Man he just completely opened my mind

Houston is a pure genius. His book - 'You're Going to Need a Bigger Story' touches more on what he's mentioned in this video and so much more. I personally bought his book a while back and it is chalk-full of great information and I'd highly recommend anyone buy it who wants to create great worlds and are seriously considering writing as a career.

This interview is not a golden nugget, it's the whole gold bar! Of course, it might seem obvious to create a world for the story we are writing, but I'd not thought of it in the terms expressed in this interview. It has opened up my story to new possibilities. I've realised how my story could now go from a one-off feature to perhaps several sequels as well, or even better, a couple of seasons based upon the world I create, with my current protagonist as the thread that holds it all together. Brilliant stuff :-) P.S. If this interview is a gold bar then this channel is Fort Knox! Keep the great content coming and thank you so much, I learned a huge amount so far!

I can't believe this guy. Everything he said is exactly my thoughts and writings about my story world. I almost thought I was going too deep and it was too much. But now I know not to change or cut anything out. Thanks so much Houston. I really connected with your concepts and guidance. I hope you see my world one day and love it.

Wow what this guy had to say was intuitive but very insightful. This willl be very useful for my own story ideas that I'm working on.

All of these things are in his book, and as far as my favorite worlds are concerned, the dystopian future of Los Angeles in both "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner 2049" are awesome worlds that explore how replicants fut into the equation, and how the laws in these worlds affect everyone there. Also, the world of assassins in the John Wick franchise is awesome because they have guidelines and rules set in play that all of the assassins must follow, and if not the repercussions are deadly.

play role playing games-fantasy, science fiction, historical, etc etc. You’ll get it.

Fav story world is Black Panther. I was so inspired by Wakanda, very beautifully done.

brillant!! love his interviews he never holds back information

Simon Stalenhag's The Loop and other visuals are amazing. It's like an alternate '80s.

Wow. This is really interesting. "Take protagonist out of story world, yet it remains an interesting place". The best tip I have ever got on story world. Wonderful. Thanks.

This just blew my goddamn mind. This is what I'm missing in my animated film script. I haven't even thought through the world enough. Back to the drawing board.

I think this more widely known as the "Universe" that your story is set in nowadays. But like he says, this is such an important concept that people seem to overlook, when I believe creating the universe for your story is the most important part to it. The most blockbuster films at the time of writing this have a very flushed out universe e.g. Marvel, Star Wars (obviously doesn't have to be all sci fi)

This man was my Transmedia teacher at the Los Angeles Film School. Great guy and such a valuable class it’s dope to see him on platforms like this even years later.

I'm utterly impressed by the amount of people who took a whole 30 minutes to watch the video and then missed the point entirely because the definition of theme is lost on them.

18:06 My man, I know you meant Cyberpunk, but I instantly visualized Ryan Gosling in a tophat with gears and cogs glued onto it

DAMNNNNN! Back to the drawing board for this pilot. I have 10 days before I have to submit this Pilot Lol... Im gonna have as much hair as him by the time Im done with this project... Great interview! He's GRAND!

