Film Courage: You mentioned something earlier about creating story worlds? Where did that
come from? Where did that occur to you? Most people probably don't think again
in those terms? Where is this coming from the story world idea?
Adam Davis, Writer/Director: Sure well Will and I we had this idea for the sci-fi series so we were pretty
interested in how do we make a world a sci-fi world that doesn't exist yet you
know like because there have been great iconic sci-fi worlds created and we
wanted to do something sort of on that level but we had to figure out like how
to build a world which is a super hard and fascinating thing to do you know so
it's like if if there's this technology that we create like how does that affect
the world you know let's let's try to build that up you know so we started
thinking about you know the macro stuff like how does politics work how does
religion work how are people how does this technology affect them and you just
sort of go out in these branches and try to nail down this world because you have
to be super specific you know because you need to know how everything operates
you know how people would react in this world do they speak differently did this
piece of technology alter it in that way you know and in doing all of that work
and we spent I would say a solid six months just building the world before we
even wrote the story you know we had a general idea of what we wanted the story
to be you know going back to like what we're trying to say but we had to really
flesh out this world and figure out what would work and what didn't work and how
it was different from other things and and how it had touchpoints of
similarities so it's not so alien that people you know are sort of thrown by
can't get into it but yeah full at least six months trying to
create this thing in order to just start thinking about the story and the
characters that would really populate it do you ever listen to some of the
science fiction authors or or screenwriters on how they've like a
Philip K Dick or whatever on how they would create worlds or just the
headspace they were in I realized some of it was maybe chemically induced but
some but you know even like Ursula K Le Guin just she was a mother of four and
then she's coming up with these amazing worlds I don't know how she's doing it
and then seems incredibly saying in these interviews you know and and do you
ever listen to just these people in their process you know I haven't really
it was sort of the thing where we just made what we thought would be a good
process ourselves like let's just sort of blue-sky this and it was just a
series of long conversations and you know just figuring out what we thought
would work and what sort of bumped against what could work maybe it's best
you didn't because then you might try to emulate that style and then and then
it's too cliche right and then it's like oh I see what they were going for they
were trying to do you know scanner dark there so you know have you carried that
world-building over into other projects or it's just for this one that you're
working on specifically now well I think maybe not the world building itself but
how we created sort of one a working relationship and and how we thought of
ideas and stories I think that's what we really took for it you know for example
I didn't need to create this whole like big world document for broken ceiling
because it's you know set in now in an industry that I know that I'm you know
aware of so for something like that I didn't need to do you know if something
set in in present day or in the world you don't necessarily have to do that
however for this period piece pilot about miners that we wrote we did have
to create a world there too because you know it's set in the 1920s which we
obviously didn't live through and I was like well do we want to make a
heightened version of that do we want to you know stick straight to the
historical accuracy so that was something that was sort of a follow-up
project to that we're you know even though it's it's a period piece
we still had to sort of create that world like how these characters wouldn't
live so it really depends on on the story and where it is time and I assume
that if I was gonna make something you know in present day there was something
that I didn't even know about you know sit in another country or whatever I had
I would have to do that same sort of world building as well you know based on
research of course do you ever put a time limit on your research because I
would imagine it would become extremely fun sure yeah I mean um I'm not as much
as I've had to do research it's not my favorite part I really want to get to
the writing and the story breaking and the character stuff but but yeah there
there is a thing and this goes not only for world building research but
character research there is such a thing as too much research you know like for
example you don't need to necessarily know what a character was doing when
they were 8 years old right you may not need to create that much of a character
background or history if this character is in their 30s you know and it's said
over the course of a week like how much is that really gonna inform you or is it
the type of thing where you're gonna want to find a way to shoehorn in that
memory from you know when they were eight years old into the scene because
you did the work so I think it's it's a very interesting sort of dichotomy of
how much is too much research what you need don't over
research and and make sure that you're actually getting those pages are written
you