World-Building at Warner Brothers: Chris DeFaria on the Power of Digital

Todd Denis has a great interview with Chris DeFaria on Jawbone.tv on world-building. Two key insights of DeFaria's are, one, on the value of being able to demo a world with a distinct visual aesthetic as a prototype that can communicate the vision for the film.

Referring to an animated film about owls, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, DeFaria describes how, 'It's a kid's book, but it's like owls in a movie like Lord of the Rings. People sort of get that, but what would it look like? So we did a test and built a world, and once the executives saw it, the movie was green lit.'

And second, that 'Clever world-building is just like clever filmmaking ... it's coming up with a very big idea for a world and reducing it down into an experience. If you can do that effectively, you can probably do that cost-consciously.'