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Making an animated feature with Lesbian Space Princess co-writer/directors
42 Plays16 days ago
We're joined on Breaking Screen by Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs, the co-writer/directors of the award winning animated feature film Lesbian Space Princess, who talk about splitting responsibilities during development and production, the differences in writing for live action versus animation, and tips for working in low-budget animation.
Lesbian Space Princess premiered at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film, an international award recognising exceptional films with LGBTQIA+ themes and content. It was also selected for Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals – and at Sydney won the GIO Audience Award for Best Australian Feature. It marks the debut feature of Leela and Emma, as well as producer Tom Phillips of We Made a Thing Studios. It’s the first full-length animated feature film made in South Australia, and was the second production to come out of the South Australian Film Corporation’s Film Lab: New Voices feature film initiative, supported by Screen Australia and Adelaide Film Festival. It’s also hilarious and you can catch it in select cinemas now.
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Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Breaking Screen, a podcast about the Australian screen industry and the creative people within it. I'm your host, Karis Buzaka, and I'm recording this podcast from the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, where I'm very grateful to be a visitor and be able to work on these lands.
00:00:18
Speaker
Always was, always will be.
Meet the Creators: Leela Varghese and Emma Huff-Hobbs
00:00:21
Speaker
Today's episode will feature Leela Varghese and Emma Huff-Hobbs, the co-writer directors behind the animated feature Lesbian Space Princess. But before we get to that chat, here's some news from the Australian screen industry.
Industry Opportunities and Announcements
00:00:33
Speaker
The Reg Grundy Award from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, or ACTA, is back. Now in its sixth year, it offers a $50,000 prize to the individual or team with the best pitch for a new unscripted television format.
00:00:48
Speaker
The initiative seeks to champion bold new ideas and fast track the development of original screen entertainment. So if you think you have Australia's next great entertainment or factual TV show, applications close 5pm on Monday, November 3.
00:01:03
Speaker
ACTA has also announced in partnership with Sony the five finalists for ACTA Pitch Focus 2025. The initiative empowers Australian student filmmakers to transform their ideas into fully realized proof-of-concept short films with the winner receiving production funding and equipment loan packages.
00:01:22
Speaker
In the directing world, after 18 months of consultation, the Australian Directors Guild has released a new scripted series rate card for directors, which features updated minimum standards of pay, rights and conditions.
00:01:35
Speaker
And that's your news wrap up, but remember to head over to any of the Australian trade publications for more. Now to the chat with today's guest.
Success of 'Lesbian Space Princess'
00:01:43
Speaker
We're joined on breaking screen by Leila Vagis and Emma Huff-Hobbs, the co-writer directors behind the animated feature Lesbian Space Princess, which premiered at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film, an international award recognizing exceptional films with LGBTQIA plus themes and content.
00:02:05
Speaker
It was also selected for Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals and at Sydney won the GIO Audience Award for Best Australian Feature. It marks the debut feature of Leela and Emma as well as producer Tom Phillips of We Made a Thing Studios.
00:02:20
Speaker
It's the first full-length animated feature film made in South Australia and was the second production to come out of the South Australian Film Corporation's Film Lab New Voices Feature Film Initiative, supported by Screen Australia and Adelaide Film Festival.
00:02:34
Speaker
It's also hilarious and you can catch it in select cinemas now. Throughout the episode, Leela and Emma talk about how they worked as co-writer directors and split the responsibilities, the differences in writing for live action versus animation and breaking down the production pipeline and tips for working in low budget animation.
00:02:53
Speaker
Here's that chat.
Inspiration and Career Beginnings
00:02:57
Speaker
First of all, um a nice easy one to start with. ah Could you both tell me your names and your role in the industry? Yeah, so my name's Leela Varghese and I'm a writer-director and more specifically co-writer-director of Lesbian Space Princess.
00:03:19
Speaker
and My name is Emma Huff-Hubs and I'm the other co-writer, director of Lesbian Space Princess and also an animator and props master. So one of the questions I ask everyone on this podcast, um just to start off with, is that, yeah, in this industry and especially in like screenwriting, we talk about inciting incidents all the time.
