline.

Dave Bullis 7:42
Oh, okay, yeah. You know, there was a program that I, you know, I had couple different people on the podcast, and we, we've always talking about this, because some people have to use a laptop and for the work, and so we would need enough for the research. But you know, even when I'm trying to do it, sometimes the phone. The phone is the biggest distraction for me, the laptop, not so much, because the phone, you know, you're always being you're always at someone's beck and call, which I think some days I say to myself, Brett, I go, you know, what if I could take a vacation and not carry my phone with me? I don't think you know what I mean. I think that would be a real vacation. Because if I went on a vacation somewhere and I had to carry my phone or my laptop around it. Would it? Would there be no point to it? No. So, you know, taking a break from the phone, as is something that, you know, I have found, is important, just leaving it in another room, turning it off completely. And for the laptop, there's a program I found called anti social, and there's also another one called, I forget what it's called, but it's, it's by the same people who make anti social, and basically it just blocks out certain websites so that way you can't access them.

Brit Cruise 8:49
Yep, and I often just have days where I turn the internet off, and it's really, it really helps.

Dave Bullis 8:55
Yeah, it definitely does. And, you know, so, so. Brit what is a normal day for you look like, like, what? How is your day structured? In terms of when you're creating and teaching and all and doing all the things that you do?

Brit Cruise 9:08
I try to break up my day into two halves. So I really hate scheduling meetings and breaking up a day into hours and half hour chunks. I only work well in half, thinking about a day and two runs of creation. So there's a morning creation phase and there's an afternoon creation phase, and then otherwise, I try to bucket all my natural meetings on one day. That's what I really try to do. So I have a day where I'm just sitting around on meetings, and then the other two days of the other four days of the week. If things are going well, I am just locked into one task and staying on that for two to three hours, then a break, bike ride two to three hours, then your day is done. I now I have two kids. Now I don't work past four o'clock. If you're working, I used to work late at night, and once I stopped doing that, it really helped, because it helped focus me so that at the beginning of the week, if I know I'm done at four, I really have to write out the day before what I want to accomplish the next day. And that has kept me very organized.

Dave Bullis 10:22
So it seems to be that, you know, if you, if you stop working at four, you're so focused on getting it done, that means, meaning that there is, it's like you have a window of opportunity, and in that window of opportunity, you say, Okay, it's, it begins here, it ends here, and in the middle is where I have to do all the do, where I have to do all my work, because once four o'clock hits the windows closed

Brit Cruise 10:46
Exactly. So you I really cherish those, those two to three hour chunks and all and during those chunks, I'll either depending on the type of work I'm doing, if I don't need a computer, I'm out on my bike, bike to the river, sit by the river, work on paper. That's where I get my best work done. Often I'm on the computer, if I can, I take my laptop somewhere, I go to the coffee shop and work, and otherwise, when I'm stuck in an editing hole, then I'm at home in my office editing, I will. One caveat is, yeah, when, when you're anyone who is at an editor, it's very hard to stop working. So there are the days, there are the very scary weeks where you can't even count how many hours you spent editing, and that happens to me. So it goes all night.

Dave Bullis 11:28
So Brit, when you're using that pen and paper, so are you just grabbing a notebook and just a pen, you know, and you're just, you know, you know, writing ideas as they come and you're working on projects. Do you ever have a problem, maybe transcribing that back to the laptop?

Brit Cruise 11:43
No, actually, I never, but I often do things in layers. So I'll write a bunch of scribbles that don't always make a lot of sense. What I find is just the process of writing is more important than what you even have on that page, because it's my form of building memory. So I'll go out, write something down, and I'll have six pages of chicken scratch. Look like a crazy person, but then I'll just leave that in my bag. The next day, I'll go out and write again what I was working on. I'll try to simplify it into some sort of bullet point thing, and then by the time I get back to the laptop, I usually have, you know, a readable piece of paper. But even if those papers blew away, it would be fine, because the process of writing on a paper for me helped me build and clarify my thinking, and then I can just sit down on that laptop and bang out a script of whatever I'm doing in a very focused flow thinking now just out loud, if I was trying to do that on a laptop from the beginning, I would never get anything done, because, again, I would be switching context. I wouldn't be on the page.

Dave Bullis 12:45
Yeah, you know the only because, I mean, I love notebooks and writing using an actual pen. The biggest challenge that, I mean, I face is trying to get that writing back into a laptop. I mean, because now you're transcribing, you know what I mean, and now I always find it. It's a little it feels a little redundant sometimes to me, because you feel like you're doing the same work you just did. If you know what I mean?

