Animator and Filmmaker Collaborating on Animated TV Show After Connecting on Stage 32!

Having won awards for my artwork and writing in high school, I knew my career path was to be a storyteller in some capacity. However, that road was not linear and took many incarnations. This included being a journalism major in college, a professional opera singer (you read that right), owning a graphic design studio, teaching ancient history & religion seminars and finally working as a personal trainer. This last vocation was the turning point.

While training myself during a lunch break, I sustained an injury. At the time, I was enrolled at SVA in a course on storyboarding. Unable to complete the class, my instructor told me to convalesce and he would walk me into MTV as a board artist on Daria. I had come full circle.

Following Daria, I moved on to other studios like Curious Pictures (Barbie & Friends), Scholastic Media (Clifford Puppy Days) and 4Kids (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). I also started creating my own projects through pitch bibles and comic books. Every year, I’d fly out to Comic Con and network with other hopeful artists jammed into the San Diego Convention Center.

Oddly enough, this is where I took my first stab at feature writing. Utilizing material from my teaching workshops, I developed a science fiction, live action movie based on Atlantis. This was all pre-Disney. I initially had approached a toy manufacturer with designs for the characters. Needless to say, they were floored, but I had missed their pitching window, so regrettably that deal fell through.

After attending a writing class, I wrote a 150 page Atlantis screenplay called Icon and presented it to an executive at Paramount Pictures. I was naively confident. The project was a labor of love, a movie I would pay to see and, being a visual person, I wrote it from my gut. You should have seen his face. Here was this ingénue pitching a film with a sfx budget hovering around a hundred million dollars, but with no film resume, no credits, no financial backing and no star attachments. What do you think he said? Licking my wounds on the plane ride home, I decided that if I ever ventured down this road again, I would need help and, most of all, connections.

Post 9/11, the industry in NY began to implode, so I made the quantum leap with my wife to relocate to the pomp and pageantry of Hollywood. The first thing I learned was that the competition was a lot harder. I secured some freelancing gigs and worked for Warner Brothers. While on hiatus (which is just a fancy word for being unemployed), I came up with more ideas across many genres with diverse protagonists and expanded my storyboard portfolio.

However, when it came time to pitching to the “suits”, the animation field was changing. In the past, I could just call or email someone in development and secure a meeting. They were more receptive to outside talent. Now, everything was being done in house and the reason behind this, for the most part, was control and money. If an employee pitched an IP to their studio execs and it was greenlit, they were given a bump in salary and a title. However, the studio owned the property 100%. Gone were the days of intellectual property contracts.

As mentioned previously, the competition in LA was fierce and, let’s just say, I didn’t walk off a Cal Arts campus yesterday. Also, the types of shows and protagonists the studios were now looking for was shifting, so I had to find a better avenue to get my ideas out there.

This is the motivation that led me to Stage 32 where I was attracted to a community of other aspiring screenplay creators in an addition to being reviewed by seasoned feature and TV executives in the field. It was another way in through the door.

During the Introduce Yourself Weekend events, I would post a blog about myself, the projects I was working on with a short synopsis and an illustration. Like I said, I’m a board artist and a visual person. Whenever I write action sequences or dialogue, it’s what I see and hear in my mind’s eye. However, that might not be the best format for a professional reading my script. Remember Paramount? So, I needed guidance and collaboration. That’s where I found Rob Jones, a comic book artist and screenplay writer in NY, and James Welday, a director and screenplay writer in Long Beach, CA.

Rob and I are currently fleshing out the pilot to my adult, TV animated action-adventure comedy series called Catching Hell. Briefly, the female-driven storyline revolves around three badass, dysfunctional women who are sent to Hell and thrown together as Satan’s bounty hunters. Their mission? To capture escaped demons that are terrorizing our surface world. The tagline is: Bad Ass in Life...Bad Ass in Death. So far, Rob has been great by inspiring a lot of funny scenes, adding dialogue and minor characters to give the series more appeal. We’ve gone through three incarnations of the one-hour pilot, To Die & Live in DC, and I think we’ve turned the corner in the final phase.

Tackling a live action TV drama is not in my comfort zone, so teaming up with James has been beneficial. I‘ve always been fascinated by the Grail legend ever since my ancient history seminar days. Entitled The Gospel of Mary, the series profiles a young girl with special, divine gifts who befriends a band of renegade Templar Knights during the Black Plague. Think Game of Thrones meets The DaVinci Code. The series runs the gamut from the early days of Mary at the crucifixion to a forgotten scroll in a Turkish cave to its discovery by a knight whose child is destined to fulfill his search. What I like about working with James is that, historically and creatively, we’re on the same page. So far, we’ve banged out an awesome teaser, and I think we’re also rounding the corner in completing the pilot for the first of eight episodes.

My advice to creatives on Stage 32 is tenacity, hard work and a lot of networking. I’ll repeat that...a lot of networking. Believe me, it’s not easy. Having doors figuratively slammed in your face or being undercut by apathetic silence can be soul crushing. But, as Rocky Balboa said, "it’s not how hard Life hits you that matters, but how you get up off the canvas and keep going".

Equally important is having a support system. This can be your spouse, significant other, family members and/or a group of close friends. I know artists who talk to their pets. You’ll meet a lot of people in this field, however bear in mind to know the difference between friends and acquaintances.

As for me, I could not have persevered this far without the love from my wife, Denise. Of late, I am dealing with a lot of challenges on many levels, so her faith in me is like a rock holding fast against a storm. And I must give a shout out to our beautiful Border collie, Bonnie, who makes me smile everyday.

In closing, being a storyteller is like breathing. I could not function in a world without doing something creative. Looking back over my life thus far, I feel like a kid on a merry-go-round horse, ready to grab a brass ring...that’s always just out of reach. But, I’m not giving up. I have too many great stories to tell.

Good luck and God bless.

About Frank Detrano

Originally from the east coast, I'm a professional storyboard artist and TV animation writer with extensive experience working for major studios in the LA area. My singular passion is creating and producing IPs for a wide range of genres and target audiences, from adult comedies to kids action adventures for FX, HBO, Comedy Central, Nick & Disney. I'm currently seeking to bring my concepts to the next level and would appreciate collaborating with established writers, showrunners and producers in the TV animation field.