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Elyse Kelly and her Neon Zoo
289 Plays1 year ago
Elyse Kelly is an award-winning director based in Washington DC. Her strength and passion is storytelling through an animated lens, and leading teams of world-class artists to create content that entertains, challenges and changes the hearts and minds of audiences. Elyse runs a full-service animation studio, Neon Zoo, that specializes in content for documentaries, brands, and NGOs.In 2020, Elyse was animation director on the feature documentary, In the Dark of the Valley. The film won a number of awards in festivals and was released in 2021 by MSNBC Films. In 2022 it received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary.In 2017, Elyse co-directed Fired Up, an animated short that depicts the origins of President Obama’s “fired up, ready to go” chant. Released on the final day of the Obama presidency, the film was featured by The Atlantic and has been viewed more than 8 million times.Elyse Kelly over 15 years of experience in animation and film, working for clients such as Netflix, the ACLU, The Atlantic, Sesame Workshop, Sony Music, the United Nations Foundation, and Disney Research. Her films have won awards and been exhibited in festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Tribeca, Annecy, Zagreb, and OIAF.
Check out Elyse's work in:
Smart Justice
Emmy nominated In the Dark of the Valley
Speech Wars
Miss Americana
Visit the Neon Zoo Animation Studio homepage and follow Elyse on @e.l.y.s.e.k.e.l.l.y
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Transcript
Origins of the Podcast and Artistic Exploration
00:00:18
Speaker
I think I've probably asked you this before, but I'm so curious about why you started this podcast and what you're trying to do with it. Oh, thank you. I don't get to talk about it too much, but
00:00:32
Speaker
I, about about four years ago, I was going to like a really rough, just kind of situation, personal situation, a lot of work stress, like everything was like pressure cooker type of thing, which I'm sure you feel sometimes. But I was going through that and I started painting and I have never had any formal art training.
00:00:58
Speaker
The one thing I did do was study a philosophy of art course, which was obviously very influential on like me and thinking about art. But, um, and, uh, when I started painting, I had this kind of like flurry and rush of creativity and way of identifying and expressing myself, which I never had. And I was, I was 46 I'm 50 now. So it was just like, I, I do union work, which is so.
00:01:26
Speaker
has these aspects of being so mundane. I had all this energy to be like, ugh, like over here. And I developed that. And so I started the podcast because I wanted to see if I could. And I wanted to, honestly and genuinely, my intent was to talk to artists, interesting, great artists, thinkers, artists, thinkers, creators. And I just kept going with it because I'd been learning
00:01:57
Speaker
like a lot. I'm very curious. Nice. And so and, you know, I got a master's in philosophy, I got a master's in labor studies. So it's like, these things are very connected for me. But there's like, thinking and creativity is like, incredible. I've learned so much from guess I'm been
00:02:21
Speaker
Uh, I love what you do and your work in your animation.
Introducing Elise Kelly and Informal Dialogue
00:02:27
Speaker
I find it the one thing I wanted to say, uh, everybody we're talking to Elise Kelly and, uh, Elise, uh, is an animator, uh, artist, uh, instructor, uh, in the arts, um, that, um, very excited to have here, Elise, welcome to the something rather than nothing podcast.
00:02:49
Speaker
Thank you so much, Kat. I'm excited to be here and cautiously optimistic that I won't ramble too much, but we'll see how it goes. This show is based on rambling, so it's incentivized. I love it. It's incentivized. Well, I think I could say that I saw your work. I saw your work more recently in the dark of the valley, which was
Elise's Journey to Animation
00:03:18
Speaker
an Emmy nominee, and I will, in all hopes of openness, say that the animation on Miss Americana, I'm a huge Swifty, I saw that, and I thought it was so amazing, and I thought it was so important how it was visually depicted. So I saw that. And I've seen the other work that you've done with Neon Zoo, your studio,
00:03:48
Speaker
you know, we're talking being nominated for awards and the Beautiful I would say lyrical animation and all that and and all that build-up How did you how did you get into the position where you were creating animation in this way? Oh That's a I feel like that's the perfect question for a ramble. I
00:04:17
Speaker
But I think what I would start with saying is that all of those projects that you just mentioned, including my studio that I actually recently launched, is all
00:04:33
Speaker
thanks to the brilliant, brilliant artists that I have the privilege of working with. It's not just me. I think depending on who you're talking to in the animation world or even the filmmaking world, sometimes people are kind of doing things themselves and, you know, kind of being scrappy and just making things work. And I definitely do a lot of that, but
00:05:02
Speaker
I don't do it alone. And so I think the reason that oftentimes so much of this work resonates on so many levels with people is because of the kind of heart and soul and dedication that everyone on my teams are putting into these projects. And to kind of step back on a broader, the broader question of how did I get here?
00:05:29
Speaker
not linearly. And speaking to the facts that I do teach animation as well, I try to kind of underscore and stress to my students that your path in life isn't always linear. For those
00:05:51
Speaker
that it is. Kudos to them. I am jealous of them. They have their direction and they go through the motions and they kind of achieve things in a very direct way. And for the rest of us, I think kind of
00:06:09
Speaker
being more open to it being a process is oftentimes what happens, I think, more often than not. And so I started out as someone who wanted to work in animation. I'm one of those quintessential, I love Disney, I must work at Disney. My childhood, a lot of magic.
