Agile Movie Moments

I have 3 small children so I often have an excuse to watch children's movies. After watching The Incredibles a few years back I had a reason to play one of the bonus features to my then 5 year old son. He thought Dash was real and that he could run as fast as Dash and he was especially keen to try the whole running on the water trick!

So I sat him down and played the bonus feature that described the whole process that they went through to create the film. It was brilliant! I don't think my son lost his resolve to run like Dash, but I saw an awesome example of team collaboration. If you haven't watched it I suggest you do.

Fast forward a few more years and to another film ... Hoodwinked. Included in the bonus features is a clip titled How To Make An Animated Film that I would also recommend you watching.

This clips describes the process they used to make Hoodwinked. Starting out with about $5000 and 2 computers they proceeded to produce this movie in a very agile manner. Using storyboards and a reel to reel tape recorder they basically created the film. Using friends to supply the voices and neighborhood kids to provide feedback they incrementally and iteratively grew the movie.

When it came to time to cast and use the voice talents of well known actors (and I imagine spending some significant money) they already had the film done and were just adding extra polish in a sense

What probably spoke to me the most about the process used was that at any one time before entering the serious production stage, before they really started spending serious money, they could have stopped and pulled the plug without a huge loss. But when they did hit that stage, they had a film, they had the characters, they had good feedback, in effect they had mitigated most of their risks for a few thousand dollars. I think there is a lesson in that.

Just for fun here is the music video to the movie

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