i saw jack the giant slayer from 2013 ad and it blew my mind

Love Houston Howard and Film Courage ❤

Good topic, and worth probably a whole series on its own... As a GM (Game Master) AND as a Player, I've visited more Worlds than most would like to believe are even available... Commonly D&D is most popularly played in "Forgotten Realms", a kind of semi-neutral earthlike Magical Fantasy world... BUT we've got a near library of worlds to choose from... AND of course, D&D is hardly the end all of RPG's... Favorites??? Okay, here are a few memorable places... Dark Sun... A realm where spells are cast at the cost of souls (supposedly) and so magic is extremely guarded and secretive... even outlawed in most "civilized places"... Metal is scarce as well. This leaves your Elves and Dwarves to whole different resources for weapons to fight the otherwise usual and unusual monsters or villains in battles... AND the arid wretched wastelands of the desert... because it's ALL desert ALL the time. SO hot and dry, in some territories that the dead from battle are often taken to be harvested of their blood for making wine... ...a good GM with this one can practically make you FEEL the sand getting to places you didn't know you had. Night City... It's not so terribly different from the world of Blade Runner... Also likely spawned of Cyberpunk ("2013" ed, I think)... Only it wasn't a big deal about replicants there. Cybernetics were the big thing, and among the problems are "Cyber-psychosis" a condition from either just too much synthetic upgrading reaching a point of "nearly godhood" in certain people. In others, it was the over-use or even dependence upon "uplinks" which allow a user's brain to jack-in straight to a computer and the network (web)... With virtual reality as real as it can get, and little or no oversight, it was easy for adventure junkies to screw up their heads between lack of sleep and the addiction to high adventures... Every once in a while, a "Cyber-psycho" suffers that critical break from reality, or a disjointed failure of discerning reality from fiction or VR (whatever)... and with some illegal or illicit upgrades like hydraulic arms and legs, armored subdermal inserts, even adamantite bone-lacing and so on... it's not hard to have a lunatic running around with the impermeable armor of a tank and machineguns ATTACHED to his arms... ...enter the necessity of the "Cyber-psychosis Squad" of local PD's... an upgrade from SWAT. OR the organ black markets can get you... Parts is parts and dead is dead... we ALL needs parts. ...Dead guys is parts. OR some binding partnership(s) between Yakuza and MegaCorporates can result in conspiracies that buy and sell government offices over lunch. Changing the political landscapes to suit whichever military-industrial group has the most money at the time. Maybe you like space??? Eclipse Phase centers mostly around the Solar System (generically)... Only travel isn't done by common spaceships, not like you're thinking of just now anyway. Humans are basically out. There are a few "organics" left, but by and large, everyone got digitally upgraded LONG ago. Cortical Stacks contain your "soul" (if you can call it that) which can then be digitally broadcast from one place to another, like uploading and downloading a file online today... This allows humans to travel at or about Lightspeed very conveniently... AND we're apparently "branching out"... Of course, just because we CAN live an endless VR lifestyle in some mechanical hulk of a body, any size or shape we want... pretty much forever... It does NOT mean that people can't still "Die" in the technical sense either... Get lost in transit, or corrupted without a filter to clean and fix the missing bits, and you're gone. Get the cortical stacks blown out of your "host" and you're probably gone. Get the file load stripped of your "soul" by any means without a copy for salvage purposes, and again... end of the road. What's interesting is asking the question, so what's life worth when it's infinite now? AND what do you do with it? ...and that's a long dark rabbit hole to start, so be careful. In the literary sense... Pratchett was a prolific world builder. I rather enjoyed Discworld most, I think... BUT you can look up the books and enjoy the read. I doubt I could do it justice without ruining things. "...and one day, the turtle will fly" -"Small Gods" As for what Video Games have the movies are looking for??? Interactivity. There's no shortcut... unfortunately. Movies are fun and all, but you can't TELL the characters when they're screwing up. You can't quite immerse the way you can with something interactive. I KNOW this part all too well, and it's why I get so much from being a GM. Once you've truly immersed people into a world, let them explore it... that interactivity lends your storytelling to tell THEIR stories. Nothing gets an audience to invest in YOUR Story World like their own characters and stories. ;o)

Intriguing concept that I have not heard of before today. Well done!

great speaker, creates a lot of potential for solving story problems.

Genius. Keys to the kingdom for me. As someone with an engineering / architectural type of mind, this is the foundation. Everything now makes sense and i can build. Create with so much more clarity.

What a great video!! Lots of good information.