00:06:32
Speaker
Exactly. And a lot of people, I think, in animation, at least in the States, that kind of is a starting place for a lot of us. But it was kind of a meandering journey. And I don't know how much you want me to get into it. But the highlights are I studied architecture in undergrad. OK.
00:07:00
Speaker
in my head that was the more grown up route to go of i was good at math and i was good at art and i loved them both and architecture felt like perfect synthesis um what did it feel like for you though what did that work in architecture or studying what did it feel like did it not just quite you know connect for you or
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. But weirdly enough, I always was kind of thinking, I think, a little bit as an animator to the point where one of my last projects in school, I designed a building that walked so that I could animate it. Wow. Wow.
00:07:44
Speaker
I love that. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And I think also the particular program I went to, which really created a great strong foundation for just how I approach kind of creating and even like critique and working with teams, was much
00:08:04
Speaker
art fear than I thought. It wasn't the balanced math and art and science that I thought it was going to be. So it was kind of by the end, well, like I may as well just lean in and like go all in on this animation thing. So I went to grad school for animation and I got my master's specifically in animation.
00:08:26
Speaker
and worked out, I was in Los Angeles for a little bit, worked in freelance there, but it just wasn't working. I'm sure you've talked with a lot of artists. Creative careers can be quite volatile, and at that time it just was a little too volatile for me, so I escaped Los Angeles, as I like to say, and I moved.
00:08:54
Speaker
to D.C., which is where I am now. Not thinking that I would stay here for so long, but I have officially been here for 10 years now, Ken, which is crazy to think about. I thought I'd, you know, you know, pit stop here and move to New York and try again.
00:09:12
Speaker
But when I was here, I did a bunch of jobs that weren't in the industry. I really did leave Los Angeles saying like, you know, it didn't work out. That's OK. I'm going to find a new path. And I eventually kind of found my way back. But it was it was not.
00:09:29
Speaker
that plan that sometimes as kids we have in our heads, right? Of like, this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to do it. I even have students now who have like, you know, their life mapped out in bullet point form. And I commend them, but also try to like, you know, talk them through like, you know, setting expectations and what happens when things go differently than you anticipated.
00:09:59
Speaker
Because you never know you never know Yeah, yeah, there's there's a lot and there's a lot of what what you had to say and I think You know, I think about paths whether they're artistic or professional. It's a very difficult area. I myself You know, my my daughter goes to the University of Oregon, but I'm also a mentor
Artistic Identity and Collaboration
00:10:20
Speaker
to mentees at my where I got my master's in philosophy, which is Marquette University and
00:10:27
Speaker
And so I've done that for a few years. So I definitely know I have a lot of conversations, you know, in life conversations. But as far as students or people going through the process for the first time, trying to understand where to go, what to do. And I heard when you were talking about architecture, because when I heard you talk about architecture and then how
00:10:49
Speaker
You made, you know, the building walk and move. It seemed like to me, just hearing you describe it was like your energy was in all this motion. And it was just like you could, it seems like you could do a still, right? But it's not the still for you. It has to be all running together and going somewhere. That's why that building is walking.
00:11:09
Speaker
Absolutely. Why not bring it to life, right? And have it be a living breathing thing. And also while all of my friends were interning at
00:11:21
Speaker
at architecture firms over the summer and during the holidays. I was working in a motion capture lab. So I think, in part, my heart was always in animation. And I tried to do what felt like a grown-up thing to do and not choose a career in art. Not because I think anyone told me that I couldn't or shouldn't, but that
00:11:50
Speaker
that thing we make up in our heads of like, this is what I must do to be a grown up, to be an adult. So it took me a little bit to get to that place and just embrace it and see what would happen. Yeah. Yeah. And it takes some courage in that. I mean, I think anybody who's, you know,
00:12:09
Speaker
Tried new things or tried to go a different direction when you when you do that. It's It's that gasp of ear for a little while of like, uh, when am I feet gonna hit the ground? you know, like just where's my stability and Kudos to you for doing that. So within your answer one of the questions I I tend to ask is when did you see yourself as an artist? I mean, I think it's within the answer that you gave but like was there like Like you walk out and you're like
00:12:38
Speaker
This is what I am. This is what I do. That's that. Was that an experience for you or a time that happened? That's a great question. I think it's constantly a process and continuing to evolve. I think a lot of people who become artists are working in creative fields.
00:13:01
Speaker
have sometimes, I don't know if two sides is the right way of putting it, but we have that kind of creative energy and enthusiasm, but that also comes with a lot of questioning and doubt. And I was actually just having lunch the other day with a few other friends who work in film, and we were saying that very thing of when you start to make your own work, it becomes much scarier and you're afraid
00:13:29
Speaker
to share it a lot of the times and one friend was saying that they'll apologize for the work when it's their own versus when we're working with clients or on other projects, it almost is liberating creatively in a very unexpected way because we can kind of run with things and it's not
00:13:53
Speaker
Anchored to something quite as as personal So it definitely took me a long time to get here. Obviously when I moved to DC I wasn't thinking that I was an artist or I was going to be working in art Ever again, I actually worked when I first moved here. I worked in a cheese shop And I read that you know what I read that I
00:14:20
Speaker
Canada is the best job I've ever had. You enjoyed that experience, yeah. It was fantastic. I think there's a lot to be said about having a job that you work really hard at, but at the end of the day you leave and you don't, you kind of, you know,
00:14:38
Speaker
Sure. Close that door for the day. Sure. You kind of live your life. And it helped me kind of learn about balance, which I'm very bad at, between life and work and living and all of those things. But yeah, it kind of was a process. And even when I started working in animation again after kind of taking a few years
00:15:05
Speaker
to regroup and find my path. I did not consider myself an artist. I did not call myself a director. I often hid under the guise of saying that I was a producer.
