Nephtali – A Conversation with GlenKeane

It’s been just under a year since On Animation last spoke with Glen

Keane[1]. At the time he was promoting his first short film, Duet[2].

This year he’s back with another hand drawn short, Nephtali[3], ablend of hand drawn animation and live-action footage. Nephtali wascreated for the Paris Opera to coincide with the launch of their newdigital stage, 3rd Stage.

Glen was personally invited to join a distinguished list of artists andfilmmakers to help launch the 3rd Stage by Benjamin Millepied, thenew Director of Dance for the Paris Opera. Benjamin and Glen firstmet while they were both working on projects at Google last year. Iwas fortunate enough to steal some of Glen’s time and gain moreinsight into the production of the short.

The audio isn’t the best quality due to the long distance call, so I’ve

also transcribed the interview below. Thanks to Bonny Báez[4] for hiswork cleaning up the audio. It wouldn’t have been an option withouthim. Enjoy!

Audio PlayerDaniel: How did Nephtali get started? What was the originalinspiration behind it?

Glen: As I was working on Duet, Benjamin Millepied was working ondeveloping a project at Google. He had seen what I was animating, andwe started talking about doing something together. He actuallyshowed me how to do a pirouette that I used in Duet, and we justthought it would be wonderful to do something together but wasn’tsure exactly what. So when he became the Director at the Paris Ballet,he created another stage. They have three stages there. They have theBastille Opera, and they have the Garnier Opera, where the Phantomof the Opera took place. That’s the central location; one of the most

beautiful buildings in Paris. But he wanted to create a virtual stagecalled The 3rd Stage, and he invited a number of directors to come tothe Paris ballet and find inspiration and do something that was callingto you.

He was not trying to impose any kind of creative direction on it otherthan that we were passionate about what we were going to do. So I’vealways just been fascinated with dance. It always feels to me thatdance is very much an animator’s…kind of like another way ofexpressing yourself through dance. Most of the time that I’ve seendance in animation, I’ve never felt that it was really living up to thepotential. It feels that we are often way too bound by gravity, and yetanimation doesn’t have to be. So I thought I wanted to do somethingwhere I can really let the figure float in the air if it needs to be, and toreally draw some of the fluidity of line that feels bound even by a realballerina. The human figure is bound by gravity, and animation canreally set that free.

We have an apartment in Paris, and I would walk to the Opera House.On my way I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, as I wasgoing to meet the ballerina, Marion Barbeau. I thought I would just usesome of her choreography. They say that a ballerina may have up tosixty choreographies in her muscle memory; it’s just there, and theycan dance it.

I thought I’ll use that, and just animate. And then all I could think ofwas Ollie Johnston saying to me, “Glen, don’t animate what thecharacter is doing, animate what the character is thinking.” So Ithought I can’t just go in there and draw her moving, I need to reallygive her a motivation and a purpose, and tell a little story. By the timeI got there, I had developed a little story, and gave her the motivation

on what these three basics acts to this little story would be. She wasincredible. So anyways that’s pretty much how I developed it, and howthe whole thing came to be.

Daniel: Can you talk a bit about creative process from studyingthe dancer in the studio in Paris to sitting down and animatingit? Did you use charcoal for the end like you did in Pocahontas?

Glen: Well there was some charcoal drawings at the very beginningwith the deer. The very end of it was actually a graphite pencil. AMitsubishi pencil that we found in order to do Duet. It’s a 10B. I foundout that it’s the same pencil that Miyazaki uses, which I didn’t know.When we were searching, we searched all over the world for the bestpencil that had this really wonderful soft feel. So it can look likecharcoal or you can be very accurate. That’s what I did Duet with, andthat’s what what I’m going to draw with for the rest of my life. It’s sorich and wonderful in its line. I describe the line as having calories to itit’s so buttery. You get fat just drawing with it.

