This is a transcript of SYS 511 – Making An Animated Movie With Julio Soto Gurpide .
Welcome to Episode 511 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing writer-director Julio Soto Gurpide. He just directed a big animated feature film called Inspector Son. So, we dig into that film and how all that came about for him. I have a number of very specific questions about animation and the writing of animation and just how these films are put together from a writing perspective. This is not something I really know anything about. I’ve never been involved in an animation project. So, if you’re interested in learning more about writing for animation, this is definitely an episode you’re going to want to check out. So, stay tuned for that interview. 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. The 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 the 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 look for episode 511. If you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in Five Weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.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 www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So now let’s get into the main segment. Today, I am interviewing director Julio Soto Gurpide. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Julio to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. Really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Julio Gurpide
Thanks for having me here.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can give us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Julio Gurpide
Sure. I grew up in Spain in Madrid, the capital. I used to be a visual-artist, I was a painter. When I was 18, I moved to Scandinavia, where it’s been five years. And then I got a scholarship to study in New York where I studied at Pratt Institute and I got involved in cinema. I studied film. I started writing my own stories as well, I started with experimental video, documentaries, and then I got into slowly into fiction. And then in New York, this was the late 90s, early 2000s. I was working in advertising for many years, mostly involved in animation. And from that point on, I started getting into bigger productions and Inspector Son is my second feature as a director in animation. I’ve directed other features, but mostly live action.
Ashley
Okay, perfect. Perfect. So yeah, so let’s get into Inspector Son and talk about that a little bit. Maybe to start out you can give us a pitch or a logline. What is this story all about?
Julio Gurpide
Sure. This story is set in the 1930s. And in Shanghai, that’s where it starts. Inspectors Son is the most famous detective that time in Shanghai. So, he manages to capture his heart’s Nemesis the red locust and he finally embarked in an extended holiday aboard seaplane. And during this flight, he actually has to go back into the detective investigation because there is a murder. So, he has to figure out who’s done it. It’s very much a take on Agatha Christie stories with the particularity that everything takes place in a world of insects, where they build this parallel world to the human world where you know, they have a ballroom, they have a big brass band, you have all the stereotypes of the film noir stories with mobsters, smugglers, fettle’s, assassins. You know, it’s a very cool story.
Ashley
Yeah. So as a, you know, Film Noir is typically not kids fair. Obviously, this is animated. So, who is this movie for? Is it for children? Is it for adults?
Julio Gurpide
This is some movie for families. When I say that, I mean like literally because there is a lot of humor. That is meant targeting the younger audiences, but there are also jokes and humor that the parents as well are going to get. So, we are hoping to sort of like make it very interesting for both like grownups and kids as well.
Ashley
Yeah, gotcha. So how did you get involved with this screenplay as a director, what was the stage that it was at when it came to you? And I’m just always curious, just logistically, how does a guy like you get scripts into his view that potentially you might want to direct?
Julio Gurpide
Sure. The story started at the American Film Market in 2017, I believe it was. That’s a great place, by the way to sell stories and to find producers for your stories. Everybody goes there. So, I met Rocco Portillo, who was the writer of this particular story. I knew the story already, because he had won the Samuel Goldwyn Award, which is a very interesting award for writers. And it was the first time that they awarded this particular price to an animated story. So, it was a big deal. How did I get in touch with that, I guess the producers in a way, there are a couple of producers based in the UK. And they’ve done quite a lot of big productions, and they knew the writer. So, they sent me the script, I read it, I loved it right away. And then from beta five, already, I knew that this was something very original. And it wasn’t so much that it was difficult to get to optioned the script or anything like that it was just a matter of like producing such a complex story, because it’s very ambitious. The script is very difficult. And like you said, it’s a topic that is not normally very common among family films, the noir stories and mysteries and murder stories. So, we had to give it a twist to make it more palatable for everybody. And that was the biggest challenge.
