Archive for December, 2009

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

credit to http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Oleh JESSABELL SOO

jessabell@kosmo.com.my

Selepas Titanic mencipta fenomena luar biasa, nama James Cameron tidak pernah lekang daripada ingati oleh sesiapa sahaja yang mencintai dunia perfileman. Hari ini James menambah satu lagi koleksi filem luar biasa air tangannya berjudul Avatar.

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LEBIH sedekad lalu, pengarah terkenal, James Cameron mencipta sejarah dengan pembikinan filem paling berjaya dari segi kutipan sepanjang zaman, Titanic. Tahun 2009, pengarah berusia 55 tahun itu menutup tirai dengan sebuah lagi karya agung yang bakal melakar momen tersendiri, Avatar.

James sebenarnya mula membenih impian untuk menghasilkan filem itu 15 tahun lalu tetapi visinya terlalu sukar untuk dicapai ketika itu. Dia telah menulis skrip Avatar sebanyak 114 muka surat pada tahun 1994 dengan menggunakan inspirasi daripada setiap buku sains fiksyen yang dibacanya semasa kecil.

Pada Ogos 1996, selepas James menghabiskan penggambaranTitanic, dia mengumumkan permulaan produksi Avatar yang sepatutnya siap pada 1999. Ini kerana sejak 1995 lagi, pengarah itu telah meramalkan kecanggihan CGI pada masa akan datang. Itu yang membuatkan dia begitu bervisi untuk menulis Avatar.

Cuma apabila pendekatan itu diluahkan oleh James kepada pakar CGI, dia sedar teknologi yang diperlukan masih terlalu jauh untuk direalisasikan. Maka, projek itu dihentikan selama 10 tahun ditambah dengan bajet AS$400 juta (RM1.4 bilion), tiada studio filem yang mahu menajanya.

Kini dengan kos AS$237 juta (RM814 juta), filem cereka pertama James selepas Titanic (1997) itu membuktikan segala kritikan pengamal media serta filem adalah salah. Hanya beberapa hari selepas ditayangkan kepada dunia, Avatar yang merupakan filem termahal setakat ini berjaya mengutip AS$242 (RM830 juta) di seluruh dunia (sehingga 21 Disember 2009).

JAMES bersama Gabenor California, Arnold Schwarzenegger dan aktres, Sigourney Wearer di Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

“Avatar merupakan filem paling mencabar pernah saya hasilkan. Saya mahu menghasilkan pengembaraan isu yang sama tetapi pada persekitaran yang tidak pernah diterokai, satu dunia asing. Telah lama saya mengidamkan

filem sebegini yang menawarkan elemen bahaya dalam keindahan.

“Sejak di bangku sekolah lagi saya suka melukis makhluk asing semasa kelas Matematik. Dengan Avatar,akhirnya saya mendapat peluang,” jelas James yang mahu menghasilkan dua sekuel jika percubaan pertama ini berjaya.

Siapa sangka pelajar dalam jurusan Fizik dan Inggeris itu akan mengecapi kejayaan seperti hari ini. Tidak menghabiskan pengajian tinggi di Kolej Fullerton, Kanada, James turut pernah bekerja sebagai pemandu trak.

Pada masa lapang, dia banyak menggunakan masa untuk menulis. Hanya selepas menyaksikan filem Star Wars pada tahun 1977, James membuat keputusan untuk berhenti memandu trak untuk menembusi dunia perfileman.

“Ramai orang menimba ilmu di sekolah perfileman tetapi saya bekerja sebagai mekanik dan pemandu trak. Saya merupakan penonton filem yang bertuah untuk beranjak ke sisi lain untuk membikin filem,” kata James.

Tidak seperti pengarah lain yang kerap bekerja, James sepanjang kariernya yang sudah menghampiri tiga dekad hanya mempunyai lapan filem cereka komersial. Namun, filem Titanic yang pada mulanya dikritik tidak akan berjaya telah meletakkan James di mata dunia selain memenangi 11 anugerah Academy pada tahun 1998.

Mendiamkan diri selama 12 tahun tanpa sebarang projek, James suka menghadiahkan hasil yang difikirkan mustahil oleh kebanyakan orang. “Ramai yang berkata karier perfileman adalah seperti membunuh diri.

HOS Josh Horowitz ketika menemubual James, Zoe dan Sam mengenai filem terbaru mereka, Avatar dalam sebuah rancangan di California.

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“Jika filem pertama anda bagus, mereka akan menghargai filem seterusnya. Jika ia tidak diterima ramai, filem anda akan dibandingkan. Tapi saya membikin filem kerana saya suka melihat hasil kerja sendiri.”

Karya pertama tulisan James adalah Xenogenesis (1978) yang mempunyai durasi 10 minit. Bersama kawannya, mereka mengumpul wang untuk menyewa kamera, lensa, studio dan filem untuk memulakan penggambaran.

“Saya tidak mempunyai sebarang ilmu dalam filem. Saya bersama kawan saya telah menghabiskan setengah hari hanya untuk mempelajari bagaimana kamera berfungsi,” tambah James.

Banyak mempelajari menerusi produksi berbajet rendah, James akhirnya berpeluang untuk menjadi pengarah seni dalam filem sains fiksyen, Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).

Peluang untuk James menyinar datang semasa dia diupah untuk menjadi pengarah kesan khas filem Piranha II: The Spawning (1981). “Pengarah filem itu meninggalkan projek tersebut dan penerbitnya telah mengupah saya untuk menjadi pengarah buat kali pertama.