00:03:40
Speaker
Um, and so I wonder if you could tell me what the inciting incident was for your career. So Lila, you first. Oh, wow. what ah It didn't go in the direction I thought it was going to go. was like, wow, a plot twist. It's a twist. um so why I mean, it's it's interesting. I guess I um ah could answer the question in many ways, but I'll just say i think Totally Wild.
00:04:07
Speaker
I think I studied film and then there'd been like a big gap between actually making films after finishing uni and being on Totally Wild just gained all my confidence back and actually made me think that I was maybe funny and so then I started writing more comedic kind of stories and so I think scoring that gig on Totally Wild was a big inciting incident for me followed by Tropfest that kind of came from that experience.
00:04:37
Speaker
And who told you to audition for Totally Wild or did you how did you No, it's complicated. No, I was just kidding. was just, I was auditioning for years. Where was the call to action coming from?
00:04:50
Speaker
I've been, my dad had originally told me to audition for ABC3 when it first started back in the day. And then I got shortlisted for that. And then I became obsessed with wanting to succeed at getting on a kids presenting TV show. And Totally Wild was years and years later. I auditioned for everything that popped up.
00:05:10
Speaker
it Back in the day, they used to have open calls for a lot of presenting gigs. So you didn't have to like have an agent or anything. So I would always just go for them. And so Totally Wild was like the i like my very last one. I've come close to a few.
00:05:26
Speaker
I'd done like Channel V, ABC3 twice, Nickelodeon at some point. Like, yeah, it was like a whole bunch. Sorry for the phone. Yeah, it's a long way. Sorry. No, I love it. there's running great fast and I Yeah, go. Yeah. what What about you, Emma?
00:05:45
Speaker
um I was studying at the Australian Science and Maths School, so i was doing nothing but maths and science, but then I had a really – there's it like two things that happened. I had a really good media studies teacher in Year 12, – and Like he ran a film club at school and he showed us like a Brit Marling film. And I was like obsessed with Brit Marling because I'd never seen a film that was like an independent film before.
00:06:09
Speaker
I'd only seen like high budget Hollywood staff or animations. And so I was obsessed with Brit Marling. And then also he showed us the trailer for 52 Tuesdays, which was made in Adelaide where the school was.
00:06:22
Speaker
And so I was like, oh, this is actually like a thing that people can do. you you don't just need to go out and make like Sherlock homes to show yeah BC um yeah yeah shout out to 52 Tuesdays yeah what was that shout out to Sophie Hyde who's but yeah the director who did 52 Tuesdays um yeah we got to hang out in San Francisco and I as like as soon as it was maybe the least weird time to do so I said you're the reason I'm here right now um and so Sophie Hyde making 52 Tuesdays was
00:06:55
Speaker
part of it But then I wouldn't have even even known about that if it wasn't for my media teacher, Marcus. And so in terms of Lesbian Space Princess, Emma, could you give me like, you know, your like pitch, your the way you pitched it, your synopsis?
Film Synopsis and Production Journey
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah. So Lesbian Space Princess is about an anxious space princess, Zyra from the planet Clitopolis, And she has to go on an intergalactic space quest to save her ex Kiki from the straight white maleons.
00:07:27
Speaker
Love it. Perfect. Thank you so much. um And Lila, as far as I know, you hadn't worked in animation before. So how did this come about?
00:07:39
Speaker
Well, we're a couple. And so, um, there was the film lab in, in South Australia film lab, new voices. And yeah, Emma suggested the film lab to me in the first place. Cause I hadn't considered a feature film making feature films. I guess I just didn't feel entitled to do that.
00:08:00
Speaker
Um, I'd kind of got my head thinking I was going to do TV, which I was delusional. I don't really know why I thought that, but, um, Cause it was a low budget, a live action feature. I come from live action had to be quite a simplistic kind of like one actor, one location, and just didn't have an idea that worked for that. And then we were talking.
00:08:24
Speaker
And so then basically it was just a way of like, how can we make something but that's going to get selected for this and also give us both the chance to get that long form project up because people just, you have to have that long form project. I feel to really like crack through.
