Managing Multiple Projects with Producer Steph Gortz, from Oscar Nominated Forevergreen

In this episode, our guest Steph Gortz breaks down the technical aspects of animation, and shares how she balanced working full-time on Disney’s Oscar Nominated ZOOTOPIA 2 as a production supervisor while producing a short film in her off hours. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:08

I'm Alexis Jacobson. I'm Natalie DeJound. Welcome to the Production Desk, a podcast about the people and process of animation production.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Hi, Alexis. Oh, hey there, Nat. Good day. I'm committed to saying it exactly the same way every time.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

You know, I'm gonna try to subtly change it and then forget what I said last time and then be confused.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

I tried to change it, it didn't work. It's so good to see you. You were out of town for too long, I think. I tried to hold down the fort. It was hard. So don't ever go on vacation again.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

It's so good to see you. And I'm I did miss you. It's funny. I think I spoke with you more than I spoke with anyone else while we were traveling.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

I'm so honored. I feel like people should know. Alexis was on vacation and actually did some editing and some podcast stuff while she was gone. Like she is committed. Well, we're gonna keep this kind of short and sweet because we're excited to finally share this episode we recorded with Steph Gortz from Disney. We recorded this before the Oscars. So we're still continuing with that theme, right? A week before the Oscars, right? Yeah, it was just before the Oscars, which also means we recorded this way before all these layoffs that have been happening this past week at Disney and other studios. And so we also just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge that. And we feel for you. This industry is in a weird frickin' place, and I don't like it. I don't like that layoffs are becoming kind of a normal thing. Yeah, I don't like it either. Good news is we do have a therapist coming on in a couple of weeks, and we're gonna be like, what do we do? What do help us in this industry? It's so stressful right now. So stressful. Yeah, just wanted to just wanted to throw that out there, and hopefully this podcast episode isn't a nice little break from that.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

Well put. Steph inspired us with her producing kind of a project Labor of Love outside of work hours. We just wanted to do a quick segment about work-life balance and creative projects on the side. You and I did talk about this when we first met, but I am still so surprised how many people who work in animation come from a theater background and they are actors. So a lot of our colleagues do improv, they're writers, they are podcasters or runners, they're running marathons, they're doing whatever it is that fuels them. But I think it's really admirable. One of the things that I always find so fascinating about Los Angeles, and I think this also goes for New York, is the hustle and the pace of life. Pace of life here in LA is fast. There's never enough time. Life comes down to time with the people you love and time with doing what you love, if you can, and how hard that is, and I think there is something that I'm always working on is the balance of work-life balance, knowing when to step out of your day job and into the creative project and finding what cadence that best works for you, whether that's working on your project ahead of work or after work. But I always do find it a bit honestly full on, if I'm being honest, and how there's always that constant feeling of wanting to better yourself and to get ahead and make sure that if there's something at work that you don't understand, because this also ties into the work component. If there's something at work you don't understand, I've will go on the side and research like a software, maybe do a tutorial and just look into it just so that when I run into that again at work, I'm that much more prepared to handle it. And it just takes the stress off because when you aren't full-on production and shit gets crazy, that's the last thing you want to be worrying about. I just wanted to get your two cents on what that's like for you because I know you have your own hobbies or things that you're passionate about. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

That I feel like defines my whole life.

unknown 4:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

And I'm glad we're talking about this, and you're right. We have talked about this before. I really do want to shine a light on the fact that many production people are creative. I think sometimes it can come across as we're the people who love spreadsheets. And there's some production people who love spreadsheets. I am not one of them. I think it's helpful for the job, but yeah, I you're right in that. There's so many people who we came out here to LA to pursue writing, acting, directing, singing, whatever, and continue to do it outside of work hours. And that's something I love about the city, actually. You know, I went to a friend's poetry book launch a couple weeks ago, and another friend, actually, a lot of book things. Another friend of mine published a photography book that I got to help with a little bit. And I love being around people doing creative projects. To your question about work-life balance, somebody tell me how to do it, because I don't know. Actually, something I haven't said this in a while, but I used to say I hate that I'm ambitious. I hate it. I feel like being ambitious is kind of a burden sometimes. If I had no creative ambitions, I would just work and come home and watch TV and be done with it. But I don't. I come home and I'm like, oh, I gotta work on stuff for the podcast. And I have the script that I haven't revisited in a long time. And I love it. I love doing that stuff, and it's hard. It's hard when there's not a lot of hours in the day. Speaking of creative projects, let's go ahead and get into the interview and hear from Steph on how she balanced working full-time on an animated feature while she was producing a short film in her off hours because it's very inspiring. And that is what we need right now, is more inspiring. Yes. So without further ado, here's our interview with Steph Gortz.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Our guest today comes from Disney. She produced an Oscar nominated short for Evergreen and worked as an animation production supervisor on Zootopia 2. Please welcome Steph Gortz. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Hello.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Hello.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 6:36

