ABSTRACT
Commercial animated fi lms were not always produced this way. In the early days, the story men and women were the writers of the picture. They drew thumbnails of the characters and the staging, wrote story outlines, and then worked their thumbnails up into fi nished boards. The writers and directors at the Warner Brothers cartoon studio often worked in groups and bounced ideas off one another. Writers such as Mike Maltese and Tedd Pierce would eventually put the witty dialogue for Bugs Bunny and Daff y Duck directly on the storyboards. The fi nal script was written out for the voice artists to read during recording sessions. Walt Disney Studio story man and art director Ken Anderson stated that he would write his own outlines for feature fi lms, sketching the character designs at the same time, and that the storyboard always took precedence over the script. In the instances where a feature began with a writer’s treatment, it was not uncommon to have the story change 180 degrees by the time the storyboards were completed. (A transcript of my interview with Ken Anderson is included in Appendix 3 .)
The Story Head (or Head of Story ) on a modern feature fi lm will act as a “third director,” in the words of story head and director Brenda Chapman. The story head has specifi c responsibilities: he or she will focus entirely on the story, while the directors are responsible for every aspect of the fi lm. The story ideally is a collaborative process, with the writers working directly with the artists and the directors having fi nal approval.
