There is so much content on Disney+ that it’s easy to overlook some gems, and I’m glad to have uncovered one of them - Inside Pixar. The documentary series is twenty short episodes that delve into different aspects of making Pixar movies. Lots of behind the scenes insight into various roles, from artists to writers, but also less creative roles such as the admin assistant, the facilities manager, and even a pastry chef.

The one episode that has jumped out to me as outstanding, however, is with Jessica Heidt who is a script supervisor and seems to have single-handedly revolutionised the way the studio thinks about scripts in terms of gender balance. We all know equality on screen is superbly important, but it can be hard to make that change and Jessica’s first step was highlighting the issue and making it visible to those that have the power to make a difference.

As script supervisor, she started logging how many characters of each gender there are, and then how many lines are actually spoken by them, and found some startling results. Highlighting this to the powers-that-be made the issue known and actually forced the issue to become part of the script evolution process. Thinking about if any characters can be changed to be more representative and diverse becomes part of the every day.

I just watched the early 2000s film Behind Enemy Lines and noted it was almost an hour before a woman even appeared on screen, let alone had anything to say. And thinking about it from this script point of view, you could see where easily a couple of roles could have been cast differently to make things more equal.

Of course, one of the most important things from this behind-the-scenes episode was understanding that it doesn’t mean you couldn’t have a women-only or men-only film. But over the course of a few years, you want the balance of voices being heard to even themselves out to around 50-50. Progress has been made but there’s still a long way to go, and not just in terms of gender equality.

Such an interesting profile, and a great episode of Inside Pixar. If you don’t have access to Disney+ there’s a fab interview with Jessica, as well, which covers a lot of the same topics.