00:08:39
Speaker
and have people believe you can tell a longer story. and And luckily, um in terms of whilst I didn't come from animation, I had actually just voiced a character on Eddie's Little Homies, Eddie Betts' children's show.
00:08:54
Speaker
And so that actually helped a lot with the directing process because Mark O'Toole, who was the director that mainly worked with me, also you know gave us
Animation Techniques and Tips
00:09:04
Speaker
some pointers and some advice when it came to directing Lesbian Space Princess. so being on the other side of the animation world and doing a voice character actually did it really help a lot. So I had a tiny bit of an understanding of of how an animated project came together. And then Emma, obviously, as the animator, was able to sort of guide and make sure that I did everything accordingly.
00:09:28
Speaker
and followed the good rules of low-budget animation.
00:09:34
Speaker
Emma, do you, um you know, the good rules of low-budget animation, do you have, like, any that you could share? are the good rules of low-budget animation? No, they're all bad rules. That the fun release.
00:09:49
Speaker
Leela, the first time we did, like, a practice scene of what the opening scene could be and Leela had written, like, two characters talking and having breakfast together and I said they can't touch breakfast they can't eat breakfast they can't eat anything because it's like as soon as you've got like connections and props and stuff and animation it's just becomes like way more expensive I said no no no this is a film where people just talk to each other um they don't actually pick things up yeah yeah no but there's a few times in the film we had to when we introduced the labris she doesn't even pick it up it just manifests into her hand yep it's just it's just you have to think so boringly and like let's movement is money
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. And so then how did you write together?
Collaborative Writing and Directing
00:10:44
Speaker
Like, did you break up scenes and regroup or, you know, le were you doing a pass and then Emma was saying, no, no, that has a prop in it. Like, let's lose that or like coming from the animation side. How did it work?
00:10:57
Speaker
Well, I mean, there was a big, there was two weeks at the beginning where with we're part of the film lab where we worked with um Alex White, our script mentor, and also Tom Phillips, our producer.
00:11:09
Speaker
And we all kind of mapped out what the film could be and the structure of the film. you spent a lot of time thinking about what structure it was like, was it going to follow the hero's journey or save the cat?
00:11:20
Speaker
Just jumping in here quickly, in case you don't know, save the cat and hero's journey refer to two of the ways that you can structure a story. So save the cat is based on Blake Snyder's screenwriting method and book of the same name.
00:11:32
Speaker
And it's where you can break a story into 15 beats or plot points as you're mapping out the arc. while the hero's journey is a classic narrative archetype. Think Luke Skywalker in Star Wars or Frodo in Lord of the Rings.
00:11:44
Speaker
And so we ended up, because we were trying to do Save the Cat, and then it just wasn't working, so we switched to the hero's journey, which makes a lot more sense because that was the story that we were trying to tell.
00:11:55
Speaker
We had... a whiteboard where we drew the map of the film. And so that like conception of what the film was loosely was a really collaborative process that took place over two weeks in our workshop. And then we came to writing the script and we wrote one scene in the same room, I think, just like Leela and I are talking and me scribing, but then for the rest of it, we divided together.
00:12:24
Speaker
and conquered I think most of the time like we would write the bones of a scene and then hand bullet to the other person and usually it was me writing the bones of like and then they talk and then they realize this and make a good please and then I'd throw it to Leela and she'd do her magic like you're really good at dialogue and um I'm better at like more structural stuff and so we'd just hand bullet back and forth and and try and put in jokes that would make each other laugh as well is that what you would have said?
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a hard thing to describe, like the process of co-writing a script, because it's not like it's like any steadfast rule that was perfectly followed, because it was our first time doing it as well. So, but yeah, no, it was just like a learning process, really learning to write together as well, because neither of us had written anything with someone else in terms of a screenplay.
00:13:18
Speaker
And so, Yeah, I definitely think and I like working with Emma because i she loves structure and I like writing. So it's nice finding somebody that you mesh with together. Yeah, you complement each other.
00:13:34
Speaker
And also, like you know I think the film itself works because of that understanding of animation and this understanding of that genre, her your love of genre in general. And it's kind of this mix of Emma's sense of humour, which is more referential and then my sense of humour. And so it's kind got something for everybody by combining our two voices. Like it would absolutely a different film if it was made by just either of us on our own.