I'm so excited to be here. It's so exciting to have you here. And your room, I think you do just need to quickly set the scene for everyone. Your office, I'm assuming that is your office, is at the It is.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

My office at the studio. Yeah, it's got a whole bunch of purple lights and flameless candles. Oh, I just realized my seal pillow is back there. Yeah, I stole this actually from the animation department. It brings me great joy. I have the same pillow. It's so great. Yeah, it's so squishy. I think one of the animators brought it one year as a white elephant gift. And then it ended up in one of our animation supervisors' offices who did the seals and the walruses and everything on Zootopia 2. And then I took it from him as a prank to see if he'd notice. And then he didn't. And when I confessed that I took it, he was like, Oh, that's not mine. And just put it there. And so I was like, I'm gonna keep it with me for now. And yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

He's so cute. And your lighting in the office is so calming. It's what I need at the end of a workday on a Monday. So thank you. The question we like to kick off to our guest right at the top is how did you get your foot in the door of animation?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I interned at Cartoon Network when I was still in school. Part of the requirements were you had to get an internship for at least one semester. And I interned on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends back at Cartoon Network. Oh my gosh, that was like I think 2006 times-ish. That's actually what also introduced me to production management because I ended up helping the PA on that show. And I was going to school for animation, but I didn't know that production management was a career path. And getting exposed to that, I totally fell in love with it because I have more of a love for data and spreadsheets and administrative kind of things. And I still love the art and the art form, but realizing that I didn't have to go down the creative path in the animation world was awesome. And so I interned there for two semesters and then I met a lot of people there. And so that just got me started with learning how to speak to people that worked within the industry and meeting people, going to like Comic-Con and things like that. That's how I started just learning how to network and then also just learning what the PA job was, because the PA that I worked with, Susie Campos, was just really great at teaching me and taking me under her wing and going beyond the just day-to-day of here, do this task. She taught me a lot about like the context behind the job. And so I will always appreciate that. But after that, I didn't have a job quite yet. And so I applied online to Disney feature animation. I just put my resume in there and prayed and hoped for the best. One day I got a call and had an interview. And so that's how I got it.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

Wow, you're going against what we what we I know.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

I left us. I was just gonna say that in the we were introducing ourselves and how we got into animation, and we both had connections that got us in. And I at least said, you know, I'd love to find out if anyone just cold applied to a job and got in because I had have yet to hear that story. It's usually like somebody knew somebody or had an internship. So that's so wild. So I'd love to hear it.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

I was hoping at the time to stay at Cartoon Network because I had established a base there. And I started working on the PowerPuff Girl like 10 year anniversary special, but then I got let go like a couple of months into that. And then I still had my job at Urban Outfitters. So I was like, oh my gosh. I was hoping to stay and what do I do? And you just go and apply everywhere. And of course, Disney was my end all, be all, like that would be my dream to work there someday. And really, I just went onto the website and applied. It was a PA position. And then I actually didn't get the original position that I applied for. It was a PA position on Princess and the Frog.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

But before they hired that role, I got a call back for a temp PA position on Prep and Landing, which was a Christmas TV special, but they were doing it at feature animation at WDAS, Disney Animation Studios. That was like a for sure thing. Like I could go in as a temp, that was only for a couple of months. And I said, if I go in for this role, will I still be in the running for Princess and the Frog? But at the time, weighing my options, I thought this is a for sure thing, and I can at least get in the door, work really hard and hope for the best. And at least I'm getting in there and learning the studio and just really getting my career off the ground at least a little bit. Fortunately, it was one of those things where I kept getting extended. And then eventually I did get hired as an employee. I started in May 2008. And then I got hired as an official employee in August 2008. But it was really just a lot of just trying to do my best and learn as much as I could, assuming that the next month I would be let go and hoping that maybe I would get that frog position, but I didn't. They hired somebody else and I was like, okay, well, now I know for sure that it's just this temp position. But it all worked out, thankfully, for the best. Even now I still think about it every once in a while. I just I don't want to take that for granted because that doesn't just happen. You always try to remember starting out, especially when it can get stressful at times. So sometimes just stepping back and being like, remember when this was all you wanted? It's good to keep that perspective in the time. Because every once in a while, too, you're just like, oh man, I'm ready to retire. But then it's kind of like, remember when it used to be different.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

