‘Encanto’ filmmakers talk representation at screening

An enthusiastic crowd bustled into the Norris Cinema Theatre Friday night for an exclusive screening of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ latest film, “Encanto.” A Q&A session followed with director and writer Jared Bush, producer Yvett Merino, production office manager and USC alumnus Babatunde Akinloye and the Walt Disney Animation Studios President Clark Spencer.

After the film’s conclusion, Lau Rodriguez, a junior majoring in film and television production, asked the audience who already viewed the film and nearly everyone’s hand went up as the crowd exploded in cheers and applause. 

During the Q&A, panelists discussed their inspiration, the storyline, character development, songwriting process, team dynamics and research conducted for the film. 

Bush kicked off the conversation, speaking about the initial spark that launched the film’s writing and production.  

“We started a little over five years ago, and it really starts with a nugget of an idea. What do you want to say? What matters to you? What story are you compelled to tell?” Bush said. “Your job as a writer and director is to shepherd that idea through all those years and bring on as many brilliant people as possible to help you find something to bring their own ideas to the mix.”

Initially, the team was not sure which Latin American country they wanted to focus on, but after talking with friends and fellow filmmakers Natalia Osma and Juan Rendon, they settled on Colombia. Following this decision, they researched extensively, traveling to Colombia for two weeks to jumpstart the process. 

The team created much of the film from home during the pandemic, and the speakers shared their thoughts on the unique experience of working on an animated movie remotely. 

“We literally made every single frame you saw on the screen, from home, from 800 separate homes,” Spencer said. “To see all of these artists and all these technicians come together and put their passion and their heart and their soul in the middle of a pandemic to create this film because they believed in it so deeply, and then to see what ultimately got created and see it on a big screen … that was really a phenomenal part and something that definitely separates it from anything else I’ve worked on.” 

Akinloye, a 2018 graduate of USC Master of Fine Arts program in film and television production, specifically touched on the attention to detail when representing AfroLatinx characters in the film.

“The filmmakers met with all the Black employees at Disney Animation, and we were able to shed some light on things like hair texture, skin tones [and] how the fingernail bed of your fingernails differs [from] the complexion on your hand,” Akinloye said. “It was just really deep, and a lot of attention to detail that Black employees were able to speak on.” 

In addition to empowering Black employees at Disney, “Encanto” also opened doors for Latinx employees to take center stage, Merino said.

“In the end, we called it familia, and it really truly was a familia because [Latino employees within the studio] read every script, they saw every screening,” Merino said. “Our familia group was a very important group as part of this process of making this film because really, we got together and shared stories of our experiences growing up — what it meant to grow up in a family where your parents were first generation or second generation.”

Another group that significantly contributed to the film was the Colombian Cultural Trust, which helped the filmmakers understand various aspects of Colombian life and culture.

“We had architects and botanists, and it wasn’t a group that we went to and showed the movie and said, ‘Is this okay?’ This was something that, as the artists were designing, they would meet with the architects and have like two or three hour-long conversations about, ‘What is the architecture in Colombia?’ ‘How were the houses made back then?’ and really get into it, because we have an amazing studio full of artists, and they want to create as much as any artist does, and so they talk to these experts and get inspired by their craft or what they know, and it grows from there,” Merino said. 

The speakers went on to discuss the astounding success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the difficulty of working with 12 main animated characters, the family’s home as the film’s primary setting and their favorite characters. 

Rodriguez then opened up the Q&A to the attendees, where audience members inquired about the plot arc of the film, future Disney Animation projects and the technicalities of producing animated features. Some, like Isa Mendez Johnson, a sophomore majoring in journalism, also shared their personal relationship to the characters from “Encanto.” 

“This was the first time I saw someone have my name on screen,” Mendez Johnson said. “I’ve never been able to experience that … I never had a character, and I was finally able to have that, and it made me feel represented, and I really, really appreciate that.”