"Rain" by Paolo Munoz (c. 1996)

A quote from ON FAIRY STORIES, an essay by professor J.R.R. Tolkien:

We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

Reposted from Sci-Fi Author John C. Wright.

This could have been an incredibly different story

After watching a lot of the special features and extras in the Pixar DVDs, I have a strange feeling that Pixar uses something akin to “Agile Development” methodology in their storytelling.

In the “Incredibles” deleted scenes, the villain, “Syndrome”, actually makes an appearance at the start of the movie while Violet is just a little baby.  He invades the home of Mr. and Mrs. Incredible while they are still a young couple. This scene was supposed to be the prelude to the story introducing the characters and their super powers.  It included a fully animated storyboard with sounds and voices. The dialog of Syndrome breaking into the home and capturing the family even included a mention that there was a prohibition on “supers” marrying and having children.

The final movie did not include any of this. In fact, if this was the original scene for the movie, it would have radically altered the entire story, plot trajectory, theme and mood to the narrative. This wasn’t a “deleted scene” so much as it was a complete rewrite of the entire story.  In fact, in some of the “Behind the Scenes” dialog, Syndrome was not even considered the main antagonist of the plot.  He was supposed to just be a random villain that allows the characters to display their super powers.

What Pixar appears to do is that they storyboard, voice and create the entire movie more than once and get audience feedback. This allows the storytellers the ability to refine the story ideas over and over again – scrapping bad ones, changing scene orders, and completely rewriting the story if need be. It is the “Agile Development” method of software taken to film – quick iterations, and lots of opportunities for feedback loops.

Linguini was voiced by Lou Ramano, Art and Production Design

In fact, that is how the voices for Linguini and Emile were discovered for “Ratatouille” – they were Pixar staff who did the voice work for these storyboard sessions and fit the characters so well, they kept them for the final production.

Keep in mind, this is merely conjecture from viewing a lot of “Behind the Scenes” features on the DVDs and on the Internet for the latest Pixar movies. But at the same time, I cannot help but think that a massive amount of research was done to perfect the movies that Pixar produces.

Both “Ratatouille” and “Up” stunned me in their storytelling craft. But if you attempt to describe to someone what these two stories are about, they would be incredulous to believe that someone could actually tell a good story from such a ridiculous plot premise.

It is almost as if someone at Pixar is taking bets that using their storytelling method, they can tell a good story from anything that you can throw at them: from a mouse who wants to learn how to cook in France, to an old man who strings his house up on helium balloons and wants to fly to South America.

With so much story refinement done up-front with tons of research done on audience reaction, I think that it would be nigh impossible for Pixar to make a bad movie. At worse, you won’t get a Pixar movie next year because they are still iterating the kinks out of the current story they are developing, but you will never get a bad one.

"Up" was probably created by a random plot generator

No longer are the people in the show merely trainers – but gods and goddesses.  The performance takes a life of its own as the sea god and his cohort would ride the dolphins and flip in the air with them.  The dancing sky goddess and her birds would swoop from the skies touching the ocean surface while birds of paradise were released to fly over and around the dazzled crowd.  To punctuate the performance and bringing the show to its climax where the sea and sky meet in a singular dance would be a pulse-pounding musical number that resonated the entire theatre.  But what brings the whole performance together as a whole is the dreaming girl and her story.

Stories give people purpose and meaning.  It helps people make sense of their lives in an otherwise chaotic and meaningless world.  In a study conducted on children as young as two, it was found that children as young as two formulate and understand their world mostly through narratives and stories.  These studies were condensed into a volume called “Narratives from the Crib” and it shows a surprising amount of comprehension and understanding of the world through the stories a child who would tell herself before falling asleep.