If I’m understanding correctly, his idea of a starting place for a story is a soapbox style message that then can be placed in a world that has potential commercial viability beyond that initial story. I understand the latter, but not the former. He uses Godless as an example, saying the story was about the women in that town, but the main story theme was actually about fathers and sons. The writers mention that in the research they found it interesting that a town with hardly any men in it could be an interesting part of the story, but that it wasn’t the main focus of the story; the message wasn’t about the town of women. I remember this being a disappointment to many people (not me) who watched Godless expecting the focus to be on the town when it was ultimately on two men. The backdrop does make the final showdown more interesting, evoking a sense of the Mother protecting her ‘son’ against the Father. He also mentions Jurassic Park, that the theme of ‘playing god’ is shown to you as bad. I suppose that’s one interpretation, but I think the movie has a lot more going for it. It’s bigger theme is that of order vs chaos, and never really answers who is right, except that order can never be maintained for long if life is to exist, and that ultimate control is an illusion. Still, some kind of order (science) had to be maintained for the dinosaurs to even be brought back to begin with. I think if you have a message in your story, then you shouldn’t make it easy to answer whether the message is good or bad. For example, there was that character in the first season of the Handmaid’s Tale that actually liked being a handmaid because her life before was so bad that being in that position was better - a nice house to live in, good food, clean water, clean clothes, etc. In that moment, at least, it was really thought provoking and THAT got me interested in the world far more than anything else happening on the show, because the greater message wasn’t so simple anymore.

Amazing! Thanks

Amazing . Mind blowing

That painter’s world is now a video game too

Film Courage is really a film school! Thank you. I have had so much trouble understanding the differences between setting and the story world. This is so helpful.

I like this guy and love his advise. Thanks again Film Courage.

He's absolutely correct! I think Ryan Coogler is doing this with Black Panther. Unfortunately RIP Chadwick :( him missing from Wakanda still gives the story world the potential to move forward and keeps us, as an audience, engaged to find out what else is going to happen in Wakanda. Hence the new title "WAKANDA FOREVER" AH...this video was super interesting and informative!

The part on the storyworld needing a message blew my mind

Amazing video!!

I love this!! Thanku!!!

Great interview

Thank you for these gems!

I also want Kid Icarus To Be Made by Lionsgate and Nintendo Movies as a Military Action and Ancient Greek film in the vein of Wonder Woman 2017 A.D. and Immortals from 2010 A.D.

Supply and demand... but for stories. Very insightful.

Wow, what insight!

Inception great concept

This was extremely helpful, top 10 videos on here

Brilliant!

Houston has solutions! Thanks :)

Eye opening content here

This was the game. He just gave us the game.

Blade Runner, Road Warrior, Star Wars, Marvel Universe, are the definitely worlds that could be explored from various points of view without including characters we already know. Smaller known worlds like Inception and John Wick could work too.

Great!

16:08 Thanos? He even snaps!

He would win the Olympics for non stop talking.😊👍

Hi, thanks for this interview! However, at 15:28 you described the character Will from “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”, as being a street hustler from Philadelphia. HE WAS NOT A STREET HUSTLER. He was a regular kid who moved away after he was bullied by gangsters in the neighborhood. Listen to the opening theme song : ) FYI the narrative portrayed about black people in film/tv matter.

Oh where are you that live action sailor moon film done professionally

Insanely powerful discussion. Took my ideas and added a whole other dimension. My challenge has been to give the characters dimension and purpose. With going to the Story World instead and making it really interesting the characters who need to play off the world become interesting themselves. Genius ideas here.

Thank you!

Isaac asimov's world is my favourite.

This man is a genius

This was a great synopsis and exploration of the nuances of world building. But for the record.. . Will Smith's character in Fresh Prince was anything but a street hustler. He was a young wet behind the ears black kid who got into an altercation with a group of delinquents over a pickup game of basketball. His mother decided to send him to live with his upper class relatives so that he wouldn't get caught up with riff raff. It's literally in the theme song to the show..

This let me see things different with books

Love craft country has a great story world

What are some examples in episodic media (TV, streaming, etc.) and video games that follow these principles well? And not so well?

