So people would say, what's the moral of the story, right, And
so that's what they want to ask when they listen to a fairy tale.
And the truth is that there's something implicit which is more important than whatever moral
you think you should get out of this story. There's some participation, some
mirror of reality, something that is that is reflecting to something precious and powerful
and sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic. But it's more than a moral. And
that's where like it seems like that's feminine thing. It's very elusive. It's
implicit, not explicit. And the mistake people try to make is they try
to when you try to make the implicit explicit. I think that's when it
gets into like propaganda, terarytate. That's when it gets into like you're hitting
people over the head with it. And you know, if they want to
hear a sermon, they'll go to church. You know, they don't want
to hear it. This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the symbolic world.
So hello everyone. I am excited to be speaking to Kendall Hoyer. Kendall
is someone who worked at Disney for many many years and she is now co
head of Story at Skydance Studios. She is an animator, but mostly she
is someone who does storyboard art. She kind of takes the ideas from the
script and from the director and actually creates the basic bones of the story that
bring it all together. And so when you watch a movie that she's worked
on, she's some of the scenes she will have worked out in detail with
how the characters react and where they are and everything. So it's really a
joy to be able to talk to someone like that and see how her thinking,
storytelling thinking, how she brings symbolism into that, and her experience as
an artist. So Kendall, thanks for coming to join me. Yes,
it's my pleasure. So Kendall, maybe tell me a little bit about what
exactly it is that you do. Oh, I was storyboard artists, so
I work with the director and other storyboard artists to board out the movie.
So I started storyboard out scenes and eventually those scenes get cut together to make
an entire story reel of the movie. And it's almost like a comic book
version of the movie. It's almost the blueprint of the movie before it moves
to other department like animation and lighting and layout and all these other departments.
That end up building the movie in production. So we watch our reels and
we judge the movie, the story basically on if it's working, what's not
working, and then we oftentimes care it to part and rebuild it again like
four months later. So we're in this constant. It's almost like rewriting.
We're doing iterations of the movie to really try to hone in on the story
and make it the best be so that that's my job is to like take
a story but the script pages or a description of moment in the movie and
flesh it out with like because that is camera, environment, acting, character,
like all that stuff. Yeah, okay, so let's let's say if
I ask you this, like just to figure it out, what's the difference
between you and the director. The director he makes the final call. He
makes the final call. So it's very very collaborative, which is great.
Like this is the same model that that Disney in at Pixart. It's like
a very collaborative in some other studios, but Disney, this is really the
Disney Pixar model. Because the head of our studio, John Lester, came
through the Pixart. He brought that model over here. It's great because you.
It's kind of like the best idea and the real winds. It's very
collaborative and creative. So the difference between me and the director is I don't
have the final call. However, I sometimes will be like, hmm,
is that what you really wander is out what we should do? Because remember
that that might contradict this, like hierarchy the main story point, like and
I can point out to them like this isn't really you know, driving with
this idea over here, and that's where like I might say, like simple
with thinking is really has kind of hold my story senses because I'm like,
I can kind of see how you know, things are more hierarchical, and
I can see the patterns overall, you know, like and it helps it
helps me. I feel like I already kind of had a story mindset because
I just obviously you were doing that before I was doing that before I discovered
your guys' podcasts and stuff like that. But it helped, right, And
sometimes it makes something implicit more explicit, like because you have these intuitions,
it's not easy to explain them, and and and so sometimes I can give
you tools too. For sure, for sure, I think I can recognize
things that are implicit quicker m and like put my finger on them, you
know what I mean, Like because I I'm like, oh, that's zat,
I can call it what it is, where some people don't. They're
not aware of those things. Yeah. And so in your job, that
means that if you're working on a project, you have to you have to
adapt whatever you're doing to the style of the project and be able to draw
the characters and be able to like yeah see yeah, like if you were
animating, you have to like be able to kind of draw them on model
to scream. Although sometimes we don't have models for characters. You just have
like, yeah, it's going to kind of look like this. You're just
like, okay, just go for it, right if it's not a main
character, imagine, they don't put as much time I get. Yeah.