Brit Cruise 13:07
Totally I guess I should clarify. When I'm writing, I'm often just drawing pictures and doodling. I'm not actually writing down sentence for sentence and then transcribing. Yeah, that wouldn't work. Once I'm at that level of I can actually write down the words of, for example, a narration I'm on the computer. So it's really that brainstorm phase structure phase, I stay on the page.

Dave Bullis 13:29
So what are some of the bigger projects that you can talk about that you're working on right now?

Brit Cruise 13:36
So in the in one world I am working on year three of Pixar in a box, which is a really big, very exciting project. The goal here of this project is to show how the movie making process at Pixar works, but more specifically, how things that kids are learning in school are used at Pixar in the making of their films. So Pixar in a box has been structured over three years. Year one, we focused on the math connection. So what do you learn in math class that they actually use at Pixar, for example, in particle simulations to make water. They're using Newton's equations from physics. So you know that boring stuff you're learning in school that seems boring when it's presented to you is using this very exciting domain. Year two of Pixar in a box, focused more on science, the connections, the connections to science. Right now I'm working on the last lesson, which is a hair simulation lesson, how they simulate hair at Pixar? Well, it uses a mass spring system, which is Hooke's Law, another thing you hit in school, but most exciting, and we're writing right now, is year three of Pixar in a box. Is really the whole point of it. Is going to be called the art of storytelling. So that will be a storytelling curriculum. We purposely pushed that one last because I always knew it would be the hardest one to make work on. Line,

Dave Bullis 15:01
you know, that's actually, you know, from from just my standpoint, that's the one I would really like to be to see. Just not because I'm not interested in an animation or how Pixar does everything, but just from a, you know, a screenwriting, storytelling perspective, you know, everybody is always interested to see how Pixar does what they do.

Brit Cruise 15:22
Yes, and we're all so excited about the pressures on to make sure this is is really strong. The and the one, the one hard part is with year one and two with pick. The cool thing about Pixar in a box is it's a fully interactive, very engaging experience. You're not just watching a video and then doing a test. You are watching a short clip, then playing with a piece of interactive software you saw in that clip. And then you follow along, video exercise, video exercise, you're participating throughout and creating throughout. So for example, with that water simulation lesson, not only are you learning how they do it, you are making your own particle simulator along the way. That's easy to kind of conceptualize in math and science, but in the storytelling world, again, it's very hard to think about online activities you're going to do in between learning about their storytelling process. So that's really the challenge, is really figuring out, okay, it won't be too hard to make really great videos that communicate how storytelling works at Pixar and how the individual storytellers what their process is. What will be hard is the handoff to the user to say, Okay, now it's your turn. Now it's your turn, because the goal of our storytelling curriculum is pretty ambitious. It is. You start with nothing, you go through six lessons, and at the end you have storyboarded your own short. So that's, that's the scope, is people leave this lesson with a storyboarded short on paper. And so that's the goal, and that's where we still working on. The steps to get you there.

Dave Bullis 16:56
That's absolutely amazing. Brett, that is, that is, see, you know, I see a lot of screenwriting courses online from from all different people and all different, you know, places and and the crux of it is, at the end, you don't really do you don't mean you should be, in my opinion, creating something as you're going, you know, even if it's a treatment, if it's an outline, that's why, when you said it's going to be a storyboard for your own Short, that is killer. That is key, because you should be creating as you're learning. So you know what I mean? Like, you learn and create, create and you learn right?

Brit Cruise 17:28
Exactly. It's exciting to hear your excitement. I just got some goose bumps because I'm like, Yes, we got to push forward on this.

Dave Bullis 17:35
You could go back to Pixar and be like, Dave Bullis really likes us. And they'll say, Who is that? But that. But, I mean, it's amazing what Pixar is doing. And I wanted to ask you, but you know, as we talk about Pixar in a box, you know, how did you become a producer of Pixar in a box?

