Inside the Magic: How James Cameron and Disney Are Revolutionizing Animation—Secrets Revealed by Pietro Schito
Pietro Schito
Okay, I love the question because very concrete, you know, my first gut reaction is that I know and I knew I could tell this… but that’s great. I love them, you know, the openness because this is going to help people and hopefully you as well with the particular project is it’s much better to speak about a concrete reality than just the ideal path. So you’re bringing it up some difference. There are so many different styles of animation, you know, you have, you know, the Disney and Pixar, even TV, it’s so different from a feature. And then you have kids show that are very raw and, and on Netflix, and then you have, you know, all the YouTube stuff that can be very entertaining and good storytelling, but you don’t really focus too much on the on the quality of animation in a traditional sense of the budget that that gives you the ability to really, really, you know, tweak all the details and have different backgrounds and comps and things like that. So I think that there’s space for everything. There are some huge channels that have very I spoke with some of them recently that had this huge followings of millions and millions of people watching and they know they’re the first one to make fun of their animation. It’s really bad. And but now they’re in conversations with big studios to do basically recreate the entire show with higher quality and push something that could have not happened without going towards a cheaper route and you can look at finding cheaper work in both ways, you know, on one hand, and you have the cheap work, but on the other hand, you have these, you know, you’re hiring people, you know, you’re if you’re as long as they’re treated fairly, you have you know, you’re contributing to society that way. So it’s not I wouldn’t say it’s always bad. And also, you know, it’s a now live in Mexico can definitely tell that there is a you know, the cost of life is so different that it allows you to, you know, have a different pricing for some studios and even in in in in many countries, you find top notch studios that are working for the big studios like Disney and they are doing fantastic work and so on. The fact when I insist on the studio is I was mainly thinking about something that is more polished and more like a feature film or a series. As a proof of concept, you can find a studio unless you really want to go the YouTube style and it’s to get, you know, a lot of views and entertain kid with the potential of that, you know, bringing that to a different level. I wouldn’t go to Upwork because I think that or any website where you find individual talent, but that doesn’t mean that your team needs to be huge, you know, hundreds of people. You can have a small team, but if you they have a studio, you can see their portfolio. They get their cohesion in in what they’re doing. There’s some direction and you’re in for, you know, a right quite a right. If it’s not, you know, it’s always complicated because sometimes you have, you know, the price is not the only the only element. Sometimes cheap means more expensive at the end, you know, and so for a teaser, then it’s easier because maybe you can find, you know, in animation, there’s the range is so big, you know, you can you have short frames. There are millions of dollars short frames from big studios that are, you know, more expensive than the Academy Award winner in the animation category flow. And that partly is because big studios, they also use it for research and development. But when they create a short film, but it’s still, you have that high budget production and then you have things that are very, very cheap. And so, it really depends also on what the story is requiring. If you have a lot of effects, if you have a lot of characters, crowds, action, and that is where things can be different. But also the history has been full of examples of things there and they broke the mold and created something, put it out there. What I know for a fact is that all these streamers are constantly scanning social media and specifically YouTube for these, what is the next hell of a boss? What is the next project that is starting with a small team, but then it’s going to explode. And so that could be a good approach as well. And you can also replace and make things better. And so I would start with a small teaser, and a common mistake with teasers is that they showcase the studio and the quality of the work. And so, you would see these teasers where you have something that shows the effects and the fact that the studio is capable of pulling off some specific technical challenging animation. I’m a strong believer in a teaser that focuses on emotions first. And if you’re able to encapsulate in 30 seconds, what is the emotional driver of the story? What is the thing that really makes you care for this show and this character? Then you can also focus then on technical aspects, but that won’t come later because there’s no conversation if they’re not, if with any pitch, if they’re not emotional about it, if there’s no, if they don’t care, even if you can do a thousand explosions, crowds, water, fluid simulation, and hair, and perfectly, it can look cool, but the conversation is not moving forward. As you perfectly know, when you pitch, these people, they’re listening to hundreds of pitches and it’s not, you know, it’s not going to stick if there’s not something special.