Benjamin Millepied and Dimitri Chamblas, who are running the ParisBallet, invited me into to sit with some of the rehearsal sessions. As Iwas drawing Marion Barbeau and some of the other dancers, justwatching them warm up, and as I’m sketching them warming up, I’mwarming up myself and realizing how how much dance is very much agestural, expressive medium. You are drawing a line of action fromhead to toe, and it’s very expressive. There’s a motion in those lines.As I worked with them throughout the next week, I found that workingwith a dancer is very much like working with an animator. They reallytruly were expressing themselves with their body, as opposed to mewith my pencil. And they were really working towards silhouette, andall of the things that Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Erik Larson were

trying to drill into me, they were doing as well. They were trying tocommunicate with attitude, so that somebody in the back of thetheater could read the pose. There was always an anticipation ofmovement…

Daniel: Clear staging…

Glen: Staging, everything was really designed for the audience; justcommunicating it clearly. As Eric would always say, “Make a positivestatement.” And something that I had learned in my first years atDisney, Ollie would say, “Think in terms of golden poses.” Eventhough you’ve got 24 frames a second flashing by, it’s really maybeonly three poses in a ten second scene that really tell the story. Justthink in terms of what are these golden poses? And the more I watchedballet, I realized that’s what they’re all about. They’re hitting thesegolden poses, and they may leap through the air… The pose walks inand it’s this picture, and a pirouette is basically one pose that is frozenbut is moving, and all of these different attitudes were carefullychoreographed to tell a story in movement. So that’s what I workedwith Marion on, in terms of what are those golden poses.

Recently, I’ve been working with Benoit Philipon. He is the guy thatwas doing the live action. We were talking about actually freezingthose golden poses, and rotating them in space, and I would animatethem moving in dimension. But I found that it was actually hurting themore important principle, which was communicating an emotion, astory. So I decided that I wasn’t going to freeze those moments. Sothere’s basically three acts that I worked out with it, and it very muchcomes from Psalm 42.

It’s a sense of spiritual longing in the first movement, which goes toconflict and struggle, and then finally a breaking free and a freedom ofexpression. Those three emotions are in that Psalm 42. The nameNephtali comes from when Jacob was blessing his twelve sons, thetwelve tribes of Israel. His son Naphtali, spelled with an “a” in English.In French it’s with an “e”, so I used the “e” spelling as it was done inFrance. But Jacob says, “Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautifulbonds.” And I’d always loved just that image of the power and thegrace of a deer leaping free. And in the end having the fawns as a lightthat’s fruitful…these are things that are very personal for me. Andbecause I was invited in in a similar way I was invited into Google…Tobe myself, and express something personal.

That’s what Benjamin Millepied was asking me to do. I find it really agift for me to come in and not have to sell something or createsomething that stockholders will find fitting their guidelines. Instead,I found I had to complete creative freedom. It was really a wonderfulexperience. For me, drawing the figure has always been a joy. When Istarted animation, I just wanted to be a sculptor and a painter. Sowhen I animate I’m constantly trying to find a way to draw the figurein space and turn them around.

Daniel: It’s sounds like that’s what you were doing when youwere trying to find the golden poses. You’re still experimentingwith drawing in dimension.

Glen: Yeah very much so. You’ve seen the Step Into the Page video[5]?

Daniel: Yes

Glen: I mean that’s even another step beyond. It actually was funny,the day after I came back from Paris, after drawing these dancers, Iwent up to Google to do the Step Into the Page. And in Paris I wasdrawing this dancer who was leaping towards me. I had to draw thatbeautiful line of action of the dancer in perspective coming at me. YetI knew that from a profile you would have this beautiful line of actionrunning down the back all the way down to the feet, and that’s what Iwanted to draw. But instead I had to do it in perspective, so it was sortof a frustration, and so the first thing I did when Bruce Skillman, oneof the two guys developing Tilt Brush, gave me the stylus was I justdrew a line going back in space like it was that same dancer.

I stepped around and saw this beautiful profile line and I could start todraw that dancer. That was really the first drawing that I did in VR. Itwas something that I found that I could never do on paper. It wasincredibly liberating and difficult. I do think it’s going to take time tomaster that art of creating in VR. I don’t think it just gives itself upwithout some real effort of understanding the craft just like animation.I remember Frank and Ollie telling me it will take you five years to atleast get to a point where you are comfortable animating so that you’llunderstand what you’re doing with it. I hope it doesn’t take five yearswith this craft, but I don’t have any illusions that you just get itinstantaneously.

Daniel: Do you plan on using it for any future shorts once you’veexplored it a bit more?

