Storyreels

(upbeat jingle)

- Once a pitch of the
scene has been approved

by the director,

it moves out of the story
department and into editorial.

Editors take the storyboards,
add recorded dialogue,

sound effects, and music
to create a story reel,

which is a rough draft of
the film in video form.

As an example, here's a short clip

of a story reel from Inside Out.

- First day of school,
very, very exciting.

I was up late last night
figuring out a new plan.

Here it is.

Fear.
- Huh!

- I need a list of all the
possible negative outcomes

on the first day at a new school.

- Way ahead of you there.

Does anyone know how to spell meteor?

- Disgust, make sure
Riley stands out today

but also blends in.

- The story reel is the very first version

of the final film.

This is where everything we've talked

about during this season at
Pixar in a Box comes together,

character development, story
structure, visual language,

film grammar, storyboarding, and pitching.

Piecing and timing are
particularly important in the reel,

that is how long to hold
on to each storyboard,

how the dialogue should
support the visuals,

and how the mood and rhythm of the music

and sound effects adds
to the emotional impact.

Although animation is visual storytelling,

as we'll hear in a second,
you might be surprised

by how big a role sound plays.

- When I have the boards for
the first time for a sequence,

I have to start building out all the sound

that goes with it.

Until you add the sound and
you time out the boards,

it's just drawings, you know,

and the sound and the dialogue

and the timing of the boards
are what bring it to life

and make it feel like a movie.

- When I have my storyboards

and I'm starting to edit a sequence,

depending on what type of scene it is,

I often start with the dialogue,

and I time that out,

and then I add the
storyboards on top of that,

and I time them out so that they work well

with the dialogue,

and once I feel that the storyboards

and the dialogue are working well,

I begin to add sound effects.

(knocking)

Once I have the sound effects working,

I play that back.

I look at it, and if that feels good,

then I start to think about adding music.

(chiming)

- So that you can time out the scene

and you can feel what it's like
for these characters to talk

to each other so we can emulate

what the movie-going experience is

so that we can sit back
and watch the entire movie

as it is and decide
whether this is the movie

that we want to make, you know,

and we do that about eight or nine times

of the entire movie before we
even start animating anything.

- When all of this is
working well together,

after the first few minutes,

you forget that you're watching drawings.

You just get caught up in the story.

That's what we're shooting
for, but it takes a lot

of iteration to get the story
just right in story reel form,

and this requires a lot

of collaboration between
story artists and editors.

So let's hear a little more
about that relationship.

- So you've pitched your
sequence, and everyone fell out

of their chairs laughing,
and the director says,

"Down to editorial with it,"

and so all your drawings are
either scanned or sent down

to editorial where they're
edited and music is placed

and temporary dialogue is placed on them,

and then you all sit around
anticipating a great sequence,

and you watch it, and it
dies, and it flat lines,

and you ask yourself why
it was so funny before.

- It looks and feels completely different

than the version that you pitched,

and you wonder what happened.

- We make a joke about it now,

but there was a while where you go like,

"What happened?

"It Was so funny over in story.

"How come it's not funny anymore?"

- And it's really hard to
say, but moving something in,

it's like a different media.

You're up acting and
performing to something

that you're just passively watching.

- And sometimes it's just timing, too.

Like, a drawing could
be really, really funny

when you linger on it, but
if you cut away from it

by just a millisecond or you
linger on it for too long,

then the comedy of it
kind of dies a little bit.

- The reason that we have
screenings, that we look

at the movie in context
every once in a while,

whatever 12 to 16 weeks,

is to test whether the pitch is funny

or entertaining or heartfelt

because the person who's pitching
it is funny, entertaining,

or heartfelt, or is it truly a great idea

that really conveys emotion to the person

who's gonna be watching it
in the theaters eventually.

- You can see that many
elements of storytelling

and filmmaking come
together in the story reel.

In fact, editorial is always responsible

for the latest version of the movie.

You might say they are
the keepers of the cut.

One question I've always
had is how editors work

with directors.

- I had my first director
review with Andrew Stanton,

and I played him back the scene,

and he then told me this
really kind of great piece

of advice, which was he said,

"As an animation editor,

"before you can even
start editing the scene,

"you have to craft the performance."

The performance is the
timing of the storyboard

juxtaposed with the sound
that the character is making,

whether it's a sound effect
like WALL-E had or a line

of dialogue like Dory would have,

and you have to empathize

with what the character is thinking

and what they are going through

in that particular moment
to be able to understand

what their point of view is

and why are they making the
decisions they're making

at that particular moment.

So you do that first, right,

and then you can really
start evaluating the scene,

and so I took another pass at the sequence

and showed it to him the next day.

It was a huge improvement

because I finally
understood what my job was,

and I still am using
that knowledge every day

when I approach a scene.

- Now that you have a sense
of how story reels work,

it's your turn to create a story reel

of a sequence from your own film.

To do this, you don't need
fancy editing software.

Freely available editing packages,

some of which are on
Smartphones, are enough,

and that brings us to
the end of this season

of Pixar in a Box on storytelling.

Everyone has important stories to tell.

We hope you now feel
like you have the tools

to find your own unique
storytelling voice.

Take a look at the next exercise.

Then be sure to check out the last video

in this lesson for a special treat.