00:15:21
Speaker
I like checklists and I like being organized. And I didn't feel like even though I was writing and developing the ideas and building the team and working creatively with everyone, because I wasn't actively doing the art. I didn't think I was the artist. And quite frankly, it wasn't until a dear friend and collaborator who's also an animation director and filmmaker
00:15:50
Speaker
told me that I was. He flat out said it, right? I was trying to figure out how to approach projects and I was telling him what I do and my role and he just stopped me and he was like, Elise, you're a director. And I was like, but I'm not
00:16:09
Speaker
not doing the art and I'm not making the animation. It doesn't matter. And so I really do. I'm very grateful for that frankness from him because it did help me shift my perspective. And it's been a journey over the last few years since then. And it continues to evolve. But I've learned to embrace it, I think, a little bit more.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I think the exciting part of working in these collaborative spaces is like, you know, me being creative doesn't negate me giving space for someone on my team to also be creative and have a voice and contribute so that we all have some sense of ownership of the work that we're doing together. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:04
Speaker
I think the identity piece is part of the philosophy behind it and part of the discussion of when do you see yourself as it. On the identity question, I've just tried to ask it so many different ways throughout the show to be like,
00:17:19
Speaker
You know, cause at times, I mean, it happened for me and I've lived 50 years and when the last two or three years, I would use that term as applied to me. That has meaning, significant meaning in my life. And it's a huge statement and affirmation, at least personally as a personal experience. And just like you, you were resistant to being like, I'm not doing it in this way. So I, I'm not doing it. And somebody's like, no, like you are here.
00:17:49
Speaker
pulling this together and putting it, you are doing it. And sometimes it just, you need to hear that from somebody else and say, Hey, yeah, it's you. That's part of you. That's what you are in a positive way, in a positive way. That attribution isn't always great. You know, this is what you are, but the positive, just take the role you're doing it.
00:18:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm, exactly. I um, this is kind of uh nerdy, but I don't know if you've watched the behind the scenes series of the making of frozen 2 I have not but I would be very open to because I love I love the frozen movies Do you? So I just didn't know about this piece, but tell us about it Yeah, well, I just I think that was another place where it kind of reaffirmed that like
00:18:40
Speaker
you know, creativity does have different forms. And obviously that, you know, it's just like a little series, online series, but they follow different artists and the directors throughout the production. And there's one sequence where it really is the directors and it's just them walking from room to room.
00:19:05
Speaker
to room, to room. And they're having creative conversations with all of the different members of their team and talking about big picture stories. Dynamic energy. Exactly. And the importance of each person's component and how that ties back to what they're trying to do. But it really was, they were just going from meaning to meaning to meaning.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I was like, I do that. But I go from like, you know, Zoom call to Zoom call to Zoom call with all of the people on my team to have those abilities and capabilities to navigate to to have those conversations. And the fact that, you know,
00:19:46
Speaker
One of the directors was one of the writers on that film, but they weren't, and obviously a film like Frozen 2 is a giant production with hundreds and hundreds of people. But I think seeing it even at that caliber, that kind of silly little thing in the back of your head of like, oh, well, they're not drawing.
00:20:06
Speaker
They have a brilliant team of fantastically talented people that they're working with, and they're guiding, and they're inspiring creatively. And that's their role a lot of the times as the director. And I was like, I'm just doing that on a very small scale. Well, the thing is, I don't think humans there have been really good at being able to understand mental labor, physical labor, the integration of these type of labors. And I think that's part of it.
00:20:35
Speaker
are paid, whatever you do, we're paid for our minds in part. I think that when you are, there's a lot of just kind of professional decisions and autonomy that I think you want to take into account. That opens up a whole big front.
00:20:53
Speaker
Elise, it's been hey, I want to ask you this. I read something about one of your productions and I want to read you this. And at the end of this description of what you've done, I want to ask you the question is going to be. How did you do this?
Co-directing The Forgotten Four and Animation Integration
00:21:10
Speaker
All right. So in 2021, Elise co-directed The Forgotten Four, six episode animated series from Yowel's Convergence Station.
00:21:20
Speaker
an immersive experience based in Denver, Colorado. She built and directed a team of over 50 artists from around the world to produce films that both stand alone and weave seamlessly into the physical experience in Denver. How did you do that?
00:21:41
Speaker
I don't know how we did it. I didn't do it alone. I think that's always going to be my answer. We really had the greatest team of people from truly all over the world. I think when I was joking before we were recording, when you asked me, what don't I do? And I said, sleep.
00:22:01
Speaker
I think that's part of it. I think finding the best artists, no matter where they are, is always one of my favorite parts of starting a project. But then that turns into so many time zones and making sure everyone has what they need. And then, you know, your role as the director is to not sleep. No, I reject that. Anyone who's listening, don't listen to me, have healthy work-life balance.