So eventually these characters are modeled, and then it goes to a different department,
which is called from here. It goes to edit, and then it
goes to where they take my boards and they put it together with sound and
music and they make like the story reels what we call it, and eventually
we will watch the whole movie in this form. Oh really, okay,
well, yeah, multiple times. We watched every couple of loads. We
watch them to judge if it's the story is working, and that's how we
kind of hone in on how the story is coming along to see if it's
coherent. And then we bring in people from the studio to the other writers
and directors, and also everybody in the studio gives notes, and with those
notes we go, oh, this isn't working. There's a problem in this
area. This isn't working. It's kind of like medici mission for the story
against within the studio, and that's a very bikey thing because yeah, yeah,
so it's kind of like that way we can pinpoint the problem areas and
sometimes we'll take people's suggestion. Most of the time people are like everybody is
like pointing in the same areas where we see that something isn't working. And
that's how you know there's patterns and stories because everybody will almost always one rises
to the surface some way. It's always similar across the board, and so
in some ways the animation, you know, before you put in the massive
amounts of investment you need to get it animated, you know what the movie
is going to be pretty much yeah, you're figuring it out. Although it's
it kind of simultaneous. Usually, if the schedule is we get about you
get a couple iterations of scripts, script mens, so terms, treatments,
and then they go to boards. Then we get three screenings before things have
to enter production. And that means when roll after like the third screening or
so, they'll look at the movie and go, this scene is working and
we don't foresee it changing too much in the future. Send that went to
production, and there's all these other things that have to get done in production.
The models or characters have to get built, the sense have to get
built. They all have to get designed first by artists, and then they
have to get built in the computer by a three D artist and the Yeah,
so there's and there's all kinds of computer simulation tests, things that people
working on it all at the same time. It's very labor intensive, imagine.
Yeah, And so I mean that sometimes you are working with let's say,
certain set designers that would have worked on some sets before you're you're going
in. Yes, well, yeah, they take it, so we kind
of work with them. The director works with all the departments. That's the
difference between me and the director too. Director is seeing it through all the
way down the line from like color and design and camera work and all these
things, like he's seeing everything through. But eventually these boards will get put
it at it and then the layout department will take kind of like what I
did here, and they might not have the exact set I draw because I
try to fall close to what we have, but sometimes I kind of just
make things up. They'll try to get the spirit of what I'm doing,
and they'll they'll set the cameras in the set because within the computer right there's
a digital set. It's already there, Yeah, already there, and they
have the camera and they can place it and they lock off shots, and
those locked off shots then those go to the animators, and the animators do
the performance on the character within those shots, and then from there it kind
of the other things happen, like effects and fur simulations and water simulations and
lighting. Lighting is really important, and all these other departments that touch the
shot before it gets done and usually gets much better each time, and when
you see the final thing, you're like whoa, yeah, wow. And
so it's like the fact that it's so labor intensive and that there's no possible
provisational aspect to it's it's surprising that you could have an animation by the time
to put it out that has like bad stories in it, Like how does
that? Because because you would think if you have people looking at it and
they can actually see the story play out, and these are professionals, wouldn't
they know if it's a bad story, Like when they be able to tell,
I feel like they can kind of tell, but they don't know what
the problem is. It's almost always a problem of not going deep enough with
the you know theme essentially, like what it's talking about, and they you
know, how you talk about layers of reality, so like it you know,
the deepest levels here at the deepest level higher whenever they're like somewhere in
the middle and they don't know how to go to the next level of depth
that would unify the parts and let parts fall off. Sometimes they get people
get caught up in like something that they're like, oh, but this is
just so beautiful, but the story is about this, and they're like yeah,
but when you have that moment in a movie, uh, that doesn't
speak to the broader thing. The movie feels fractured and disjointed, and it's
not all pointing to the same thing. Like the best movies, right are
firing on all cylinders in the sense that they all have they're all pointing to
the same thing, right, Like the story carries that the theme, right,
but also then the the sect design, the lighting, all those choices
are pointing to one thing. And but if you get caught up somewhere in
the middle, then you want this sequence to speeches really cool and whatever,
but it's saying something different than what you have in your final conclusion scene,
then it's like they're not People are like, wait, what what was that
about? Oh that didn't tie into this? Oh okay, you know that
that tends to happen. Yeah, So people get like they like a certain
bit of writing or like a little exchange, and they're not willing to sacrifice
it to the the bigger to do your whole or sometimes I think they can't
see the bigger holes sometimes, or they can't they think that one sentiment might
be like the deepest there is. I think this goes from a materialistic perspective
because it's harder to perceive, like you said, to see the idiosyncrasies that
are evident in exchanges or that are evident in a character's journey, but you're
not. You can't. You can't like you can't see it. You can't
perceive it, or you don't see it in your own life, so you
can't see it in the character's life. I don't know. It's just just
sometimes I noticed people can't see it. They can't, Yeah, so they
So if you have you noted? Have you have you had a moment?
Like have you had moments where you worked on something and like you thought it
was all good and whatever, and then later you look back at it and
you thought, how could how did I miss this? Like? How did
I didn't see this weird thing about it? Or this like this bump or
this this this. I mean, I haven't had as much say in uh
other projects as the one I have now because now I'm at a position where
I have more You have more power now than you did before. I have
more access now to say something. Before when I was just asteroidus and I
would I would say things, but it wasn't in the room all the time
to you know, to really try to get to the bottom of it.