Brit Cruise 17:54
Backing up, I was, well, immediately I was working at Khan Academy. And what I was doing there at the time is thinking of how we could co produce content with partners. And I dipped my feet a little bit in with NASA the year before, where we kind of looked at all of NASA's content and thought, okay, what can we do to kind of curate this and make it work on Khan Academy. So it was, you know, aligned to standards, and it was, you know, an interesting linear flow. But the NASA project was really a curation one, looking at what they had and then, and NASA is such a big organization, there's just all these different departments that make educational content. So it's like grabbing from 1000 things, trying to find the 20 that work and putting that into a lesson format, that was like a baby first step in experimenting how we could work with partners. And then right around that, the time that ended, someone at Khan Academy, kit haraski, is used to work at Pixar, and said, you know, there's someone at Pixar who's, you know, interested in maybe doing something with us. And at the time, Tony DeRose, is the chief scientist at Pixar, was doing a TED talk. And he has a talk called math in the movies, which is like a one hour talk, talking about, you know, what you learn at school is relevant at Pixar. And he they were working on a physical exhibit the science behind Pixar, which is now traveling around the US. I saw it in Boston last so he had this, he had this one hour talk, which was successful. Then it became a museum exhibit with a bunch of interactive things you could do. But then his next vision was, we want to reach more people by creating some sort of online version of what I'm trying to do in the museum. And what was really exciting is, in that first meeting, when they came in, I was like, Yes, I have to be in that meeting. They didn't have any idea what they're going to do, yet it was just like, we know we wanted to do something online. We know our guiding principle, but we don't know what the thing we're putting online is. So it was this opportunity to work

Brit Cruise 19:58
Work on an exciting project that was a blank slate from the beginning, and that's and I was like, no one could stop me at that point, jumping in and grabbing the reins.

Dave Bullis 20:19
Yeah, I mean, because, you know, you look at Pixar in a box and it just looks, you know, so well put together, is so many talented people working on that, you know, has there ever been a challenge we're working on Pixar in a box that that it's almost beyond sort of a resources standpoint. Or, if you know what I mean, Brit?

Brit Cruise 20:40
Wait, can you repeat the question, just so I'm clear, when you say resources, what do you mean?

Dave Bullis 20:44
Like, maybe there's not enough people, maybe there's enough time, you know, just something that maybe, like, there was an element to picture on a box that maybe somebody wanted to implement, but they just couldn't, you know, either through time or just didn't have enough, you know, time or people to do it.

Brit Cruise 21:00
Yeah, it's hard. I mean, everything about the project has been a challenge, but they're all great challenges because the project is fun. So it started right with a getting funding for this project was difficult, but once Disney eventually funded it, that gave the freedom to actually spend some time conceptualizing what the lessons would be, and that's we. That is where we wasted. I don't want to say wasted, because it was development. That's where the majority of our time went initially. What is this lesson look like? And we actually, just a small group of us, rebuilt the same lesson, which is our environment modeling lesson like four or five times over and over and over until we could find a model that worked. So the and the challenge there is icon Academy, we're about, you know, producing stuff, fast, low quality. It's not about production value. It's about, you know, being clear and being engaging and being personalized content. Pixar came in needing a very specific bar to be hit in terms of production values. And the hard part was finding that middle ground between something that Pixar thought was visually appealing enough, but Khan Academy thought was fast enough to produce that we could actually scale this out and not waste all year on one video. And finding that middle ground blending live action and blending graphics was really hard, but once we found that middle ground in terms of production, we were able to crank out the other lessons fairly quickly. In terms of lessons I've worked on before, like we really managed to find a system that we could crank these out.

Dave Bullis 22:37
And you also Pixar in a box has a podcasting element, which I think is a phenomenal idea as well. Because I think podcasting, you know that as soon as they can get the, you know, there's a video element through the, you know, video and audio through the Khan Academy, those those lessons, and then also, I mean having that, that audio element, so that way, you know, if someone's out for a walk at the gym, they still put that on and hear a whole nother aspect, you know, because it's just, you know, they're busy doing whatever, but they're either they can have time to listen totally.

Brit Cruise 23:07
And that reminds me that one of the, again, it's just all challenges. Another challenge was, who would be in these videos, and would it be one person throughout? Would it be multiple people? Having multiple people is a very tough scheduling problem. Ultimately, we went for someone different in each lesson, and ultimately two or three people, and that was very difficult to schedule, but it was so worth it, because it's so nice now to look at that content, and anywhere you dive in, you're gonna meet somebody new, and it's very authentic.

Dave Bullis 23:37
So you know, as you talk about challenges with Pixar in a box, you know, what was the, the biggest challenge that you faced, and how did you overcome that?

Brit Cruise 23:49
Think for a moment.

Dave Bullis 23:51
So, you know, while you're thinking, I'll just, you know, just add, you know, I a creative problem solving. You know, somebody once told me that anybody can write a check, you know. But, but the real, the real, most sort of mark of a good producer or good anybody, is the creative problem solving. And it sounds like to me, Brit that you're full of creative ideas and full of just genius ways to sort of figure out problems that don't require, you know, just, okay, you know, we'll just, you know, here's money. We'll do that way. I think you're a guy that sort of puts his, you know, thinks not only analytically, but also thinks on different planes about how we can actually creatively solve problems.

