This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 534 – Disney, James Cameron and Animation with Pietro Schito .
Welcome to episode 534 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger of its sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing Italian animation producer named Pietro Schito. He has done a number of animated projects both as a writer and producer. So today he’s going to talk about his career. And then we talk about the state of animation and how AI is going to impact it in the near future. So, stay tuned for that interview. SYS’s Six Figure Screenplay Contest is open for submissions. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our regular deadline is May 31st. If your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features. I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million U.S. dollars. We’ve got a lot of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds. We’re giving away thousands of dollars in cash and prizes along with a bunch of other prizes to bring exposure to the top screenplays. We have a short film script category, 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script by all means submit that as well. I’ve got a number of industry judge producers who are looking specifically for short scripts. So hopefully we can find a home for some of those as well. If you want to submit or learn more about the contest, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode 534. If you want my free guide, how to sell screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material. Really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So, a quick few words about what I’ve been working on. I am now in pre-production on my ultra micro budget feature rom-com. I am slowly starting to put the pieces together. It looks like we’ll be shooting in the last week of October and the first two weeks of November. I’ve got my crew pretty much figured out. I’m going to keep things super small and manageable. My cinematography from The Pinch, Bernie Rao, is coming back and he is bringing one of his filmmaker friends who he has worked before on other films. And they’re going to be my crew. They’ll run the camera, they’ll also do sound. We might have a day or two where we have a slightly larger crew, but that’s basically going to be it, the sound, camera, and then me as a director and line producer.
I’ve also started to lock in some of my locations. The main location is just a bar. It’s sort of a standard American bar in the year 2025. And I found a great one that’s willing to work with us. So that’s exciting. It’s up in Ventura, which is about 30 minutes north of Los Angeles. It’s a fantastic location, has a lot of character. It looks really cool. And the owner is just a really cool guy. He seems like he to really like the idea of just having his bar in a film. So that’s exactly what I was looking for.
One interesting thing, and I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, trying to rent a location for a film shoot in Los Angeles is just ripe with issues. I found a bar in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, which would have been good. Frankly, I don’t think it would have been as good as the bar that I eventually found. So sometimes the necessity is the mother to push you to that next step, but it’s a great location. And they were willing to work with us on our price. So, they didn’t try and bicker over the rate that I could afford, but they didn’t want to commit until September. And I sort of took that to mean that they were hoping that they could rent the place out for more money. And so they didn’t want to commit to me since I wasn’t going to be paying them a ton. You know, as a producer, that definitely worried me. So, it just, I kept looking and kept trying to find someplace else, which I eventually did. But I guess the bottom line is it seems like getting out of LA, even by 30 minutes, makes dealing with these location owners much easier. So I’m going to try and use the same strategy for some of my other locations too. We’ll see how that goes. The next location I need is really only for like a half day. It’s just one little scene in a department store where they go on a date and they’re buying some new clothes and they do a little, there’s a little interaction near the changing room. So I’ve got to find that location and that is going to be difficult just because most department stores obviously are big box retailers. They’re not going to want to rent to me for the little bit of money that I have. And I’ve looked at, started to look at some sort of smaller boutique clothing shops and they don’t quite fit the script. So, I’ve got to figure that part out. I’m still looking, as I said, if I can find a good location, I will definitely do that. But I’m thinking I might have to just entirely rewrite the scene. I mean, I know what has to happen in the scene. And interestingly too, now that I’m looking for locations, I sort of have an idea of what locations are easier to find. So just as an example, I noticed when I was looking for bars, there’s a lot of places that, salons, barbershops, that kind of thing. So, I was thinking maybe I could easily change this scene and rent in a salon or a barbershop. So that’s one idea.
We’ll see if that actually comes to pass. It gets a little dicey as I think it through. Again, this is low budget. So it’s not like we’re going to have all the time in the world and the schedule is going to be the schedule. Some of these locations are going to be available when they’re available. So having a scene in a barbershop where you cut your protagonist’s hair could potentially create some continuity issues.
So I’ve got to think that through and sort of decide how that’s going to work. Just logistically, how are we going to film this guy? Because the scenes at the bar, as an example, the scenes at the bar, that’s like six days that we’re going to need it. And it’s obviously the guy gets a haircut in the middle of the script, his hair’s a little different. I’m thinking maybe he has short hair. We can do kind of just slick it back, maybe a little more gel on the days that he supposedly had the haircut. But those are the sorts of things, as I said, that I’ve got to sort of work through. I think I can find a salon or a barbershop fairly easy. I think from the screenwriting aspect, I think I could make that scene work. But then from the producing aspect, it does create some issues. So those are all sort of the things. Those are sort of the examples of sort of the problems that I’m working through to create the best possible movie on the least amount of money and just given these constraints that we have. So anyways, that’s what I’m sort of working through.
