Winning a hundred thousand dollars on television at twenty did not make him rich. It made him unbothered in an audition room, and he thinks that is the reason the commercials started landing almost immediately.

Mark DeCarlo is an actor, comedian and television host, best known as the voice of Hugh Neutron in Jimmy Neutron, with credits including Duckman, Seinfeld, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Travel Channel series that took him to five hundred cities.

Mark opens up about sneaking into Second City in Chicago at fourteen because a friend's older siblings were on the main stage, watching people walk on with nothing and turn a suggestion into seven funny minutes, and realising that was a job you could be paid for. He talks about why improv appealed to him more than stand-up, why he thinks the basic rules of improvisation are also the basic rules of being present in a conversation, and how a fraternity and a comedy education overlapped more than you would think. He gets candid about winning over a hundred thousand dollars on a game show at twenty, what that money actually bought him (not things, but the ability to walk into an audition without smelling desperate), and what he suspects his life would look like without it. Mark reflects on what voicing a father for years taught him about fatherhood when he is not a father himself, and gets into the live animated character he now performs in real time, an hour a day, interviewing people as a cartoon bear.

What comes up:

- Sneaking into a comedy club at fourteen and finding a career

- Why improv beat stand-up for him, and what it has in common with life

- The game show money, and the desperation it removed

- Playing the genius's father as the least intelligent person in the house

- Performing a fully animated character live, on air, in real time

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Ask him what he would have done if The Incredibles had been a hand drawn film made in Brad Bird's garage, and the answer is immediate: he would have gone there instead. This is a conversation about following people rather than jobs.

Lou Romano is a production designer, art director, illustrator and voice actor who worked on The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Monsters Inc and Luca, and voiced Bernie in The Incredibles and Linguini in Ratatouille.

Lou opens up about a Neapolitan father and a Sicilian mother, losing his biological mother young, and finding that art and movies were what carried him through it. He talks about being told by a doctor that he was socially awkward, being sent to San Diego Junior Theater at eight, and choosing animation over a theatre arts major after a friend showed him CalArts. He gets candid about Brad Bird giving him his first real break, the month Brad made him work only in black and white while they studied noir cinematography, and what that did to his colour. Lou walks through the mid-century architecture research behind The Incredibles, a Berkeley Hills house designed around where the light lands, and why using texture as a storytelling tool was the thing that genuinely surprised him about CG. He also speaks openly about a bipolar diagnosis at forty seven, four years in a sober house, the eighteen months it took to feel like himself again, and the short film he made about it while working a minimum wage job in a meat department.

What comes up:

- A month of black and white that fixed how he handles colour

- The architect who walked them through a house he built around the light

- Texture as a storytelling tool, and what it does that flat colour cannot

- Recommending someone else for the part he ended up voicing

- A diagnosis at forty seven, and the film he made on the other side of it

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An eight million dollar animated film funded by one man who invented a vodka, made partly in the Philippines, and the ownership conversation at the end that decided whether its creators would come back for the sequel.

Cory Edwards is a writer and director who created, wrote and directed Hoodwinked, and who has worked across animation and live action for more than two decades.

Cory opens up about shooting on Super 8 as a teenager, laying kids across the hood of a moving car, and the years of music videos in Tulsa where he learned a crew, a truck and a camera without being locked to a narrative. He talks about the independent feature that got them to Sundance in 1999 and their first agent, and about the eccentric inventor and Skyy Vodka creator who funded their animated film alone. He gets candid about a budget that started around five hundred thousand and ended near eight million, the trips to San Francisco to explain each increase, and the ownership conversation at the end that is the reason he and his brother did not direct the sequel. He explains why the humour worked, why a Ken Burns joke made it into a children's film, and why he thinks the films that land now are the ones allowed to get weird. Cory also talks openly about a much later offer, a very large animated feature at a major studio, what was in the source material that stopped him, and how saying no changed the way that studio treated him afterwards.

What comes up:

- Making a feature on vodka money, in the Philippines

- A budget that grew sixteen times over, one meeting at a time

- The ownership deal that cost them the sequel

- Being weird on purpose because nobody was giving notes

- Turning down a very large job, and the meetings it created

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A conversation that gets past the credits and into the actual mechanics, right down to the moment he goes and finds the twelve year old audition email and reads the character description aloud.

Harrison Houde is an actor, producer and director from Vancouver Island, known for Some Assembly Required, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the TVO science series Finding Stuff Out, and now working out of Los Angeles.