00:22:30
Speaker
The sleep behavior is not to take a bunch of the advice. You're questioning your own sleep behavior and comment. Yeah, exactly. Do the exact opposite of what I do. But I think that project was really exciting because the client, essentially, in this case, which was Meow Wolf are artists themselves, which was really
00:22:56
Speaker
refreshing because they were obviously coming at it from an art perspective, a storytelling perspective. So even before we started the animation, they folded us into the kind of end part of their scripting, script writing process.
00:23:14
Speaker
so that we could start to see where these narratives and these stories were going and start to craft it and finesse it based on what we felt was most impactful and effective using animation specifically as
00:23:32
Speaker
a medium for storytelling. And I had a really great co-director, Jason Carpenter, who was actually that person who told me I was a director back in the day. Bless his heart. He really has made a lot of impact throughout my career at different stages. So we really worked in tandem, not only with each other and our team, but
00:24:00
Speaker
Meow Wolf to figure out the best way to kind of bring these stories and they're about essentially for women to life in a really exciting way and I think the thing that was very different about that production than a lot of the other work that I've done is that
00:24:22
Speaker
there is a physical there is a physical space in denver um that's kind of like we we've described it and i don't know if meow wolf would describe themselves in this way um but disney world meets burning man um so kind of well you've thank you you've captured my interest in a few other hundred people yes i know right it's you know i think the like
00:24:47
Speaker
generic way of describing it is location-based entertainment, but it's obviously so much more than that. And it really is, it was started, the organization was started by people who are brilliant, brilliant independent artists, experimental artists. And so all of the animation and the worlds that we were designing
00:25:10
Speaker
that were all kind of in this sci-fi fantastical space were then worlds they were building that you can visit in Denver. So it wasn't just that we were making these animations based on these scripts. We were making animations that also would be reflected in a physical way. And the actual component of that is that it didn't exist yet.
00:25:38
Speaker
While we were making the animation, they were building the space in Denver simultaneously to us working on the production of the animation. So it was a lot of big picture creative conversations, trying to get a sense of the tone and the feeling of these worlds, seeing a lot of their production art and their development process.
00:26:05
Speaker
and kind of trying to get into their heads as much as possible so we could take what we were starting to see them doing and kind of reinterpret it in a way that was authentic to what they were trying to achieve. But again, I think was also served best
00:26:22
Speaker
um for the animation so it was a lot it was a lot of fun we had a lot of crazy conversations there's this six-dimensional being um and in the films that kind of weaves in and out of the storylines and so we had a lot of very um
00:26:40
Speaker
existential crisis-esque, I don't know, maybe it was just me, conversations of what is a six-dimensional being? What does that mean? What are they? How do they react and reflect the world, engage with the world? And so it was a very exciting and challenging
00:27:07
Speaker
endeavor to go on especially as someone who oftentimes works in the documentary space and that was the same for my co-director Jason. A lot of our work is in documentary and so this is you know on the outside very different right of like you couldn't
00:27:25
Speaker
be like in the dark of the valley talking about you know these moms fighting all of these giant organizations for the cleanup of essentially like a nuclear waste site versus this trippy sci-fi six-dimensional almost kind of multiverse
00:27:47
Speaker
um convergent story um couldn't be more different but i think um jace and i both came from it came to it in a similar way as documentary at the end of the day like who are these characters what are their stories what are we trying to say about them and trying to bring that authenticity um into the storytelling in a way that you know
00:28:12
Speaker
the end of the day is what hopefully People who are watching this stuff are ultimately connecting with right and and kind of like getting drawn into those worlds and those stories The your description of the project First of all, wow, that's I mean just yeah Beyond intrigued but your description of the of the process seems to me like
00:28:40
Speaker
in terms of building, it's where your architecture thinking must become like super active because I could see like when we talked about it earlier, just in the sense of that static piece versus movement, but in whether it's dimensions or me just beginning to grasp the ideas that are behind the project, which is why I asked the question because it was such a big idea.
00:29:03
Speaker
you know practically how and then what what is the thing so i appreciate that but um it seems like you're conceptually using that with the architecture what the places look like or how they would like like in real life and in that so i'm just i'm thinking you get to play within architecture in a way that that's certainly the traditional path wouldn't have lent to you in terms of space
00:29:28
Speaker
Absolutely. I think you're totally right. And I never really thought about it in terms of connecting back to my work in school studying architecture. But it really was when we were studying, not just about the act of designing a building, but the kind of meaning behind it.
00:29:49
Speaker
Like I said, it was a more liberal arts program than I anticipated, but I think it was good in the sense of thinking about the why behind all of your choices. And that is something that we're always talking about in animation is we can do anything in animation, right? It's not like live action where you have to deal with four walls of a building or access to spaces or people or even gravity.
00:30:16
Speaker
We really are Unbound and so thinking about then, you know, if you can do anything What is kind of driving your creative decisions? And how does that support every step of the way the story? That you're trying to express I think kind of helps you Construct in a very thoughtful way Yeah
00:30:42
Speaker
Wow. What a, what a, what a project in, in, in, in thinking about it. I, um, one quick little personal note. Um, I mentioned to you at least before that I had lived in Washington DC a couple of years and a very influential friend of mine, uh, his name is David armor, who's, uh, has an architecture firm in San Francisco, very talented artist, architecture, um, architect.