And sometimes it takes a while to get to the bottom of what something really
is about, like, because the how the process works is the director usually
has a couple of different ideas and they don't know necessarily what what's at the
base of those ideas. It's just like there's something intriguing about this, you
know, and then the creative director or executive creative executive producer like comes in
and says, Okay, the developed this idea out of the three, like
they pick one out of the three and it's a go in this direction.
And so they start to develop that and as they're developing it, they start
to see kind of a story, and they start to develop the world,
the environment that the story is going to take place in, the other characters
and excuse me, the basic story structure, but they I wouldn't say that
they have the seme in hand, and that kind of like I think it's
like when people were saying they write a book and like it starts speaking to
them, it'll start speaking. It's just sometimes I don't think everybody listens fully.
But there's something about, you know, when we talk about these animated
movies, there's something about the early Pixar movies that were that seemed like they
were really able to just it's hard to explain it. Like they just had
a mastery of storytelling and also of characterization. Also because they were doing animation,
they didn't have to that characterizations didn't have to be you know, complex
like he would and some you know and some Oscar winning you know movie.
But the characterizations we were captured so well, you know, like it was
hard. It was magical, right, It's like the First tot Story or
Monsters Incorporated, or there were these these these early Pixar movies where there was
something about it when when the story finished, you were really mesmerized by just
how much air well to capture, even in terms of you know, the
the way that the movie the story twisted and turned it how it kind of
came back in the end, and how all these threads ended up being brought
back. The writing was just astounding. And so yeah, so that's why
that's why, like in some ways they they kind of ruined us for animation,
because it's as if it was the first blowout of real three D animated
movies, and they did such a great job that now it's like everything's measured
at the light of these early Pixar movies. I mean, they were like
the other good thing that they had for them at that time, Like let's
pressure almost like and lets you know, like voices in the room, but
maybe they're not in the room, do you know, just let's uh top
down bureaucracy, age, reliable, better words, you know, just like
they were a small group and ideas could free flow, and you know they
were like, let's do it. You know, they like, you know
more taking chearances. And it's that kind of created environment that you kind of
have to Like it may come easy when you're small in a smaller studio and
you've got something to prove, but as soon as you've proved something, that
kind of pressure comes, you know, starts turning heads. No I want
to part of that, or you know, and it starts to protect the
creative environment you actually you have to protect it to a certain degree, actually,
right right. I mean that's interesting to think about, you know,
and it's interesting that in some ways you could imagine that some studio like Pigsar
ended up being the victim of their own success, like you said, which
is that they attracted so much attention, you know, bought by Gigant,
the biggest, biggest entertainment corporation and then then basically the stakes are so high
now every time, every time, now these movies are so expensive too,
because the stakes keep getting higher that I imagine the pressure in the room is
different from a bunch of I don't know, like guys who finish college that
are just going just kind of just balancing things off the wall until it totally
sticks and bring it together. Yeah. I think there's probably different pressures when
you're at that level than when you're at the top. And I think,
what and then you're at the top, there's more voices and more i don't
know, like mundy pressure and you know, expectation and things like that which
can really kind of drag you down at the creatively hard Yeah, so you
would hope that position. I'd never been a director, Yeah, yeah,
I know. I can't imagine like the pressure that they they hear, you
know, uh, that that they that they have to deal with. So
hopefully you hope that they'll protect their creative crew so that they don't have to
feel that heat so much. And that's where somebody is to have a creative
person in charge that unders really understands the created process to kind of protect the
creatives underneath them is really important, Like you know, because the business side
is the business side, you know, their their business seed, which they
have to be you know, that's important. Do what we do without that
side of it. But also there's a certain aspect that you have to create,
create like a buffer or protection between the people just trying to be creative.
You know. Yeah, I mean that's really interesting. Like what I
would I find interesting about what you're saying because you wonder, like and I
see the bad movies come out and I and I'm like, what, how
is it possible? Because you think they're definitely creative people, Like it's not
like there's a dearth of people with great ideas and a dearth of people that
tell good stories. But in some ways, maybe it's just that pressure that's
so high coming from people who aren't creative, who want to make sure that
I mean, it's it's it's not anybody's fault in particular, but it's like,
if your movie has to generate a billion dollars, I mean, the
pressure of something like that is so crazy that it has to it has to
kind of like come down onto the people that ultimately are the resource to make
it happen. And it becomes kind of like a beast in out of itself
because the lore you I guess, succumb to like making things more expensive,
the lore. That cycle just kind of perpetuates itself in a way because you
just, well that one was really big. We got to make a big,
you know one on this one. You know, it's just kind of
like spins kind of out of control, you know, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah yeah, And I think we're reaching it seems like we're at
the end of that. Like it seems like whatever the next wave of things
is going to be is not It's just not going to be. It's like
what do you do after endgame? Like what do you do after these like
massive, huge, you know, really well done and successful like things.
