There are few organizations in the world that can claim more expertise when it comes to storytelling than Pixar. The Disney-owned animation studio is known for its ability to consistently create…
Pixar has released lessons on the technical sides of movie making before, but these lessons are an emphasis on storytelling itself. This reminds me of The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar written by a storyboard artist for Pixar. Some great insight into what makes a great story.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
I’m guilty of this… A lot.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
I wish more of Hollywood would follow this rule.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
Both of these are a nicer way of paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut, “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”
Few saw the Chromebook coming. When it launched half a decade ago, the category was broadly maligned for its limited feature set, middling hardware specs and operation that required an always-on internet connection to work properly. But things change in five years. In 2015, the category overtook MacBooks in the U.S. for the first time ever, selling…
On the one hand, we’re told, robots are coming to take all our jobs any day now. But then there are 6 million job openings in the U.S., and large companies in a range of industries are telling us they are running out of humans to perform labor. The reality, of course, is somewhere in between….
There are two pretty basic problems with this line of thinking. First, the idea that you cannot create on a smartphone or tablet assumes both that the software on the new device doesn’t change and that the nature of the work won’t change. Neither are good assumptions. You begin by making the new tool fit the…
In the real world, there’s no textbook or curriculum. There’s no way to practice. There’s no source of continuous feedback. There are no teachers — it’s just you and whoever you can convince to help you. So how do you learn something no one can teach you? How do you become a world-class expert on something few…
Experts agree that parent involvement in education is one of the biggest predictors of student success. So where can parents begin? We’ve compiled a list of articles, videos, and other resources to help you engage productively with your kids’ teachers and school. Source: Parent Partnership in Education: Resource Roundup | Edutopia Involving parents in the…
As educators, we’ve spent years attending classes, participating in workshops, going to conferences, and continuing our education. The more we learn, the more we create and collect. Because of the time and effort that we spend developing such rich resources, it becomes challenging to let some of them go. I’ve struggled with this for years….