Brit Cruise 24:29
That helped me think of what it was. Thank you.

Dave Bullis 24:33
No problem. I my ramblings, help somebody. I'm glad. Brit, no, I'm just kidding.

Brit Cruise 24:38
I in terms. So one thing was at the time, Khan Academy's exercise platform only allowed certain kinds of questions right, like from multiple choice to dragging a point around a grid ordering boxes the type of questions you do when you do a math test. But we clearly wanted the exercise. Sizes to be very different. We wanted you to actually be doing things and working on simulated pieces of software that people at Pixar use. That was my goal. Like, let's look at the software you guys are using, and let's build a stripped down version of that. And we've done that for things like, we have a color correction suite, we have an animation suite, we have all this stuff, but it was stripping them down to the very core element. So, you know, any animation suite has a billion buttons, takes forever to learn. We had to build an animation suite that would work within, like, a minute. So we stripped everything away except, you know, there's key frames and a play button, and you can do linear interpolation or Bezier interpolation. What are the functions, the essential functions needed to simulate that software then figure out a way to actually make those simulated environments work on Khan Academy, which is a whole issue in building that out on the back end. But coupled to that, the opportunity I saw in that in working on these very complex, interactive exercises is there was a free thing that came out of it, which is, the graphics we needed in the video. Which is, I was always worried about, how are we going to do graphics for 200 videos? It's so much work is and with iteration, it's just a nightmare. I realized I put a stake in the ground and said, all the graphics in all our videos will be screen captures of the exercises. So the pieces of software we build that you get to play with going through the exercises, that's the visuals you see in the video, about 95% there's some other ones you have to make on top of it, but it was really great because it meant there was a ton of legwork to build the software for the interactive exercises that are really fun and visually appealing. But then when it came to video production, it was really just a matter of cutting together a live action shoot with screen grabs from an exercise and then, boom, it just eliminated a whole job of having a full time graphics person,

Dave Bullis 26:56
Yeah, and that's, yeah, that's that amazing creative problem solving. I was talking about. You seem like a guy Brit Well, actually, I know you're a guy who can, who can just think on the fly like that, and just sort of, you know, even when you're in brainstorming sessions, you know, because I think with with projects like Pixar in a box, I could see a lot of, sort of, you know, obstacles. And just, just both creatively, financially, like you said, you know, Disney had to finance it. And I'm, you know, and just, just, I think, you know, having those that creative ability add so much that it's almost, you know, it's unquantifiable. You know what I mean?

Brit Cruise 27:31
I think I like my definition of creativity is ability to deal with unknowns. That's my working definition of what a creative person is it's not even like, Are you a great writer? It's, can you deal with unknowns? And do you embrace unknowns? So this project was great. It was all unknowns, but the driving force was that vision of what it will be at the end was so strong that it was like this. This project was me saying, I'm send this back to my 12 year old self, because I remember, like anyone, when the first time you time you see Toy Story, everyone has a story about that. I was in grade eight. Toy Story came out. I told my teacher, we got to do animation. And he's like, we don't even know where to start. And I remember going to buy 3d Movie Maker, which is a really old 3d modeling program. Great, great software. And like, convince my teacher to buy it, and you to buy it, and you put it on all the computers. But then there's a question of, like, now, what do we do? And that whole headache of a year with Toy Story and trying to integrate it into the classroom like regurgitated when I had this Pixar meeting, and I'm like, here's the chance to actually do something that is fully aligned to those films that inspire kids, so that having that end goal allows you to just blow through all the challenges, and because you're just like, you know where you're headed.

Dave Bullis 28:46
You know, I really like that definition of creativity. So, so your definition of creativity is how you deal with unknowns.

Brit Cruise 28:54
I would say a billet Sorry to cut you off. The definition would be the ability to deal with unknowns,

Dave Bullis 28:59
The ability to deal with unknowns. So let's just say we're, you know, we're writing, you know, Brit and you know, as we were writing, so we're sort of putting pieces of a puzzle together, you know. You know both, both consciously and subconsciously. You know, we're trying, you know, we're trying to fit all this together. Do you think that, you know, maybe creativity is sort of as we're going actually writing in that moment, and just things are coming up naturally. You know, do you think that would probably be like the purest form of creativity?

