There's little need to scout locations, no reason to fill out film permits or gladhand local officials into cooperation with photo ops, fruit punch and munchies. You don't have to hire best boys, gaffers or go-fers. Yes, life must be easy when you're producing a CG-animated film.
Well, that's the idea, anyhow. In reality, making movies, whether live-action or animation, is the same yet different — as Graham Walters, the producer of Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo, can attest. Walters, a veteran of the computer graphics firm PDI (Pacific Data Images; they later did Antz and Shrek), joined Pixar Animation Studios to work on Toy Story and has been there ever since. As he made his producing bow on Nemo, let's allow him to define the job.
"At Pixar certainly, the way we look at it, the producer's part is just trying to get the film on screen," he declares. "There's a scene in Big Night — about the brothers and their restaurant — with the Ian Holm character, who sort of stabs them in the back. They ask him, 'What kind of person are you?' 'I'm whatever I need to be at any point in time. I'm a businessman.' " Walters laughs. "A producer is whatever he needs to be. That's what is cool and what I like about the job."
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