If you live in LA and you want to be involved in the film, I’m definitely going to need a lot of help. We’re going to have two days where we need a bunch of extras, one day of which will actually be at that bar in Ventura, I mentioned. But there will be other days, there’s one other day that we’ll definitely need some extras and then there’s some other days that maybe you don’t need extras, but be a little bit more difficult shooting days. So we might need a PA or even an AD or a second AD on some of those busier days. So really, it’s the whole gamut. If you have any production experience, you want to learn about production or if you just want to be an extra, just help me out, come out and be an extra. I would definitely, definitely appreciate all the help. Just send me an email, info@sellingyourscreenplay.com and I’ll get your information and then as we get closer to shoot date, we’ll start to work out some of the specific logistics. But definitely if you’re in LA and you want to be an extra in the film, I’m going to need lots and lots of extras for these two different scenes. So, I’d love to have some of the SYS listeners come out and help out. So, if you’re in the LA area, definitely keep that in mind. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on over the last few weeks.
So, now let’s get into the main segment. Today, I am interviewing animation writer and producer Pietro Schieto. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Pietro to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Pietro Schito
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Pietro Schito
So, I grew up in Milan, Italy, a large Italian family. And since it was a little kid, I would basically spend all my afternoons creating movies with my camera or drawing one of the few Italians that doesn’t like soccer. So, my friends will be out playing and be inside drawing and a couple of encounters that I had with the animation industry really shaped and a possibility for me to work in what I think it’s the best, you know, art in the world, of course, it’s a subjective biased judgment. But I really loved, you know, from the first film I watched in the movie theater, which was The Little Mermaid, to then meeting a couple of Disney animators on a train from Milan to Rome. And I was mesmerized by the beauty of the trade and the fact that they were drawing, they gave me a gift as a kid. And I kept, you know, creating these stories by myself with my brothers and friends with an old handicap that my parents got as a gift. And, but I didn’t have any idea about any of the storytelling and narrative structures and principles that we can learn from up until college when a Disney screenwriter came to give a hands-on workshop. And this guy was amazing. And he ended up being the was his title was, I think, head of like a big name in Disney Plus, like, it’s just, I don’t remember exactly right now. But he moved to the States and worked at Disney for more than 20 years. But he really gifted me this idea of narrative principles, not rules, but principles that can really help you. So, I immediately thought about all those dozens of silly things that I used to create by myself with the camera, and suddenly understanding that, you know, if I had those principles in mind from the beginning, I could have done so much more, not as a regret, but as a, you know, something that basically opened up the world of narrative. And that’s the last job in the world. I mean, you bring these characters to life. And that’s how we got into screenwriting more professionally. And then and to animation, then I moved to LA to study at the New York Film Academy. And then I’m now in Mexico. And where I connected with the stop motion community that’s been fostered by Guillermo del Toro in a local studio here, and other stuff. But that’s kind of like the gist of how the passion started.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, let’s talk about some of your first credits. You did a number of shorts that you wrote and directed and just looking at your IMDB page, I noticed some of them were animated but some of them were not. Maybe you can speak to that. Was it always your intention as you started to make these shorts? Like Horror Kitchen is listed as your first credit on IMDB and it didn’t look like it was an animation project. So maybe you can sort of talk through that. How did you get that going? Were you on this track to be in animation and you just took a sidetrack to explore other things? Maybe you can talk about that. How did you get that film made?
Pietro Schito
Yeah. I love the question. Thank you. Horror Kitchen, for example, was my very first short film and it is live action. It’s this girl that gets home. It was a part of a film festival and it’s a very simple idea of a girl coming back home. It looks like it’s a horror thing that somebody broke into her apartment. But then when she slowly opens the door, you see that all her appliances basically are brought to life and they created a birthday party for her. So it’s a short film that it’s based on a surprise. And that had this animation element in love because it’s not stop motion, but we used the baby’s fish line and threads to move the different parts of the different characters. And so it’s still the soul. And that brings us to the idea of animation is not a genre and so it’s a medium. And so I think that at the same time, animation has a specific energy, a specific fantasy approach that we can have as writers. And I can observe that that has always been part of the things I would love to do. Nowadays, you have live action films that are live action, but they’re really animated. Like the live action remakes like Lion King or Mufasa or Avatar from James Cameron. That’s basically animation. So it’s just about distinguishing the medium and the genre. And so I also worked on live action because it is still storytelling. And actually there’s no difference between a script that is for live action and one for animation on the page. And so it’s about the style and the fact, something I really love about animation is the fact that you can really blend and morph reality. You can get into these inner states with much more freedom and it’s much more accepted. And that allows for a certain kind of story. But of course, as a medium, you could tell any kind of story, a drama or comedy, a kids film or four quadrant film. And so I worked on, I also worked in behind the scenes for some live action films. And also, as a story consultant that really helped me understand all the departments of a live action production. And so I would love to go on chat with the prop master, understand all these elements that then actually translate in animation as well. I mean, a prop master takes a real thing and create, create, they create prop props for a film, but it’s the same for animation. Every, actually even more, because in live action, some locations, they kind of exist, or at least you have some baseline where you start building stuff on top. Or if you’re in a studio, it might be everything from scratch, but in animation, everything is actually always from scratch. You need to build everything. And so, I think that it was a good experience to be in live action as well. And storytelling is my passion, regardless of the medium.