Brit Cruise 29:33
Yeah, because at every step it's like, there's a branching effect. At every step there's a multiple options, which is a branch of things, and then each option leads to other options, and it just branches out so quickly. There's so many avenues you can go down, and you can't be intimidated by that. So like one thing some people might do, I'm just trying to make this up. Let's just imagine a hypothetical person who isn't, quote, unquote creative, which is silly. They might have an idea and then stick to that, just because it they had a new idea that was connected to that. And if you change the new idea, then I'd have to go back to the old idea. And if you're seven ideas deep, it's so scary to go back and rip it up and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild. But if you're not afraid of those unknowns and how those unknowns connect to each other, I would say if there was this other quote, unquote, creative person, they would be more than willing and even enjoy that process of breaking it down and starting again and again and again. And like you say, I like that puzzle analogy, I guess, yeah, they would enjoy rearranging the pieces again and again and again to see how they fit together.

Dave Bullis 30:50
You know, when you're talking about branching out, that's something that I've seen too. You know, when you're writing, you have a lot of, you know, options, you know what I mean, and you sort of go, Well, okay, I can go option A, but if I go or I can go option B, and then they sort of have their own sub branches, you know. And then sort of, there's a, there's a phrase that I hope I remember correctly. I think it's called decision fatigue, where eventually you get so tired because you're like, Okay, well, if I choose a, you know, let's just say a, two, like branching and, you know, and this is, this is, I mean, whether we're coding or the screenwriting, you know. I mean, you know, we're always sort of whether, either way. You know, there's, I think there's a lot of overlay. But if you choose, like, Option A, for instance, and you say, Okay, we have two branches, I can go a one or a two. If I choose a two, well, that makes, that changes everything else I already did. But if I choose B to, you know, and I think eventually, I think as we're writing, I think a lot of times decision fatigue causes us to stop, more than you know what I mean. I think it causes us to go, oh geez. But if I did this, you know, I mean, where you're sort of sitting there, going, Oh man, what should I do next? I don't know, oh man. And I think that's when people sort of go online, just sort of trying to figure it out. You mean, I think they have to go, all right, let me just check Twitter real quick, and I'll see if. I'll see if you know the decision comes to me,

Brit Cruise 32:10
I say that's interesting. I like decision fatigue, and that's where those distractions are nice, because you can stop having to make decisions for a second and just zone out completely you're but telling me about decision fatigue reminds me of the so another project I'm working on is my YouTube channel, art of the problem. And that's a an hour long video series which explores the origin of modern fields of study and the way to do that. But my approach to doing that is looking for an ancient question that humans have always been solving, and follow that question through time, because the question never goes away, just our way of solving it does. And in writing those episodes, they're definitely the most difficult thing I've ever done. It's really a process of trying to rewrite history, and that is something that I find most draining in the writing process.

Dave Bullis 33:07
Yeah, the old logic questions. I like that a lot, because there's one question that is, you know, I always go back to whenever I'm writing, and that question is, why? Just literally W, h, y, question mark, you know? And it's sort of, I think that you know that question has plagued philosophers throughout time and every and every culture and all of the planet. And I think that you know why, W, h, y, question mark, if you could sort of figure out, or maybe I shouldn't even use that term, figure it out, if you can sort of create an answer to that question. It will be your answer, but it's like you just said. It's sort of like the you know what? Everyone's gonna have a different answer to that and how people have answered it throughout time.

Brit Cruise 33:52
Totally. That's really fascinating when you think about things through the lens of what is the driving question. And again, that's exactly what I do with art of the problem. It's a great way to look at the world. And what you do find is it's amazing how the same question will have the most like opposing decisions are almost orthogonal to each other, and then the but the answers or the when I say decisions, I guess I mean solutions, the solutions to problems through different eras also reflect the era that you're living in, which is just, I find very interesting.

Dave Bullis 34:29
Yes, yeah. And you know, what does a culture say at that point? You know what? What is the country going through at that point? Because personally, Brit, I think right now in America, it's like a reflash of the 70s, just, just culturally, economically, it just feels that way to me, probably completely wrong, but I think that's why, why cinema is getting back to that gritty grind house. He feel, at least in the independence, the independent side of things, you know, and I also just, just in general, I think, you know, I see a lot of. Of parallels, but, but, but, you know, yeah. I mean, you know, problem solving, and our perspective how we solve those problems, even especially when we're writing our perspective as we go into the to write, you know, it's, it's so important, because I think you know when our perspective as we go in that affects every decision we make.

Brit Cruise 35:18
Mm, hmm, yes.

Dave Bullis 35:21
So, you know, Brit, so you know, as we're talking about, you know, storytelling, you know, and we're talking about Pixar in a box, you know, what if somebody was going to take the course, which is on Khan Academy, and someone was going to take the course, what's the, what's one thing, you know, you want them to take away from, from the course?