“Filem itu diterbitkan di Jamaica tetapi kemudian saya sedar bahawa situasi kewangan produksi itu tidak stabil. Ketika itu, saya mempunyai mimpi ngeri mengenai satu robot yang dihantar ke masa depan untuk membunuh saya. Dari situlah saya mendapat idea untuk filem pertama saya, The Terminator (1984).”

Kejayaan filem pertamanya telah meyakinkan pengarah itu untuk terus mencuba terutama dalam membikin filem eksperimental efek khas. James juga terkenal sebagai pengarah yang mengutamakan kesempurnaan.

Sifatnya itu turut dibenci dan digeruni ramai pihak terutama pelakon yang pernah bekerjasama dengannya. Malah Kate Winslet sendiri telah membuat keputusan untuk tidak bekerja di bawah pimpinan James.

Akui Kate: “James seorang lelaki yang baik tetapi panas baran. Saya tidak akan bekerja dengannya lagi kecuali filem itu menjanjikan keuntungan besar.”

Ramai pihak termasuk studio filem takut untuk berganding dengan James kerana dia juga sering ketinggalan jauh daripada jadual dan menggunakan wang melebihi bajet.

Namun, tidak kira apa yang dikatakan oleh orang, James yang pernah mengarahkan dua dokumentari, Ghosts of the Abyss dan Aliens of the Deep serta beberapa siri TV termasuk Dark Angel dan Entouragemempunyai nilai harganya tersendiri.

JAMES gemar mencuba teknologi baru dalam filemnya. Kerana itu dia sanggup menunggu 10 tahun sebelum memulakan penggambaran Avatar.

“Saya mahu penonton berpuas hati dengan apa yang mereka saksikan. Saya berharap mereka akan keluar daripada pawagam dan berkata, ‘Saya tidak menonton filem. Saya menyelami sebuah filem’,” kata James yang baru dianugerahkan bintang di Hollywood Walk of Fame baru-baru ini.

Revolusi efek khas

Dalam filem Titanic, James menggunakan efek khas untuk membuatkan audiens berasa seperti sebahagian daripada sejarah. Avatar pula menggunakan teknologi baru untuk mengangkut penonton ke masa depan dalam dunia berbeza.

Merangkumi 40 peratus pergerakan pelakon sebenar dan 60 peratus CGI foto-realistik, Avatar dibintangi Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriguez dan Sigourney Weaver.

Dengan cara rakaman pergerakan pelakon, kesan yang dikehendaki mampu dicapai. Ia dapat menghasilkan fizikal puak Na’vi yang matanya dua kali ganda lebih besar berbanding manusia dan berkedudukan lebih jauh. Mereka lebih kurus, leher panjang, struktur tulang dan otot berbeza.

James kali ini juga tidak berminat untuk menggunakan bantuan solekan untuk mencipta spesies makhluk asing yang resipi ini telah digunakan sekian lama sejak tahun 1950-an. Penggunaan getah pada permukaan pelakon turut pernah diaplikasi tetapi ia membataskan persembahan aktor.

Selain daripada itu, mereka juga lebih tinggi berbanding manusia. Solekan biru juga tidak boleh menghasilkan kulit lutsinar yang bertindak seakan kulit manusia seperti CGI. James mahu menghasilkan makhluk asing yang mewakili abad ke-21.

“Bagi merakamkan imej baru menerusi persembahan muka, satu kamera kecil diperlukan untuk merakamkan pergerakan muka pelakon secara mendalam terutama pergerakan otot. Apa yang paling utama, kamera itu merakamkan pergerakan mata, satu teknologi yang tJames.

Teknik rakaman pergerakan yang digunakan oleh krew Avatar juga mampu meliputi enam kali ganda kawasan sekeliling berbanding rakaman biasa. Merakamkan sekumpulan kuda, babak pergaduhan anjing serta makhluk terbang, semuanya mempamerkan kecanggihan filem ini. Selain daripada itu, satu lagi inovasi yang dicipta khas untukAvatar adalah kamera visual.

“Kamera ini membenarkan saya merakam seperti berada di studio bunyi Hollywood. Menerusi kamera itu, saya tidak akan melihat Zoe tetapi wataknya, Neytiri yang mempunyai ketinggian 10 kaki serta berkulit biru dan berekor. Saya juga tidak perlu menunggu berbulan-bulan lamanya untuk melihat hasil penggambaran untuk sebuah kawasan khatulistiwa Pandora,” tambahnya yang dilahirkan di Kanada.

KESAN khas menjadi tunjang utama dalam filem-filem James namun apa yang ditawarkan oleh Avatar berjaya memukau ramai penontonnya.

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Mungkin ada pihak yang keliru sama ada puak Na’vi dan Avatar itu adalah animasi. Sebenarnya anda tidak salah beranggapan sedemikian kerana ia adalah kombinasi pergerakan manusia serta animasi. Contohnya boleh dilihat menerusi pergerakan ekor dan telinga yang tidak boleh dilakukan oleh aktor sendiri.

“Pelakon ada bertanya sama ada kami akan cuba menggantikan mereka dengan animasi. Sebaliknya saya cuma untuk memperkayakan watak mereka. Kami mahu memberikan cara baru kepada mereka untuk meluahkan perasaan tanpa batasan.

“Apa yang cuba saya gantikan adalah masa lima jam di atas kerusi solek yang selalu digunakan untuk mencipta watak makhluk asing, serigala jadian, nenek kebayan dan banyak lagi. Kini anda boleh menjadi apa sahaja tanpa mengira usia atau jantina dan tidak memerlukan solekan kompleks,” jelasnya mengenai filem yang turut dihasilkan dalam bentuk 3D.