“Disney Animation was sort of like a dog that had been beaten again and again,” Byron Howard, the director, told me when I asked him to describe the mindset back then. “The crew wanted to succeed, but they were afraid of pouring their hearts into something that wasn’t going to succeed. You could feel that fear. And in notes meetings, everyone was so afraid of hurting someone’s feelings that they held back. We had to learn that we weren’t attacking the person, we were attacking the project. Only then could we create a crucible that boils away everything that’s not working and leaves the
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