Brit Cruise 35:40
I would say one is one. Interesting thing is that every topic on Pixar in a box is featured, is taught by a different host, and the people we got to teach each lesson are actually the people who work in that department. So it's a rare case to really dive in and if whatever the your department you're interested in, whether it's rendering or whether it's storytelling, you can zoom in and actually get to meet that person. And we've included, aside from the lesson itself, which we've tried to make as engaging as possible, there's getting to know videos, which I find really valuable. They're a four minute video. What did you do as a kid. How did you get here? And watching all of those getting to know videos are, I find really fascinating, because you see a lot of parallels, but it also can help you build a mental model for, you know, your own path.

Dave Bullis 36:35
Yeah, you know, I started taking, I actually watched the intro video, and I was looking around too with the different lectures. I like how I think it's, I think it's labeled class two, or level two. It's much more detailed and algorithms and computer science, and, you know, sort of, you know, the real, real, like Adam level of how things are actually created, Pixar. And the first level is actually getting, you know, getting an intro class. You know, you're seeing how, you know, all these things happen. And you're sort of, you know, seeing how, on the, on the on the surface, you know, how things are created to

Brit Cruise 37:09
Yo, you just reminded me the the the challenge with Pixar in a box we faced was just that, what level of difficulty would these lessons be? And we batted that around a lot. Went like, if you're getting into math, when do you get into the math? And we finally landed on a model where we would break every topic into two pieces. And Lesson One would be all about getting you comfortable with a process or tool that they use. So with animation, you get you actually use a keyframe editor, and you learn how to make a animate a realistic bouncing ball, and then it's the second lesson where we peel back the layer of the onion, one layer, and we show you how those tools work. And that division was really important, because there's a lot of people who actually don't maybe care how the tools work. They just want to see what the tools are. So with this model, we were able to appease both crowds, and I'm really happy we did that, because every lesson, one on Pixar in a box, and every topic you don't have to be worried about, like rendering, might sound really scary, but guess what? Our rendering lesson doesn't require any mathematics, but the second part does, so you don't have to worry about dipping your feet in anywhere.

Dave Bullis 38:20
So, and that's great. I'm glad I could remind you, by the way. Bram glad again, my my ramblings help somebody out. But, but, you know, you know, when I saw Pixar in a box, I mean, it's just phenomenal. And you know, do you have an anticipation date at the anticipated date of when you know the whole storytelling part of Pixar box be up

Brit Cruise 38:42
In 2017 we'll start rolling it out. We'll do it sequentially, so there'll be six lessons in that storytelling unit, and by the end of February, we will be rolling out our first one. And then that'll roll into the summer. So by September next year, that whole storytelling curriculum will be finished.

Dave Bullis 39:03
That is, that is amazing. Brit, you know, and I'm going to link to Pixar in a box in the show notes. That's, again, it's on Khan Academy. And, you know, Khan Academy is an, is an open source online. What is, is it classified as an mooc Brit?

Brit Cruise 39:22
No, it's not classified as a MOOC, because, you know, MOOCs are all about creating packaged courses you can take, where Khan Academy is really trying to be there to help you with the concept you need. So you can fill in the gap you need on whatever journey you're on. So, you know, it's a resource, a free resource that spans many, many concepts, and it's designed so that you can, you know, jump in and out to get the thing you need, that you need help with, versus, you know, a collection of packaged courses, like like you see on the MOOCs. So it's different in that way.

Dave Bullis 39:22
So Brit, you know, just out of curiosity, do you ever think that. These online classes are basically going to replace colleges.

Brit Cruise 39:22
I don't think they'll replace colleges. I just think colleges will evolve.

Dave Bullis 39:32
You know, I've, you know, I actually used to work at a college, and a lot of, some of the professors were actually talking about the MOOC's, and basically, you know, what they thought of them. And I think the bigger colleges, like, you know, the Ivy Leagues, will never have to worry about anything, you know, no matter what. I think, if they're not actually teaching education. There'll be a, there'll be a glorified summer camp. You know what I mean? I don't think if college, if those colleges, like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, if they adapt correctly, which they will, because they usually have incredibly smart people, you know, running them, I think though that's what will happen. Though, if they're not teaching education, they'll be, you know, sort of like, almost like a hedge fund or or they'll be like a, you know, a glorified summer camp, you know, go there for a summer, have fun, or whatever. I don't know. I mean, I'm always interested about the future of education and the place of college. You know, it's always interesting to me. I mean, to me honestly. I think the some people flourish at college, and there's others like myself who struggled a lot in college, and I kind of look back Brit and I kind of don't really think my college education was really worth the cost, if you know what I mean,

