- Hi, I'm Kristen Lester, astory artist here at Pixar. Today we're going to talkabout story structure, the way we organize and tell our stories. But before we begin, haveyou guys heard the joke about the mushroom thatgoes to the discotheque? A mushroom walks into a discotheque and he walks up to a ladyand he asks her to dance. She says, 'Ewww, gross,no, you're a mushroom!' So he walks up to anotherlady and asks her to dance. 'Nah, I'm not interested.' Lady after lady after lady,rejected, rejected, rejected. Nobody wants to dance with him. Finally, the mushroom walksover the the bartender and he's so confused, he says, 'I don't get it, why doesnobody want to dance with me? 'I mean, I'm a fungi.' (laughs) See, this joke has a structure. It's got an opening, abuildup in the middle, and an ending, which is,you know, the punchline. That structure is a bigpart of what makes it funny. Structure is the answer to the question, what do you want theaudience to know, and when? If you get the order wrong, it could be a real problem, check it out. Hey, can I tell you a joke? Alright, so there's this fungi and, shoot, I messed up the opening. OK, OK, hey, can I tell you a joke? Alright, so there's a mushroomwho walks into a discotheque and then there's a bartender there. Aw, darn it.(marker scribbling) I messed up the middle. Hey, hey, hey, can I tell you a joke? Alright, so, there's a mushroomwho walks into a discotheque and there's a bunch ofladies on the dance floor. He asks them to dance and they say, 'yes.' (marker scribbling)Dang. Without conflict, joke over. (sighs with exasperation)See, structure is important. Just as structure is a bigpart of telling a funny joke, it's also essential to making a movie that has the emotional impactyou want on your audience. (shushing) This is a great example. - [Marlin] (screaming) Nemo! - [Kristen] In earlierversions of Finding Nemo, the structure of thestory was very different than the final film. The director wanted to interweave scenes of Nemo's parent's livesbefore they had kids as flashbacks throughout the whole movie. So you would see them meet. - [Marlin] Hello. - [Kristen] Fall in love, and eventually move into their house at the drop off in littlescenes throughout the film. - [Coral] Oh honey, it's beautiful. - [Kristen] The mainstory of Marlin and Nemo and their journey was prettymuch the way it is now. But, with the flashback structure, it wasn't until the end of the film that you would find outthat Marlin's wife Coral. - [Marlin] Coral, look out! - [Kristen] And all of her eggswere killed by a barracuda. (Marlin grunting)(screaming) - When they showed themovie with this structure, they had one big problem,the audiences, well, they didn't like Marlin. Looking at their story structure, the team realized that, inthis version of the film, the audience didn't find outwhy Marlin was acting this way towards his son until themovie was almost over, so they decided to re-edit the movie and remove almost all of the flashbacks, leaving only the sceneswhere Coral and Marlin's home is attacked by the barracuda, killing Coral and all ofher eggs except for Nemo. They moved these scenes tothe beginning of the movie. - [Marlin] I promise I will never let anything happen to you. - This change in the story structure changed the audiencefeelings about Marlin a lot. They knew right from the beginning how much Marlin had lostand how brave it was for him to go after Nemo,and they loved him for it. In the case of Finding Nemo, finding the problem was a matter of rearranging the story structure. Of course, all our movies are different, and their story structurechallenges are too. In this lesson, we'll lookat the many different ways we think about storystructure here at Pixar and you'll get to try out for yourself different approaches tostructuring your story. Hm, I wonder if I told the mushroom jokes in flashbacks it'd be funnier. Probably not.