Synopsis: World-building insights from Warner Brothers Executive Vice President of Digital Production Chris DeFaria. (If you enjoy this article, you may also like '5D: Building New Worlds and Stories One Event at a Time'.)

The term ‘world-building’, at least in so far as it applies to film, defines the creation of a fully evolved setting in which a story can reside. It’s the invention of a self-contained place with consistent rules that apply to the cultural, political and historical as much as they do the geographical or physical. And it’s now become an essential tool for big budget movie development.

In his 2006 book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins quotes an unnamed screenwriter on the shift to world-building in Hollywood: "When I first started you would pitch a story because without a good story, you didn't really have a film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. And now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media."

Indeed, the financial push from single- to multi-channel (transmedia) narrative has cemented world-building into the development process at Warner Brothers, where Chris DeFaria is Executive Vice President of Digital Production. Surprisingly though,  DeFaria points out that marketing and distribution are just one factor behind the world-building push.

Jawbone.tv: Where does Executive Vice President of Digital Production fit in the story pipeline?

Chris DeFaria: It's my job to first create a production plan for the movies, one that can meet the studio’s needs for marketing, budgets, schedules and delivery dates. And then I constantly work with the filmmakers during production to stay on track with the plan.

Jawbone.tv: when it comes to the world-building around that ... how do you and the studio get involved?

Chris DeFaria: There is a certain type of movie where world-building is at the core. The measure of the success and value of the film isn't as simple as what's in the script, or as with many movies, who the attached stars are. There is a group of films for which those things aren't unimportant, but there are other criteria or elements that help market the movie, and also define the audience experience of the film.

Those movies tend to be heavy with visual effects, or an entirely animated. So, in those films, what Alex [McDowell – Production Designer] and I have been working on is ways to define those films more narrowly. And one of the things they all seem to have at their core is an idiosyncratic, internally consistent worldview that has been made visual. And that's where we get this idea of world-building.

The story is going to rely on the creation of a whole universe that has its physical laws, its social laws, its aesthetic laws and consistencies. And that's sort of the first step in creating a production plan is creating those worlds.

Jawbone.tv: Is that world necessary just for the story or more for marketing reach, allowing the movie to extend easily across other platforms like games?

Chris DeFaria: Both are goals. We need the world for the story to make sense. Once that’s created, all of the other ancillary uses, like toys or TV shows, the things you hope to spin off from a commercially successful film, have a world to live in. So there's no doubt that the world-building can unlock potential in the ancillary markets.

Jawbone.tv: When it comes to production development, from the moment the project has been approved to the time it comes alive on the screen, how do you approach world-building there?

Chris DeFaria: Actually, in movies where world-building is important, that often starts before a project is even approved. It often helps with getting the green light. Because often you're looking at a story, Where the Wild Things Are as an example, you say, this is a story of a little boy who runs away from home, goes to an island and interacts with some fantasy creatures ... and that sounds okay, but not really until you begin to see the world that the movie will take place in do you get excited. You see the tone of the characters and the environments and [those within the studio] can begin to see the potential of the movie.

Or with Watchmen, you have a very complicated political drama, and in a pitch, it sounds interesting, but it doesn't necessarily feel like a compelling pop culture film. But when you begin to build a world around it, which is what Alex did with Watchmen, of course drawn from the original graphic novel, suddenly it brings the story to life. It gave it a look.

And, Both Wild Things and Watchmen had the beginning of the universe [the books] to pull from before being green lit, but sometimes we're going to sit down with the President of the studio and we need to show him something that hasn’t been seen before, something with no existing visual material.

So with something like Clash of the Titans, there were a lot of questions within the studio about what a movie like that could look like. Through some beautiful conceptual art, we were able to show them.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is an animated film about owls. 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.

Jawbone.tv: So out of some sort of preproduction fund you develop what could almost be considered a prototype ... a proof of concept?

Chris DeFaria: Yes, absolutely. World-building connects to what I think are the chief advantages of the digital tool set. Rapid prototyping, which we do a lot of in preproduction now, and easy, open access, for creative contributions … an illustrator working alone at home or an artist at a major shop can make a big contribution into what the world will be.

Jawbone.tv: Do you consider these prototypes primarily an internal tool for the approval process, or is it used somehow with audiences as well?

Chris DeFaria: No, it's still primarily internal. Movies are very expensive. Green lighting a movie involves many divisions from within a studio. The ancillaries, marketing, and of course the feature film division. The prototypes give everyone a good glimpse as to what they'll end up with.

Jawbone.tv: Some people involved on the traditional authorship side of things, the writers specifically, get nervous when they hear about world-building. How do you see writers in this equation, on both large and small scales?

Chris DeFaria: The budget dictates how much of the world you get to see. But it doesn't cost a lot to create the world. That just takes creative energy. There are a lot of films where a complex and interesting world is developed – largely by the writers – but it’s only glimpsed at in the actual production. The consistency and rules that the world imposes on the story are still evident. Look at the original Terminator or Road Warrior and the worlds established that are clearly there but never seen.

Jawbone.tv: What do you say to the indie filmmakers who don't operate in the $100 million + club? How should they approach world-building?

Chris DeFaria: I'd spend my time looking around, as a filmmaker, and just notice how the world we live in is detected. How are the logic and consistencies made apparent? It's not all in big traveling wide shots. 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.

For things like prototypes, people [investors, distributors, partners] need to know there is a vision for this world. The most obvious thing is concept art that indicates look and feel, tone and emotion. That’s critical. But I have this conversation all the time with filmmakers, because we want to design a presentation that is appropriate for the given world. I'm doing one right now based on an artist's [conceptual] work in New Zealand, and for that we're shooting a scene. It's low budget, but we're shooting the scene because there's really no other way to get across what we're trying to get across.

For Guardians of Ga'Hoole, we did a series of concept art designed to contradict the assumptions of the world based on the nature of the original material [a kid's book]. Some people thought it was going to be cute little dancing owls. We corrected the assumption.

But, there's no single recipe out there. I'd say, above visual gloss, focus on the question being asked about your world ... and answer that question.

(If you enjoyed this article, you may also like '5D: Building New Worlds and Stories One Event at a Time'.)