In a feature film I tend to believe that getting on with the story is job number one, since you’ve got a limited time window to tell (what should be) a complete tale. If you’re world building you drop just enough detail to assist that and no more. The original Star Wars has its famous opening crawl  and then gets right to the action, and as it goes along is constantly peppered with throwaway dialogue about Sand People or Jabba or the Emperor which hits just the right balance of intriguingly vague and supportive of “Oh okay, now back to laser swords.”

Here, we move at a more leisurely pace. Literally so in that the story is being told at a much slower pace as first presented, but also formatively in that we can take breaks from what’s happening directly to Suzie and co. and fill in some of those intriguing bits of the setting I may have had a character mention or may just be something you were wondering about. Like, what sort of tactics did the military come up with to fight (our particular brand of) zombies?

I suppose Star Wars trained me well for this in that I’ve spent probably a far too big percentage of my life wondering about the its intricacies and implications, so now that I’m developing my own setting I’m inclined to think about those answers and details long before a reader ever asks about them. And every so often, I get the chance to present those bits and pieces. Sometimes they’re even thematically relevant to the story at hand and that gets me perilously close to me thinking I might be decent at this.

Excuse the flippant self-deprecation, it’s an artist thing. Unless perhaps you’re someone like Kanye, but all in all I’d rather be me.