And then it's like, well, there's just nowhere to go after that.
If all you're trying to do is make it more fireworks, like you you
can't come back to come back to story, come back to character, come
back to two simple things thing. Yeah. I mean I think people are
really looking for like real and authentic thing, you know, yeah small,
I think I don't know, did you see have you have you followed a
little bit our snow white thing? Have you seen a little bit of what
we're doing. Yeah, yeah, it's great. I'm body am we Oh
cool. I'm going to read it to my daughter. She's she's about to
turn seven, so she's perfect. That's perfect. Yeah. Where it's like,
I listen very carefully to what you're saying because in some ways, you
know, it's like I think, I think that it is possible right now
to make very powerful, beautiful things. But but in some ways you have
to have the right were the right people, but then also the right spirit
of of of creative possibilities in order for it to happen. Yeah yeah,
yeah, yeah, to like protect that thing. And I think you know,
the other thing that I think people like or maybe watching or they need,
it's something that gives them something to reach for. Something that's so much
of things like are like story wise, they're not like aspirational, you know,
they're just kind of like, here's what it is. You know,
Yeah, it's kind of a doubter. It's like, oh yeah, that
is house. See. You know, I suppose it's something that's like we
look at this beautiful thing, you know, and you know, people might
criticize that's just ideal stick that's never whatever, but it gives people something to
aim for that's higher that they can look up to, you know, stories
that that give them something and also stories like that where they can find themselves
in where they like the psychology of the characters real. You know, that's
another thing that's really that's hard to do. I think it's finding a character
that's interesting, relatable, appealing, right that you're like, uh, You're
like, oh, I'm on board with them, Like I know what they're
feeling in their smellet I really understand what their wound is. You talk about
that sometimes, like what's the characters like flaw and yah? What what drives
a character? You know? M hmm. Have you do right? No?
I no, I haven't ever written. You say. No. You
said do you have story ideas? Yeah? Some story ideas? Yeah,
and why wouldn't you want to? Right? Yeah? I don't know.
I did. I just I'm always a picture person. But I mean I
don't hate I like words, but you know, I just don't have it.
But right, not in the sense of I don't care about the writing
part. What I mean is in the sense of creating stories. Oh,
like creating your own story. Yes, I probably should should? I probably
should something, so like I just do my work and then I do my
mom duties. I take my daughter La and all these things and them by
the end of the day, Like, oh, but I should try to
make turning for that. Sure, how long have you been doing this?
I started in two thousand and eight as a story artist. Wow, that's
and now you're head of story and the co edit story co head of story.
Yeah, so I have another coworker who was doing the job with me,
which is super helpful. And what does that mean? What does it
mean then the story? Well, our job is to oversee the storyboard artist
team and also to be in the meetings with the writers and the director to
kind of almost like shepherd the story and kind of help the director find the
story and then carry that vision through in the boards in the storyboards. And
now that the project we're working on, Now this is the first time you're
doing this, Like, yeah, this is the first time I've been head
of story And how how is that? Well, it's great, it's great
because that's why in this job I have more say because the director is really
great. He had this in like all these meetings and because we're at all
these meetings, I can really see the story. Like if you're not in
all the meetings, like little things get changed all the time. But if
you're in all the meetings and you're like, oh, okay, I know
why that's there. I know why that's there. I know why that's there,
and he needs to accomplish this and this care We need to have a
moment around this area where a character realizes this because you have to track their
character arc. Right, you have to figure out you know, because all
the little pieces have come together. You got to do the main character,
the secondary character, the world problem, Like all these things need to track
throughout, and you need to lay enough type in the story so that it
feels cohesive at the end. Right, you're trying to like have all these
things come together at the end and the conclusion will feel satisfactory. So you
can really track that if you're in all the meeting all the discussions about the
story. And so it's super fun because I really really enjoy talking about story
and character and really figuring out. I like story problems because it creates an
opportunity to solve something. Yeah yeah, yeah, what did you study to
do this? I studied animation okay, and I like you, I went
to art school, but I illustration. Yeah yeah, yeah, And I
always wanted to work in animation since I was like eight. You know,
when I was like eight, I was like, I don' want work at
Disney like many kids pre didn't you actually went, You actually went for it
and ended up doing it. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, I studied
drawing, you know, in high school. I was that kid with a
sketch book at youth group drawing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, always drying.