Harrison opens up about a twenty dollar camera, an animated intro made by someone in Norway, and the plain reason he ended up in front of the lens, which was that he had just moved towns and had nobody else to film. He talks about two years of Sundays spent travelling three hours each way for six classes a day, and about auditioning for every single role in a film he had been reading the books of. He gets candid about the science show that flipped his grades, and about one segment involving weather, a wicker basket and a question he only thought to ask once he was already in the air. Harrison walks through the difference he sees between Vancouver and Los Angeles, including the pressure that comes from a city where everybody is chasing the same thing and some of them are exaggerating. He also reflects on the part of producing he genuinely dislikes, on a month spent in Japan on a call he did not expect, and on the pile of scripts currently sitting with companies he cannot name.

What comes up:

- Two years of Sundays, six hours of travel each time

- The science show that changed which subject he was good at

- The question he forgot to ask before leaving the ground

- Reading out an audition breakdown from 2013, live

- Why Vancouver talent and Los Angeles money do not sit in the same place

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There are master recordings sitting in a closet that will probably never come out, made by a jazz guitarist who never had a platform. His son has one, and thinks a lot about what to do with it.

Derek Minor is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, entrepreneur and screenwriter whose roots run through a musical family in the South.

Derek opens up about legacy over money, about what he wants people to say when it is over, and about why he refuses to separate what he makes from how he makes it. He talks about a father who was a jazz guitarist with a hit single of his own, whose master recordings still sit in a closet because there was no platform and no budget for a Black musician from the hood to put them out. He gets candid about the mixtape days with old heads, the producer who taught him about creating moments in a song, and the friend who kept pushing him to rap and sing and produce until he was self-sufficient. He speaks openly about grief, about how a season of loss taught him to be greedy with the people he still has, and about what he thinks the Bible actually asks of a person about loving other people. Derek explains what he loves about jazz specifically, that music is movement and jazz creates more kinds of it than anything else, and why a genre that most of his friends have no time for is where he keeps going back.

What comes up:

- Master tapes in a closet, and the platform that never existed

- Learning to create a moment inside a song

- What grief taught him about the people still here

- Music as movement, and why jazz makes the most of it

- Discipline as the thing that separates a career from a moment

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The videos people still quote were shot on Thanksgiving weekends in whichever city the group could get to, and the conversation goes into the craft underneath the chaos rather than the chaos itself.

Lake Markham is a photographer, musician, and writer who played Dade in the Filthy Frank series and went on to create and star in his own web series, Bald Internet Man.

Lake opens up about middle school in the mid 2000s, when YouTube was new enough that you could watch something and think you could do that, and about frame by frame animating a lightsaber into a fight with his neighbour. He talks about the difference between showing up to perform in somebody else's series and having to drive the whole machine himself, which he calls a very steep learning curve. He gets candid about the shift in his own performances between the two characters, why he was readier to be outrageous at the younger end of it, and how much a cowboy hat and a Venom jacket change what you are willing to do. Lake walks through where Bald Internet Man actually came from, a group of friends in Nashville working coffee shop and bar jobs, watching the city get torn down and replaced, and turning all of that into characters. He also reflects on the artist who designed the cartoon faces for the merch, and on the graphic novel version that never quite made financial sense.

What comes up:

- Animating a lightsaber frame by frame as a kid

- What changes when you have to run the whole production

- The difference between the two characters he is known for

- Where the characters in Bald Internet Man actually came from

- The heist movie he would make with an unlimited budget

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A Disney director explains that his biggest creative problem was never drawing or story structure. It was fear, and the fix turned out to be refusing to plan anything before he started.

Stephen Anderson is a director, storyboard artist and voice actor at Walt Disney Animation Studios, known for directing Meet the Robinsons and Winnie the Pooh, voicing the Bowler Hat Guy, and work on Frozen, The Emperor's New Groove and Monsters at Work.

Stephen opens up about growing up on everything Disney, records and Sunday nights, and about a magazine article on a place in California that felt like it had been sent from above. He talks about his real creative obstacle, which is not craft but fear, and how he stopped thumbnailing every panel and started drawing straight into a sequence to find out what it is. He gets candid about the film that sits above the others for him, the personal connection to the material nobody at the studio knew about, and the eight months of writing and boarding and rewriting each other's work that got them to the first screening. Stephen explains how he actually directs voice actors, treating a session like shooting coverage rather than hunting for one correct read, and why he prefers to be in the room even when it means ruining a take by laughing. He also breaks down texture and stereo depth as storytelling tools, brick and wallpaper against glass and smooth stucco, and why he found moving from features to television refreshing rather than a step down.