Ashley
So just maybe you can give us sort of a sense of, um, some of the more business decisions you were making during this time. So, you made like horror kitchen and then, you know, how did that eventually get you? Now you have two feature films that you’ve written, thingdom and insomnia that are in production. And maybe you can sort of walk us through those steps. Did you start to try and get an agent? Did you just network on sets and meet people? Did you tell people, Oh, I’m also a screenwriter. Like how did you actually start? I noticed you have a credit for the astronaut. It looks like it’s a video game. Like just how did you go from just making a short yourself to getting into professional storytelling and animation, just making that leap from just doing stuff on your own versus doing stuff professionally for other people.
Pietro Schito
I think the key is always networking. I don’t like the word because it’s really about nurturing real connections and finding ways to be useful. For an example, I wanted to get on a production called a feature film called Little Boy because I had a friend working there and I thought it was very interesting. And I was in Mexico was going to be shot in the studio that was created by James Cameron for Titanic here. So, it was an attractive experience to me to meet the local community around that studio with the James Cameron school and get to share the experience with friends. And I remember that at that point, I was starting out, I wanted to do anything. I told one of the producers, need a driver, I’ll be there, I’ll be on time, and he said, when the studio was funded by James Cameron, it was then sold to someone else, but we basically have everyone, there’s nothing that we need. I remember trying different approaches and trying to get in, basically it was a no. And then a producer friend of mine told me something that to me didn’t make really, it didn’t make sense, especially back in the days. He said, why don’t you propose creating a blog and a production diary of the film? This is an indie production. It’s not like you’re creating Star Wars or something that you have a fan base or something, but I’ve learned that to be humble and trust is usually a good idea that also it didn’t have much to lose. So I created a mock-up of a blog with a production diary, looked up who was the lead actor. So to put a picture, like a little mock-up to show, this is what you’re going to get. Five minutes later, I get three emails from the three main heads of the studio, each of them with different wording, basically telling me, we need this right now. Come here, take a flight as soon as you can, and you’re in. You might see that as a big coincidence, but I think that putting yourself out there and trying to find ways you can be helpful in any situation, even very little things. Sometimes we think that big names and people that are at the top of their career, you have nothing to offer. And I believe that there’s always something you have to offer specifically that no one else can. And so finding those alternatives. And you know, in the industry, you ask 100 people how they got in, and I’m glad that you’re asking your guests because you learn a lot from different ways. But I always see, there’s the door where you could have an agent and then submit your scripts and then select it by the readers, and then the reader submit to the studio. In animation, that’s almost impossible. It’s just statistically, it’s very unlikely that they’re going to, like a big studio, taking a new writer, you have to pass so many filters. That said, like a building in animation studio, they have the main entrance, and they have a lot of windows. And so when I ask 100 people, I’m pretty sure 90, 95, 99 people would tell you, I got in through the window. Not that you’re doing anything strange, it’s just the fact that you nurture these connections, and then you’ve always put yourself in a position to help. How can I help in this situation? And a different approach, and sometimes I had that bad approach, I don’t think it’s useful, is trying to go and ask people, telling them what you need. I have this project and I see that a lot. We all have our baby, our big project, but going around and telling everyone about our baby, our project, and trying to cram it into the conversation, I don’t think it’s a good approach to find first ways to help others. That has something that has helped me. And then from behind the scenes, one of the actors from the film now has an animated series on Netflix. He’s a Disney actor that was very connected there. While I was studying in LA, I connected to the animation industry as I went to meet the leadership at Pixar, I went to all possible events, and tried to genuinely connect. I’m an introvert and maybe what we do here on the YouTube channel, it’s pushing myself outside my comfort zone, but it’s not about me, it’s not how I am, it’s about the result about the stories. So long story short, it was through direct connections and some of them became friendships and in the industry, one-on-one, not strategic. I don’t believe in called emailing people and try to create these connections and find a way to help others.
Ashley
So, well, that’s an excellent answer. And I think that’s, you know, I hope people really listened to that. Let me dig into a couple of little points there though. So when this producer suggested that you make this web blog, production blog, you already had some experience doing web development, correct? Like you already knew how to lay out websites, you had something, things that was just, you had to like learn that to figure it out or to be part of it.
