I spent all day Saturday at the Great American Pitchfest. It was great to be immersed in all that story knowledge again. These conferences are usually built around access to Hollywood types and pitches, but also include a healthy dose of screenwriting gurus. Syd Field probably more than anyone is responsible for making screenwriting gurus famous. Of course each guru has their particular way of breaking down story, but the very fact that they can do it so easily is a bit amazing. But as Drew Yanno put it, “We are the most sophisticated story receptors ever”. We are simply exposed to more stories than at any other time in history and the more exposure means the easier to gleam knowledge. All this lead me to think of what early film pioneers in 1900 would give to know what we know today? What would real time story artists give to know the techniques and conventions that would become standard in the field in say 2050?
Being at the beginning and lacking that knowledge can also be fun. It’s when the wildest experimentation takes place, but that also means a lot of failure. Yet for those who trudge through it there is usually great success. Take Pixar for example. Watching The Pixar Story, the early founders realized that to create computer animation they would first need to get all the data into the computer. Every tree, every leave, ever piece of bark.
It will not take thousands but millions of triangles to create the photo realistic animated films we see today.
That’s a daunting task given the processing power of computer in the early 80′s. We wear more processing power on our bodies today than existed in the average computer lab in the 80′s. But Pixar’s early founders saw through to the potential and kept at it to become wildly successful.
Of course much of Pixar’s journey was on the technology front. They didn’t experiment with story, rather much of their success can be attributed to their strong use of classic storytelling. Screenwriting gurus use their movies as examples of classic storytelling. Pixar’s experimentation took place in the creation process – one half technology and one half structural. Unlike Hollywood studios Pixar creates a movie more by committee (which some would argue is how Hollywood worked in the early days). In Hollywood where movies start with a screenplay written by a single screenwriter, Pixar many time starts with a concept and work as a team to build it into a movie.
I see a much different path for real time story on the experimentation front – much of which will be on the story front. Real time story is about changing the rules of classic storytelling. It’s going to be an interesting time. I can’t wait for the day I attend a conference to hear real time story gurus.
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