So mmm, I mean this is weird, but there's a difference between
how I think the public perceives entertainment or movies and stuff like that in terms
of actors and all that stuff. Like that stuff is really secondary. It's
like it's it's like they get the money, but that who cares. Really,
Like the important thing are the important people are the storytellers. Yeah.
Yeah. The storytellers are the writers and they'll cleanly the directors that take the
story and make it into something. Yeah, and they take you the journey
with the actors of the cinematographer and the lighting and the set dresser and all
that stuff. And that's why it all has The director has to be the
keeper of whatever here is at the top, like the saying that everything needs
to be pointing to and if they don't know what that is, and everybody
else is in trouble, right yeah and so and so seth. So we
need we need for people that are thinking about storytelling and are realizing that that's
really the key to talk to each other. So yeah, anyway, So
like in my case, that's what I want to do, Like I have
to stop complaining about stories, and I have to try to to tell better
stories. So that's what that's kind of the the vision I give myself in
the next few years with his fairy tale, but then also God's Dog and
then other stories that I have in mind. And so hopefully we can also
attract people around that, like people who are so anyways, that's why I
like, well, you know, I feel like I've never heard of so
many people interested in like I mean, as people more and more people recognize,
wow, Alliwood's really not doing good things. Other people are like,
well, we'll do good things, you know, just like everybody's you know,
and which is good because it creates opportunities for other things to arise as
the other just the established system seems to be fun. But you know,
I think something you have to like go into it soberly and like also be
really like led into it because I think that, uh, it's it's harder
than it well, at least for animation. Somebody, yeah it makes to
you and like really you really know what that takes, like backers, and
you need someone at the head of that that understands it, and like,
I mean I don't even understand it, like all the like things that need
to come together for that to work. It's like it's it's a lot the
massive enterprise. Definitely, no, I you know that's true, especially if
you want to make really quality things, because obviously you can pump out animation
out He's more easily than any time in days, Like you could animate without
knowing anything about animation, and then you get here like yeah, and then
it's horrible and then and then and then nobody nobody cares. So so maybe
tell me a bit about how how kind of symbolic ideas has influenced your your
work, Like how you you feel like you're able to integrate some of the
things you've been that that I talk about or that or that you know Jordan
talks about into storytelling, Yeah, we'll play you. How I came across
Jordan's It came about Jordan first. It had like, well, because I'm
always looking at stuff and you know, filmmaking things and so things. Anyway,
and I think I was looking up I had heard that kra Kuratsalah was
influenced by Dostoyevsky stories, and so I was looking up Dostoyevsky and I found
Jordan's video about any personality series. I was like, wow, this is
really interesting, and so I started following, and around the same time he
became kind of controversial and people this is like back in twenty sixteen, like
twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, when it was late and it might have been
it was either early twenty eighteen or late seventeen. I think, yeah,
yeah, well that's when it really blew like it really blew up. Yeah.
It was starting to blow up when people were talking about how this guy
is really well, he's misogynistic, he's this. Then yeah, I don't
disagree with anything that he's saying. I'm like, oh okay. It just
kind of kept my interest in itself and just watched all his video by myself,
and then I think he had you on and I was like, wow,
that's really interesting. And then I looked up your channel and you had
like all these things about movies. I was like, oh cool, and
so I watched a bunch of that. So that shook my worldview, like
I had pretty much been living in you know, for like you know,
very worldly, like I was raised in the church, and during college I
kind of fell away. And then so when I discovered all these things like
Jordan and you, my worldview had already been shifting, like I'd come back
to God and like I was questioning everything, and it really kind of things
that I had been experiencing but having gone in my life again were really resonating
with what Jordo was saying. When like he talked about the bottom falling out,
I was like, oh, I don't think everything all the things that
he would describe, I'm like, yes, that's what happens. Yes,
that's what happened. That's what it feels like, phenomenologic, phenomenologically, and
so all those things really spoke to my personal experience, but also I could
apply them to what I would see in the story room or what I was
seeing in stories, Like I was like, oh, that's that principle that
you guys talk about or you know, when you kind of peel away the
material view and you see that really the spirit is the ontological truth and you
can see things more clearly, you know. And I feel that's what symbolism
is very connected to the spiritual realm. So it's very like, uh,
it's it's like that represents that that thing in the story is this principle in
kind of the spiritual realm. It's symbolic of something that's unseen. And the
more I could see those things, the more I could kind of problems solve
stories. So I think that like listening to you En Jordan, I didn't
discover Junger Vicky too a couple of years ago. I think we're kind of
really just opening my eyes to seeing things not materialistically and seeing things and stories
and patterns as more lack of but were more spiritual in a sense. And
it just made it clearer to me because see, the piece is moving underneath
the physical reality. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's hard to talk about bass,
I understand. Yeah, And so definitely one of the issues that people
complain about in terms of the modern movies is in some ways a lot of
some of the decisions that seem to be made are not based on the needs
of the story itself, but come from outside the story, like some message
or some thing they want to get through, and it and that and that
it's it seems artificial or tacked on because the story itself doesn't need it,
or that it actually sometimes goes against the basic pattern of the story. Yeah.