Pietro Schito
No, I mean, I always loved computers. And since I was a kid, so I would do, you know, this is something that, you know, most of the audience doesn’t even know about like front page microphone front page, all the way ways to create a website. But it was more about the documenting with the, with the camera, I was expecting, you know, a big camera, they gave me this handicap, like very cheap and had to, you know, the interesting enough, the construction and prop department, they created. I didn’t even have a microphone. They didn’t have a budget. It was, was all improvised. I didn’t have a camera. And the prop guy created an adapter for a microphone to be there. It was very interesting. And but it was more about shooting on set. And so would want from, you know, live action sets, you start very early in the morning. And so sunrise to sunset is, is, you know, it’s your time for light. And so it would, I would go and interview all these departments. This film is set in the 40s, in the 40s. So it was very interesting. They built an entire town, small town. And so it was interviewing the actors, but also, you know, costume designers casting, the head of casting and that’s the web component helped. And actually was because they, they were reporting to investors, this is an indie production. So they use the behind the scenes for many promotional clips and things like that. But the coincidence happened because they needed to show and prove that to their investors that, you know, we’re advancing, we need more money. But look, we built a town, the casting is has started. And so they needed that. And it was a very interesting coincidence, for me was a learning experience because I, you know, I was a driver or even assistant to an actor or someone, a PA, I would have never been able to learn so much from all the departments. Now, another coincidence that was very interesting is that there were two people from Pixar at this on the set, they had, they were working on and off at Pixar, one from Lucas film, and doing storyboards, they had a very interesting approach to storyboard for that film, I got to chat with them through the interview, because, you know, people are busy on set. And it’s not like they have time to tell you all about their experience. And to me, it was fascinating. Even the style of the storyboards was very, you know, animation like, and, and they remember asking them, you know, your experience in animation. So I think that any, anything that brings you into people who love film, even if it’s not, you know, the exact thing you want, even if you’re not at Disney, or I don’t know, the studio that you think of as the perfect environment, you will always find options and contacts that that can help you.
Ashley
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, let’s dig into some actual, um, production of animation. As I mentioned, I have this animated pilot that I wrote a few years ago. It’s a kid’s sort of superhero. So we’ll dig in some, to some specifics. Um, but just in general, just walk us through sort of the animation production line. Um, what comes first? You do storyboards. Do you hire artists to design the characters? And as you say, start building the locations, design the characters, but just in sort of broad strokes, walk us through this, this process. You, once you have a script that you think is ready to go, what are those next steps?
Pietro Schito
It’s a great question because there are so many misconceptions with animation, especially if you come from screenwriting and you’ve written for live action, then you focus a lot on the script. You know, the script needs to be very good, perfect, and then now I have it, you know? This is my script, I’m going to knock at doors and I’ll find someone to put a team together or a studio that wants it or trying to sell the script itself. First of all, it’s very, very hard to sell an original script to any animation studio because usually in animation, ideas come, they come from within and this is not to discourage anyone. For example, when I was studying in LA, all my teachers would tell me, why are you writing? You know, we had to write two feature films in one year, so it was very intense and the teachers would tell me, what are you writing? Animation. I mean, no one will ever pick up a studio, a script, like an animated script from the outside. And I was like, I don’t care. I mean, I want to, you know, these are the kind of stories I want to create and I don’t regret at all. You know, it’s not like the script needs to be sold, it’s just to be involved in the medium. And then that script will open other opportunities. But it’s true that trying to sell a script, especially in a feature film, just to a studio. It’s not usually how those projects happen. They usually are developed from within, especially for the big studios, the Disney picks of Netflix, DreamWorks. It’s almost it’s very, very unlikely. Usually once when an original idea starts from within, from the outside, it’s already someone that has a deep connection within the studio or they’re working in a different department. And even that is not very likely. That said, Hollywood is not the only route there. Even within Hollywood and the international market, you see a lot of independent productions. And even then there, it’s unlikely that you just, you know, show with your script and it gets bought. Usually what allows a project to happen is. more the entirety of the project, and that’s why having a solid pitch deck with killer art, something, concept art, and character designs that you can really see as a producer, you can see the full picture. And so usually, you know, you have an idea, you have a script, as you know, you know, it’s hard for people to read a script in general. So the advantage of animation, it’s, is that it’s a little more normalized that you present something more in a pitch deck form, which allows many more people to read it. And especially if it has, you know, the art, it’s an easy read compared to another live action drama that these people have to read.
