Inside Disney’s Animation Secrets: How Brandon Violette Crafts Stories That Come to Life
Ashley
Gotcha. So then you’re back in the US, what is pounding the pavement and trying to get that first opportunity? What were those first jobs in the business?
Brandon Violette
Yeah, so came back from China, six months of applying to different entertainment companies, didn’t get any bites. Not far from where I was living at the time, I signed up for a temp agency. And I said, I’m looking for entertainment companies. And they said, we don’t really have that. But sometimes we do. And I said – Well, that’s better than like six months of nothing. So, I said, Yeah, yeah, I signed up with them. And the next day, they said, we have Hasbro studios. And Hasbro, for those who don’t know, of course, you know, GI Joe transformers, big-big toy company, they make TV shows, animation, animated shows and movies. And I thought – Oh, my gosh, yeah, I’ve heard of Hasbro. I go in the following week for an interview. On the way home, I get offered the job. And they called the temp agency, temp agency calls me, they want you to start tomorrow. And so, I was hired as a temp. So, it was like, you’re everybody’s assistant, you know, you’re all over the studio, help it delivering mail, whatever. But in that experience, people were like, what are you here to do? What did you study? What do you want? And I always said writing. And eventually, there was my first show that I got to be a part of called Stretch Armstrong and the flex fighters. It was a Hasbro and Netflix show animated series. And they said, “This is your chance. Go interview with the head writers. We’ll recommend you.” And so enough people there knew me to kind of push me in that direction. And I got hired as a basically a PA on the show. And I got to spend the time with the head writers. And halfway through that first season, I got my first official writing credit and paid as a writer, I wrote one of the episodes on the show.
