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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

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Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: May 7
Film Director
Republic of Korea
People
Story
Artists
Artist
Brought
Kids
Female
Stories
Asking
School
Aren
Thing
Along
Baffling
Really
Issues
Gender
Never
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More quotes by Jennifer Yuh Nelson

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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
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I'm not aggressive by nature and it was tough for me to make the transition to directing.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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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
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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
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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.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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As quiet as I am I find it amazing I can stand in front of hundreds of people now and make a speech because i've had to do it so much. I've so much support from the people around me that I can achieve something like that, crazy introvert that I am, I never would have thought that would happen.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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The story in that particular spot was an ancient history story, and we wanted to give it a historical feeling, which was why we used a historical calligraphy scroll come to life.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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You have to make sure that people are still motivated and happy and creatively challenged so that it can all be stitched together. The voice acting starts after a lot of the storyboards are done.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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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
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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.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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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
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Sometimes, you just have to go in there and bowl people over with your sheer force of will.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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I think it's because Po [from Kung Fu Panda] is such a geek, and he is so relatable. He is so excited by life and is excited to learn new things. I think that accessibility is something that we all can relate to, there are so many things we wish we could do but don't have the means to achieve it.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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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
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It's like being the general of an army [directing a film]. You send people out to die.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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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.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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We had Chinese artists that would put in elements for the Chinese audience like the calligraphy actually means something so the audience when they read it they'll understand. So there were definitely little things we were able to do that specifically leveraged the artists' talents.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson