Tell us a little about yourself and your career.
Howdy! I’m Brandon Jarratt, General Technical Director and TAG Executive Board member currently based in Burbank, California. I’ve worked as a TD at Walt Disney Animation Studios for nearly 12 years.
After getting my bachelor’s in Computer Science and master’s in Visualization Sciences, both from Texas A&M University, I started at WDAS in early 2013 as an Assistant Technical Director on Big Hero 6. I have worked in some capacity on every WDAS feature film since then, developing tools for and supporting various production departments. The last several years I have been part of the “tools and workflow” group at the studio, which is dedicated to longer-term development and integration initiatives across productions. I stepped into my first Technical Supervisor role on our Disney+ episodic series Baymax!, which was a full-circle moment and personal highlight because the world and characters of Big Hero 6 are special to me.
What challenges have you faced in navigating a career in animation?
I am incredibly fortunate to have joined WDAS near the beginning of a creatively and commercially successful period of its history. However, the first few years of my career as a “short-term hire” with a looming end date were stressful. I have lots of empathy for my Union kin that deal with that as a regular part of the gig. Even after I finally reached the security of becoming a long-term staff hire, our studio had its fair share of crunched projects, canceled projects, slate shifts, layoffs, box-office highs and lows, not to mention the pandemic that sent us all working remotely overnight. Most recently we’ve had to navigate the uncertainty of the studio’s expansion to a Vancouver location and band together as TAG members to support newly unionized co-workers and restore our 40-hour work week.
Who are your inspirations in the field of animation?
Like a lot of kids who grew up in the early ’90s, I wore out multiple VHS copies of several Disney movies from rewatching them over and over again. But honestly, ReBoot and VeggieTales were as much an inspiration to me as the Disney classics. Those shows (and later Toy Story, which did it at awe-inspiring scale) opened my eyes to the way technology and art could complement each other, and that computers could be just as much a tool for storytelling as pencil and paper.
I never really studied animation formally, so these days I try to read about and watch as much of it as I can—everything from Fleischer classics and UPA to Czech puppets and anime. The more I learn about animation history, the more I can see a common thread of grappling with technology’s limits to solve problems and tell stories.
What do you hope to accomplish as an artist in the animation industry?
I’d like to believe that the work we do as TDs helps free up artists from worrying about technical details and just lets them focus on their art. That’s the goal, at least, even though developing and integrating new tools can sometimes be destabilizing. But beyond automating common tasks, moving data around, fixing broken shots, or making workflows more efficient, I hope the work I do helps expand the possiblities of what we can actually put on the screen, in service of telling a great story.
What does being in the Union mean to you?
It means linking arms with my co-workers and telling the largest entertainment conglomerate the world has ever known: “No, this is how it’s gonna be.” It means finding common cause and connection with craftspeople I’ve never met. It means building something together for all animation workers that will far outlast any work I do in my career. When I first joined the E-board in 2018, the dream of little IATSE Local 839 gaining national status and contract coverage across the country was a long way off. Now that dream is becoming real and we represent workers from California to Puerto Rico. Anything is possible when we show up for each other, and I hope all TAG members believe in the power we hold.
Find out more about Brandon at his website.
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