Zach Baker: Story-Driven

In the summer of 2000, I was sitting in a classroom at Universal Studios CityWalk. I was taking a class in writing for animation – yes, doing scripts for cartoons. Well, we had a couple of guests this particular night, Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley.

They were the producers of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, which hadn’t even aired at that time. After they talked about Buzz, Mark mentioned that they had an original show they had just started working on. Mark kind of looked at Bob and asked, “Should we tell them?” Bob shrugged, “Sure.”

Mark said, “Well, we’re not really supposed to be talking about it since it’ll be a long time before it airs. But we’re just so excited that we can’t not talk about it.”

That show was Kim Possible. They explained that it was a kind of cross between a female James Bond and a high school comedy. That Kim and her inept friend Ron Stoppable would take down super-villains but still have the same problems as anyone in high school. And their eyes lit up and they got excited. It sounded really cool, even if we didn’t fully get it yet.

And, Mark added, “There’s something that I’m proud about, which is that we made the decision right from the start that Kim would never pick up a gun.” She wouldn’t even point something like a gun at anyone. I was really impressed by the resolve with which he said it, and they of course made good on that promise (with a little help, in the first season, from a grappling hook launcher which cleverly let Kim strike a secret-agent profile).

Well, more than six years and eighty episodes later, Kim Possible has become something really great. But I have to tell you, I could tell that it was going to be something special, not because I have any sixth sense for good TV shows or can pick a winner. It’s because I saw the intensity and excitement in Mark and Bob as they were telling a classroom of strangers about this show they’d thought up. The premise sounded interesting, the characters sounded fun, but most of all, the creators, who had just been through the grind of a 65-episode series, were bursting at the seams with excitement. Anyone could tell something great was coming.

So now the fourth (and final) season of KP is coming to a close. Mark and Bob are moving on to things beyond the Wells building, the cast met for the last voice session last week, and things are being put in their place to wrap up everything on the series. I’ve been following along by reading director Steve Loter’s blog which counts down to the series end with some behind-the-scenes access. Check it out here:

http://sothefinale.blogspot.com/

Jennifer Lerew’s Blackwing Sketchbook has a great series of sketches from a trip to Paris. Très formidable! Her sketches are as amazing and expressive as usual, plus there’s the backdrop of a wide-eyed first-time trip to Paris. Irresistible.

What can you say about the quirky but talented kids in high school? They’re not confident because they’re not sure where they fit in. They haven’t defined themselves because they don’t have a life-long plan. They don’t know how to express themselves because they have a limited sense of taste. But they want to be amazing artists, have that coolness that transcends their environment. Who pulls that off when they’re in college, much less high school? Okay, Brad Bird. But who else? You’d have to have a lot of confidence, a lot of ability to define yourself, and really good taste.

Anyway, I just had to write this because I just saw a video of The Wrong Trousers, a young San Diego band who have, at least on stage, absolutely nailed it. They pull off a hip adult taste for what’s cool, an artistic sensibility that goes beyond quirkiness and tremendous confidence. And all of them are individually really talented. It’s freaky. They’re like superheroes or something. I really can’t believe they actually exist. Maybe I’m being put on and this is another MySpace hoax.

They play an upright bass, harp and mandolin, which is brilliant. Here they are, The Wrong Trousers:

Check out the rest of their performances on YouTube. By the way, that’s the link to their most popular video and it only has 14,000 views since last November. They’re like these perfectly-drawn characters at the beginning of a very interesting story. I expect to hear them on KCRW any morning and expect them to just grow from there.

Flektor, the online video/photo editing web application, was bought by MySpace. Not bad for a company whose product went into testing six months before and debuted just a few months ago.

But of course, the real story is who’s behind Flektor: Jason Rubin, Andy Gavin, Scott Shumaker and Jason Kay. Jason and Andy founded a little company called Naughty Dog thirteen years ago. They made a couple of games that sold like 25 million copies altogether, something like that. Scott Shumaker you probably don’t know, but he’s like the Tiger Woods of game programming. And Jason Kay is just the guy who would get this kind of thing going.

But anyway, the Flektor founders were at the core of Naughty Dog, then they left and started a new company. Maybe there should be a particular word for that, because that’s what ended up happening at Luxoflux. What’s very interesting to me is that they took this right turn into web applications from video games. It’s a transition I’m doing in my own much less sophisticated way.

Jason Rubin left Naughty Dog after giving a well-publicized speech about the need for game development talent to demand respect. It made a splash which led to very interested anticipation of what his next move would be when he expressed intent to “explore other options in the gaming sector.”

I think everyone assumed that he was going to start a new studio, and in fact I had heard “Jason Rubin Games” mentioned off-handedly. But he went for the Flektor venture instead. It should give pause to any game entrepreneur out there, because the message it conveys is that the opportunities in web software are better than in game software, even if you’re Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin.

Now that’s a thought which indicates that there’s something wrong with the game industry. Of course, maybe they just like programming in Rails more, but I think that’s my own imagination!

Anyway, if the $10 million thrown around for this is the full paid-up price, that seems like a heckuva deal for MySpace. But hey, no slight to Flektor for not getting more. Any liquidity event beats an illiquidity event. I’ve seen those, too. Well done, Flektors.

First, check out this post on startups and animation I saw at News.YC. What can I say, a post about startups and Pixar, right up my alley.

It reminded me, I got a kick out of hearing Brad Bird interviewed by the Spline Doctors (q.v.) when, near the end, they asked him about Glen Keane’s impressive technical ambitions. He was like, yeah, fine, but come on, the audience doesn’t care about that! “Hey kids, you want to see some sculptural drawing this weekend?” Classic.

So yeah, the director’s priority isn’t to advance the technique or the technology, but to tell a great story well. You could just as well say it’s to make something people want, since he’s a guy who really fights for what the audience wants. So technique is good but not gold.

Technique and experimentation is the focus in academia, film festivals and so on, and there’s some pretty lively subcultures that follow that kind of stuff. But if your goal is to make something people want, then that’s what’s got to be in the driver’s seat. All that push-the-boundaries, show-everyone-how-I-can-do-it, expand-the-art-form, make-cool-technology-for-its-own-sake stuff has got to be in the back seat.

So if you want to MSPW, don’t fall in love with technique. Make it the servant, not the master. Value what it does for the art, not how it reveals your cleverness. Keep it in the back seat. And when it gets out of line, go ahead and kill your darlings. Don’t hesitate to delete “cool” code. Smash the amazing hands off the sculpture.