And then the more elements you have, the better. So let’s start, let’s do like a quick list. I hope this can be helpful for your audience to understand what are the steps. As always in film, in art, you know, these things tend to happen out of order. But if you had to focus on something and set goals, I would start with an idea, of course, having a good logline to share it, then you get into synopsis and you get into script, treatment, rewrites, rewrites. But at some point, you want to start seeing what you’re talking about, what you’re writing about. You want to maybe hire a concert artist or a character designer and trying to create a pre-production independent team that can help you visualize this project. If you are tied on budget, I would focus on a, on one piece of key art that shows what, what is this about? What is the vibe of this, of the story? That’s something that if you go to Disney, for example, they always put on the wall this key art for any of their new films. Like to put everyone on the same page, I’m looking at one now, I have a poster there from one of their films. It’s this landscape art that, that it’s one piece, very well done, but it gives you the entire vibe from the tone, the colors, the character, the dynamic. Hopefully you also see some kind of a story in a single picture. And those things, they really are sometimes what sells a project because they know that in animation, that the story will be evolving constantly. So that’s why I love it. I think that it’s wonderful that it, compared to live action, you get surrounded by people that are constantly improving your story. So, you look smarter as a screenwriter in animation because the story is getting better and better and better. And so, on the other side, it means that, you know, having the perfect polished script, it’s not, maybe it’s not the best bet at that moment. You know, if you want to, if you want to produce and see this project on the screen, if you want to use it as a piece of portfolio, then polish it and do another one and do another one, do spec scripts and things as an animation writer, that’s a different path, or solely as a writer. And so after this pitch deck that hopefully you have, you know, a synopsis, key art, character design, if it’s TV, maybe an episode stream board, which is a quick summary of all these, the episode ideas that you had, maybe you have your pilot attached as well. But also it can, the next step would be, if you’re in the independent market, it would be to produce two things. A teaser, something that shows, gives a better taste of what the vibe, the style, the animation style, the animation technique as well. And then a pilot, if it’s a TV show, which is way more expensive. For that, you need a studio because usually it’s the only way, I mean, you can produce something like that, even for a teaser. And for a producer, even a big studio like Netflix, for you, they want to, the more elements they have and the more they can trust all the elements, the easier it is for them to pick up the show and at least for a pilot production. And so with a teaser, you can show not only that the idea is much more tangible and it’s easier to get a gist of what is this show about, but also you’re showing that you have the right connection with the studio. Hopefully they have some credits that can prove that they are able to pull off a production and that there’s a specific style. There is a pipeline and technique that’s been thought to create this show. And that will help you. It’s another element you have. Sometimes you can go with different studios and say, you know, I’m creating this. I would love to attach you as a potential studio. And we’re talking about, I don’t know, it’s a feature film, 5, 10, 15, whatever, a million of dollars of, that’s how we think we’re going to budget this film. And you can create an agreement with the studio. Sometimes if there is an exchange where they’re providing maybe talent and resources to create a teaser, then you get into, you know, the legality of an agreement and with a teaser, a pitch deck and a pilot or a script, then you have all the elements. And the key element, of course, is also you pitching the show, you know, you’re pitching the project. And so, the verbal pitch is not like you can never get away from that. It’s always super important. Plus nowadays, if you have a teaser, put it on social media, put it everywhere, because no one will read the script, but everyone will click on a 30, 60 second teaser. And those things, if they’re good, they travel very fast.
Ashley
Okay. So, and that’s all fantastic. And I hope people really listen to that because I think that was a real good sort of crash course in sort of, you know, getting these, these animated projects through and, and exactly what you’re saying. And that’s been my understanding. I’ve never worked in animation is that it’s just a very difficult, I mean, Pixar is not just looking at spec scripts and producing them. These things are the people that are writing those have long track records have been probably working for Pixar for years. So, I get all that. So, and so now let’s talk about, and that’s definitely one track, um, that people, if they want to be animated some writers. I met a woman when I first got to LA, that was an animation and she had gotten a job. It was some sort of like, you know, she was in the writer’s room of some sort of kids TV, animated TV show. And it seems to me that was sort of a very traditional track where you get in there and become a producer and a writer as, I mean, she was like, whatever the lowest person in the story room was taking notes type of a thing, but then working way up. So there’s definitely that track, but let’s talk about just if you wanted to produce this independently and don’t be afraid to push back on me because I want to get a real reaction. I want people to hear to hear your reaction to me about some of the things I’m about to propose. So I’ve done a lot of work, or I’ve used a lot of outsourcing through, services like upwork.com where there’s just, there’s tons of people in other countries, that were willing to work much cheaper than Americans, for programming and animation is a big one. I had an animated logo created for ASM media incorporated. When I did some of my films, it was a nice 4k animation. I think I paid $150 for it. You know, I got someone to do it very, very inexpensively. And I have since, you know, I have young kids there on YouTube all the time. Now they’ve gotten a little older, but certainly when they were younger, like six, seven, eight years old, they would run into tons and tons. And I would definitely say it was sort of lower end animation, but it was tons of these YouTube channels. And when I would sort of research them, they were folks in Pakistan and India that were just flooding YouTube with these animated kids shows and getting a lot of views and stuff. And when I’m on Upwork and I’ve had some conversations with some of these animators and stuff that are in India that are in some of these other countries where they’re willing to work cheaper is that you get some really low price and you kind of keep going back to seeing what you need a studio to produce this. Suppose I actually, because this is my idea. Again, maybe I’m completely out of my mind. This is a crazy idea, but my idea is to produce this pilot independently, hire the animators, find some people in it in another country to work cheaply and war work through that process, but end up with a 22-minute pilot that I can take around and sell. And maybe I would even try and raise the money and just shoot an entire season, like 12 episodes, write them, and then try and produce 12 and then try and sell like a season of animation to some sort of a network or, I mean, there’s so many of these stream platforms. If the quality was good, maybe I could find some success that way, but walk through that. Like you keep saying you need a studio to produce it. Is it because you just need like 200 people to produce a 90-minute animated thing? There’s just so much work to be done that even if you’re only paying them a dollar an hour, you still need hundreds of people. What is sort of the, some of the pitfalls that I would run into if I try and do this where I try and go and really cut corners and do it super, super cost effectively?
