Breaking Story as a Team: Storytelling + Collaboration

In movies, the development of the story is usually the longest part of the process. It makes sense. Getting the plot and characters developed must happen before a single word is typed into your favorite script writing software. Index cards may litter your floor or maybe you are one of the lucky ones who can see the entire story in your head — you are rare.

At this stage, there is the fewest number of people involved as well and that translates into a lower overall cost of the film (at least initially).

Think about it. Changing the story involves very few people. It may only involve one. This is the time to run ideas or pages past people you can trust to give you the truth. Does this work? What doesn’t work? Better to figure all of this out at this point.

When talking about an animated project, if you wait until you are already in production, the costs can skyrocket. Make some changes after drawings are done, or worse yet after animation, and you are talking about a lot of people and their time, which equals a lot more money.

Surprisingly, the latter still does happen AND it does cost a lot of extra moola.

So, it is good to have a few people involved in the story process right from the beginning. This small group can be anywhere from 2 to 6 people. I…