Avenger of the Week | Jessica Heidt, Script Supervisor at Pixar

Cars character Sally Carrera

Jessica Heidt, a script supervisor at animation giant Pixar, was reviewing the script for Cars 3 when she noticed a gender imbalance between the number of lines spoken by male and female characters, so she decided to count them. At first she simply added a note about the lines by gender on script pages as she reviewed each version, but eventually she put it on a spreadsheet and sent it to the team. The original script for Cars 3 had a 90% male to 10% female split for both characters and lines spoken by those characters. In making the writers and the director aware, even in the midst of production, she was able to make her point, and they all worked together to change the gender of three characters, resulting in a final script that was 75% male and 25% female.

Next, Heidt went to Josh Minor in the technology department, and they worked to develop a program that counts characters and lines by gender, and that program has now been incorporated into all Pixar software.

Heidt, now an associate production manager at the company, received the Pixar Unsung Hero Award for her efforts. She told the Teller Report that the gender tally has gone from an average of 75% male and 25% female to an average of 60-65% male and 35-40% female in Pixar productions. The latest Pixar animated film, Soul, has “almost a 50-50 split,” she said. She also said Pixar will be representing “all genders”, leading to speculation that a future Pixar film will include a non-binary character.

GenderAvenger loves counting and those who do the counting. We salute Jessica Heidt for proving once again that counting can create not only awareness but also practical, real world change.

Go, Jessica!

Jessica Heidt is @GenderAvenger’s #AvengerOfTheWeek! She won @Pixar’s Unsung Hero Award for building better gender balance into their system of making movies, making real change that sticks. Go, Jessica! #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-jessica-heidt-pixar