- Hi, I'm Kristen Lester, a
story artist here at Pixar. Today we're going to talk
about story structure, the way we organize and tell our stories. But before we begin, have
you guys heard the joke about the mushroom that
goes to the discotheque? A mushroom walks into a discotheque and he walks up to a lady
and he asks her to dance. She says, "Ewww, gross,
no, you're a mushroom!" So he walks up to another
lady and asks her to dance. "Nah, I'm not interested." Lady after lady after lady,
rejected, rejected, rejected. Nobody wants to dance with him. Finally, the mushroom walks
over the the bartender and he's so confused, he says, "I don't get it, why does
nobody want to dance with me? "I mean, I'm a fungi." (laughs) See, this joke has a structure. It's got an opening, a
buildup in the middle, and an ending, which is,
you know, the punchline. That structure is a big
part of what makes it funny. Structure is the answer to the question, what do you want the
audience to know, and when? If you get the order wrong, it could be a real problem, check it out. Hey, can I tell you a joke? Alright, so there's this fungi and, shoot, I messed up the opening. OK, OK, hey, can I tell you a joke? Alright, so there's a mushroom
who walks into a discotheque and then there's a bartender there. Aw, darn it.
(marker scribbling) I messed up the middle. Hey, hey, hey, can I tell you a joke? Alright, so, there's a mushroom
who walks into a discotheque and there's a bunch of
ladies on the dance floor. He asks them to dance and they say, "yes." (marker scribbling)
Dang. Without conflict, joke over. (sighs with exasperation)
See, structure is important. Just as structure is a big
part of telling a funny joke, it's also essential to making a movie that has the emotional impact
you want on your audience. (shushing) This is a great example. - [Marlin] (screaming) Nemo! - [Kristen] In earlier
versions of Finding Nemo, the structure of the
story was very different than the final film. The director wanted to interweave scenes of Nemo's parent's lives
before they had kids as flashbacks throughout the whole movie. So you would see them meet. - [Marlin] Hello. - [Kristen] Fall in love, and eventually move into their house at the drop off in little
scenes throughout the film. - [Coral] Oh honey, it's beautiful. - [Kristen] The main
story of Marlin and Nemo and their journey was pretty
much the way it is now. But, with the flashback structure, it wasn't until the end of the film that you would find out
that Marlin's wife Coral. - [Marlin] Coral, look out! - [Kristen] And all of her eggs
were killed by a barracuda. (Marlin grunting)
(screaming) - When they showed the
movie with this structure, they had one big problem,
the audiences, well, they didn't like Marlin. Looking at their story structure, the team realized that, in
this version of the film, the audience didn't find out
why Marlin was acting this way towards his son until the
movie was almost over, so they decided to re-edit the movie and remove almost all of the flashbacks, leaving only the scenes
where Coral and Marlin's home is attacked by the barracuda, killing Coral and all of
her eggs except for Nemo. They moved these scenes to
the beginning of the movie. - [Marlin] I promise I will never let anything happen to you. - This change in the story structure changed the audience
feelings about Marlin a lot. They knew right from the beginning how much Marlin had lost
and how brave it was for him to go after Nemo,
and they loved him for it. In the case of Finding Nemo, finding the problem was a matter of rearranging the story structure. Of course, all our movies are different, and their story structure
challenges are too. In this lesson, we'll look
at the many different ways we think about story
structure here at Pixar and you'll get to try out for yourself different approaches to
structuring your story. Hm, I wonder if I told the mushroom jokes in flashbacks it'd be funnier. Probably not.