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.
Ashley
Now, what do you think of some of the advances that Unreal Engine has made? Because that’s another thing on the Upwork. There’s a lot of people that know how to do it. And the other big thing with the Unreal Engine is there’s whole marketplaces now where you can buy characters and edit them. You can buy backgrounds and environments and the whole bit. And I mean, these things are dirt cheap. I mean, once someone creates them. And again, does that play into modern animation? Could you do something really just quickly and cheaply using some of these tools like that?
Pietro Schito
Yeah, so it’s just, I would say it’s moving the conversation to a different world of animation where now it’s more about efficiency and trying to get the job done and not caring as much about how certain things look in our design. Because if you look any art book of any animated film at big studios, or even some independent productions, there’s a real care of how everything looks. And so they would really distance themselves from something procedural. With exceptions, you know, you have to create a lot of buildings for a town. It’s not really, once you have the general idea of, you know, the visual language of the show, especially in TV, you know, you also need to find a cheap solution to do it. So it’s not like you can design every single thing. So that’s where libraries and nowadays, I know that can also, you know, you have a tree and then that tree is not always the same. It depends on the style. If you want to photo realistic stuff, then, you know, these game engines, you don’t really care if the tree has one more branch or not, it’s in the background. And that’s something that’s a principle of animation, knowing where you, you know, where to focus when you put your where you put your budget, and where you leave that in the background as a general tool, because people sometimes coming from live action, they think that you can do whatever you want, because it’s all in the computer. Well, actually, everything is expensive. Some things are even more expensive in the computer compared to that. So, in production, Unreal Engine, I love it, we are experimenting with data on two projects that are blending stop motion with that Unreal Engine, because it can be a very interesting blend to create things that are almost not impossible, but they would create the most expensive film in animation history if we had to do everything in stop motion. And finding that blend is very interesting. You’re running all sorts of pipeline problems and difficulties. Yeah. And I know that Epic Games and Unreal as a team, they’re working very hard. And they’re very serious about bringing this as a tool for animation. Some things they sound very attractive. And that’s something I also thought they were much easier than when you speak with people that know about pipeline because in an animation project, the pipeline is super important. And some studios, they each have different pipelines in animation, you know, usually go shot based, especially in TV, where sometimes you think is coming from live action that they just build everything, they build everything and then, you know, you move the camera around everything is, is like a set that it’s there for you and you can go crazy. Many times, you know, you work with plates compositing where some things are rendered separately. I’m not an expert in all this, but I can tell that, you know, it looks more promising than it is because I’ve met people working with Unreal Engine. And I love that many people are pushing, many studios are working with that. And it will get there eventually. We’re in that phase where it’s better you have a good team of engineers to, to help you alongside, especially when it’s not just a teaser, you want to keep doing stuff. And you can create very interesting things, especially in the animation part. It’s a little more difficult now in terms of it’s still not there. If your story has to do with that, that’s why many projects from, they come from many of these artists, they come from the video game world. And some of these projects kind of look the same. It’s robots, because they don’t have to animate facial expression, or people that would have helmet on and things that they look really cool when you but then you stop and think about it and say, wait a minute, there’s no facial expression, there’s no style, everything looks very real, water looks like water, there’s no stylization, there’s so, there’s so many new tools that they’re helping so much in that and we’ll we’re moving towards that and that’s super interesting.