00:14:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And like if that was the writing process, like how do you split the directing side of things? Directing was much harder to split.
00:14:13
Speaker
It was, um is I always say that like when you're writing, you just go, yeah you let somebody win because you go, well, it's okay. It's just the script. Like once it gets into production, I'll make sure we get rid of that.
00:14:25
Speaker
ah yeah So the battles became very real because it was like, this is happening or and or it's going to be in the film unless you put it there or it's got a fight to get it out of the film if you don't want it in the film now.
00:14:38
Speaker
But it was very similar. Like we both have different strengths. And so we were just leaning into where we initially felt we landed when the project started in terms of our strengths. so performance was the thing that I was passionate about.
00:14:52
Speaker
Animation was the thing that Emma was passionate about. And then we kind of led those different areas. i was more music. You did all the production design and everything as well. You were good at technically talking to the animators to explain what we wanted to achieve.
00:15:08
Speaker
And I liked talking to the actors. But by the end of it, it was really interesting because whilst we both started with our strong skills that we entered with, I think we both became really good at the other things that we weren't necessarily as strong at at the start. And so, yeah, I think it was just nice because weirdly, we just work well together because we are filling in a lot of each other's gaps a lot of the time. But also with the directing, every it was quite an intense process because everything in the film went through both of us.
00:15:38
Speaker
but Regardless of who was making it, it would end up like it had to get the sign, like the tick from both of us. So it was quite thrilling. And we're also a couple. The approval process.
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah, because we're dating as well, you know. It was like our life, our whole life was this movie. it was very It was very intense while we were making it. Yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine. You literally like wake up in the morning talking about it, and night talking about it.
00:16:06
Speaker
3 a.m. wake up talking about it. Yeah.
Animation Production and Voice Acting
00:16:11
Speaker
um And so, Emma, from what I understand, animation is really pipeline focused.
00:16:19
Speaker
And so I'd love to hear from you about the production pipeline from an animation sense. So like how much time was spent on pre versus production? Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, we didn't have a lot of pre. It was just me and Jeremy in the animation studio for about eight weeks before the two animators came in.
00:16:41
Speaker
And what we did during that time was I was doing the animatic. And yeah Jeremy, for context, is one of the halves of we met, Jeremy Kelly-Backer, and he was also like... Yeah, I'm going to say. Oh, yeah, cool.
00:16:57
Speaker
But I was doing... Me first. I just think we're far down the track without the context of it. Okay. I'll go Jeremy first. Jeremy Kelly-Backey.
00:17:08
Speaker
He was making the puppets that we used in Toon Boom. Harmony and the film is a composite of about half puppet rigged animation and half hand drawn and rule with the puppets was that you weren't allowed to get the computer to generate in-betweens.
00:17:31
Speaker
um I don't know if that's too animation jargony but um essentially if you're like having a character that's waving and they start here and then they end up here you have to plot out the like three in between frames.
00:17:46
Speaker
You can't get the computer to do it because then it looks bad. So we were trying to do like puppets, but it looks good instead of bad. Cause I hate, I really hate puppet animation, but we had to do it because of budget.
00:17:57
Speaker
Anyway, he was making the puppets. He'd never, he'd never made puppets in Tomb Raider before. So he was learning how to do it as he was doing like eight of them. And then I was doing the character designs, finalizing them, finalizing environments, design, but it was mostly about the characters. And then in terms of the pipeline, it was like the,
00:18:18
Speaker
film of a million programs because we were making the storyboards in Photoshop and then making the animatics in Premiere Pro. And then we made the background references and we recreated the storyboards in Maya.
00:18:32
Speaker
And then we would give it to the environment artists and they would use that so that they could do the environments really quickly. And they were doing the environments in Photoshop again. And then we would give that to the animators who were working in Toon Boom Harmony. And then Jeremy would do compositing into two moon harmony and then we would put it into da Vinci which was our edit program and then sometimes as well he would use nuke and after effects for additional compositing that makes my brain hurt a little bit um ah really that's quite a like the organization involved um yeah it it sounds stressful just from here it was stressful but also it was a bit easier because we only had
00:19:15
Speaker
like six people in the, actually on the animation tools to coordinate. So then that's kind of also why I had so many programs because it was just like, everyone was sitting on top of each other trying to work on stuff. And so sometimes animators would be animating without a background and all that stuff.