I wanted to ask, did you originally go to school to be an artist?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Yeah. So I went to Woodbury University, which is a small university in Burbank. It's not really known for animation. When I went back in the day, it was known more for architecture. The animation was one of the newer majors, I guess, that they were offering. The classes were very small, and most of the teachers worked in the industry. And so you could get a lot of attention. Secret of Nim is what made me fall in love with animation when I was very young. And so I always knew that's the industry that I want to work in. But not realizing that you start out and you're like, oh, I want to work in animation. That means that I need to be an animator and I need to learn how to do that. And I enjoyed that. But the longer I was in school, the more I was like, oh man, like I'm not sure if I want to be an animator. Because my junior year of the university was when I interned. And so thankfully, that is when the production management world opened up to me. And I was like, okay, this is actually something that I would love to pursue. I went to school for animation, thinking that's what I wanted to do, and then realized that is not what I want to do. But I want to be in that industry because I'm still in love with the industry.

SPEAKER_04 13:36

So I know you've been at Disney, it looks like the majority of your career, but it looks like you also did a short stint at DreamWorks.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

So yeah, it was just under two years. At the time, Disney, if you were in production management, you were either a production assistant or you were what was called a PDM production department manager, which was a production supervisor. And there was no like coordinator role in between there. And so it was a pretty big jump up from PA to PDM, aka production supervisor. I was looking at the DreamWorks website, and I honestly wasn't quite exactly looking to leave, but I noticed that they had a position open for a production coordinator in lighting because I was ready for some more challenges. And I had just done lighting on Tangled. And I applied for that position and ended up going further in the interview than I thought that I would. It turned out that they needed somebody who had lighting experience because they needed somebody just to come just jump in and run. And so I really had just rolled off of Tangled and lighting. And so that timing was really great. Went to DreamWorks and did lighting on Puss and Boots, the first one and Rise of the Guardians, which was one of the most fun times I've ever had. After that, Disney ended up rolling out the coordinator role. And I still kept in touch with Disney and got a call asking if I wanted to come back to the studio because they had the coordinator role now. DreamWorks was great though, because just to be at a different studio, getting different experience from what I knew was great. It definitely taught me a lot of different perspectives, which I carried back with me when I returned to Disney.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

That was such a good point. The kind of different places and different people you get to work with and learn from, yeah, in a lot of ways, often what not to do.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, yes. I definitely learned some of those things too. And also I also learned sometimes proprietary software is so wonderful. And then when you don't get to use it anymore and you have to use like a different system that I'm not gonna say where has which one, but it's just nice to just be like, oh yeah, see how great this is. Appreciate it. Don't take this for granted.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Oh, we I'm very jealous of friends who have worked at Disney. Whenever they describe some of the proprietary software they worked with, I'm like, well, that sounds magical.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

We have a lot of Sony people here now, and they'll be like, oh, we use this tool. And I'm like, dang, that's really cool.

SPEAKER_04 16:12

It's wonderful to be spoiled by incredibly smart, amazing pipeline crew at the different places.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah, recently they've had, I think they're calling them technology buddies. It's been really great because we're having some of our technology friends sit in on reviews. And if something goes awry, we're like, what do we do? And then they fix it or show us how to fix it or debug something. And so shout out to them because wow, I don't know where that piece of my brain just doesn't exist, but they're incredible and we appreciate them so much because it makes it less awkward because the meeting gets going again instead of hey, everyone look over here while I try to keep your eyes away from the screen that's not working. But I feel like that's a part of just being in production management is learning how to distract stall. That's the word. Thank you. Professional stalling is a big plus, I think. There's also like in a way that can be obnoxious, which me as a younger PA, like I think I'm doing such a great job at stalling in the room and then later to find out. So people like find it really annoying when you're like, all right, everyone, let's have an icebreaker question. That's not exactly what it was, but it's everyone go around the room and say your favorite food or something.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