Yeah, And I think that was kind of like where I'm saying,
like I think sometimes people pay they they see like sometimes those things, those
values as the highest value, like the best, like that's the deepest point
of the movie, or that's the theme where that's what it should be about,
and they try to It's like I always compare it to trying to hammer
in a square peg in a round hole thing. It's like you're trying to
make it fit, but it just doesn't fit. But you'll bend over backwards
because you think that that's the most important thing. And it comes from not
listening to the story or the characters of what this movie is really trying to
say. Oh, just like if you know you're writing a novel and you
weren't really listening to what the characters would say or who that character is,
like you would make them act in a way that was counter to what you
had established before. You know, we'll go like, well, that character
wouldn't do that. It pulls you out of this suspension of disbelief and because
it's just like it doesn't jibe with reality, it doesn't jive with the patterns
and reality, it doesn't jive with what you've previously said up nobody would act
in that situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then yeah,
but it's interesting because right, it's like that's when you can see that
in some ways the highest form of reality is not because we use we tend
to think something like even myself, you know, writing fairy tales. So
people would say, what's the moral of the story, right, And so
that's what they want to ask when they when they listen to a fairy tale.
And the truth is that there's something implicit which is more important than whatever
moral you think you should get out of this story. There's some there's some
participation, some mirror of reality, something that is that is reflecting to you
something precious and powerful and sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic. Sometimes you know it,
but it's more than a moral right, and it's yeah, like uh
like and that's where like it seems like that's feminine thing, you know,
like it's it's very elusive. It's implicit, not explicit. And the mistake
people try to make is they try to when you try to make the implicit
explicit. I think that's when it gets into like propaganda caritatee. That's when
it gets into like you're hitting people over the head with it. And you
know, if they want to hear a sermon, they'll go to church.
You know, they don't want to hear it. And I'm never a little
posted. I had a ton of post it on my screen, but one
of them is avoid didacticism. And it's because I learned that word. I
was like, oh, that's what we want to avoid dignactics because and there's
a kind of place for it, like I mean, I feel like Asop's
fables or there's some you know, there's some things that are like for children
that have more of a little more of that. Yeah, it has that
aspect to it, but as you get older, you don't want it to
be so explicit. You know, you're more you're in a story, You're
more like kind of asking questions in a certain area like a certain like over
around a certain value, and you can't strawmen the opposing value, or it
feels didactic. You have to let the the anti hero or whatever the antithesis
be as wrong as the the protagon industry, because otherwise it feels rigged.
It feels rigged. I love that word. I never thought of you thinking
about it that way. It feels rigged. That's a that's a great idea.
And then and then it makes you realize in some ways that like you
said, that there's something about a story which is rather a puzzle of human
experience that is playing out, and that there is there is a solution,
but the solution is within the puzzle of the story. It's not it's not
that it's not just a a more moral tale that comes in from from outside.
And obviously we're not the first ones doing this right. The whole THEA
sixmachina idea was that was like, you know, Aristotle complained about the playwrights
not making the characters work out the story from within their own motivations rather than
rather bring in, you know, at the end, someone who just solves
the problem from outside and just basically tells you what you know what the moral
is so that you can go back home, you know, with a nice
package. Right. And as a storyteller, I feel like you have to
be aware of the audience, the characters you're creating, and yourself. You
have to be aware of like what you yourself putting in there, you know,
because what you already like have in your head, uh in like in
the story. Like so many times, I feel like I've been on projects
where it's like I feel like we are like, yeah, we're saying this,
and we know that this is what it is in the story, but
but we should take that out of it because by this shod or saying this,
we're imposing ourselves as the storytellers onto the characters, right, And if
you do that too much, the audience feels it and it doesn't feel right.
Yeah, yeah, and it's a and you can imagine like you could
also you can imagine it too that as the person telling the story, you're
like, well, this is what I want people to get from this story.
And so the danger, of course is that that's what you want,
so you make it too explicit, and then by the time you make it
too explicit, you you haven't succeeded because nobody cares about the story anyways.
