[laddershoe]

Modern Disney filmmaking (Pixar, WDAS) is much closer to the Miyazaki approach you describe than you'd think. It's very, very iterative; each film goes through 5-6 screenings, during which the story structure can and does change dramatically. People are very definitely working on the final product while the story is still being worked out. One pretty common pattern: with 8-9 months left to go until release, the entire third act has to be scrapped and reworked, and often big chunks of the first and second act reworked to match. Voice actors for the main characters are involved throughout, and often come in many times to record new pages of freshly written dialog.

If all this seems chaotic, it is. It leads to untold stress as the release date looms closer and closer and the ending still isn't figured out, which compresses the schedule for each department to deliver a finished product. Very very rarely, the release date is allowed to slip (see "The Good Dinosaur" for example) but that's really the nuclear option, as it involves shuffling the release schedule and incurs a ton of cost. This is a big part of why these movies cost so much: compressing the schedule means hiring tons of people and paying them tons of overtime.

Source: I worked the better part of a decade at WDAS.

[jedc]

There was a great documentary series about the making of Frozen 2 that shows exactly this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Unknown:_Making_Froze...

I found it fascinating how the team was still developing key plot points (let alone dialog/animation) down to the final few weeks/days before the film needed to be completed!

[kingcharles]

It's no different to how the video games industry works, either.

It completely kills your employees though: all those crunches to scrap tons of good work and replace it with new ideas; tons of stressful overtime. Ugh.

[karmasimida]

No different in software either.

Working on the new service, everything is involving independently while product is figuring out what they want to sell in reality. This out-of-order execution seems like a feature of modern production, while consistency is left behind and only synchronize when they absolutely has to.

I have no opinion on this however, can't think of a better way myself.

[wigster]

I heard they were writing the scenes of Casablanca as they filmed it. seems to work out ok.

[shalmanese]

Animation differs from live action in that it's edited, then shot instead of shot, then edited.

[SquirrelOnFire]

They hadn't written the ending of Die Hard when they started filming - the Movies that Made us episode about it is pretty wild & illuminating.

[stevage]

The Lord of the rings movies too. So much extra footage shot.

[barbazoo]

I have a few friends in the industry and their whole process just seems nuts. They earn good money from overtime but I'd just be so annoyed doing so much throwaway work even though a lot of it just seems like it could be avoided with planning, time management and more honest pricing when it comes to sub contracting.

[pchristensen]

The willingness to throw away work that, no matter how well done, is in service of a less enjoyable movie, is why some movies are great while others are, well, just movies. Producing 90 minutes of animation is a heck of a lot cheaper than producing 90 minutes of animation that hundreds of millions of people will cherish for generations.

[stevage]

Yeah. That amazing scene in terminator 2 with Sarah Connor's actor's twin sister is a great example. Just wasn't necessary to tell the story, movie was better without it.

[stevage]

You say chaotic, but it basically sounds like modern agile software development.

[babypuncher]

It is chaotic compared to conventional film production. Most movies have a complete script before principal photography even starts, or at the very least all of the major story beats and set pieces planned out. Last minute rewrites and reshoots for big budget productions are a last resort if the studio feels the product just isn't shaping up into something that will put asses in seats.