Brit Cruise 41:35
I feel the same way. And I think that basically, with free online education, what you can do is really raise the bar of what's expected of students when you enter school, and then you can focus less on making sure you know X, Y and Z, and more on The Club collaborative nature of school and the project based learning that goes on in school, which when I look back, yeah, a lot of The information I sat through, I just could have learned online. But there were a few very specific things I do remember, and everything I remember that was valuable going back to high school, were the collaborative things. So drama in high school biggest learning experience putting on plays for me. And then in school, I studied engineering. You know, it was working with a group of people to make a robot that could play the drums. And it's, it's in those collaborative environments that real learning happens. So I don't think that's going to go away and and I think the colleges will learn that, and they'll just go more in that direction and less in, you know, lectures maybe could be replaced with something else.

Dave Bullis 42:39
Yeah. I also think Micro Masters are going to come become big. I see a lot of it, like on edX and corsia, you know, just about creating a Micro Masters course. And you know, I'm seeing that more and more, but, you know, it's just, but I'm glad you feel that way too, Brett, because you're incredibly intelligent guy. So, you know, there's, there's a guy, there's a book that I read. It was called 100 or 50 50, or 100 alternatives to college, written by a guy named James Altucher. And I got to talk to James probably about a year ago, and not for the podcast, and he actually said the same thing. He actually got out of college with a degree, and they had to send him somewhere else to learn how to code, even though his degree was in computer science. And they said, you know, hey, you know, hey, you know, we're gonna send you this boot camp. We're gonna do all this and that. And finally, he said, you know, what the hell was it worth? He said, I spent all this money going to college, and I get bumped out, and all of a sudden I, you know, we can't, I can't even code. I mean, what was the point of all that?

Brit Cruise 43:33
Yeah, I can relate. That was kind of the same way. It's sad,

Dave Bullis 43:37
Yeah. I mean, my former college, I actually used to teach multimedia classes, because they, the teachers that got hired to teach them didn't know how to do anything. And I mean that with all sincerity, but they literally, one guy actually came to me and said, Hey, Dave, I haven't picked up a camera in 15 years, and they want me to teach the video the introduction to video production class. So I had to sit down with him. And I said, Okay, so we're gonna be shooting through an SD card. We were using the Panasonic HMC 150 P and I hit record on the camera, and I said, Now when I hit it again, it's gonna create, it's gonna start and stop that file, and that's its own digital file. And he says, whoa. He was Dave, wait a minute. You're going way too fast. Yeah. And I said, what? I said, you're gonna be teaching the course and, and this is too fast. His idea was he could stay one step ahead of the students by training with me. That was his secret plan.

Brit Cruise 44:30
And it's only gonna the speed only increases with time on it with technology. So it's a losing race.

Dave Bullis 44:36
Yeah, it really is. I mean, the thing, I mean, that was his, I mean, because I think if he was trying to get, you know, his head wrapped around the cameras, and it's just, you know, I, you know, I'm so glad I don't teach there anymore, or do anything there anymore, but, but that, that was the sign I think colleges like that are going to go under. I think all of these small private colleges. That are that live and breathe through having 100% enrollment are just going to all go under

Brit Cruise 45:05
That again. When I graduated, I did a computer science degree at McGill, I again, struggled through the whole thing, and then I said it was so painful that I started a YouTube channel to just try to re communicate what I had learned, and I had I'm doing, I'm still doing that to this day, and it's been very cathartic to you know, spend months struggling on a video that was connected to months prior, that's struggling in school, and then re communicated in an eight minute video that then people say, Ah, you opened my eyes. You made that clear for me and and I'll hear from people who either finish school and are still watching those videos because they it feels good to have something clarified. But I'll also hear from people who haven't yet gone to university and will watch one of the art of the problem series and say like that has changed my worldview now I'm going to school knowing what I want to learn, and that makes me very happy, because when I went to school, I didn't know anything. I didn't know where I was going, I didn't have a firm grounding. And it's very sad that it wasn't till after school and communicating it back on YouTube that I fully absorbed the lessons I was supposed to learn in school,

Dave Bullis 46:19
See and that that's invaluable. I think that's why a lot of the times there's online classes are, you know, if I was, if I was a high school senior right now, that's all I would be doing. Would be was, would be doing online classes right now?

Brit Cruise 46:32
Oh, man, it's just a different world now, and the quality is increasing so quickly. Just five or six years ago, on YouTube, if you were trying to learn, there was not a lot out there. Now, if you search anything, not only is it there, but there's probably six or seven versions of it, and the top version is probably really well produced. So things are trending in the right direction when it comes to finding online resources, big time.