What comes up:

- Throwing out the script and boarding to find the film

- The connection to the material nobody at the studio knew about

- Directing voice sessions like coverage rather than correctness

- Brick and wallpaper against glass and stucco, doing story work

- Why he says the answer for anyone entering animation is one word

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A stylist whose work has been printed millions of times explains that he never once set out to be the best at anything, only to do a good job that day, and that the label came from other people long after the fact.

Christiaan Houtenbos is one of the most published hair stylists in the world, a Dutch barber's son whose work has run in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar more times than anyone has counted, and whose cuts have moved from the runway into ordinary life.

Christiaan opens up about what it actually feels like to carry a label like best in the world, and where that thought tends to arrive (a grocery aisle, mostly). He talks about arriving in New York barely speaking English, being tested by editor after editor, and being handed a creative director title within months on seventy dollars a week take home. He gets candid about the day he lost the job, standing on the sidewalk newly married with nothing lined up, and how the relationships he had built quietly carried him into freelance work. Christiaan explains the image of two horses running that changed how he cuts hair, the moment a cut he did in the middle of the night went everywhere, and the one he did in Milan that Condé Nast tried to bury before it became the defining look. He also gets into why he prefers to be quiet while he works, and why he thinks touch, not conversation, is the real language of the job.

What comes up:

- Getting into the New York salons on a case of mistaken identity

- Seventy dollars a week, and a creative director title inside four months

- The two horses image behind his whole approach to cutting

- A cut the magazines refused to print, and what happened two years later

- Touch and feel, and why he says no other profession has it

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Her parents took her to an audition partly so she would learn what rejection feels like. She booked it on the first try, which is not the lesson anybody had planned.

Ruby Barnhill is an English actor who played Sophie in Steven Spielberg's The BFG, appeared in the CBBC series 4 O'Clock Club, and voiced the English dubs of Mary and the Witch's Flower and Princess Emmy.

Ruby opens up about growing up watching her father act in the theatre, inheriting a spark from him, and asking her mother at seven if she could join the local drama group because she had a strong imagination and liked the idea of pretending to be somebody else. She talks about five auditions over several months, the whole family relocating to Canada for four months, and what a right place and right time really means in this business. She gets candid about balancing school and a huge job at ten and eleven, and about the one piece of advice she keeps returning to: family time, outside, away from the pages, with her little sister. She describes what it was actually like to be directed by one of the most famous filmmakers alive, the patience, the low pressure, the room to let her imagination run. Ruby also talks honestly about the character being close enough to herself that she was not doing much stretching, the challenge of matching English lines to Japanese mouth movements, and why she stepped back from acting to work in animation production instead.

What comes up:

- An audition meant to teach her about rejection

- Moving a whole family across the world for one film

- What that director is actually like with a ten year old

- Dubbing English over Japanese mouth movements

- Leaving the front of the camera for the production side

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Two writers had an idea nobody wanted, kept plugging away at it for years, and by the time it actually sold their own agents had stopped telling them about the offers so they would not get their hearts broken again.

Brent Simons is a screenwriter who created and wrote Megamind with Alan Schoolcraft, wrote Penguins of Madagascar, and is now working on the Megamind television series.

Brent opens up about a childhood built on Star Wars, Raiders and Aliens, and the screenplay that first made him want to write rather than draw. He talks about spending a full day as a background extra watching Randy Savage body slam a stunt double over and over, and why he and his friends just wanted to be in the room for it. He gets candid about a version of the film written for a live-action broad comedy, the draft that circulates online, and how the fans reacting to it have no idea what they are actually reading. Brent breaks down the years of near misses, the directors who came and went, and the one who went back to their original draft and made it stronger. He also talks honestly about dyslexia, feeling like an outsider at school, and how a weakness pointed him at the thing he was actually good at, plus what it is like to write characters somebody else created, and why most of what a screenwriter writes never gets built.

What comes up:

- Being told the genre does not work, and writing it anyway

- The R-rated live-action draft floating around the internet

- The director who went back to the original script

- Dyslexia, and the weakness that showed him his strength

- Roughly one script in seven, and what happens to the rest

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