Developing The Idea

Developing the Idea

The Mitchells vs. The Machines Case Study

Origin: “The Mitchells started as a very early idea from our filmmaker, co-writer, and co-director, Mike Rianda, who wanted to essentially tell a story about his zany family”
Initial state: “When he came into the studio, it was a very, very basic seed of an idea”
Studio approach: “We did our best to give him the freedom to figure out how he wanted to tell that story in an animated space”
Surrounded him with “like-minded people and other storytellers that can help him realize that vision”

North Star Concept

Development challenges: “It took many twists and turns to really get the story right”
Guiding principle: “There was always a great north star with The Mitchells, which is a story about family”
Key advice: “It helps to always have that top-line idea and remember why you wanted to tell the story in the first place”

Creative Process and Space

Individual Development Time

Need for distance: “There are times where just as a creative, I feel like I need to have a little distance from the big kind of room of it all and get some space and figure things out on my own”
Benefits of space:
“I think that kind of helps me to stay grounded on what my own visions are”
“What my own goals are, and the stories that I want to tell”
Return with clarity: “When I come back, I’m able to kind of give more of an organized, inspired pitch on what I want to do”

Script Development Process

Team Assembly

Post-idea phase: “After we come up with an idea, we look for the right writers to come up with the script and kind of shepherd that process”
Timing consideration: “Before moving down the line and before you bring on many, many more artists that are gonna help realize the vision”
Foundation requirement: “You have to get the story right and understand that this is the tone of the project that we’re shooting for”

Executive Collaboration

Creative group role: “We work closely with the creative group, which is a group of executives who are really in the mix on those new writers, new projects”
Filtering process: “They kind of do the first pass of filtering, and then it’s like, okay, this is something we like, and then I can help with the talent”
Team building: “Usually it’s a director, writer, and then maybe bring in some other artists to help kind of flesh out that idea a little bit more to see if it’s something that we want to make”

Growth Metaphor

Development philosophy: “For me, it’s like there’s a little germ of something that’s been given to me, and then it’s like, how do you water that plant, fertilize it, make it grow a little more?”

“You have to get the script as right as possible”
Creates “something called a shooting script that you don’t deviate from”
More rigid, locked approach

Production Planning Phase

Script Analysis

Production executive role: “When you have a script that feels nice and solid and ready to move forward, one of the jobs of one of the production executives will be to look at the script and spot it”
Breakdown process: Identify “all of the characters and all of the different locations”
Department assignment: “Because it’ll be somebody’s job to design those, and that’s the visual development department”

Parallel Development

Visual development: Working on character and location design
Storyboard team: “Starting to assemble shot by shot what each sequence of the movie is”

Storyboarding Phase

Tone Expression

Core function: “Storyboarding allows you to really express tone, which is such a hard thing to convey”
Text limitations: “A lot of times when you read text on paper, it feels like it’ll work”
Reality check: “But when you actually come down to storyboarding it, sometimes it’s just not quite enough”
“There’s not enough emotion there, enough juice in there”

Emotional Capture

Primary goal: “So we try to really capture that in the storyboarding phase, just letting people see what this movie can feel like”
Collaborative nature: “It’s a very collaborative effort that goes back and forth in terms of finding each scene and each sequence and the voices of the characters”

Quiz Question: What is one key difference between scripts written for animation and those written for live-action filmmaking?

Full Answer Options:

Animation doesn’t use scripts
Animation scripts are closed to being “locked” when shooting starts, whereas in live-action they are “iterative”
Live-action scripts are text-based documents, but animation scripts are drawn on animation cels
Live-action scripts are closed to being “locked” when shooting starts, whereas in animation they are “iterative” ✓

The development process transforms basic story concepts into production-ready projects through collaborative refinement and iterative scripting. Animation’s flexibility allows continuous script evolution throughout production, contrasting with live-action’s more rigid locked-script approach.