Dave Bullis 46:55
And also, you can get the I just downloaded Unreal Engine four, and it actually is the whole engine you can use to actually build video games, and it's 100% free and legit.

Brit Cruise 47:06
That's so cool. That's a rabbit hole I'd be scared to go down, but sounds very interesting.

Dave Bullis 47:11
I wanted to make my own little first person shooter, just something very small and fun and just have a laugh. And that is something, I mean, I have so many film projects I want to get done, but I was like, you know, let me just try this real quick. And try this real quick and, you know, just trying it out. But that, but that is something too. I agree with that I would be like a rabbit hole, you know, it would be hard to get back from, if you know what I mean,

Brit Cruise 47:23
I've been one. I actually think that's great, though. When you're stuck on something, did you go work on a totally different project? I have to have three things on the go. It's the only way I work. But making a video game is always been in the back of my mind. But yeah, again, I just, I know the hours involved, so I haven't even touched it yet.

Dave Bullis 47:48
Yeah, it's and what I've heard, it's just very time consuming. It's okay, it's just one of those things. But there's so many scripts that I want to write and this and that, and doing this podcast that sort of keeps up. No, keeps you busy enough, but, but you know, Britt, you know we've been talking for just about 45 minutes now, you know, is there anything sort of in closing that we hadn't, haven't discussed, said that, maybe that you wanted to bring up, or is there anything you wanted to maybe mention, just to sort of put a period the end of the sentence,

Brit Cruise 48:20
I would just kind of amplify something I've been hearing lately, which is, this is a dawn of a new era where it is a world. Sorry, it's a daunt. Let me start again. I'm going to amplify something I've already heard a few times, which is that this is a new era that will be very friendly for creatives and people who create online, where it's just starting to happen, where we were in a world recently where you're either at the very top of your industry and you're making a ton of money, or you are a nobody and you made no money. But now people who can have generate, you know, small audience, whether it's 10,000 whether it's 100 or 1000 or 10,000 or 100,000 we're getting into a world where you will be able to sustain yourself, and with things like the Internet Creators Guild, which I recommend anyone joining, which just launched this year, creatives online are Starting to reorganize, and the business models are changing. YouTube's evolving, if you're in the video medium. And I think if anyone is either starting now or they started a little while ago, and you know, they're not making any revenue from their art, I think just stick with it, because in about five years, I think an internet eyeball will be worth the same as a TV eyeball, and right now, they're off by like, two orders of magnitude. So I think we're getting into a new era where it's very creator friendly, and you can kind of build your own audience from the bottom up, and not have to attach yourself to some sort of machine to make a living.

Dave Bullis 50:08
Yeah, I fall into the former ladder camp, a nobody who makes no money. That's me. So hopefully, I mean, you know, hopefully I can do something. But, I mean, I would call you that bread because, I mean, you know, you're a part of Pixar in a box. You know, you don't have the problem, you know, all this great stuff. But so I don't, I don't think you're a nobody.

Brit Cruise 50:32
I think your podcast great, and it's, it's just amazing to see people who just, like, plow away at something and just build it. I think the people building stuff online now, in 10 years, are gonna be very happy they did it well.

Dave Bullis 50:44
Thank you, Brit

Brit Cruise 50:45
Awesome. I love it.

Dave Bullis 50:47
So Britt, where can we find you out online?

Brit Cruise 50:51
So you know, my website is britcruise.com and I'm on Twitter, and art of the problem, you can find me on YouTube. That's where I kind of publish the majority of my videos,

Dave Bullis 51:03
And I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Everybody, Alex to also Pixar in a box and also, but I gave you a follow on Twitter, by the way, and I actually found your Twitter account before you. A couple days ago, I was like, oh, I want to make sure to follow him and see what we see what he's tweeting. And you tweet, you tweet a lot of interesting stuff, by the way, and and I like people like that who tweet, you know, really cool stuff.

Brit Cruise 51:27
Right on. I follow you too. Okay, cool. Thank you.

Dave Bullis 51:31
But Brit, I want to say thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to everything that you, that you come up with. And again, I'm looking very interested on a box season was it? Season three, I guess we're gonna call it or

Brit Cruise 51:44
Yeah, season three. Well, that's internal name, but it's the storytelling unit.

Dave Bullis 51:47
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that as well. Brit Cruz, I want to say thank you so much for coming on, and I really do want to wish you the best for everything.

Brit Cruise 51:55
Thanks so much, Dave. Let's catch up again.

Dave Bullis 51:57
Oh yeah, anytime you want to come back on, Brit, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to have you on thank you so much anytime, buddy, take care.

Brit Cruise 52:04
Cheers!