I’m excited to interview Sofia Warren, the author and illustrator of the graphic novel Film Nerds, which just came out September 29. She is also a cartoonist for The New Yorker. Welcome, Sofia!
About the Book
To start, can you give us a short summary of Film Nerds?
Film Nerds is about two best friends who make movies together. There’s nothing Ami and Ivy love more than getting together and making their epic sci-fi. . . that is, until the stressors of middle school start creeping into their project. Ami is having a hard time at school, but is trying to hide this fact from Ivy: what if Ivy sees her differently, and doesn’t want to be friends anymore? Ami’s convinced that if she can just show the movie to her classmates, things will get better, but Ivy doesn’t agree. What will Ami do? Will their collaboration survive? And more importantly: will their friendship?
Who would especially enjoy this book?
Film Nerds is for creative kids— which is to say, all kids! It deals with themes of friendship, belonging, creativity, and overcoming hardship. Fans of Raina Telgemeier, Terri Libenson, and Kayla Miller will enjoy spending time with Ami and Ivy.
About the Author
What was your connection to cartoons and graphic novels growing up? What were some of your favorites?
I loved comics! I mostly read comic strips and syndicated cartoons, like Calvin and Hobbes, Zits, The Far Side, and For Better or For Worse. I also loved Asterix and Tintin. I didn’t really read graphic novels until after college, but once I discovered them in the library, I totally devoured them.
How did you become a cartoonist for The New Yorker? (To see some of her cartoons, check out her Instagram page).
New Yorker cartoonists (myself included) just pitch our work to the editor, and she either takes it or she doesn’t. I started submitting cartoons almost a decade ago after a friend explained the process to me, and I’ve been sending work in regularly ever since.
Tell us about the film you created as a tween: As the Moon Orbits.
I loved making movies! My two major projects were Mary-Kate and Ashley and the Sorcerer’s Scone, (a feature-length satire of Harry Potter) and As The Moon Orbits, a soap opera in which every character was played by either my friend Christen or myself. They may not be Oscar-worthy, but I learned so much and as a shy, awkward kid, I’m so grateful for the experience: making movies made me feel confident and energized. I wish I could show you a clip of these masterpieces, but sadly the soap was on a hard drive that got damaged, and I don’t want to share clips of the others without the consent of the other players.
Do you make films anymore? Have you dived into the world of animation?
I miss making movies, but I haven’t done so in a while— my main creative outlet is comics now. I did go to film school for college, and spent my first few years as an adult working on film sets (both professionally and with friends). I also worked in animation for a number of years, and still animate on occasion!
What was most relatable to me was the uncontrollable blushing—and it getting worse the more you try to stop it. Is this from personal experience? What else did you draw on to write Film Nerds?
Definitely! I was a big blusher. This book is certainly fiction, but much of it is pulled from my own experience: like Ami, making movies with my friends was my favorite thing to do, and like Ami, I was worried that I’d lose my best friend if she discovered my low standing in the popularity hierarchy. The events in the book aren’t real, but the feelings very much are.
What is something from your childhood that you snuck into the book?
I love the movie Waterworld, because it’s one of the few movies we had on VHS when I was a kid. I managed to sneak a reference to it into a fantasy sequence, and I’m very happy about that.
Graphic Novels
With graphic novels, it can be difficult to get the page turns to work. How did you plan the storyline with panels? What challenges did you face?
I wrote all of Film Nerds as a script first, which was broken down by panel and page. Because I’ve been making comics for a while, I had a pretty good sense of how much I could visually fit on each page before it started to feel rushed or dense. That said, I left room in the process to draw out a rough draft, and I did move things around at that stage: for instance, sometimes a particular story beat needed more space for emphasis. I drew things out in spreads, rather than pages, because I find that gives me a better overall picture of the pacing of the book.
Was it difficult to go from creating single-panel cartoons to writing a middle-grade graphic novel?
A lot of what I learned by making single-panel cartoons translates into longer-form work: drawing in a simplified style, and composing panels with an emphasis on clarity, humor, and efficient storytelling, for instance. That said, they’re very different processes. I wouldn’t say it was difficult to go from one to the other, because I’ve always worked in longer-form work alongside the cartoons, but it does require a different kind of approach with a lot more planning and less spontaneity.
I liked the use of the film strip Rovers of Time and Space and how it parallels what’s happening in the story. You ended up having to write a story within a story! Was this hard to do?
Thank you! I had a lot of fun writing the girls’ movie within the story. I wanted the stories to feel related without mapping exactly one-to-one, so I did make a chart with the big story beats to make sure they were lining up the way I wanted. Once I settled on the overall conceit of their sci-fi, I found it pretty organic to write the story for it.
For Teachers
Are you doing school visits related to this book?
I have a few visits planned, and would love to do more! I have different presentations and workshops planned for different age groups, which show art from the book talk about the process of making it. I’ll also be doing some comics workshops oriented for middle schoolers.
How can we learn more about you?
Thanks for asking! I’m online at sofiawarren.com and @sofiawarrenart on Instagram.
Thanks for your time, Sofia!
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