Blender is another amazing tool it’s free and that it’s more traditional. And they also have a real time visualization. Again, I’m not an expert in a technical aspect, trying to understand and have someone evaluate the pipeline and tell you if it’s sustainable and try it and but I love them. I love when people are not taking it back from all the notes that the industry tells you oh, no, you can never do that. You can never do that. And then you just, you know, jump into the water and figure it out with a small team. Yeah, you create something that that if the story is there, then you can get better animation later if it’s a web thing.
Ashley
So, one of the things that I’ve been experimenting with, as I’m sure you have in a lot of other people is just these AI image generators where you can type something in or upload a photo and it will create, um, an image in a variety of styles, you know, any style that you want, it’ll create it. How long do you think it’s going to be? So number one, I had a question about that. Can you use something like that for storyboarding, like using AI to generate, these storyboards? It seems to me that would be a good tool. But the, the sort of the follow-up question to that is how long do you think it will be before we can just upload our script to an AI and it will output the completed animated film? It seems to me that’s sort of the direction this is ultimately heading.
Pietro Schito
It’s a very difficult topic because there’s so many elements at play, you know, you have also the ethical discussion of, you know, how it was trained and all that. But speaking from a strictly technical perspective, I want to give my experience. So, when you look at some of those pictures and your eye is not trained, I’m talking about today’s 2025, maybe in one year, everything will be different. But to the non-trained eye, you’d see something beautiful that could be, you know, let’s say you prompt something about, you know, a character from the Star Wars universe and you see a character and you say, yeah, that’s totally Star Wars. I mean, it’s there. I would buy that. And I remember we did some post-production work for the schoolism platform where artists, they teach you about different topics. They have one with about character design from a great character designer that worked with George Lucas and with others. And just by just as an external person, I’m not a character designer, but just to observance and go through the course and understand how much is there, like how much knowledge and care for details and thought about lines, colors and shapes and expressions and background of that. You understand that, you know, there are worlds apart. You know, AI is mimicking that. And then for us is going to be, oh, that looks cool. It’s almost like the original art. And so it’s very different from photography, you know, photography. I mean, again, I’m putting aside the ethical question about how it was trained and all that just to be specific, because, you know, that’s something to think about as well. But in a world where it looks like it’s just inevitable and impossible, hopefully they will find more ethical ways to, you know, to train these models. And I don’t know, you’re probably at a point of no return. I don’t think that’s going to be a conversation for another day. Yeah, that’s a whole podcast about it. But so let’s put the ethical part aside for a moment just to focus on the quality of what we have.
And so, for example, if you connect an A.I. with one of those engines like Unreal Engine or Blender and you want to create a background and you want to replace a lot of trees and you want to install, copy and paste. So every tree is a little different. So it can generate probably other, you know, branch formations and things. If it’s something that is non-artistic that just for the background. I mean, I guess that’s something that’s going to be very good. When you look at those, some still pictures, they look very good because, you know, they’re being trained on the films that we watch. And so especially some AI you can put basically a pixel character and it’s the same way you can put an actor or a public figure and it’s photorealistic. But from that to really because this thing that don’t animate, you know, I mean, you see an animation, but technically it’s not like they’re animating. They’re it’s a very different process. And so the kind of control that you can have today is not, you know, it’s worlds far from how good animation is for something very cheap. I’ve seen stuff online. And, you know, if you want to create things on TikTok to, you know, with curiosity data or little stories or bad nights, you know, I guess you can you can do it and very quickly. And I mean, those are more still pictures and movement. I do believe that it’s getting there. I think that many people in the animation industry are completely in denial because of the, you know, it’s a shock to see that, you know, I’ve spoken with, for example, Chris Stentress, the director of a living stage, how to train your dragon. Now the beautiful The Wild Robot. And he told us, you know, that he was on the major list of artists where they basically took all his body of work and used it to train without permission, without compensation. And so that that arrangement and I think it’s I mean, he has a point because it’s one thing is that you put something out there. The other thing is that, you know, they can just crawl it and learn from it. And so for some of them, not Chris, but some of them, I think that the arrangement, it’s kind of blinding to the fact that eventually I think it will get there. I think that we’ve seen it with photography and with video, the advancement is so fast. At that point, I worry more about, you know, what is AI doing in general? I mean, it’s just as a whole society, but that’s, again, a third podcast, a completely different podcast.
