DIGITAL DIVIDE: STORY TELLING REINVENTED

In 2011, Moonbot released a 15-minute animated short film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which was a combination of stop motion and computer-generated animation. The film was released only in digital format, with an iPad application that supplemented the story. Morris, as Moonbot calls it internally, went on to win an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

At Moonbot, the goal is to keep the core principles of storytelling intact despite the transitional period into a digital age.

“If some mediums are successful in a digital age, I think it’s because they keep the integrity of filmmaking and storytelling at the forefront,” said Calvin O’Neal Jr., an editor for Moonbot Studios. “We want to preserve the way stories are always told. That’s why we love stories so much, because of how they have been told over the years. As we’ve moved into the 21st century, we want to retain that as digital media keeps evolving.”

O’Neal Jr. said the first step is to translate a story onto film.  “The first thing we do is get the story straight and try to present a short film, then after we’ve figured it out, we try to add all of the digital elements. That’s an afterthought. Filmmaking is always the forethought.”

Hebert agrees narrative comes first. “We have these wonderful characters, environments and stories that we want to tell the world, so we just want to find the right ways to deliver those. It might be a film, it might be a game or it might be something not even invented yet.”

For Moonbot’s most recent project, the story dictated the medium and in the end, The Golem will be the studio’s first video game.

“During early meetings, The Golem has been a book, an animated feature length film and a game,” said Hebert. “There have been a lot of ideas kicked around the studio about what it could be, but we felt as though being a video game first was really important because we feel the story has so much potential for making the audience feel a wide range of emotions. Games really present an opportunity through interaction to give an audience that wide range”

“We want to tell stories in the most insane and entertaining ways possible,” said Sara Hebert, marketing director of Moonbot Studios. “We don’t want to just be pigeon-holed as an animation studio or a game studio. What’s important for us is that we find the right media to tell a story in. It is less about being a film studio or an app studio and more about telling amazing stories in the most unexpected ways.” At Moonbot Studios, the goal is to “stay current,” said O’Neil Jr. “Keeping those old conventions and integrity is important, but we are also privy to the fact that things are moving fast. The way people accept media is changing. So we want to stay on the ball but we also want to preserve the story.”

Moonbot Studios is a relatively small company that was founded in 2009 by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, and has fewer than 50 employees. The pair has worked on projects such as Toy Story,  A Bug’s Life, Robots, Rise of the Guardians, George Shrinks and Rolie Polie Olie in positions ranging from conceptual and art design through to producer, production designer and executive producer. They’ve worked with big name studios such as Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks. But Oldenburg and Joyce have always wanted to create original content where the story is at the heart of the company. This desire turned into Moonbot Studios where the emphasis on original storytelling permeates throughout the studio and its staff.

http://humberjournalism.com/finecut2013/digital-divide-story-telling-reinvented/