I just love because that's so relatable. And I love the idea of a younger version of you being like, I am killing it. I am nailing this soft skill of stalling.

unknown 17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah. The longer you're around, the more you learn. And then you get to hopefully bestow the knowledge upon your young PAs that roll in. But food is always a good one. I will call out my friend Nora Rogers, who is really good about just getting people to talk just by saying something about a French fry or a potato, and then people just go off about their favorite potato dish.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

That's a hot tip. I'm like taking notes. I so want to see that in action.

unknown 18:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:04

How about those French fries? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yeah. Hey, who loves French fries?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Or my favorite one, but this one's really polarizing. We actually called it Raisin Gate back on Strange World and animation, but people either really love or hate raisins. Yes. It's really funny just to get that conversation started and like just watch the people fight about it.

SPEAKER_04 18:25

I am 100% gonna just test drive that tomorrow. You and I were talking before we started recording about getting older and gray hair. And I would love to hear how you handle stress because it sounds like you don't have gray hair yet, which I am so envious of.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

I gotta thank my parents for the genetics there for sure. So I definitely used to get way more stressed out. And the longer you're in a career and learn, the hopefully less stressed you will be because you've learned, hey, this is not actually that important at this moment and it's fine. But managing stress so much is out of our control and out of my control. At the end of the day, if I feel like I did my job to the best of my ability, I did all the things on my to-do list that had to get done. We had the conversations for the day that really needed to happen, all of that kind of stuff. That is the best that I can possibly do. There's nothing that I can absolutely do from my role as the production supervisor of whatever department I'm in that is going to fix anything or help with anything. And it this took a long time because I definitely used to get more stressed about it. But now it's just I can let it go. Or honestly, I just laugh about something because let's be honest, sometimes our jobs are just absolutely ridiculous with some of the asks or like the deadlines. And again, I used to get frustrated or upset about it and vent about it with my team and then get them stirred up, which I don't want to do because they're stressed out as well. Now we'll just all kind of laugh together and be like, you know what? We did the best we possibly could today. There's no need to take this home with us. But again, took years and years to get there. And I try to, with my production management teams, they'll be spinning because they didn't get an answer by the end of the day. And at that time, maybe we're not approved to work OT yet. And they're like, oh man, I didn't. I'm like, you know what? So it waits until tomorrow. What's the worst thing that's gonna happen?

SPEAKER_04 20:20

I think it's remembering also that we're all only human, mistakes are gonna happen. And as you said, which was beautifully put, you can only do your best. Everything else is outside of your control. And it's true. Like, I think over the years, I too have gotten better with it, but I did start running because of stress.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Oh wow. That's a good way to manage it. There are other things like exercise and trying to eat as healthy as I can, especially during crunch time, trying not to give in to the OT meals. Yeah, giving yourself grace and giving others grace. Because everybody at the end of the day really is just trying to make the film the best that they possibly can.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

So speaking of making the best possible film, this is my silly segue because I love a silly segue. What is your favorite Disney film?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

My favorite Disney movie is Sleeping Beauty because it's I mean, it's just it's so gorgeous. Just so uh stunningly gorgeous, every frame of it. And one of my favorite parts or pieces of Sleeping Beauty is the heron cloth animation. It's so good. It's so gorgeous. And I mean Maleficent is also incredible. I love her.

SPEAKER_04 21:31

What an iconic villain she is. Uh badass. She makes a great Halloween costume, too, by the way. I've actually had the headdress, so I really I agree.

unknown 21:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:44

It's very uncomfortable though, because it's very tight. It's always that fine lineup with headband. I needed to stay, but not cut off my head circulation.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

I did do Ursula once year, and then I had a friend who was ran. Maleficent. And then another friend I'm going to be Cruella DeVille. This was a million years ago. And so we had a little like Disney villain crew. And it was really cute. Cute. Yeah, it was cute. I love a good Halloween costume.