But yes, in terms of, you know, today I was on LinkedIn, I saw something that was very interesting and impactful for the animation industry. So, most storyboards that you see in the films that we watch are made on some platforms like Tomboom is one, Harmony is one of those, they help you with animation, specifically with pre-production and storyboarding. And they just launched, I watched the video where they completely embraced AI. They were very careful because AI is a very hot topic with good reasons in the animation industry. They were very careful with the wording, but they’re embracing it. And those are one of, you know, the big, that’s the platform that every studio use. And so they allow you to put a script and then it does a breakdown. I didn’t look into that deeply, but in a brief video, it would tell you that the AI will analyze the script, do scratch voices with AI-generated audio and things that are, you know, I’m pretty sure the comment section is going to be very heated in that post. But eventually it looks like there’s no way out. And so, yeah, there’s no specific question with the answer with the date, but I think it is coming to some degree. Looking at the bright side, just very quickly, these films that we watch, you know, Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, these are films that cost millions of dollars, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars with the very big productions. In the films, like even the one that won an Academy Award, Flow, was 3.5, I think, million of dollar five, I don’t know what the entire, the final budget, but it’s, you’re still talking about a project that’s millions of dollars. And so if AI is used ethically and can suddenly bring the cost down even to one million, it’s still a huge investment of money and that will pluralize a lot the industry. So other voices, other communities, other people that are usually not in, they don’t have a chance, then maybe that could be a good thing. Looking at the bright side, of course, if ethically, you know, source, then there’s a way to do it properly. And so that is my take on AI and it’s complex.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So well, great. I think that is a lot for people to think about. So just quickly, as we wrap up, we just is there some of you just mentioned fall, but is there some other animated films out there, including fall, I guess you could talk a little bit about that, that you’ve been watching, I just like to wrap up by seeing what have you been what have the guests been watching recently? And maybe you can just anything on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, that, that are mostly screenwriting audience might get some value out of.
Pietro Schito
Yeah, I mean, let’s start with flow because it’s a very interesting case. I’m I had a soft spot for the wild robot and DreamWorks finally getting recognition. But I’m very glad that flow won because it’s a statement for the industry. And it’s the third time in a row where Disney doesn’t get the Academy Award. And animation is still its own category, as if it was a genre when it’s a medium. And so flow winning, I think, was very good. I got to chat with the with the director against the animation film festival. Such a humble guy. And 30 people made that film. And he was, you know, for him, it was a big step up from his previous productions. And it proves that, you know, 30 people can, you know, it’s going to be more with the other VFX and other, you know, collaborations. But it’s a great, great example. Now, we need a flow that does a lot of money in the box office to really break the you know, the problem with the industry, which is that it’s controlled by the distribution. You know, distribution is very controlling what we see. And so for indie animation to really be an alternative to all these films that have this giant marketing machines behind them will be for a flow, hopefully many more to really have an impact in the box office as well. Because I think that it’s great to have the recognition. And I thought it was a very interesting film. I loved the experience. And I think that we need more of those. He’s working on the next one where he will have dialogue. And with my kids, I’m catching up on My Dad, The Bounty Hunter. And from and that’s a series that I thought it was very interesting sci fi. If you love, you know, sci fi in the 90s, that’s pretty much inspired by all those great
Ashley
Okay. My Dad, The Bounty Hunter, where is that playing?
Pietro Schito
That’s on Netflix.
Ashley
On Netflix. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. That’s a great recommendation. I have not heard of that one. So what’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? I know you have a website and some courses and some information. I think you also have a podcast too. I saw some YouTube videos that you’d put together and stuff. So just tell us about all of that. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I’ll round up for the show notes, but just go ahead and tell us about all your various platforms.
Pietro Schito
Yes, if you if you want to explore writing for animation, if you feel the passion for the medium, then come to write for animation. That is my plug.
It’s a YouTube channel where we interview the top talent in the industry. We had all the names I mentioned before. A lot of people from Pixar, Disney, Netflix, DreamWorks, independent people like Gintz from Flow. And we’ll have more in this stuff very soon. And it’s a place where you don’t hear the usual speech of, you know, the PR marketing interview. We get people, top people from the industry to really get hands on with the craft. And you are storytellers if you’re listening to this. And regardless of your interest in animation, you’re going to learn from the top storytellers that Pixar all for free. Then we also have, you know, if you really want to boost your career and go even deeper. We do have the right for animation academy. But, you know, getting on YouTube gives you like a lot, a lot. It’s an entire film school, basically for free with the top talent in the animation industry.
Ashley
It’s literally right for animation.com and then you also have a YouTube channel that goes along with it.
Pietro Schito
Yes, exactly. You can type write for animation on YouTube or go to write for animation.com. One special thing is we have a free session section with a lot of guides and tools that are again completely free. You can get them. And we also have a mailing list that helps you weekly with free classes. And yeah, we’re really about, you know, putting out that knowledge that I didn’t have. Going back to the beginning that I didn’t have when I grew up and now I want to bring these great storytellers to all of you. So, thank you so much, Ashley, for having me. That was a wonderful conversation.
Ashley
I know this was, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me, taking some of your time. This was, I know I learned a lot. I’ll probably have some follow-up questions. So maybe I’ll circle back with those, but good luck with all your projects and hopefully we’ll hear from you again.
Pietro Schito
Thank you, yes, I’d love to come back.
Ashley
Perfect, thank you, we’ll talk to you later.
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