Screen Drafts, Story and Shared Genius

I have recently had the great pleasure of watching a video of Pixar CEO Ed Catmull talking about shaping a creative culture at the famed animation studio. In the presentation Ed covers two topics very near and dear to me and, since Ed Catmull is a certified genius it prompts me to ask the question - If a certified genius says exactly what ive been saying independently and without collusion, does that make me a genius too?

The two areas where Mr Catmull and I overlap is in regard to Story and Creative Drafting. 

I wrote a few months ago about my problem with STORY and I exerted with frustration that: 

“the problem with such exertions of Story-Love is that they are rarely accompanied by Definition, Clarity or Detail about what STORY actually means? It as if the word has the weight of religious significance - the true name of God - of which to question or seek clarification is taboo and transgressive. Story just IS and MUST be accepted. It is a word used as a preacher might when pressed hard with questions of logic against faith - “because God said so…!” and we smile and nod as if the very presence of the word itself explains everything and prevents any further questions.”

It seems that Ed agrees with me:

“Saying the Story is the most important thing is not helpful to say if everyone is saying it. So i stopped saying it… Movies are stories and to say that the Story is the most important thing is a tautology. It doesn’t have any meaning at all. Yet when you say it to almost anybody they nod their head as if saying something profound.”

The other area of overlapping insightful genius that Ed and I share is in regard to visual drafting and the breaking down of fear-culture creativity. Along with my colleague Karen Pearlman I co-authored a paper recently presented at the ScreenFutures conference in Melbourne (the full audio podcast is available here) The paper was based on earlier articles written by Karen for Lumina: the Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business, as well as our world-first graduate program in online episodic storytelling, and explored a process of visual drafting in episodic stories that engaged a deeper more comprehensive notion of creative development. 

It seems my mate Ed has deliberately constructed just such a working culture at pixar where all staff are urged to show their work early, when it doesn’t work rather than later when they think it does. 

The video is a fascinating insight into what makes for a great creative and productive culture. Should all of Hollywood work like this or produce such work of quality.