And so it's like you've lost if you try to make your point or whatever
it is you think you're you're you're making and so the and so what happens
I think too, it's like you if you remain in story mode and in
the kind of story puzzle mode where you have these factions and characters that play
off each other, that balance each other out, you know that that relate
to each other in ways. That is it is in the puzzle of the
story. I think what it does too, is that it can make someone
say something deeper than what they're capable of. Yeah, I do think that
that you could just see it starting to emerge, like like somehow you just
stumble across it and you're like, oh my gosh, that's so much deeper
than then we could have even like constructed. It just starts to kind of
happen. It's like things start lining up. You know that the things are
starting to line up, and it just kind of flows. It's strange,
but it happens. If you don't fight it though, somehow, like that's
the you have to almost get yourself out of the way as the as the
storyteller, it's almost like a conduit. You have to kind of shepherd it,
but you can't get in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
no, it seems like that. I think you're You're totally right. And
that's why sometimes like the best storytellers, and this is true like in terms
of music, in terms of all kinds of sometimes those you don't really want
to hear the people tell you what it's about, because actually they don't really
know what it's about, or they think they know. But once you once
you see, you're like, well, what you're saying is actually reducing the
movie or the song or whatever, like the reason why people actually care about
it. That's it. That's it. And so in some ways that the
storyteller is almost like a it's like an antenna almost more than there's someone who's
just basically vibing in the puzzle and is able to put it out there,
but it doesn't even necessarily understand it. It's not even to their own to
their own merit sometimes that that they're able to that they've been able to do
something like that. Yeah, I think so then the mus idea becomes way
more coherent, Like we can kind of understand why the Ancients and not just
the Pagans, the Christians too, you know, in the Middle Ages and
even in the Renaissance, people were still invoking the Muse before they started because
in some ways knew that doesn't totally come from you. Yeah, there's like
you kind of have, yeah, and you're like some sort of conduit you
have. You just kind of have to shepherd in. And I think the
more you do it, the more you kind of, you know, recognize
where you're inserting yourself and where you're just letting things flow to a certain extent.
And you know, you've been creative. I don't know, I've been
in creative rooms. You know that there's a certain flow that happened in the
papers too. Things just go back and forth and they just kind of go
and there's ones where it's just like, oh, I can't say that,
well, well that's that you know, you just start putting blockades up in
your own mind, you know, like they're not going to like that or
this, that and the other. So that's true. I mean, I
mean when you when you are creating something and there's that flow, like really
the way that John Ravagki talks about it, there really is this the logos
right that Johnny also brings up, which is that in the end, the
there's more than what you thought was possible. There's definitely more than what you
could have done on your own, and that's really precious. I mean,
if you can have that, it's quite rare and it's really precious. And
that's probably you know, like you talked about the like the early Pixar movies
or even the early Disney movies or you know, other projects like that,
where there was probably some of that going on, Like there was just this
really bubbling thing where the ideas just gibed and everything was just kind of falling
together in a way that was that was intuitively right, you know, right,
I mean I think like to use like I mean, I don't know,
but like early Disney as example, I think Walt Disney and his brother
were kind of like the business people, like protecting their little pie of creatives.
And they had they they amassed all these great creatives, but and they
they interfaced with like I'm sure they were hustling to try to get money and
funding to keep this thing going, right, but they were also protecting their
little hive of artists, you know, and trying to give them like the
best that they could. And they also were visionary, like we're gonna need
this and this is gonna be great, and so they're yeah, they're like
shepherding the creative process and moving it forward. You know, for sure,
there's something unreasonable about those early Disney movies. I mean when I remember just
a few years ago, I watched Pinock again and I was looking at watching
that animated waves and I was thinking, this is completely unreasonable, Like how
the hell did they? How did that? How did they? Who did
this? Like who animated the water? Like just and it's all you know,
it's all hand done and everything, and they's just something so completely unreasonable
about about it. And but also this you can just feel the absolute care
and love, like like if you're looking at a hand crafted violin or something,
right, yeah, and that they create, you know, and like
early picks are they created, they had they were visionary, and they wanted
to tell the story and they wanted to do it with such cure that they
created technology like really like people that can help them to do these things.
And that's kind of where like you know, early picture will talk about like
art it pushes on technology and technology helps the art and it kind of they
kind of move forward together because sometimes the artists can't cite, you know,
they can't they don't have the tools to create what they want, and so
that the technological people will come in and help them create. Like the multiplying
camera, like that wasn't the thing, right, you know, and they
created that to do snow white so that they could get these the feeling of
these you know of one layer moving play it that way so you like a
camera moving and you know, all this stuff and gain depth and beauty to
the shots of the platal product, you know, like, but they didn't
have that before they had to create that. Yeah, so I'm gonna I
think I think maybe I'll end with the dark question. Sorry, end with
the dark question. But the so AI is all abuzz and everybody's talking about
AI and you can see, you know, the different software, the different
platforms that are like stable Diffusion and amid Journey and all these platforms that are
kind of pushing on us. Uh. And so what do you think in
terms of as we watched this kind of these technologies, massive technological innovations down
the coming downstream, how do you see the future of this like of animation,
of creative storytelling in relationship to these these tech tools that are just coming
down very fast. Well, honestly, I don't know that much about it.