Glen: Well yeah, I’m developing a few ideas right now; trying to findthe right partnership. Somebody who wants to collaborate, and dosomething that is personal, expressive. I want to do something that’sgood. I want to do something that touches people in a meaningful way.I’m not interested in just the technical aspect of an object turning inspace. I want them to have some emotional resonance with theaudience.

Daniel: More than just a gimmick.

Glen: Yeah, much more than that. So I am talking to possible partnersthat we can do that with. Right now I’m not exactly sure. The thing isafter leaving Disney, I left because I felt like there’s somethingwonderful out there waiting. I didn’t know what it was. Now I’mbeginning to discover it. It really is an entirely new era of animation

right now, and it’s not formed yet. It’s very very fluid. It’s kind of likeif you’re making a sauce and at the beginning it’s just very liquid, andyou’re stirring the spoon, and you’re thinking this is never going tothicken up. And you add some more flour, and pretty soon the gravystarts to get a little bit thicker, and then you have somethingwonderful. I think right now it’s still thin. It’s beginning to thicken.It’s beginning to form into something very personal, expressive, but ittakes an enormous amount of communicating with others which is

why I’m actually going out to The Future of Storytelling[6], to touchbases, to learn, to share. There’s an enormous amount of collaborationthat’s happening right now outside of the big studios that I findincredibly exciting.

Daniel: Would you consider collaborating with another majorartist, or do you want to focus more on personal stories rightnow?

Glen: I’m open to any kind of collaboration right now, and I’m findingthat most of the people who I’m rubbing shoulders with are otherartists as well. Maybe it’s going to be helping somebody elseaccomplish a vision that they have. It doesn’t have to be mine. I’vespent my whole career helping directors realize their vision. Since I’veleft Disney, I’ve had wonderful opportunities of actually realizingsome of my own, but I’m really open for the right marriage of creativepeople together. And if it means helping somebody else tell their storyor working with another artist that I am sympatico with then yeah let’sdo it. That’s how I feel.

Daniel: In the live action footage we see you directing thechoreography of, Marion Barbeau, the dancer. Did you have anidea for what you wanted the whole sequence to look like from

the start or was there more of an organic process with bothartists bouncing ideas off of one another?

Glen: Yes and yes. I’d never done choreography before, though I’vecertainly thumbnailed so many different moments in animation that Iassumed it was like that. Except that you are working with anotherperson, a choreographer. I remember one time in Treasure Planet,John Ripa and I, we animated on the same animation desk at the sametime where Long John Silver is meeting Jim Hawkins. John and I justchoreographed it very much like a dance working around one another.I would run and animate a little thing, and then he jumped back inthere it was…so collaborative that way. That was probably the closestI’ve had to this experience. I watched Benjamin Millepied, who is agenius in choreography. He works very intuitively, almost like it wasstraight ahead animation, where one pose just leads into the next.

He’s working with a dancer, watching them, and then somethingoccurs to him, and then he adds on to it. He may have some generalidea, but he’s really responding to the spirit of the moment. I watchedhim do that and I thought, “Okay, I can relate to that.” So when I camein, and I met Marion Barbeau, it was scary and intimidating because Idon’t know dance. Here’s this ballerina who, her whole life since shewas six years old was working and studying, and I’m not going topresume to know what she knows. But I did know that there are certainthings that she needs. She needed for me to communicate the emotionthat she had to have at the very beginning. I knew that I needed tohave this longing start in one place, and have her move to the nextpoint on the stage. So I did little thumbnail sketches to show her theway I thought she should move. And I mostly did them through littlethumbnail drawings, sometimes trying to act them out for her.Thenshe would have an idea how to interpret this wind, this wave. In the

middle of Psalm 42 it says,

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; All your wavesand breakers have swept over me.

So I translated all of this in French to her, and the whole time wasspeaking to her in French. She understood that turbulent kind of afeeling. I kept looking for ways that we could get this beautiful arc. Ikept imagining her as if she was a drawing. Even though you’reworking with a ballerina, a living person, I’m still imagining her asdrawing that’s actually moving across a space with a kind of an SCurve, a French Curve, in the arc of her path of action where she wouldfall down onto the ground. And sometimes it would feel a bit clunky,so I would ask her to do it again but with a little more of a gracefuldissent as she would hit the ground and then rise up. There needed tobe these changes of direction.