Many of the rides and shows I’ve been seeing have been altered or changed so that they become part of a larger story.  For instance, to revitalize the “Enchanted Tiki Room” in the Magic Kingdom, the animatronic birds were given new life by infusing two characters into the song: Iago (the parrot from Aladdin) and Zazu (the bird from the Lion King.)  By adding these two characters into the performance, the “Enchanted Tiki Room” becomes part of two larger stories rather than an exhibit that doesn’t mean anything by itself.

Even through adulthood, we also are inexplicably drawn to the power of stories.  We spend billions of dollars on watching TV shows and movies.  It is an unquenchable thirst for meaning that fuels this desire for stories.  And, given the opportunity, people want to be part of the story – part of history.  That is part of the reason so many people are drawn to celebrities.

You may agree or disagree with this person.  But you cannot deny the power of his life story.

"Totally Righteous, Dude!"

Today I discovered that humans could talk to sea turtles.  I met one particular sea turtle who had a lot of questions for us humans and welcomed us to ask him our own questions as well.  His name is “Crush” and he resides at Disney World on his show “Turtle Talk.”

When you enter the showroom, one wall is arrayed like a window into the open sea.  And after an introduction from the hostess, Crush comes surfing into view and begins to talk to the audience.  He talks not just to the audience in general, but to specific people in the crowd.  He asks one little girl what her name is and calls her by her name.  He asks who brought her here and she answers that her Troop Leader had done so.  And so he starts asking the Troop Leader questions too and calls the Troop Leader by name.

Crush then asks the audience, specifically the children, if they have any questions for him.  He picks the children from the crowd by describing them to the human hostess running around with a microphone.  One girl asks if he likes swimming and he proclaims that he likes swimming, but loves surfing and proceded to demonstrate by swimming around and clocking himself on the window.

The creators at Disney understand the value of a personalized experience and personal interaction.  Relying on animatrons to be hosts and hostesses on popular rides only goes so far, and so adding truly interactive sessions with Pixar characters such as Crush completely change the experience of the audience.  No longer is the experience merely a ride that everyone enjoys, but you truly feel like you’ve interacted with this strange and wondrous world of dreams comes to life.

Neverwinter Nights 2

The technology that makes it possible to truly interact with a sea turtle can one day make it possible for us to create ever more interactive games.  Games like “Neverwinter Nights” makes this attempt by allowing players to create their own campaigns, story scenarios, and combat encounters with the same tools as the developers used.  More and more games are taking this approach and allowing users access to create their own experiences and to tell their own stories and share them with others.

What I believe will replace the MMORPG will be something from the past – the MUD (multi-user dungeon).  The strength of the MUD was the ability for users to create their own content which is lacking in most MMORPGs.  Also, since the primary medium of a MUD was text, it was easy for administrators to describe anything and everything they wished within the confines of the MUD structure of “rooms.”   The power to customize a room was only limited to the imagination (and literary skills) of the writer.

I do not believe that the future of gaming lies in the ability to push yet more polygons to overcome “uncanny valley” or the perfection of “mammary mechanics” as many developers seem to push for.  I believe the future of gaming lies in giving players more access to tools to make their dreams into reality.  While there is an element of cynicism that goes with user-created content, I believe the next big evolution in gaming is pushing for the technology to create and present the imagination as close as possible to real-time:

Gamemaster: “You enter a large dark room…” (clicks a couple settings) “In the room in the corner is a pillar…” (drags) “Where 5 goblins are surrounding it…” (presses hotkey) “And they are worshipping it…” (clicks emote) “Because atop of it lies a statue of Tiamat…” (drag and drops)  “They are currently unaware of your presence…” (sets combat parameter)  “What do you do?”

Player: “I wish to declare myself their new god!” (presses a “Diplomacy” skill check – scores perfectly)

Gamemaster: “For some reason…  They believe you…” (pressing emote button)

And yes…  Someone did pull off that stunt in a game and the gamemaster let him get away with it – simply out of sheer humor factor and lending itself to a great story.

