Inside Disney’s Animation Secrets: How Brandon Violette Crafts Stories That Come to Life
Ashley
So, with Cocoomelon, you mentioned that you had two writers in the room, the script coordinator, and you also doled out some of the script assignments just to other writers. Maybe you can just quickly go through, how did you find those writers? Were they people you had worked with on Tots or other shows? But just give a sort of a rundown of just how did you find that script coordinator? How did you find those two writers? And how do you find freelance writers?
Brandon Violette
Yes, some of those writers, one of the writers came from a summit on another show I had, where I participated in this, like, it’s a writer’s room, but it’s a summit. So, everyone’s batting around episode ideas, because a new show is starting. And it was at a totally different company. That show never even happened. But I remembered a certain writer from that room, and I reached out to her. And some of it, the showrunner worked with an assistant on his last show, who shows a lot of promise. And so, we want to try to elevate her to staff writer. Someone else was the script coordinator came from interviewing with us on a different show that we didn’t ultimately move forward for various reasons. But it was like, you know, she was she had it, like, let’s go see if she’s available. So, you just kind of collect people in your mind overtime, the network is always going to have recommendations. So, you’re taking a lot of meetings. So that’s part of it is just, you know, it’s tough, because obviously, you’re always meet with way more people than you can fill. And so that’s part of the value of a summit is to what I referenced earlier. It’s the launch of a show, and you get like it’s over two days, five writers on one day, five writers on another day, and you’re just batting around show ideas, and trying to get springboard episode ideas, and you can see how people are in the room. And this is before you are writing episodes, there’s like a little period of just ramping up. And that’s a good way to try people out.