There’s basically three pieces of choreography, each one moving in itsown direction, it was very simple that way. So I wrote down words forher, so that she could understand the one central thought in that, fromdesire or longing. French doesn’t have a word for longing, so I had tocome up with other ways of translating that. Desire would probably bethe closest. Then there would be this struggle, which was the secondword. In French it was a different word, but it was something like that.And then, liberty, freedom was the last one. With all of those I did a lotof little sketches so she understood how I would do this if I wasanimating it, and then watching how she interpreted it.

So that was how we were doing it throughout the whole process I wasworking closely with Benoit Philippon, who was doing all the live-action. He was filming the whole process. I needed him to shootcertain angles because I was going to use that for reference when Icame back to L.A. Then when we got back, I really only had about threeweeks to do all the animation, which is what we did. My son Max, whowas Production Designer for Duet, was also the Production Designerfor Nephtali. He just has a knack of taking the drawings that I’m doingand making them look a hundred times better. Just putting them inspace and dimension.

Daniel: From my perspective, as a fan and an observer, you haveaccumulated all of this knowledge and expertise over decades ofcreating animation, and now you have your own company, in atime with all this emerging technology at your fingertips. It’sseems to me that the possibilities of what someone like you cando are really limitless. I think I speak for everyone when I saywe’re all waiting in anticipation for what you’re going to do next.

What are your long term goals in this business? What do you

hope to achieve by the end of your career?

Glen: Well, I plan on living until I’m 120. So in a lot of ways I feel likeI’m just beginning my career right now. I can honestly say that I feelvery much the same way I did when I first started. I feel like I’m barelyup to the task. When I started it seemed like everyone else knew somuch more than I did, and I was playing catch-up all the time. And Ialways looked to past masters of drawing and sculpture as my guidewhen I became stuck. I wouldn’t look so much at animation as I wouldlook at Rodin or Degas, and Augustus John, and learn that way. So nowI’ve never lost that sense that if one of those artists from 150 years agowas transported to today and you gave them the tools that we havetoday. But didn’t show them any of the animation that’s been done,but just show them what’s possible. What would they do? What wouldthey come up with? That’s kind of where I’m thinking of myself, inthat sense of, if you could re-invent what you’re doing, who you are asan artist, and look at all of the tools afresh, you probably would nevereven come up with the look of Disney now. That’s a look that’s therebecause of a technical limitation of painting on cells. There would bean entirely different feeling to the way you draw

And now thinking about VR, maybe there’s a way of actually animatingin three dimensional space. This is something I’m fascinated withactually animating around me with drawing in space as if you aresculpting that figure in space, but it’s in line. These are things that I’mreally fascinated with and there’s been a few projects that have beencooking in my mind for thirty years now. I’ve been wanting to dothem, but I never felt like I was ready. Not that I feel like I’m ready yeteither. But at some point I’ve got to dive in and start, so right now I’mputting my sails up and seeing what fills them, and how I canaccomplish these ideas.

1. http://onanimation.com/2014/12/02/making-duet/

2. http://onanimation.com/2014/06/26/behind-the-scenes-of-duet-by-glen-keane/

3. http://onanimation.com/2015/09/15/glen-keane-nephtali/

4. https://twitter.com/bonnybaez

5. http://onanimation.com/2015/09/10/glen-keane-step-into-the-page/

6. http://futureofstorytelling.org/

My wife’s patience and encouragement along the way means a lot tome because we’re in this adventure together. For me to step away fromDisney was also a scary thing to do. Something that I took veryseriously because I felt like I was given so much there by these greatteachers. I felt a responsibility to continue to pass that on. And Irealized that even though you leave Disney, Disney never leaves you.You’ve still got those principles, and I’m trying to apply them intothese new frontiers. I kept hearing from Ollie Johnston, he would say,“Glen, you’re going to do greater things than us some day.” I’mthinking, man, I wish he’d never said that. That’s such a burden; Ican’t possibly do better than Pinocchio. But now I realize he didn’tmean great in quality like that. He was talking about greater inapplication, in influence. In a way, take those same principles andapply them in a ways that he couldn’t even imagine. And I see thatthat’s exactly what’s happening. Anyway, that’s where I’m at today.

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