Yeah, you put understand more than I do. I really don't understand
that much about it. But I think I think it's I tend to think
it's a kind of a hack, you know, like people, it's also
robbing people of something, right, Like there's a certain amount of like gratification,
and that happens when you put in the time too to do something and
you can, you overcome, and you overcome, and then you put you
have something. You're like, wow, that looks great, you know.
But now people are like using AI to get there faster. And I'm you
know, I'm not about like not getting something faster, you know, like
to a certain degree. But you're like robbing people of excellence in a certain
sense, you know, by giving it to the machine and giving it to
some program or something that like, you know, if you spend hours dry
and really honing your crack, that can't be taken away from you, right,
that can't be taken away from that's something that you've put in the attention
and the time to do. And I think AI kind of roobs people of
that, you know, like that handcrafted things so valuable. I think it
devalues some things if it was just a machine algorithm. And what do you
think of the idea that in some ways like the best way to frame it
is something like care and attention in the sense that even though the computer might
bring to us like technically proficient images that will be very fast to produce and
will be visually stunning and surprising and all that, ah, but that because
it's so easy, the type of care and attention you would need in order
to create something that people will love, well, like you won't. It's
like as if you won't have to put that in there because it can happen
so fast, and that will necessarily affect the result, and it will necessarily
affect the perception that people have of that result as well. But I think
people can tell for sure, Like you said, I think people can perceive
that something doesn't have that level of care and attention, you know that,
and that I feel like it's just gonna you know, some people will be
like, oh, it's great, But then when something comes out that really
has the creed attention. People are gonna like walk on to it because they
can. I think we're just built to notice things like that. You know,
I don't know, well, I mean, we're artists. It's hard
for me to know how objective I am. But for sure, like now
I've seen in the past six months, I would say maybe a little more.
I've seen a huge percent of ads online get replaced by mid Journey images,
and I not only can I tell, but there's something about it,
Like there's something that I don't know how to explain it. There's something about
those images that are boring, even though they're all stunning and they have all
the right light angles and they have this kind of perfection. There's something about
a lot of these images that are boring and repulsive to some extent. And
so I mean, I'm curious if it's just because I'm an artist and I
can tell, and I'm like, it's like, oh, please another mid
journey image. Like if I just scroll down my Facebook, whatever thing or
all I see or just a bunch of mid journey generated ads, and people
use it for thumbnails too. On YouTube. A lot of people are using
mid journey for thumbnails on YouTube, and there's something about it that is just
not that I find very uninteresting, but it's almost like something really flashy at
the flashy, really fat, Like it's just it's flashy, you know,
but then it it wears off really fast. Yeah. I mean I'm also
artist, so I probably have a similar like mindset to you. Like I'm
also like, uh, my eye is really attracted to things that are like
hand crafted or there's something I don't know, something just something nicer about,
you know, like handcrafted things, and I I cann't have like like oh
look at the neg what And then I'm like, oh, look it's really
expensive, and then a reason and you're like I've got it. But yeah,
and a long time ago I turned off to most of the like comic
book movies because it's like, oh, same thing again, it's like flashy
flash if actually it is like the same thing in my mind just kind of
shuts it down. I don't know if everybody will be like that, you
know, but I do think that if you create something uh that is really
good quality and appeals to people it's not like high artsy or whatever, then
it will attract their attention. You think people are just built to see things
like that, like the early Picks movies or the early Disney movies, like
things like that, Like people are drawn to them, you know, and
they they withstand on time. Yeah, definitely, definitely. So well,
thanks for your time, Kenda, I appreciate it. That's great. Next
year, February twenty ninth to March second, we are going to have the
very first Symbolic World Summit in tarp And Springs, Florida. There'll be some
amazing speakers. Of course I'll be speaking, but there will also be Father
Stephen de Young of Lord of Spirit's Fame. You will also find their Martin
Shaw, who's a mythographer and amazing storyteller, but a bunch of other people
too. Of course, Richard Rowland will be there, Nicholas Kotar, Neil
the Great, and Dirt por Robbins are actually going to play a concert.
They'll also be Vesper Stamper, but also a lot of other people involved in
the Symboc World community will come together to explore how we can recover rediscover the
ancient cosmic image. But it'll also be a time for people to connect together,
to meet in real time, in real space, develop relationships, you
know, find people thinking in the same line as we are to further this
community and to further this type of thinking in the world. So I'm really
looking forward to meeting you in person in Tarpan Springs February twenty ninth, so
hopefully see you there