Jen Nelson
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
film director, storyboard artist
Jennifer is the first woman to
solo-direct a major Hollywood animated film
as well as
the first solo female director to be
nominated for the
animated feature Oscar.
She led DreamWorks’ “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Kung Fu Panda 3”
to a collective $1.18 billion worldwide!
Jennifer is now one of the highest-grossing female directors.
Q&A
How did you take your love of drawing as a child and turn it into a career?
Doodling when you’re young is something you do for fun, but for me it was something I just couldn’t stop. Drawing was something I did naturally.
In school I did well in many other subjects like science and math, but I didn’t have the level of joy in those subjects as I did when I was drawing.
So, I chose to go to Cal State Long Beach as an illustration major because I knew I wanted to tell stories through pictures.
As a director and artist, what draws you to a movie script?
It’s always about the emotion for me. It doesn’t matter the genre, the tone or the setting because all of that is just decoration on whether or not the story has a depth of emotion. That’s always been the case in any animation I’ve done. It always has to have that depth of emotion.
What would you like the next generation of girls to know?
You don’t have to change who you are to succeed.
I think past generations had to change who they were in order to make their way through a system that wasn’t necessarily designed for them. So, everyone had to adapt to the system, whereas, for the next generation, I hope the system will now adapt to them.
more about me...
before directing Kung Fu Panda, what did you do?
My first major industry job was story artist and character designer at HBO Animation. I moved from there to DreamWorks Animation, working as story artist on Madagascar, head of story on Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and story artist on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
what are your movie sets like?
I honestly try my best to make a good working environment for my crew so that everyone feels proud of what they did. It’s all about working together and feeling creatively charged up to make a movie we’re proud of.
what makes you different from other directors?
I’m a quiet artist. So I approach directing in my own way. At meetings, I’ll cluster all the chairs around me so everyone could hear me. If you can talk casually and conversationally with people, they don’t feel like they’re being ordered or directed, they feel like they can engage in a conversation with me. I find that to be productive.
"When people feel safe, they come up with ideas. It's important to listen to the actor who is there on the stage and living it."
Now Playing…. Jennifer’s new movie,“The Darkest Minds,” is an adaptation of Alexandra Bracken’s bestselling young adult novel, starring “Hunger Games” veteran Amandla Stenberg.
Stay Tuned... She is now in the early stages of her next project, a live-action Korean thriller called
“A Bittersweet Life,” starring Michael B. Jordan.
