Key contenders in this season’s animated film Oscar race shared their insights on creating emotionally authentic films. Diversity Animation Panel – Pixels and Pencils at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival is moderated by senior awards editor Clayton Davis.

“I would say that your fears are not your limitations. They are your opportunities. “When you look at the things that really scare you, those are the things you have to turn to and try and figure out, because that’s where the good stuff lies,” said Morgan Neville, writer, director and producer of Pharrell Williams’ Lego animation. The movie “Piece by Piece”.

Neville was honored along with “Flow” director Gints Zilbalodis; Oscar winner Josh Cooley, who directed “Transformers One”; Chris Sanders, three-time Academy Award nominee and writer and director of “Wild Robot”; Kelsey Mann, writer and director of “Inside Out 2”; and Adam Elliot, writer, director and producer of “Memoirs of a Snail.”

When asked what advice he would give to a student currently working on his first animated film, Zilbalodis said, “Don’t try to be like everyone else, try to tell your own story in your own way.” He added: “If we spend our lives making these movies, we should do it because we really care about it. It’s not just a job, so try to find something that you feel really passionate about and that is very close to you and it will become more than just a job.

All filmmakers on stage agreed that for an idea to be successfully communicated to the audience, that idea had to be reinforced through a certain emotion. “You need something to anchor you when you’re asked a million questions a day, and for me that’s always the most emotional part of the story you’re trying to tell,” Cooley noted.

Another common consensus was the importance of team collaboration to translate a single person’s vision into a film. Because animation requires so many different departments, it is difficult to master the skills and techniques each team has on their own. Thereupon, Sanders shared an anecdote about directing ‘Lilo and Stitch’, in which he and Dean Depluwa had the opportunity to direct for the first time. “We panicked for a moment because we thought I didn’t understand every discipline. From now on I will be responsible for order and such things. I learned animation but I couldn’t really do it that well and I understood but it’s still not enough to stand over someone and tell them how to do it. The solution, he said, was to talk to everyone “as if they were an actor.”

Mann had a similar experience when dealing with character designs for the “Inside Out” emotes. He explained how he initially came very prepared with a specific vision for the characters, but then someone on the team said it would be best if he communicated what emotions he wanted to portray in each scene and the animators worked from there. He added: “Then you get all these amazing ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of. Probably the biggest thing I learned in the movie is to trust your team.”

The panelists also discussed the role of the director and how much control he has. “I think in stop motion there’s this assumption that every day the director comes in last, other people come in and set up all the scenes, set up the puppets, and then I come in. But in my studio, I’m the first one in at 6 a.m. and the last one out at 7 p.m.,” Elliot said.

Coming from a fusion of two genres, Neville shared his surprise at the added control a feature film director has over a documentary filmmaker: “I was really interested in the friction between the real world and the documentary. The grammar of the documentary and then placing it in a world where you can control everything.”

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