00:31:08
Speaker
And I learned so much from him moving through Washington, D.C. with his knowledge of architecture. I'd never been around, so I didn't understand anything about architecture. I didn't know nothing. It was all fancy stuff, big, fat books that are expensive. So expensive. So expensive, right? But I walked around with him, and I began to just really think and understand space and how things are proportioned
00:31:38
Speaker
where I never did before so it was like a gift that I got and then I began to think about.
00:31:45
Speaker
architecture. One other piece I had recently, and you might be intrigued by this, a guest, Pamela Valfer, and she used to, she has the band Kitty Craft, which is kind of a really cool band going back and always check them out. But we had an amazing conversation about architecture, and it was unexpected because I don't feign to know a lot about it, but I love when I have the opportunity to re-engage
00:32:15
Speaker
With that,
What is Art? Philosophical Exploration
00:32:16
Speaker
okay. All this is to say a least that we do have a couple other conceptual questions of which I'm really interested to hear your answer. And the first big one, which you might've grappled with or didn't want to grapple with is what is art? You're an artist. What is art?
00:32:36
Speaker
Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask me these big questions. I know you told me you were going to ask me them and I went, I'll figure it out when we get to it. That's fine. We're all figuring out when we get to it ultimately. Right. I think, um, if I were to be a little cheesy about it.
00:32:58
Speaker
Art can really be anything, and I think it can come in many forms. And maybe this is in part thinking about my students, because a lot of them, when they get into my class, they haven't done art or taken an art class since they were very, very little. And as you can imagine, a lot of my students who are at Georgetown aren't going to Georgetown for the arts.
00:33:27
Speaker
necessarily. It's not something you would think that they're they're seeking out. So seeing them
00:33:37
Speaker
start to find ways of expressing themselves in a different form, I think is kind of what I always go back to in terms of thinking about what art is. It doesn't have to be of a certain caliber or a certain style. It really is about that expression and being able to capture a feeling or an emotion or
00:34:00
Speaker
a moment in time in a way that you might not be able to articulate in another way and kind of watching that kind of come together and click for a lot of them throughout the semester I think is what has
00:34:19
Speaker
really opened my eyes into the power then of what art can be. It doesn't have to be this perfect festival-worthy, museum-worthy piece. If it helps an individual kind of process something, I think that's where I'm most excited in terms of like, you know, this question of what art is and what does it do and, you know, how do we kind of engage with it, I guess I would say. Yeah.
00:34:49
Speaker
No, I really appreciate that. And asking over time, I've had guests sometimes where they're like, I think that's the only thing. I don't know if every art class I was in knew they asked that or I had to figure it out. And then others have been like, maybe just different experiences have been like, what the hell kind of questions that?
00:35:13
Speaker
You know, and it's legitimate responses. I mean, I think philosophy questions, philosophers are annoying in general. If you're around, I mean, straight up, I'm trained around it. I've been around them. I've spent years around them. You know, the questions are disruptive and they might make you laugh, but I don't know, you find out, you find out a lot. So what is, here's this question related to what is art,
00:35:44
Speaker
What it what is what is the role of art and Is that change? It's 2022 things feel different from me than they did just a few years ago personally It feels differently just like the way the world is the role of art and has it tweaked or changed or recently
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if I'm equipped to answer that question, but I think you're right that it does feel like it's changed simply due to the fact that there's so much content out in the world and we consume so much
00:36:23
Speaker
media, and obviously I'm thinking of media because I work in this kind of film and animation space, so it's not necessarily thinking about art on the kind of bigger picture scale, but
00:36:40
Speaker
There's so much, and I think that's good and bad. I'm not quite answering your question. I'm going on a tangent. Hey, this is what philosophers do that as well. That's part of the thing with this show. There's nobody watching over this. There you go. You're just all alone for the ride.
00:37:01
Speaker
But I think it's changed. There's so much. It's so hard to cut through that noise and that kind of scrolling that a lot of us do. But I also, on the flip side, that accessibility in terms of being able to make.
00:37:20
Speaker
art and content and be creative and finding your creative voices is exciting at the same time, especially to your point, thinking about like, you know, when we were all in our Zoom spaces. And again, I keep going back to my students. I'm going to have to tell them I kept talking about them.
