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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Categorized in : Ideas Choices Shapes

Sometimes, you just have to go in there and bowl people over with your sheer force of will.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

force-of-will inspirational people

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

emotional want moving

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!

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

actors artist talking

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

growing-up girl cute

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

animation stories

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

drawing mom real

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

directors school thinking

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

artist listening advice

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

growing-up frustration kids

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

fronts people

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].

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

old-buildings views beautiful

I'm not aggressive by nature and it was tough for me to make the transition to directing.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

aggressive tough transition

I'm a very soft-spoken person. I don't throw furniture. I don't throw tantrums.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

tantrums furniture persons

It's like being the general of an army [directing a film]. You send people out to die.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

film army people

I think the one thing specifically that is most consistent, is that we want to harken back to martial arts movies because that's kind of the genre we're paying tribute to, so there are some similarities to a lot of films, because they all feed off each other!

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

want art thinking

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

artist kids school

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.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

jewels perfect thinking

We got the best actors imaginable [in Kung Fu Panda]. If we could have made a wish list I don't think there would anyone else we would have added. Yeah, we've been blessed with exactly how amazing a cast of actors we have. To have someone like Bryan Cranston, who is not just an amazing actor, but who has such a range.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

kung-fu-panda blessed thinking

One of the things we love about Po [Kung Fu Panda] is that he's vulnerable. He's someone that we can all identify with because he has those insecurities. He's an outsider feeling guy.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

insecurity guy feelings

When you see all of the pandas in this movie [Kung Fu Panda 3], they are rolling because that is exactly what they do. Not only were we able to watch the pandas play but we had free range to walk around and get a feel for the architecture and get a sense of where they lived ,so there's a lot of firsthand exploration.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

kung-fu-panda rolling play