SPEAKER_04 22:13

For those of you who don't know, Nat is a huge fan of Halloween, as am I. It is the most magnificent time of year.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

It is. We should be talking about it. I'm going to slip it into conversation more on this podcast. Do you have your Halloween costume for this year picked out yet? Maybe. And you're not going to tell what it is, are you? Yeah, I wanna I need to stew on a little bit more. Okay. So we'll see it. Stew away. So bringing it back to animation, we wanted to hear more about your experience on Zootopia 2. Congratulations, by the way, on the Oscar nomination. But we wanted to hear you talk about your time managing the animation department on this film and in general, because we haven't done a deep dive really into the animation process of the pipeline. And I know it looks a little bit different at different studios, but if you could go into a little more detail for our listeners who may not be as familiar with the pipeline, who are maybe new, wanting to get their foot in the door, would love it if you could talk a little more in depth about that.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah. Yeah, totally. So on Zootopia 2, I ended up taking over around May of 2025. And then I also partnered with a production supervisor in Vancouver, because our team was like 140 something. So for this movie, I was not there for the process, but I've been there before. So I can still speak to it. So for animation, to bring a character to life. So after the character is designed in Visdev and that gets approved, then it goes to modeling and assets, and modeling will model the character, and then rigging rigs the character after that. But that is where the collaboration with animation starts, is when it's in rigging. But at Disney, the animation supervisor of whatever character, we have around six to eight-ish animation supervisors. And so each of those anim soups will supervise a character or a number of characters. And the main characters are, of course, the hardest. Their life cycle is the longest because they are A-level characters. The B characters are still important, but less time is spent on those. And then the C characters could be like crowds or characters that have even less screen time. They don't really speak. And so like they don't need to be rigged to speak and things like that. The Anim Soup starts working with the rigor, testing the rig for their character. So rigging will start with the basics and then they'll hear what the Anim Soup is hoping to get, because depending on the character, if it's an animal, they're gonna hope for different controls than if it's a uh human or whatever wacky thing they come up with, it's an A character. But then the rig goes back and forth between animation and rigging for rig testing. And then eventually a pantomime test is done with the rig. And then the sort of last big step is the performance test where there's dialogue and also another performance test from the animation supervisor. And while all that is going on, they're doing like walk cycle testing and all sorts of other rig or anime performance testing to start getting to know the character and how the character moves, how the character walks, how the character speaks, and facial expressions and all that stuff. And then they'll do facial calisthenics, testing out all of the facial rigs, and so all of that stuff happens before the character is considered ready for animation. Sometimes it'll take, gosh, months for the character to go through all the rig testing process. We have an amazing rigging team. They are so good at what they do, and so everything always turns out incredible no matter what. So then once it's considered ready for animation, and animation will pick it up and still do some more testing, whether it's performance or pantomime, up until a sequence is ready to be turned over into animation. And then they will get the shot basically issued from the directors. The other thing, sorry, that the animation supervisor is doing while the character is either going through rig testing and also after it's considered ready for animation is they are putting together what's called the chalk talks, but it is best practices with the character. They're also working on just anything and everything about the character's like personality as much as they can because they do have a part in helping create the character's personality. Even though they still have the script and they have the whatever came out of story, they also get to help shape the movements and the facial expressions and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

That was very eloquent. I was thinking she should teach.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Thank you. Yeah, by the way, please let me know if I'm rambling because sometimes I took the job just and then just repeat the whole damn thing over again. No, it's really interesting. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 27:09