00:37:42
Speaker
But the fact that we were all stuck alone without real resources and we were still able to make right and we were still and maybe it wasn't as fancy because we were we were animating on our phones or animating with You know and our closets at home or in the bathroom at home, but we were still able to make and they were still able to
00:38:11
Speaker
Tackle really big questions and really big especially, you know right when we went virtual there was a lot of anxiety and there were a lot of There's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of my students channeled that into what they were making and so yeah, I think
00:38:32
Speaker
Maybe some people would say that art is not the same and it's being lost because there's just so much and there's so much, quote unquote, crap out there. But I think there's also, because of that ability for more people to do things, there's a lot of potential and a lot of spaces to
Art's Evolving Role and Digital Era Challenges
00:38:54
Speaker
create magic in ways that you wouldn't necessarily have been able to previously.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. No, I you know, I think we're trying to figure out, you know, a lot of times people say that's art's always going to be art. The sky's always fallen in. Right. I mean, if you look throughout the history, like always like if there's one thing like throughout history, I don't know if there's like a dour point or a positive point is that like, yeah, shit's really messed up right now. I feel like you asked me to say, hey, the ship messed up. Yeah, I would say yes. It very much is. And I'm worried. But
00:39:32
Speaker
A lot of people have been worried for a lot of time about a lot of things, and this is not to minimize what it is. It's just human beings in general tend to feel their own finitude, I think. Yeah, and for better or for worse, this is probably awful to say, but maybe I won't say it. I think in these spaces where we're being challenged,
00:39:59
Speaker
when we are asking those tough questions of ourselves and of each other. And that oftentimes is what makes art kind of transcend to that next level, right? Because it becomes something else. Yeah, making to make, but it really is tackling kind of bigger issues in a way that
00:40:24
Speaker
I think also kind of then looking back on it becomes a really interesting time capsule. Yeah, I said time capsule. Time capsule. I like that word too. Of this moment and it makes me think of, I don't know if you've ever, how far down the independent animation rabbit hole you've gone, Ken.
00:40:49
Speaker
But one of my favorite animators that I discovered when I went to grad school for animation is this man named Yuri Norstein. He's a Russian animator and he was
00:41:05
Speaker
quite prolific during the Soviet Union when they had state support and funding for film and the arts. But he made some beautiful, beautiful films that have so many different layers
00:41:22
Speaker
to them, and they work on kind of a surface level, oftentimes kind of like fun magical realism stories and just things that feel sweet and for children. But as you dig deeper, you find all of this meaning and thought and reflection behind them that I think really speaks to those moments in his life and those moments in our histories.
00:41:52
Speaker
that kind of are infused into the kind of work and stories that he ended up telling. Yeah, I, it's, there's so much there. It's, it's, it's, it's really, it's really rich. And at least some tough questions, I got to say about Disney, my attagest on Eleanor Wells, who's
00:42:14
Speaker
Quite the gifted director. She's in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin Area and she talked to me her production companies called Cinderella pictures and just about the influence of Disney and these images and and and just people tend to react really strongly to when you say a Disney and I've been really interested in conversations around that because like Disney and whatever the worlds it creates I
00:42:44
Speaker
Like have been really important for people to watch or go through or experience or as kids and things like that is What I mean, I I love Disney is is as well I like the fantasy of it, but I didn't I was definitely in a different camp for most of my life being like no like that stuff's like I don't know it's like whether it's mind-warping or it's like it's kind of commercialized type of thing like in my head, but I
00:43:14
Speaker
I began to realize within the wonder of that animation and when it was done well and was representative of cultures, it was a proper representation, whatever that might be exactly, that the
00:43:31
Speaker
They're wondrous pieces of art. And so I think that's something to deal with. And when you're talking about Frozen, I love Frozen, but it makes fun of me for liking Frozen. My kids liked Frozen, and then Frozen wasn't cool anymore. What happens with me, even when stuff isn't cool anymore, it doesn't matter to me. I tend to respond to it the same way. So I'll be talking about Frozen and Frozen too.
00:43:52
Speaker
And they're like, nobody talks about no more. And I'm like, why? I still want to talk about it. All right. What am I asking? I don't know. Tell me about Disney. Tell me about Disney. Tell me. Tell me you think Disney's cool.
00:44:04
Speaker
I know that Disney is obviously contentious or polarizing for certain people. And obviously I already told you that the reason I went into animation is because I wanted to work for Disney. So I think there will always be a place in my heart because it
00:44:25
Speaker
it really started that love for this medium and way of telling stories that I think, you know, that those first moments when you realize that grownups do these
00:44:39
Speaker
do this for a living and you're like, what? And it's just so exciting and it opens up so many possibilities. And I still watch Disney movies, which my niece and nephew really appreciate because I'm just as excited oftentimes as they are and all the other adults are doing their own thing. And I'm sitting there with the two of them and we're watching the movie together.
00:45:05
Speaker
But I think maybe something that I don't know if your guests have touched upon that is something that a lot of people in the animation world kind of notice or discuss is this idea that because of Disney's
00:45:28
Speaker
You know, what's the word I'm looking for? I can't find the right word. Presence in the US in particular is like just how a lot of us have been introduced and consumed animated content from when we were little and because of the type of storytelling that they do this kind of very, you know,
00:45:54
Speaker
family-friendly, child-oriented stories that people don't realize a lot of the times in the States that animation doesn't have to be for kids. And I think that's something that we see a lot, especially around like award season. I think it actually happened this past Oscars. There was a lot of
00:46:22
Speaker
frustration in the animation community because of how they introduced the animation categories this year and kind of playing off the princess vibes, playing off the for kids and oh, you know, the parents in the room are going to roll their eyes because
00:46:40
Speaker
They've watched this movie a thousand times with their five-year-old and not thinking about it. I guess going back to your questions and our discussions about what is art, that animation really is something that we kind of are broken records on. It's like animation isn't a genre.
Disney's Influence on Animation Perceptions
00:47:01
Speaker
It's a medium. Genre is a type of story. A medium can be used to tell any story, right? And I think in the States, because we are so entrenched in a lot of younger, audience-driven content when it comes to animation, there's this perception that it can't do more than that.
