Jennifer Yuh Nelson
I think the idea of a distant, far off dystopia, where the world is completely different from what we have now, is good, but it's been done. Especially in YA movies.Collection: Movies
I like action movies, and I prefer to watch a bad Hong Kong action movie to just about anything else.
Every movie goes through that U-shape where you start with 'Oh that's a great idea. I love it.' Everything's possible and then you face 'Oh, we can't do that, and that's impossible, and that's a bad choice.' You go the practicality of it. And then you come up to 'Great.' But that middle part is when you don't have results yet.
I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.
A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.
I don't think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I've had female students say to me afterwards, "I never envisioned myself being a director, since I've never seen women do it." But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we'll see more female directors.
When you make a movie, it's just so personal and then you put it out in front of people and it becomes something else.
Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!
I'm not aggressive by nature and it was tough for me to make the transition to directing.
I'm a very soft-spoken person. I don't throw furniture. I don't throw tantrums.
If you have a movie that doesn't strive to go to a certain emotional point, you can do anything and it will be fine and funny. But if you have something pretty emotional at its core, you have to make it right. You don't want it overwrought or unearned. Everything has to be moving towards this one thing.
Growing up, my sisters and I would always talk stories. One of my frustrations was I didn't know anything about cameras. I didn't know how to make a film and I obviously didn't have a special effects budget. I was a kid. So I was learning to draw to get down the stuff that was in my head, that I couldn't afford to actually do.
There aren't a lot of female story artists, and it's baffling to me. There are a lot of kids in school that are female and I wonder, 'Where did they all go?' People have brought it up, asking me, 'What did you do?' I don't really know. I puttered along, did my thing and gender has really never been an issue.
I only think in live action.
It's really helpful to have somebody to bounce off of and that will say, 'Yeah, that's a horrible idea. You shouldn't do it.'
When people feel safe, they can come up with ideas.
It's important to listen to the actor who is there on the stage and living it.
If the actor doesn't feel it's right, that's when you say, 'OK, let's find something else.' It's then that you get the natural moment.
When we were first creating the look of 'Kung Fu Panda,' we wanted to pay tribute to the beautiful tradition and culture of China.
Qing Cheng Mountain was a direct influence on the mysterious final shot of 'Kung Fu Panda 2.'
I think in the experience of growing up and realizing who you are, what your place in the world is can be quite scary.
You have to figure out how you can step forward and affect your own life. I think that sense of empowerment is actually really positive, specifically for the young generation because they've been bystanders in their own lives for a while.
I don't believe in overcooking the actors too much. Especially when it's a real performance that I'm looking for.
I want a space for people to feel safe and be creative. Actors want it, too. They want to feel like they're listened to, and they're safe to experiment.
I always want to do a big finale.
I've been watching things like 'Master of the Flying Guillotine' since I was 5.
I like to draw, and my drawings are what yell and scream for me.
I've been asked about the glass ceiling a lot, and I don't think of myself as some kind of crusader going around smashing glass. I don't feel like I had to - and that is a very, very strong flag showing the people around me made it, so I didn't have to.
My producer for the first 'Kung Fu Panda' movie, Melissa Cobb, is an amazing woman. She's supersmart and helps push everyone - male, female, anyone - to do their best.
The great thing about computer animation is that all of those environments exist as three-dimensional worlds, so these VR worlds already exist.
I walk into a room, and people see me as a director, not a woman.
I'm a hard-core geek.
I like action. It's not typical, but it's a passion.
Going into live action, the perception I had was that to be a director, you had to be loud, you had be physically fit, wear cool hats, have a beard, and yell, 'Action!' really loud. And I'm none of those things.
I couldn't imagine screaming 'Action!' on an outdoor set over a wind machine or whatever.
I'm not necessarily a huge fan of YA movies. I haven't watched a lot of them.
Sometimes, you just have to go in there and bowl people over with your sheer force of will.Collection: Inspirational
8 year old young girl came up to me when I went to speak at an elementary school, and she gave me a drawing. It was great and she said "I want to be just like you when I grow up and direct movies". And that just made me choke up. It was so cute, and the reason why she's looking at me is I look like her.Collection: Cute
If you only do what you can do, you'll never be more than you are now.I never thought i'd be where I am now, but the fact that I am is pretty cool.Collection: Facts
When people feel safe, they can come up with ideas. It's important to listen to the actor who is there on the stage and living it.Collection: Ideas
Aside from that i’m an introvert and i’m a quiet person. The benefit of that is I listen. It’s not like my mouth is open and I broadcast everything and i’m drowning everyone out. When I’m listening to the incredible artists I work with and i’m hearing their specialised advice on what they would do with something then we can, all together, as a big collaborative group, all work together to achieve something together.Collection: Artist
The hidden village was something we found when we went to research in China we climbed a mountain in the Sichuan province where the panda sanctuary is based, and we climbed to this beautiful, mist-covered, almost primordial place and when we turned these corners these moss covered old buildings would come into view, revealing themselves and it was so beautiful and so unlike anything we'd seen that we literally took those moments and put them into the film [Kung Fu Panda 3].Collection: Beautiful
Lots of people support me and I forget. But sometimes things happen and I remember, and they say I encourage them, it makes me feel very happy.Collection: People
We go for our own reality. I remember some of our guys saying it is way harder to make stylized art directed explosions of jade rather than a regular explosion of shrapnel.Collection: Art
It's like being the general of an army [directing a film]. You send people out to die.Collection: Army
I think we had to push forward to make sure it was different, do something that we had never done before and yet still have the consistency to stay in the same world. This was our chance to do all the things we didn't get a chance to do before. We've been working on these movies [Kung Fu Panda] for twelve years and we have to keep things exciting for us in order for us to devote that many years of our lives to do this.Collection: Thinking
We always try to make the very best movie when we're working on and we can only think one at a time. We want to make this a perfect jewel, and then we'll see what happens after that.Collection: Thinking
Tigress is my alternate personality, especially with children. I love animation because you get to do things you don't normally get to.Collection: Children
I think it's really nice to have an authenticity, it's a huge source for us to be able to lean on people who have that knowledge.Collection: Nice
One of my favorite things about the Kung Fu Panda 3 is the look of it. We never go for realism. I think a lot of time when people go for 3D that's the mistake. Because we're never going for full realism - for computer generated live action films like Avatar the goal is realism, to make the audience feel like they are seeing something that is real. Lord of the Rings had character design and environments to make it look real, whereas we aren't going for that, we are going for something that is theatrically, viscerally, and emotionally real.Collection: Real