C-3PO and R2-D2 banter while you wait

One of my favorite rides of all time (despite George Lucas’s attempts to ruin it) is “Star Tours.”  In the ride, you go on a scheduled tour of the Star Wars universe and thanks to the bumbling efforts of your ship’s pilot droid, you end up in mortal danger, culminating in taking part in the Battle of Yavin (the end of Episode IV).

One of the great things they do to set up the ride is an elaborate set up in the waiting line to make it seem like you really have stepped into a real space port.  Animated droids are busy repairing ships and making comments to one another and it is humorous to listen to the conversations going on while waiting in line.

For an adult, a certain amount of childlike suspension of disbelief is asked for.  You know that millions of people have taken this ride before and millions after you will as well.  But thanks to a clever introduction, set up and follow through, the disbelief makes it all part of the fun.

Computer games, and especially MMORPGs, also request a certain level of suspension of disbelief.  In the World of Warcraft, the human campaign has a plotline where a particularly troublesome bandit named “Van Cleef” must be executed and the player must take the head back to the Castle as proof of his defeat.

Van Cleef has how many heads?

I found it particular amusing that after Van Cleef’s defeat, my entire party was able to collect multiple heads from Van Cleef’s body, so that we could all complete the quest.  These are things that you allow as part of the fun of a game, but it required too much suspension for me to disbelieve the “amusement park” feel of an MMORPG.

Single player games do a better job of treating the player as special and unique in the world.  In an MMORPG, the plot movers and shakers are people like Thrall and Arthas – computer controlled characters.  You, the player, and the 8 million others players are simply the errand runners in this elaborate amusement park.

Until the tools for creating very unique roleplaying experiences in a short amount of time have been perfected, the only place I can find great storytelling for a group of people is in a table-top roleplaying game.  For as great computer games are, they cannot match what humans are able to create with the power of their imaginations.

In one campaign that I was running as a gamemaster, the players had defeated and captured a female drow (dark elf) bard.  Being a party of heroes, they could not outright kill a defenseless and defeated enemy but as a bard, she had the power to seduce and control the party through the sound of her voice.  So the party kept her under close surveillance.

A Captured Drow

Because of this awkward situation, she took advantage and became a foil for the group.  At every opportunity, she spoke and made the party second-guess itself, and verbally berated them, denigrated them, and humiliated them in gleefully vicious word play.  It became so intense that the cleric, the “holy warrior”, of the group wanted to kill her.  To the intolerant cleric, a drow is, after all, born evil.

One of the players created a monk who spent his days mastering his body through meditation and the practice of martial arts.  He was the crown prince of an kingdom and threw away his fame and fortune in an disagreement with his father over the need to expand the empire.  The monk was sitting and meditating while the party was resting from battle when the beautiful drow sat next to him and asked him a question.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“That my body, this existence, is merely an illusion,” he replied.  The player was using Buddhism as the basis of his monk’s philosophy.

Wryly she asked, “So… Nothing is real?”

“Everything is merely an illusion.  There is no difference between me and the rock I am sitting on.  Nothing is real.”

And with that, the drow coyly drew herself close to the monk.  Being a bard, her features and charm were as much a part of her magic as her voice.  She let the opening on her drow-styled bodice drop to give the young monk a subtle vision of the secrets her clothing hid in curves and mystery and beauty and turning her head, let him brush against her delicate neck.

She planted a deep kiss on the monk’s lips, and after drawing a breath, she parted from him with a deep blush and said, “Tell me I’m not real.”  And with that, she walked away.

The scene I described was not planned by me or the player.  It came and went as a flash in my mind, and the scene was played perfectly by the player whose character was thenceforth flustered and unable to really contend with the drow philosophically or psychologically.  It was her intention to demoralize the monk, one of the toughest warriors of the group.

Instead of simply rolling dice or using rules to accomplish it, we played out a scene that is forever immortalized as a unique and unrepeatable story among friends.  Something that a computer-generated “amusement park” game could never beat.