00:47:25
Speaker
And it's not kind of taking away from the power of the stuff that we have here and what is being done and the people who are challenging that and pushing boundaries. But it's far more acceptable, maybe isn't the right word, but far more of just an accepted way of filmmaking in Europe
00:47:54
Speaker
or in, you know, Japan, where it just happens to be animated, but it can be any story. And I think one of the reasons that people got so upset this year at the Oscars is one of the nominees was this film called Flea. Have you heard about it? Yeah, yeah. So it's I'm going to do the log line totally wrong. But basically, it's
00:48:22
Speaker
Essentially, a documentary that is animated for one reason being safety of the subjects and making sure that they weren't revealing who they were because they couldn't
00:48:39
Speaker
Showcase who they were in real life just because it was you know years later after all these events have happened It is still an issue. It's about these kind of immigrants escaping and and obviously that's Not doing the film justice. It is a beautiful beautiful rich complex film about these really strong and powerful characters But that was nominated for
00:49:08
Speaker
Best animation, best foreign film, or international film, I think they're called now. Is that the new name of the category? And best documentary. It was nominated for all three. And the way the category was introduced was still this kind of very diminutive focused, narrow focused,
00:49:36
Speaker
um kind of interpretation of it um and again i keep going on tangents and i don't know what the point i was trying to make here is is that we were talking i gave you a question right like i think disney it's brilliant and i love disney but i think
00:49:54
Speaker
it for better for worse for a lot of people it's kind of pigeonholed our thinking into what we can do with this type of storytelling and kind of like challenging those notions myself included like I went to school for animation with that Disney mindset and I got there and I went oh no
00:50:18
Speaker
There's so much I didn't know. And there's so many ways you can take this art form and so many stories that you can tell with it. And it's just finding the right way to tell your story, whether it's with animation or documentary or music or audio. What is the best way to serve what you're trying to do and what you're trying to tell?
00:50:45
Speaker
putting labels on it in a way that kind of shuts people down and makes them not necessarily want to engage in something because it feels like it needs to be categorized in a particular way.
00:51:02
Speaker
Yeah, I understand that and the complications around that. And I think the thing is, and maybe as a final point about Disney, I think you end up approaching it in different ways. And I think you're talking very much in particular how the influence of it upon how
00:51:23
Speaker
the, I don't know, not probably using the right term genre or the category, as it develops. And I think when I think about it, because Disney, I see as, I'm a labor union guy, so I see that I've seen them have inclusive practices that have been very progressive. And I've seen them as a company in recent times taken on hate.
00:51:47
Speaker
in close-minded thinking within the workplace and otherwise. And so I think when you look at it that way, you're talking about one thing, and I think if you look at it like Pocahontas, right, and the fictional tale, I mean, when you talk to some indigenous folks, the first missing and murdered indigenous woman was Pocahontas, and a fairy tale around that creates a
00:52:14
Speaker
So you can look at these, when you mention Disney in different ways, what they do with the category, what the, you know, what the medium is. And I just started thinking about it myself when I had two or three more conversations, because I think there's a knee-jerk reaction, being like, sometimes it's so reverential towards Disney, or sometimes it's dismissive. Oh, Disney, like, that's a whole thing. So.
00:52:36
Speaker
I don't know, maybe there's a bunch of Disney conversations to be have. So for the first time- There's spin-off podcasts can be all about Disney. It will be a Disney one, but I would also say now in this episode, for the first time we transitioned from Disney to the big question, at least Kelly, here we go from Disney, to why is there something rather than nothing? Because then what's the point? Can I just thunder with that? Yeah.
00:53:06
Speaker
You can't unless I had more. I mean, I have other questions because what's the right. It's another philosophy is what's the. What's the point? It has to be that way. Otherwise. Yeah. Then why are we doing what we're doing? And why are we doing it? There's no there's no method to the madness. There's no reason. Yeah. If there is nothing. Hey.
00:53:31
Speaker
I got a question that I don't want to forget to ask. I mean, when you're talking, I try to note some because there's a few other things. But I did want to ask, or I want to make a statement and then a question after that. So in seeing your work, and you describe in a couple of pieces we've talked about in the dark of the Valley and speech wars, Smart Justice and Miss Americana,
00:54:00
Speaker
The issues being handled, discussed, animated in these pieces are very important. The content is very important, the questions of justice and things like that. I'm going to ask a naive question related to that. Is that by accident?
00:54:24
Speaker
How do you, because these aren't, what you're working on is important within the social political context as well. So I think when you were animating within that, it has this, I don't know, I'm an art activist, so I just, I've appreciated the importance in how, you know, where individual rights, environmental injustice in the dark of the valley,
00:54:50
Speaker
mistreatment of prominent women, Taylor Swift and Miss Americana, where the hand you lay in telling the story helps drive the point home.
00:55:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that's why I'm really drawn to doing animation in documentary and nonfiction spaces is because I think what's really exciting is that because, as we were talking about earlier, you can do anything with animation, which means that
00:55:26
Speaker
we're not tied to the reality of a particular space and time and moment. And when we're thinking about the impact of an event that can be so pivotal in someone's life and trying to express that, again, goes back to sometimes you can't express it in a literal way. You can't express it in words. So with animation, we can
00:55:54
Speaker
use motion and color and an abstraction to capture that experience in a way that is authentic, but an authentic in a way that's in a very internal, personal way versus authentic, especially when we're thinking of documentary as set in this particular location in space and time.
