”It’s really important to pay attention to the things that are around you, to the people you know, that are happening in your community, that you’re watching on the news, or anything that’s coming into your life, and realizing that those are the kernels, the nuggets of gold for you,” says Caran Hartsfield.

You probably have that uncle, grandfather, auntie, sister, or whoever who was an incredible character. That often gets overlooked. The real people in our lives that are great characters, or those real moments that happen between two friends on a Tuesday. Write those things down. Use those little golden nuggets to create great scenes.

“It’s so much easier to use real people than to make this Frankensteinian, made-up person that you’re really basing on other films that you’ve seen. You have the luck of knowing the people that probably only you know.” Hartsfield explains. “I don’t know them; most screenwriters don’t know them. You know them. I don’t have the life experiences you have. Most screenwriters don’t have the life experience you have. That’s what’s so exciting. We all have the stories that only we can bring.”

“The world is not monolithic. The world is not homogeneous. Art has always reflected life to a certain extent. The notion that it should not be diverse is insane,” says Seith Mann. “I think that there are so many different and wonderful stories out there, and the more diverse the talent base telling those stories is, the more different, interesting stories that you will have.”

We all benefit from hearing stories from multiple voices. From gaining insight from characters and worlds that have a lived experience that is not necessarily our own. Then, at the same time, it’s important for people to see themselves and stories. If you have a marketplace that doesn’t reflect anything but a particular demographic, that makes it harder for different people to identify with those characters. It’s difficult for them to be truly invested in those stories, which is, ultimately, what is behind all the human need that we have for this illumination that comes from storytelling.

In Hollywood, there’s a profit motive. Hollywood’s going to make more money if it draws in a greater audience, and part of the way you do that is to have diverse storytellers telling different stories. It isn’t rocket science.

”You have these very early experiments with drawings that move. You have these ideas of taking characters that were either in a comic, or in the newspaper and turning those into animated shorts,” Says Kimson Albert. “For example, Gertie the Dinosaur with Winsor McCay was an early version of animation.”

He had a Gorgo act where he actually interacted with an animated version of Gertie the Dinosaur. Behind him, he would throw grid an apple and all these interactive things. It was very new. It was kind of a novelty thing at that time.

You have the early Disney shorts, and you have early Fritz the Cat shorts. Everything is a mouse or some sort of animal that’s cute or mischievous or any of these things.

Steamboat Willie is a short that’s the first sound short animated short. Before then, you wouldn’t have sound synced to the action, which is a Disney film. This turns everything around. Now that the cartoon has sound to it, we’re in a whole of the universe essentially. Film goes from like a Dark Age and then after one film into this incredibly new territory of sound. Then there’s time to adjust that.

With Disney, he was able to experiment with these shorts, prove the kind of ideas, and prove the experiments that they were working on with movement and character in the shorts. They would do all these incredible things with camera. They would test out things with the facts and everything like that.

Then when it came time to do his first feature, which was Snow White, he takes all of this knowledge and his best animators and effects people and throws them on this incredible project that transforms the entire film industry period. It is the biggest thing at the time. Snow White is the definitive mother of invention when it comes to animated film. If you do your research, you will know that the DNA of all animated film features comes from Snow White and character animation.

The evolution of the animated feature is basically the evolution of the Disney studio. They were the ones who were rolling out the Cadillacs of animation. They were the highest level of quality in terms of character animation, in terms of backgrounds, and in terms of camera.

David K. Irving believes that documentary is an exciting form of filmmaking. One of the most exciting things about documentary is that it’s about the truth, and he thinks that’s important. The truth can be very scary. Getting personal and close to the truth is a very rewarding experience for any filmmaker, in David’s view.
The major difference between documentary film and narrative film is that documentary films are usually built during post-production. You do a series of interviews. You come up with a script. You find all the images that you want. But ultimately, it’s based on what images, stories, and interviews you do have in the editing room. David thinks that the documentary often takes shape in the post-production phase.
He says this is very different from a narrative film. Much preproduction can be done in terms of identifying what the shape of the film will be the better. In post-production, it’s a question of realizing that vision. Documentaries are very exciting because they all happen in the moment.
David personally feels there are many different kinds of documentaries. “Cinéma verité, for instance, is a wonderful form of documentary,” says David. He thinks Ken Burns did a terrific job covering the Civil War and baseball to introduce this kind of documentary into the mainstream in American cinema. He thinks it’s become a very popular format for people to enjoy films.
And for David, the major point of documentary film is the same as narrative film. Both types of film have to tell a story.
He’s seen many documentaries that were just a series of interviews and images where there was no edification. There was no climax. The better documentaries are the ones where when you finished watching it, it feels like it’s the end of the story.
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