I'm just curious, for my own knowledge, looking at your experience, it does look like there's a difference between animation and technical animation.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yes, there is. So animation, at least at Disney. A lot of studios call tech animes, so character effects, like I know DreamWorks did. I think Sony might. And then I don't think Pixar uses what we consider tech anim because I think that they front load everything into their sims at the beginning when they do all their sim testing. But tech anim at Disney comes after animation is approved. So animation focuses on character performance while tech anim is hair and cloth performance. So our animators, when they work on the characters, they are wearing their like leotards or have a proxy for the clothing, but they don't touch any of the hair or cloth. They're just all about the performance and the dialogue. And if they have thoughts for maybe how they would like a piece of clothing or something to move because they consider it an important point of the shot, then they can pass a request over to Tech Anim. But technical animation, their main focus is all about hair and cloth performance. If we do want to jump back where like rigging sets up the character for the animators to control, we have a simulation team, hair and cloth sim, that do the same sort of thing, but with the hair and cloth. So they are setting up the costume and the hair to move and to be able to be manipulated by tech anim. Once it gets to tech anim, sometimes we want run what's called an out-of-the-box sim where you just run the shot with the final animation. The sim that is generated just from the movement of the character, like sometimes it looks so good, it's yeah, that actually looks great. And then not a whole lot has to be fixed. But tech anim, so if something is really heavily art directed, so like big costume movies like Frozen and Wish had a lot of big costumes, a lot of layers within the costumes. And I did tech anim actually on both Frozen 2 and Wish. Speaking back to Sleeping Beauty and the hair and cloth that I loved. So like watching Pocahontas, I was just like, you know, with her hair, just so gorgeous. And I love a cape, Twish, or you know, a dress or the forever cape. Oh my gosh. Magnifico's cape was also so much fun. Man, and then back to the tech animists, they are so good. It's always so exciting to be in that department. But again, like hair and cloth is just something that I really love. And so it's just always, oh, the pretty hair and costumes. Like that's what I always get really excited about that. But tech Anim also does body sculpting because a lot of times joints or something could be broken, and so tech Anim needs to pull an arm out of the body or fix this joint. They also do sculpting. If there's maybe a muscle that needs to be more defined, they'll do a nice little sculpt work around that. And they can also do foliage or ribbons, flags, anything that has like a cloth wave to it, or an effect sometimes will also do foliage. An example, there's one on Wish where Asha, yeah, is parting some vines to walk through them. And since there was so much character contact, tech Anim ended up doing those vines. So what kind of defines those things is how much character contact goes into that. Oh, ropes, ropes, tech Anim loves ropes. They're a huge pain. But again, they do such a great job and they're good sports. Okay, who wants this rope shot? That's 500 frames. No, that would be terrible. So that is the difference between animation and tech animals. Yeah, like a lot of times people think that animators do everything, which I get that. If don't work in the industry, I could see that.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

I know sometimes, depending on the film or the project, or in your case with Zootopia, did you use any reference from animals specifically or bring them into the studio, or did you do any field trips to zoos?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Yeah, they'll do field trips. And yeah, they had some animals come in for animal drawing. They had from what I'm trying to remember for Zootopia too, there was a boa constrictor and a bunny. And I remember for the first zootopia, there were a lot of animals. They brought in a fox. So cute. The ones with the big ears, the really big ears. They brought in a sloth, which was crazy. Yeah, he just hung on this pole the whole time. Um, and then like for Frozen, they brought in a reindeer. This reindeer's name was Sage. And so it was antler shedding season, and she shed one of her antlers on the drive over. She, yeah, and then during the animal trying, her other one fell off.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

So she got just used, just like bloody spots on her head, and we're like, Oh, we're so sorry. Sage, don't be so sad, but so funny.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

She was like, Oh my god, so there's some sort of like mockumentary version of this that I'm seeing in my head. Like the magic, behind the scenes magic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

How not to handle strap.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

But they'll normally bring in some sort of animal, which is very exciting.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

We said this before we started recording, but I want to say it here. Congratulations on producing an Oscar nominated short. That's really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Thank you so much. Our team was around 200 volunteers who we all did. This was a free time project. This was an after school, you know, after school, quote unquote, but after work, early morning, lunchtime weekend project. While everybody also had, well, we all had our full-time jobs and of course families and whatever life throws at you because life's unpredictable. So I'm so humbled that so many people really gifted us their time to work on the project. It was a long project. I think it took like six and a half, six-ish years. But then production, once it got out of story into production, that was five and a half years. So I started on it in January 2020, right before the pandemic. I'm just really, really humbled, is I think the word because it changed my life in a lot of ways too, for the good. I learned a lot and formed a lot of new relationships, which was also wonderful. Jeremy and Nathan were just incredible partners as directors.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

I'd love to hear it's like production supervising by day, producing by night, making that jump. Like there anything about that shift that surprised you?