00:19:34
Speaker
So like spinning like six different plates. And then in terms of like something that's like another element of pre-production is that we had to shot list the whole film together and then do an animatic.
00:19:48
Speaker
And basically that gave us an idea. I don't know if you know an animatic, which is just like just the pictures, basically nothing animated. um Emma drew all the shots and I voiced every character in that. um And, but it's fun. It was really for animation. It felt really important because we can't really, you don't have coverage. You can't go back. You can't,
00:20:09
Speaker
you know, go, oh, is there different, you can go, is there a different performance? But once it's animated, sometimes you can sneakily replace it. But essentially what's really cool about that in terms of pre is that to some degree, we also got to see the film and how it felt before we started production in the animatic.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's amazing. it um It's also of those things with with some of the casts that you had. I thought they were improvising with parts, like the Auntie Donna um guys, but was that all scripted?
00:20:44
Speaker
It's the bones of those scenes were like the same and then like, yeah, they totally improv'd and riffed. So, and Aunty Donner in particular, they they were in the meanwhiles and the meanwhiles were more comic relief than like actually leading the plot forward. So for some of the other cast, it was like a little trickier because they did have to kind of actually follow a structure in in what they were doing. and what Hit the beats. Yeah.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, absolutely. And we encourage that with everyone as much as possible. We always tried to get a take that was like, you want to do take that you can just do for you? And often like when you often it's the take where you finish giving all your directions and you say, why don't we just do whatever? Like, why don't you just try something? And often that would be always like, for me, one of like my favorite takes from people always.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, great. so we have a pay it forward question, um which is from a previous guest, ah Vanilla Tupu. And she said, so my question is, what does advocating for people you believe in look like for you in an industry that can be quite closed door?
00:21:56
Speaker
I'm really, really lucky to have a lot of people champion me throughout my career, which has really helped me kind of leapfrog from one role to the next, even down to someone one giving me an opportunity as a COVID safety officer, which meant I kind of got to be on set during COVID and stand by the video village and make some amazing connections there. So what does saying your friends' names in rooms look like and what is the benefit of it?
00:22:24
Speaker
Well, I think um for us, like, We're actually producing a short film for one of the animators from Lesbian Space Princess now. And so sometimes it's about using your knowledge and ah wisdom, i guess, to help somebody that you saw in a position that you were once in where you didn't have that support.
00:22:45
Speaker
um So we're really excited to like help Alice get her first film out into the world. And so... It's hard because it's like, obviously it's a lot of work, mostly Emma's leading the producing on that.
00:22:58
Speaker
But it just feels right. Like, you know, we've never had this much production. but attention on us and this much success before. And it just felt very natural to jump in to try and use that to help somebody else that's young that we remember being that age and just not having anyone helping and championing us.
00:23:17
Speaker
So I don't know. I think it can be mentioning names. It can be very practical. It can also be like literally helping get something made. Like it's whatever you have the means to do, I think, and where you're at in your career.
00:23:29
Speaker
It's kind of a tricky one both ways. Yeah, I think it's just about like keeping your eyes open and looking at the people that you're working with, especially when they're helping you out and seeing their drive for their own things as well and um trying to boost them up as much as possible.
00:23:45
Speaker
I love it. Well, I'll leave it there. i know you got other interviews to get to, but um yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and congratulations on the film. I loved it so much as did the Sydney Film Festival audience going crazy there.
00:24:02
Speaker
No, thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much. It was really fun having like a screen careers oriented kind of interview. It's really cool. That was Leela Varghese and Emma Huff-Hobbs. Thanks again to them for joining me on the podcast.
00:24:17
Speaker
This episode was produced and edited by myself with logo designed by Shara Parsons and music by Seb Sebotaj-Gavrilovic. If you enjoyed listening, please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review. See you in a fortnight.