From the Imagination of the Writer to the Screen...

After reading the post You Can't Walk Into An "Office Building" at the The Artful Writer, I kind of wondered aren't authors supposed to lay a solid foundation for the story and the characters? Don't get me wrong here, my way of working could differ from the ways of others, but (big but to be precise) I thought that creating a personality for a book requires to create some more background than what will be visible to the reader/viewer of the story.
Creating such a background will simplify things for the author, it allows to answer questions about the behavior of said character and stay focused on the story. Call me old-fashioned, but the looks of the office building mentioned in the article will be on my list of things about a certain person appearing in a book, to answer simple questions like if the persons looks out of the office window (if he/she is not located in a cubicle), what will be visible? Just thinking about the potential description of the office and the building sparks ideas for plots and scenes.
Granted, descriptions like this should not end up in a script; not in the level of detail I create them, but doing so first, would give me all I need to talk to the A.D. in case of doubt.
Just my two cents (YMMV) ;-)