Meet William Gadea, Idea Rocket and Creative Ya-Yas
🎭 Pro Spotlight: Why William Gadea always begins with story, no matter what.
This past year, I had the great privilege of producing a narrative feature titled Alien Intervention, written by Adam Seidel and directed by Janet Grillo. My producing partner, David Youse, and I were warned repeatedly that if we wanted to produce a movie with a budget under one million dollars, we should avoid kids, animals, remote locations and sci-fi because of the special effects. We had all of those things, plus Covid, and I’m proud to say we came in on budget.
William Gadea and his animation company, IdeaRocket, helped us make that financial boast possible. Neither David nor I had ever dealt with special effects. It was also new for our director. Will not only educated us all in the most generous and patient manner possible, he also made sure our film’s special effects rocked.
I interviewed Will for this article to give you a better sense of how he and his company work, and why I’ll be eternally grateful to him for being on the Alien Intervention team.
Julie: Will, you’ve lived all over the world and have a background in playwriting. How did you end up at IdeaRocket?
Will: I never fell out of love with the theater, but I did fall out of love with having two jobs: one to maintain myself, and one to get my creative ya-yas out. So I had this job in graphics and this too-expensive film school education, and I asked myself, how can I combine and take advantage of those two things? The answer was animation.
I took some night courses in a software called After Effects, worked up a portfolio, and pretty soon I landed a job at MTV Animation and started a career in Children’s Television. Then YouTube and online video came around, and I looked at the videos that businesses were making, and I thought: I can do better than that! So I started pulling together a team, and learning about marketing and sales, and here we are. Over the last 10 years we’ve worked with more than 30 Fortune 500 companies, and a bunch of new start-ups. I am earning my keep and getting my creative ya-yas out, which was my original intention!
Julie: ”Creative ya-yas” — stealing that phrase for sure. There’s a super cool, animated version of how you founded IdeaRocket that readers can watch by clicking here. Now, Will, creating the special effects for Alien Intervention was such a fascinating and involved process. Can you briefly describe what it takes for you and your team to go from the idea stage to a fully realized product?
Will: It always begins with story, no matter what. Adam Seidel’s script was sensitive and captivating, and we wanted to be true to it.
Janet Grillo had the vision of creating a sort of subjective reality for the Ritual scene, which is the main special effects centerpiece. So we experimented with a couple of looks, and eventually one clicked with the creative team. I was lucky to be able to work with Jeronimo Adrien and Jorge Iriarte, two really versatile talents that executed most of the special effects for the film.
Julie: Jeronimo, Adrien and your entire team are rock stars. We loved working with them and appreciated that they had a sense of humor throughout. But just to be nosy, do all of your projects have the same type of development as Alien Intervention? For example, after we all understood what story we were telling in a strictly visual language and then landed on the look, your team created storyboards, then animatics—which was sort of a rough draft of the animation—and then the final animation. And each step takes considerable time and skill. Is that normal?
Will: Oddly, yes. You would think that a special effects movie would be different than a TV commercial would be different than an explainer video, but they all have similar steps. We answer these questions one at a time: What is the story? What is the look? How do we tell it? (Storyboards, or storyboard animatics.) How is it designed? (Design or layout animatic.) And then we animate it, add sound and music (well, your excellent post team did that for us on Alien Intervention) and, voila, you have a finished product.
Julie: Yes, Lillie McDonough composed such a gorgeous score for us. Now it’s clear that Alien Intervention was your best client ever. But please tell us about another project that is high on your list of favorites. Why does it get to share our spotlight?
Will: Ha, ha. Well, after Alien Intervention everything is a step down, but last year we created a PSA for Georgia 811. It’s a non-profit that you notify when you plan to dig on your property. They let all the utilities know, and the utilities let you know where the pipes and cables are, so you can take care not to puncture them with your digging.
We pitched them a story that we thought would be fun and convey the necessary information. A pair of groundhog characters share an underground home; they are sort of like a rodent odd couple. One sees a human digging in the wrong place and is trying to roust his friend out of their home before the disaster happens. His friend is a bit pedantic and more prone to lecturing on why they should have contacted Georgia 811 rather than make the exit in an emergency situation.
It was a classic cartoon situation, and we don’t often get the opportunity to work in those. We were lucky enough to work with one of my favorite designers, Juan Barabani.
Julie: And now the inevitable follow-up. Which clients or projects made your life a living hell? Why? You can answer this hypothetically if you want, but I’d love to know what makes you cringe when it comes to your work.
Will: I do remember an agency client that gave us the “you’ll never work in this town again” speech when they were alarmed that we might not meet a deadline. We did.
Julie: That was a lot less dishy than I hoped for, but let’s move on. Is ChatGPT freaking you out or lighting your fire? Are any of the rapid fire advances in AI affecting your business now or do you hope/fear they will in the future?
Will: There’s no doubt it will affect us in the business. What I tell the staff is that we need to embrace it and learn how to work so that AI makes us better, and we make AI better. The hybrid will almost certainly be better than one or the other. Burying our heads in the sand and freaking out is not going to help.
Julie: I truly cannot imagine you ever freaking out about anything. You are such a Zen guy. So, Mr. Chill, what’s inspiring you these days?
Will: I’m an old movie buff so I’m constantly seeing movies for the n-th time. One recent re-see that was even better than I remembered it was Night of the Hunter. It’s the only film directed by Charles Laughton, and you have to ask yourself: why didn’t the world not just ask, but demand that he direct ten more? It’s exquisite.
Julie: That’s quite a rave. I’m adding that film to my must-see list. While I do that, tell us—in one sentence—what advice would you give to people just starting out in the entertainment industry?
Will: One thing I notice that puts people ahead in animation as well as theater is a wealth of personal work. You’re not going to become highly skilled in anything creative unless you have a burning desire to express yourself. When I see that somebody has done a ton of stuff – not for school or a job but because they just can’t help themselves – they are usually already pretty good. But even if they’re not, you just know they will get there because they have the gas in their tank to get better. Oops, sorry, that’s not one sentence, is it?
Julie: No, it’s not, but we’ll let it slide. While I’ve got you feeling gabby, anything else on your mind that you’d like to share?
Will: When people are young and making important life decisions, I tell them to listen to ALL of themselves. The idealistic parts, the risk-averse parts, the family-minded parts, the fame-and-glory-seeking parts… everything. These are all parts of them, so if they ignore one part because it is not supposed to be “legitimate” for some reason then they are not really being true to themselves.
Julie: That seems like sound advice for people at any age! Thanks so much, Will, for taking the time for me and Showbizing. And let’s do another movie project together again soon. It’s such fun getting creative ya-yas out with you and the gang at IdeaRocket.
