Miguel Jirón
Head of Story, SONY PICTURES ANIMATION
Miguel Jirón is an award-winning director at Sony Pictures Animation. At the studio, he recently worked as Head of Story on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — the sequel to the Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, on which he was a story artist.
He’s also a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he graduated from the Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts in 2013. Miguel’s films have screened at festivals around the world — including SXSW, TIFF, Ottawa International Animation Film Festival — and have been featured by NPR and Vimeo Staff Pick.
What compelled you to pursue a career in animation?
I always loved animation. As a kid, everyone I knew knew that I wanted to work for Disney. But as I went through college — during my “rebellious period” — I didn’t want to work for Disney anymore. I got more into movies and fine art. I started looking for artist positions in New York after graduation and was so excited about the open frontier nature of contemporary art.
At that time, the medium of drawing was being reconsidered as a major medium as opposed to a minor medium. I started to see animation in a completely new light. It was a medium with boundless potential. It’s made up of so many summations of different artist disciplines — music, visuals, movement — and I feel like I’m still always trying to push what it can be.
As an MFA student at USC, you directed several short films - all of which would go on to major film festivals. Each one is distinct in its story, style, and tone. Why do you think your portfolio is so diverse?
The artists that I admired have always placed an emphasis on reinventing themselves and changing what they’re doing from project to project. By the time I’m done with a film, I’m so sick of it that I want to do the complete opposite for my next one. That’s probably why the films I made during my time at USC are so different from each other.
As Head of Story at Sony, how do you manage artists with different styles, personalities, and ideas?
I think the most important thing — as crazy as we knew the visuals were going to be in Spider-Verse and how high the bar was set — is that none of it really matters unless you care about the emotions, story, and characters. It was our mantra coming from the first movie that everything doesn’t mean much, and no one is going to care what they’re seeing on the screen, unless you’re feeling it from Miles’ point of view and you’re understanding what’s this all feeling like for that character. That’s always been the crew’s shining light on how to contain the madness - finding what the path is in any given scene is just asking ourselves, “Well, what would Miles be feeling here? What does this mean to Miles? How does this factor into his story?” That’s the key guiding light.
How does your culture play a role in the stories you tell?
When I was lucky enough to be part of the first Spider-Verse movie, one of the big appeals to me was getting to be a part of the Miles Morales story. The Afro-Latino kid who I loved reading about growing up. There’s a lot in that character that I really respond to, so it was really important to me to show a kid that could straddle between all these cultural spheres while also taking on this incredible, ridiculously mental of being Spider-man at the same time. It was important to me to show Miles at home speaking Spanglish and note having it being something to make a big deal of, but rather depicting it as natural and fluid. That was really exciting for me and I was happy to see that come across in the final film. You don’t need subtitles - you get it. It’s a much more honest way of depicting this kid’s reality growing up in New York.
What advice do you have for aspiring story artists?
Storyboarding is really difficult because you are combining a lot of different disciplines into one umbrella: you're part animator, part writer, part director, part cinematographer. And so to get to that place where you're technically proficient in storyboarding is difficult, but it's not insurmountable.
I very strongly believe the best way to get good at storyboarding is by just doing it again and again. I think the other part of it is once you get to a place where your technical expertise is sound, what I'm looking for is your personal POV. When I’m crafting story rooms, it’s not so dissimilar from casting actors. I want to find the right voices that would make sense for the project.
What excites you most about the future of this industry?
Animation is going through a really exciting period where we're sort of busting open the idea of what animated movies generally look like. On top of that, animated movies like Spider-Verse are trying to position themselves as general audience movies. It's trying to break out of the idea that animation is just for kids. And so I feel like I have not seen that reflected in the industry stronger than I see it today. So I'm very excited to take on the momentum that those movies have started and build on it.