SPEAKER_01 33:52

I wouldn't say surprise because I was just so excited and passionate about the project that it was something that I looked forward to. And yeah, like there were nights where I was really tired, and like sometimes I'm like, I don't want to go to this meeting. But then once I was there, it was like, oh no, this is fine. This is great. I feel like I'm pretty good with time management, but that really taught me to be really efficient. You know, it was a long, a long road. And so I was also trying to be mindful of not burning out too early.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

I'm not even sure how we want to phrase this question. I'm just so blown away by you having so many, what did you say, 200 people working on the movie? And like, how did that look like in the day-to-day that many people and still trying to hit deadlines?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah. And I will also just say that the volunteers, it wasn't just like the animators and artists, and it was also people who were musicians and mixing and fully and post-production. We had two PAs. I mean, it covered the whole gamut. So yeah, one of the biggest challenges as a producer is I couldn't really put together a production schedule because you can't give deadlines on something like this. What we would try to do though is make goals. So we approached it and we approached the whole thing just how we would normally approach any movie and tracking and all that. So what we would try to do is set goals for people so that they had something to work towards, but also something for us that we could kind of gauge how long something could take. And then if they started getting closer to that, we would check in closer to the deadline to see their progress. And if it was like, ah man, you know, I haven't been able to make it to get there at all, we would say, okay, like how about the next goal is this date? And then they would say, Yeah, like that, that's really great. Or if they're not sure what the best sort of timing is for them, we would just say, Okay, when do you think you might have a gap coming up? And then we would just kind of go off of that. But at the very least, just trying to give them something to work towards so that they felt like they were moving towards something.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

I was just gonna say that they do want a deadline.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

And so trying as much as we could to keep moving forward in that way. But then the challenge became how do you keep people motivated to keep trying to move forward, even though this film is moving slower than like a snail through molasses? Like, how do you keep people excited? And so we would just be like, oh, look at this cool test that somebody did, or oh, look at the shot that so-and-so animated. And just little things like that, you would kind of see the spark like, oh, that looks really cool, or oh wow, you can actually see some lighting on this one now. And then you would see things surge forward here and there because people, you know, got excited and found a couple of hours to squeeze it in. But what gave a deadline was a software update almost blew the whole thing up. So we were 90% through animation, and we were really far along through tech Anim, because we did have tech Anim on the show. There was a lot of sculpt work. So we did have tech Anim doing a lot of that. We had a lot of stuff in lighting, but it wasn't considered final yet. And the biggest sequence, which was the fire sequence, that was the one that had the longest way to go. And so we were kind of like, oh, okay, software update. Let's see what's gonna break. And then looking into it, it was like, oh, okay. So everything that, gosh, pretty much everything would have had to be converted. I mean, uh definitely everything for that fire sequence, but since nothing was actually through lighting and we couldn't really clean up our files like we normally do because the we called it the wobble, which was animators had the ability to basically use different keyframes to kind of make the texture that looks like it's moving around on the bear in the tree. We had one of our look artists, Rich Fallett, come up with this amazing system that animation could use to manipulate the keyframes and make it look wobbly, but it was super heavy. And so we couldn't really get rid of anything, which wasn't great because we were also running out of space. And so all of these things coming together at once, we were like, wow, this is actually really destructive. And if we were to have to convert, it's gonna draw this thing out at least another couple of years. So there was kind of like that moment of like, oh no, this could be really bad. But then we've gotten this far, you all, like we're taking it to the end. I know deep in my gut, we're gonna finish this thing. How can we finish this thing? And so we pulled together our VFX soups and our tech VFX soup, Greg Smith, and TechSoup Bebecca Thompson, who were instrumental in helping push this through. And then we also did have a small conversion team that helped convert some things. But we got together and looked at the bigger picture and what was left. And from there, we were able to come up with basically a production schedule because we knew the date that stuff was gonna start to shut down. And so from there, just reverse engineering at least the big tent pulls for when we needed to finish certain tasks before that sort of end all be all date. And while it was really scary and, you know, not great news to have to tell the crew, we were really upfront with them and said, Hey, here's what we're facing. We know that you're also in crunch on this other film right now, or about to be, or just finished and you're tired. But can we all just try to band together and just finish this thing out and yeah, try to make this deadline before everything shuts down? One of my favorite parts of what I got to learn being a producer on this film was just working with post-production and that whole process and seeing the whole thing through there, all the formats. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

I just cannot imagine producing is hard enough. And then to do it with a team of people that are working in their off hours. That's an incredible feat. It's massive.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

It's super impressive. And echoing what Nat said, it's absolutely beautiful and it was incredibly moving.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Thank you so much. It was so wonderful to be able to tell the team because you know it was 5 30 in the morning that all that, you know, happened. And so it was just really exciting to get to tell them, like, hey, we got nominated.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

I watched your reaction video. That was and also like, oh my gosh, I am not a morning person. So I was just like trying to stay awake and then, like, oh, is that happening? And then, wait, did I hear that right? Or am I just tired? That was cool. Yeah, and my brother's on that video too. So it was just really funny to see his reaction for like personally.

