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Joe Johnston

Joe Johnston

American filmmaker

Sep 11, 2026

8:35
Could you go into your role in learning storyboarding? Where did that come from? How did you develop that in things like Raiders and stuff like that?
8:45
Well, I really learned on the job.
8:48
When I started working for George on Star Wars, I had never drawn a storyboard before.
8:56
When I applied for the job with John Dykstra, he said, and I was really applying more as a designer and model builder, but he said, and you can do storyboards, right? I said, sure.
9:12
I didn't even know what a storyboard was.
9:16
But it's basically images that tell the story.
9:20
You know, it's as simple as that.
11:37
Do you miss, do you miss being a storyboard artist? I mean, is directing giving you more jollies than, than building out a story?
10:00
right
10:01
uh you know the han solos falcon comes in later in the story but uh that was that was a situation where um the ship and i'm sure you've heard this story before in the space 1999 came out and they had a ship, the Eagle, I forget what it was called, the Eagle something.
10:22
And In George's mind, it was too similar to Han Solo's ship.
10:28
It was long and thin and had a cockpit at one end and engines at the back.
10:32
And that was about the only similarities, but he felt it was too similar.
10:38
So we had this emergency meeting and he said, we need a new spaceship and make it look as unlike this thing as you possibly can.
10:51
But we need it right away.

25 MINS LATER

36:12
So good.
8:11
[laughs]
8:11
... to smash into the side of it, and it just is immediately reloaded.
8:16
Um, uh, there is...
8:17
It's so rich in detail, and there's...
8:20
What really struck me as well, and, and this isn't spoilery stuff.
8:23
This is just stuff you can glean from the very first couple of levels of the game as you're kind of exploring the, the missions themselves and the kind of hub world that you go to and from.
8:33
So it- it's got a hub setting.
8:59
Mm.
3:33
No,
3:33
I hadn't come off Wolfman.
3:34
Oh, okay.
3:35
That's the problem.
3:37
When I accepted the Wolfman gig, Which, as you may have heard, was I took over the production from another director with about three weeks of prep.
3:56
But almost as soon as I said, I'll do the Wolfman picture, I got a call from Kevin Feige asking me if I'd like to direct Captain America.
4:12
So I had barely started the Wolfman project when I knew I was gonna do Captain America.

17 MINS LATER

20:52
Do you have any thoughts or philosophy or approach to getting that right?

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