Great story and great world, can you relate example?to understand? shortly

First, I disagree that a story world should force a given message or theme. For instance, one might think a courtroom drama should say, "Crime doesn't pay," but I think it should rather ask for an exploration of the theme, "Does crime pay?" Take the story world of Law & Order: Usually, the bad guy gets caught and convicted, but not always. As to his larger point of a story world needs to be interesting on its own, I largely agree. The world of Harry Potter is interesting even without Harry as THE CHOSEN ONE. In fact, if Harry Potter were a story about an otherwise ordinary kid unfamiliar with the magical world, but gets a chance to go to a school in that world, I'm in. I don't need Voldemort. I don't need world ending stakes. Just explore the world.

I am going to think that in my opinion that the hero of episode ten of Star Wars is named yore dressed in red and grey welding a weapon of a light whip chain and he is from a planet called Klakoo which is a desert

Man I want to see the Poltergeist remake from 2015 ad

So as an avid reader i have many concerns with this idea but the biggest one is the whole "have a message and design a world that needs that message". And the concern is that if you do that then it is no longer art but is now propaganda. The goal is of a story is to learn, not to teach. Thats the differnece between a good story and a great one

A story world could also be a professional milieu. In Rocky the story world is professional boxing. In the Bourne series, the story world is the CIA's global espionage programs. A story world is primarily a set of values, not a geographical location. Cool movies are set in a cool story world.

It would be great to hear from some non Americans. I could be alone but don’t have much interest in American/Hollywood cinema. There are a lot of countries making amazing films (some would say a lot better than American) it would be great to hear from them.

#mindblown

Wow so he really taught me something about potential here BUT i don’t understand then how so many stories have stood the test of time without a high concept world. Like Romeo and Juliet. And then there are huge successful movies like 50 shades that were set in a normal world... so I’d like to know more about his thoughts on regular places as settings. Like crime dramas, law dramas, medical dramas... so successful and so normal...

What is it called, if characters have things with them, that change the story world, into a new? So you got two kinds of world logic,,,

Matrix great concept !but bed world?I think

So sci-fi and fantasy is the way.

i am trying To Introduce the Digital Monsters In America specifically the bering straight America and Russia and Japan connection

Can't a studio just steal your story world and say..oh, didn't know you had the same thing going on in that little short film of yours.

Holy shit this guy is smart

I keep thinking that the shows Seinfeld and Friends totally defies his point on story worlds, or yet that maybe a great story world can enhance your IP but the lack of doesn't mean you don't have something meaningful and potentially successful on your hands. I don't think it's a one size fits all proposition.

I get the point, but I have a huge problem with that whole marketing shit. It feels like you have to create a Story World to make Money. I only can speak for my self but I don't want to make movies because i want to make money. I just want to make and see good movies. So I think not every story should have a high concept story world if it is just a character driven Story. Don't get me wrong I like most of the movies he mentioned, but they are often unrealistic. I take his example, the story World of Rocky isn't that interessting, but that makes it more realistic and relatable because our World doesn't have wizards or vampires or superheros. And I don't want every movie to have some. So don't suggest to kill some great movieideas, just because their world isn't that catchy and clickbaity. (My opinin: As an artist you are not an service provider)

The world of the objective story in Rocky is boxing. His personal story and relationship with Adrian dominate the screentime, though.

I feel like this only really applies to stories that need to be furthered. In another interview he used the example of Rocky... nobody wants to see a movie dedicated to some other character in Philly with the movie label "Rocky" placed on it. Why? Because it's obviously a cash grab. If you're going to use this method, make sure it right for the story you're telling, and not for a story and ends and doesn't need further exploring. This is great for sci-fi and fantasy and a lot of other genres, but honestly I don't think we need a spin off of Moonlight about some other random woman who can't pay her bills or something idk. Slapping the title of 'Moonlight' or whatever story world you come up with just seems cheap and has been done before to no avail.

so the story-world needs to be interesting (ie: Matrix), but also the story-world doesn't have to be interesting (ie: Rocky) !! It seems like most of his advice is directed at Science Fiction. I'm not sure how it fits Drama.

