Is Head of Story comparable to being an A.D. (assistant director) on a live action movie?
Stevenson: Yeah, it’s a weird position. I don’t think it really has a live action equivalent, because the story process on an animated film is really the key filmmaking tool. It’s the department, which is sort of first-in and last-out, because you’re always tinkering with the story all the way up to the end, and it’s where we make all our mistakes and work things out before we commit to the process of animation. The best live action analogy isn’t actually a filmmaking one, it’s more like a theatrical one. Our story process is like doing rehearsal in a theater or putting a show up in Seattle that you’re finally going to take up to Broadway. It’s where you take things on the road and you try them and refine them until you’re ready to do the final product. That’s all because animation is so expensive and so labor-intensive that you don’t want to commit to your resources until you’re absolutely certain that you’ve made the best decision. The best and easiest and actually cheapest, which is
