Some views on creative development from Pixar's Andrew Stanton, director of Finding Nemo and Wall.E…
"I am a firm believer that you can't take it literally when audiences tell you what they want. Our job as storytellers is to know what the audience wants before they do. So an audience member will typically tell you 'well what I want is…' and they are just going to use examples of what they've seen before. You can't take that at face value. What they are really saying is 'I want to feel as great as I did the last time I had a good time at a film, but in a new way. But I don't know what that new way is, so I'm just going to give examples of old ways'"
So it's not about giving people what they have seen before, and so can easily articulate…even if they did really like it. It's about letting them feel the way they have felt before (when it was good)…which could actually look very different in execution…and probably should, as novelty adds and sameness detracts from a positive 'feel'.
Which has particular implications for 'research', I guess, as this 'feel' only really happens in the execution and in real life context.