00:56:22
Speaker
And it's been really exciting as I've continued to work on pieces in that space to figure out how to walk that line of capturing a person's real, honest experience and using
00:56:43
Speaker
animation in a way that honors and respects that because I think oftentimes, again, actually, in the Dark of the Valley was the last time that I heard this. Oftentimes, people will say, why are you turning me into a cartoon?
00:57:09
Speaker
Right? And that perception of animation equals cartoon equals silly equals not the best way to represent particular stories and then
00:57:21
Speaker
When we show them what the possibilities are, they start to go, okay, you're right. There is no way for me to articulate this in a way where I can show it except for the fact of using metaphor, visual metaphor, and doing things that you wouldn't necessarily think right off the bat.
00:57:44
Speaker
turn in somebody's body to be very huge or very small to reflect the back and forth and then you look at it and say oh well yeah that's kind of yeah exactly what is the best way to capture that emotion um and it doesn't necessarily you know if we're quote unquote skewing reality um
00:58:06
Speaker
It doesn't make it less valid. It oftentimes makes it more connected to how they felt in those particular moments. Yeah, no, I I I that that creative possibility within animation, which is what you started when we first started talking. I hear that like in this point.
00:58:28
Speaker
Very clear. Elise, before we let you go, tell the listeners, tell me about Neon Zoo Studio and what that is, what people can find there, how they find your works and what you do, because there's quite a few amazing projects. So where do people go? What do they do?
00:58:54
Speaker
We're scheming over here. So Neon Zoo is our little independent boutique, however you want to describe it, creative animation studio. And we officially launched and announced our name earlier this year. And if you want to find us, it's
00:59:19
Speaker
A little bit annoying, but it's neonzoo.co, so C-O, no M at the end. I noticed that. It's stuck out. It was not what we wanted, but we make it at work.
00:59:36
Speaker
The reason we came to this point is for the last five to six years, I mentioned that I'm working with these really, really amazingly talented teams. And it's not just me. Oftentimes I'm directing or I'm producing. So you would think that it's quote unquote me, but it's so much more than that.
01:00:01
Speaker
And for the longest time, the kind of public persona, at least on the onset, was that individual. And when I started to then talk to people and begin collaborations, it would come out that it is we're building crews.
01:00:24
Speaker
with people from around the world based on the needs of projects and what makes most sense creatively and story-wise. And it felt like the next step was to better reflect what we were already doing, that we essentially have a little studio running over here and we're making productions. And I wanted it to be less about me and more about us and our work.
01:00:52
Speaker
And it took a really long time to find a name and to start figuring out our voice. And we're still figuring out our voice and what it means and what it looks like. But I think already it's feeling like it better encapsulates
01:01:13
Speaker
you know, this group of magical unicorns and what we're trying to do and the stories that we're excited to tell. And hopefully it also opens up doors so that, you know,
01:01:28
Speaker
It's not just me leading productions, it's other artists and we're creating a support structure and network to kind of help people and championing the things that they want to tell as well, or at least that's the hope. We'll see how it evolves, but we're cautiously optimistic.
01:01:55
Speaker
Well, there's a lot of great things to connect to on the site. I've gone through it and links, so it's pretty easy to move through. And it just really pulls you in, which great animation can do. You'll be pulled in, and then you've lost some wonderful time into that animation, like I said. You did so much research. I love it.
01:02:16
Speaker
Well, I do. And, you know, you kind of, you know, I'm not trying to be like that, but you're kind of a big hitter, too. I mean, you get, you know, there's awards, you're working great teams, you're doing great stuff.
Neon Zoo Studio and Future Aspirations
01:02:27
Speaker
So it's really a great pleasure to talk to you and for folks here on the podcast to just kind of go deeper here into like some really cool stuff, some of these big art questions and animation. And as you know, at least this is an episode I've been wanted to
01:02:44
Speaker
for us to be able to pull together for some time. And so I really appreciate the opportunity that it has happened and love hearing about you in Washington, DC, a place I like and talking about architecture and art. And I just want to congratulations overall and you and your team and all the folks who contribute and also with what you'll be doing
01:03:09
Speaker
uh through neon zoo and the other things that you do so i really look forward to seeing seeing more thank you thank you and i almost feel like it's good that it took us so long to get here because we've had so much more to talk about
01:03:27
Speaker
Isn't it? It's quite the interesting thing, you know, to kind of just pull, you know, eventually pull things together. And to see, of course, like you said, with the, with Neon Zoo, everybody check out that website and it's .co. It sticks out because I just think a company and it's a company. So that's how I remember it. I think things need to be conspicuous for human beings to remember them nowadays. That's my theory. I don't know of science.
01:03:53
Speaker
I love it. I'm going to take that and run with it and make me feel better when I see that go. Go with it. That's what I, I say company right off the bat. Anyways, maybe it doesn't work. I don't know the podcast guy says it does work. Elise, it's been great chatting with you and meeting you and everybody check out Elise Kelly and the neon zoo studio and enjoy the art. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ken. It's been a lot of fun. All right.
01:04:29
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.