Ashley
Now, you just said it was difficult and complex. One of the things again, I don’t have any experience with animation, but one of the things that seems at least from the outside is that you can do a period piece, you can do these elaborate, you know, crazy characters and this sort of stuff with animation. And it’s not really any harder, obviously live action, it would be a totally different ballgame. So, what is hard about something like this, when you have a script like this, that’s going to be animated, just the number of people involved, the number of animators the number of voices. What is actually difficult about this?
Julio Gurpide
Sure, I mean, any animated film is difficult. In this particular film, more than 265 people participated in this film. So, it’s a big crew. But what makes a script more difficult or less difficult in animation is mainly the number of sets that you have the number of characters, you always try to contain everything to a minimum of these things, right. That’s why for example, in this movie, the first act takes place in Shanghai. The second act, which is the biggest bulk of the movie takes place in the seaplane, it’s an interesting story about the seaplane, they used to call it the flying hotel, they were using these planes until the 1950s. It was like a luxury traveling, you know, transoceanic flights. They had luxury cabins, restaurants, I mean, it was a big deal. So, we were really like this set. And then the third part takes place in San Francisco. And we contain that to a number of streets and a few small locations. So, I would say like sets and characters. That’s what makes it more expensive or less.
Ashley
Yeah. And that’s interesting, because that’s, in a lot of ways, that’s the same that for a live action movie. Those are some of the same constraints. So, let’s just run through this. I’m just curious. Again, I don’t have a lot of experience in animation. So, I’m just curious, just from a logistical standpoint, take us from sort of script to screen like okay, so you have a script that you guys all liked. I’m sure there was some development on that. What is the next step? Do you then storyboard it out? And how involved are those storyboards? How many storyboards is every angle? Like every single shot, you do one storyboard? Is it one storyboard per scene? Just talk us through that early stages, like what is the next step from going from script to screen?
Julio Gurpide
Sure. There is one major difference between animation and live action. In live action, you can have several cameras should several takes you know, and you in the end, you pick the one that you like, or do an edit in animation. You don’t have that luxury to do that, you have to go straight to the one shot that you planned in animation. I mean, in animatic, which is basically the moving storyboard. So, the first thing you do is you storyboard everything from beginning to end, and with certain poses, so it’s not just a static storyboard, but it’s kind of like an animated storyboard and that once you’ve are ready the number of shots that you have, the length of each shot, the angles, the characters that you have there. So, then you do a breakdown of everything that you have in your scene. And with that breakdown, you do a layout, which is basically the same thing. But in 3d, you have a camera. So already, it’s very much like enough live action, you do a rough set, rough characters, and then you position the cameras, you do a basic layout.
Ashley
You’re doing this on a computer in some software, you’re like laying these things out. So, what is the actual software that you use for something like this?
Julio Gurpide
We usually use Maya. Maya, it’s 3D programming has been the standard for many years in animation. So, what I’m saying is not uncommon to big production, like big budget productions, such as Avatar, or any of the big budget movies, they do exactly the same thing they do. You know, they do basically a 3D layout of every scene, every character and everything, before they actually shoot any live action person, because in a way, it’s very cost effective. And you see what the final movie is going to look like. And that’s good. That gives you an idea whether it’s working or not. The other thing we do is we record reference voices like is basically with you start with three or four actors, usually two guys and two girls. And then you do the voices, the basic voices with some acting. And that gives you the timing of the scenes and the flow of the dialogue and everything. And then you go back to the script, you rewrite the dialogues if they need to be funnier or more fluent. And then you go back to the storyboard, you recut. And with your final animatic, that’s pretty much what you’re going to animate. And the final movie, it’s 90%, what you do on the animatic.
Ashley
And what is animatic? When you say that word, what does that actually mean?
Julio Gurpide
It’s an animated storyboard. Like I said, it’s a rather than a static storyboard, you do some poses, like basic keyframe poses.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha.
Julio Gurpide
I could send you a sample of one.