SPEAKER_04 40:18

Oh yeah. That's so cool that he could be there with you.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah, he's been such a huge, huge part of the marketing and PR side of just so much wisdom from him and that piece, because I don't know anything about that.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

If you could give advice to somebody who wants to produce an animated short film but doesn't know where to start, where should they even begin?

SPEAKER_01 40:39

If an opportunity arises and you feel like you're not ready for it, maybe because you don't have the experience, like doesn't matter. Just accept it and figure it out. Because I'm sure one, you'll probably be surprised at how much you do know that you think you didn't. But don't let inexperience stop you from it. Because that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do this. There was a lot of stuff that I didn't know how to do that I was able to learn.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

Well, Steph, you've been so incredibly generous with your time. We can't thank you enough.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Thank you so much for having me. This was so so much fun. It was really wonderful to meet both of you.

SPEAKER_04 41:17

I will need to do another part two of this because I know there's so much more to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Yeah, I'm game.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

We would love to have you back. Thank you again too. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. Okay. So, Nat, very curious your answer to this. It is something that haunts me on every laptop, whether it be personal or work. How many tabs do you have open? And are you a Chrome or a Safari user?

SPEAKER_02 41:50

I am a Google Chrome girl, and I feel like I have a reasonable amount of tabs open, and I will count them right now, real quick. One, two, three, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Which to me feels very manageable. Sometimes I have double that amount. So do I win a prize? Is 12 good? 12 seems like not that bad. Yeah, I think we kind of cleaned it up recently. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_04 42:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

What about you? How many tabs?

SPEAKER_04 42:15

You'd be appalled. I've had IT tell me I have too many tabs, like I'm killing my laptop. I've have had to switch to multiple laptops in the past at work. And then I acquiesced and tried to do less tabs, which I just want to say my work laptop have gotten better. My personal laptop, I'm not going to admit how many. It's a lot. On my iPhone, same thing. I am at the limit for how many tabs you can have open.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

There's a limit?

SPEAKER_04 42:42

There is a limit.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

So maybe you're worse than me. You know, the reason I only have 12 open right now actually is because I knew we were recording and it slows it down if I have too many tabs open. So I've gotten a little bit better with that.

SPEAKER_04 42:57

You sound like IT. Yay! I also, just because I think this question connects, are you someone, like in your personal email, do you have everything read in your inbox? Or are you the type of person who has a lot of unread emails on your phone?

SPEAKER_02 43:20

Oh, yeah, a lot of unread emails. My work email is different. I generally try and keep up on that. I'm looking to see my personal email. I have 769 unread emails. So if someone's been trying to get hold of me via email. Sorry if I haven't written you back. Is that bad? You'd be appalled if you heard my number.

SPEAKER_04 43:44

It's more than 769? Oh, what a shame. I don't have my phone in the closet with me.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 43:50

That will have to be a part two of how many emails are on Alexis's personal phone.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

No, I got it. We'll post the number in like our social media posts. And be like, if somebody knows what this number is in relation to, you win a prize. And they have to say, oh, that's how many unread emails Alexis has right now. That's what that number is. I think people would be really shocked.

SPEAKER_04 44:14

It is not a pretty number. I'm excited to find out. Well, to be continued, and we'll leave you in suspense with that.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

It was lovely to see you, Nat. You too. We will drop another episode for you all in two weeks.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

And I just want to say we both rallied. We were not thrilled to do this, but it does feel like food for the soul. So thank you, Nat. We rallied so hard, and I agree. Well, I hope you have an epic sleep because I think we both need it.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Oh my god. Yeah, you too. See you all later.

SPEAKER_04 44:48

Good night. You've been listening to The Production Desk. We are our own producers.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Outro by Marcus Taylor. If you have a moment, we'd love a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find the production desk on Instagram and Facebook. For any episode ideas, please reach out.