Great stuff. But Neverland isn't ironic.

I think he keeps saying 'IP'. What is that?

I Want Queens Blade the Vagrant Warriors Too to Be Made by Warner Bros and Co-Distributed By lionsgate as Well becasue of Toonami and adult swim issues and Teenage Marketing by lionsgate ltd

So is he saying Rocky isn't a good movie? Is the fresh prince not good? All in all, if u take the high concept character out of the world and it doesn't work, does it mean that the movie really isn't good?

So Night Shylaman is just loading his Glock following those Philadelphia comments...

The point he's making is perfectly valid, but doesn't necessarily apply to all kinds of story. Some stories are purely based on character, and that's their nature. In those cases, there is no need to focus so much on the story world, although a rich story world would give more appeal to the story, of course. In general, I have two problems with his arguments. First, a writer is a creator whose source of inspiration is within not without, so telling a creator to follow the rules of the outer world is like telling him to shut down his inner child, or his deep source of creativity. Second, no rule applies to all creative work. If a rich story world works for video games and certain kinds of movies or TV shows, it doesn't mean that everybody has to stop what they're creating and focus on the story world. This is exactly how we end up with formulaic works that are doomed either to fail or to bore the audience.

Chile, this is some major tea that was revealed here. How did i not know about this before tsk tsk !

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, people write characters and plot and leave the "story world" in the background? Connect me with one of such individuals, I make amazing story worlds, but creating personalities and conflict between characters is rocket science to me. Perhaps I need to meet my match somewhere.....

Rocky is an underdog story. The story world of Rocky is a blue collar, hard scrabble neighborhood in Philadelphia full of underdogs. Rocky is the local boy that makes it. The underdog that beats the odds.

Not to say his advice is bad but where are the credits for this guy? Like a few of the interviews on here, I can't find a single piece of work, why should he be telling me how to tell a story when he can't put one out himself?

I don't completely agree with him in that your story world needs to have an ideological theme laid out before it is written. Sounds like propaganda instead of story telling. The great stories that are told dont have these rigid "guard rails" on them. LOTR, the early Star Wars films, old Disney movies, etc all transcended ideological story telling and were great because of this. Films like Elysium disconnected me from the story because of the rigid ideological tones present in them. Films like that always seem unrealistic and unnatural the way their "story world" functioned.

he just called blade runner steampunk????????????????????????????????

It's sad to hear that all his conversations always revolve around money and how much and to whom you can sell. He suggests looking at video games because there's more money there. So he's suggesting that movies have lootboxes and battle passes? And gacha mechanics. "That's a great plan, Walter. That's fkn ingenious, if I understand it correctly. It's a Swiss fkn watch." You get the impression that this man is part of the problem.

His gaming comment is iffy to me and here’s why. Paying attention to video games isn’t the pool of inspiration, it’s Anime. Asian animation and story telling has been influencing just about every corner of American entertainment for decades. When he talks about trans-media story worlds and how it’s some sort of secret sauce to differentiate yourself; I get it and it’s true but it is nothing new. There are mangas that become games that become tv shows that move onto to animated features and sometimes live action features. This is happening by the calendar season, hundreds of stories are developed and adapted into new media forms all the time. Anime had $20 Billion in earnings an that was 2017 it continues to rise. Most of the gaming industry market share is in Asia-Pacific. If there’s any one section of entertainment to watch closely it’s Anime. Become an Otaku 😂

People whining about idelogical storytelling - if you have nothing to say, don't be a writer, because no one wants to hear your nothing.

interesting subject, but this man is incredibly verbose

stopped at 8 minutes. All examples that "work" according to him are Sci Fi. The Godless example could be in any community before 1900

cringe

Gee, I wonder if this guy is a feminist.

He's sounds like a "woke" filmmaker.