Ashley
Yeah, you know, maybe that would be a… Yeah, if I could link to something like that. I think that would be interesting for the listeners. Now with something like Maya, what do you need? Like if I wanted to do this for my next short film, just like a five-minute short film, what would I actually need to bring someone in to do this with Maya, I need someone that’s could, one person do everything that needs to be done for the to do this sort of animatic storyboard for my live action Short Film?
Julio Gurpide
If it says short film? Yes, I would say yes. But you need to find somebody that is knowledgeable about narrative, like visual narrative. And who knows how to position the camera and do basically the storytelling in 3D. Basically, the blocking and the camera, blocking pretty much like, like in the live action says, you know, you put the characters in the room, you place the cameras, and then you move the cameras around to see which shot, which angle is the best for your story, is the same thing.
Ashley
Gotcha. Now, you had mentioned going back and doing some rewrites, even as you were sort of creating this animatic maybe you can give us some example, like how much of the story at that point gets rewritten? Is it just some dialogue, some tweaking of scenes? Or do you have like, can you get pretty far through this process, and then have to do some major story, rewriting some, like real rewriting on the actual story of stuff?
Julio Gurpide
I mean, in big productions like Disney, or DreamWorks or similar, you, they get to do a lot of that, like, for example, a movie like Zootopia, I mean, they, they rewrote, like, 80% of the movie. We don’t have that kind of luxury. We are an independent production company. So, I would say that maybe 15% which is still a big chunk of it. Well, how do you know I mean, what do you change? I would say, like, something like the humor, you know, sometimes when you read the script, you find it funny, you find it hilarious, but once you see it acted, maybe isn’t that funny. Humor is a very tricky thing, you know, is very difficult, like you could think is very funny on the written page, but then once you see it played, it may not work so you have to rewrite that and make it funny or completely change the joke and do something else. Or maybe the action scenes are not that interesting anymore. You know the way you envision them is not that funny. are interesting. So those are the things that you’re selling.
Ashley
Yeah. As a writer, as a screenwriter, are there some differences? Just quickly to our audience, between what writing for live action versus writing for animation, what do you see as some of the differences there?
Julio Gurpide
Well, I think animation gives you the possibility to invent new universes, like any anything you can think of basically, like World set in the 1930s, with spiders as the like, the sort of like the cops of the insect world, you know, and those, I would say, those idiosyncrasies of an insect world is something that obviously is not the same as if you write, you know, just a crime story for humans. I mean, it’s very difficult. Obviously, you also have to pay a lot of attention to humor, which is basic in animation, you have to you want the story to be very always energetic, always, you know, you can have any, any downs, because people are young kids, you’re going to lose the…they’re going to get bored. So, so I mean, I’ve never written a live action family film. So, I have no idea. I guess it’s the same. But you have to keep the kids entertained. And that’s very difficult.
Ashley
Yeah, that’s sound advice. I have two young kids and I can definitely attest to that. How can people see Inspector Son? What’s the release schedule going to be like for it?
Julio Gurpide
It’s going to be out on October 27th. You’re basically going to have it in, in all major cities, I think 1500 screens, if I’m not wrong, AMC, theaters. So yeah, go and say it because you know, the bigger is better, in this case, so.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. And what’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, any they’re comfortable sharing, I will round up for the show notes so people can follow along with your career.
Julio Gurpide
We’re not big on social networks. Maybe we should but we have a website. Yeah, we are the website is there, www.thethinklab.com. We basically respond to email.
Ashley
Julio. Perfect. I really appreciate coming on the show today. Good luck with this film and good luck with all your future films as well.
Julio Gurpide
All right, thanks so much.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
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On the next episode of the podcast, I have on screenwriter Dennis Paoli. He’s written some classic horror films like Reanimator from the 80s. And he just did a new film called Suitable Flesh starring Heather Graham. This is a story that’s based on an HG Lovecraft short story, which he’s done quite a bit of in his career including reanimator. So, we dig into this adaptation, how we did the adaptation of this classic story and sort of how he approached this screenplay. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.