https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=mFp3H96_wd8
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 reflecting to you something precious and powerful and sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic, but it’s more than a moral. And that’s where it seems like that’s the 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 territory. That’s when it gets into like you’re hitting people over the head with it. And if they want to hear a sermon, they’ll go to church. You know, they don’t want to hear it. This is Jonathan Peugeot. 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’s 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, some of the scenes she will have worked out in detail of how the characters react and where they are and everything. So it’s a 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. Yeah, it’s my pleasure. So Kendall, maybe tell me a little bit about what exactly it is that you do. Oh, I’m a storyboard artist. So I work with the director and other storyboard artists to board out the movie. So we 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 like the blueprint of the movie before it moves to other departments 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 tear it apart 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 it could be. So that’s my job is to take the script pages or description of moment in the movie and flesh it out with like, because that is camera, environment, acting, character, all that stuff. Yeah. Okay. So let’s say if I asked you this, 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 Disney and Pixar. It’s like a very collaborative, it’s some other studios, but Disney, this is really the Disney Pixar model. Because the head of our studio, John Laster came from Disney Pixar, he brought that model over here. It’s great because it’s kind of like the best idea in the room wins. It’s very collaborative and creative. So the difference between me and the director is I don’t have the final call. However, sometimes we’ll be like, is that what you really want? Or is that what we should do? Because remember, that might contradict this like in the hierarchy, the main story point, like, look, and I can point out to them like, this isn’t really, you know, jiving with this idea over here. And that’s where like, I might say, like symbolic thinking is really has kind of honed 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 you guys’s 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 so sometimes can give you tools to for sure, for sure, I think I can recognize things that are implicit quicker, perhaps, and like, put my finger on them. You know what I mean? Like, because I am like, oh, that’s that 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, like, if you were animating, you have to like, be able to kind of draw them on model to a certain degree. Although, sometimes we don’t have models for characters, we just have like, it’s gonna kind of look like this. It’s like, okay, I can just go for it. Right. If it’s not a main character, I imagine they don’t put as much time. Yeah. So eventually, these 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 a story reel, is what we call it. Eventually, we will watch the whole movie in this form. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Multiple times, we will watch every couple months, 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 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 metacognition for the story, I guess, within the studio. As that’s a very big thing. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s kind of like, that way we can pinpoint the problem areas. And sometimes we’ll take people’s suggestion. But 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, something is 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’s kind of simultaneous. Usually the schedule is we get about, you get a couple iterations of scripts, scriptments, sometimes treatments, and then they go to boards and we get three screenings before things have to enter production. And that means when we’ll 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 one to production. And there’s all these other things that have to get done in production, like the models for the characters have to get built, the sets have to get built, they all have to get designed first by right artist. And then they have to get built in the computer by a 3d artist. And then yeah, so there’s, there’s all kinds of computer simulation tests and things that people working on it all at the same time. It’s very labor intensive. Imagine. Yeah. And so, 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. The 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 inputted 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 stay 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 like within the computer, right, there’s a digital set. It’s already there. Yeah. Right 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 for 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, it’s like, whoa. Yeah. Wow. And so it’s like the fact that it’s so labor intensive and that there’s no possible improvisational aspect to it. It’s surprising that you could have an animation by the time they put it out that has like bad stories in it. Like how does that, because you would think if you have people looking at it and you can actually see the story play out and these are professionals, wouldn’t they know if it’s a bad story? Like wouldn’t 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 theme essentially, like what it’s talking about. And they, you know, how you talk about layers of reality. So like it’s, you know, the deepest levels here are the deepest levels higher, whatever. 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 that doesn’t speak to the broader thing, the movie feels fractured and disjointed. 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 set design, the lighting, all those choices are pointing to one thing. But if you get caught up somewhere in the middle and you want this sequence to be just 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 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 bigger hole. Or sometimes I think they can’t see the bigger hole sometimes, or they think that one sentiment might be like the deepest there is. I think this comes from a materialistic perspective too, 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, it’s 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. Sometimes I notice that people can’t see it. Yeah. So if you have had a moment, like if 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 other projects as the one I have now, because now I’m in a position where I have more. You have more power now than you did before. Yeah, I have more access now to say something before when I was just a story artist and 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’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, develop 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 and the other characters and, excuse me, the basic story structure. But they, I wouldn’t say that they have the theme in hand and that kind of, it’s like, I think it’s like when people say they write a book and like it, 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, then 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, the character, the characterization didn’t have to be, you know, complex like you would in some, you know, I don’t know, in some Oscar winning, you know, movie. But the characterizations were captured so well, you know, like it was hard, it was magical, right? It’s like the first story or Monsters Incorporated or there are these early Pixar movies where there was something about it when the story finished, you were really mesmerized by just how much they were able to capture, even in terms of, you know, the way the movie, the story twisted and turned and 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 kind of ruined us for animation because it’s as if it was the first blowout of real 3D animated movies and they did such a great job that now 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 is like less pressure almost, like, and less, you know, like voices in the room, but maybe they’re not in the room, you know, just less top-down bureaucracy, for lack of a better word, 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 chances and it’s that kind of creative environment that you’re going to 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. People still go, oh, I want a part of that or, you know, and it starts to protect the creative environment. You actually 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 a studio like Pixar 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 entertainment corporation and then basically the stakes are so high now. Every time, now these moves 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 finished college that are just going, you know, just kind of just bouncing 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 when you’re at the top, there’s more voices and more, I don’t know, like money pressure and, you know, expectation and things like that, which can really kind of drag you down, I think, creatively. Yeah. I’ve never been a director. Yeah, yeah. I can’t imagine, like, pressure that they hear, you know, 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 really understands the creative 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, they’re businessy, which they have to be, you know, that’s important. Yeah. And do what we do without that side of it. But also, there’s a certain aspect that you have to create, like a buffer or protection between the people just trying to be creative, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s really interesting. What I find interesting about what you’re saying, because you wonder, like, when I see the bad movies come out, 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 not anybody’s fault in particular, but it’s like, if your movie has to generate a billion dollars, I mean, the pressure for something like that is so crazy that it has to kind of like come down onto the people that ultimately are the resource to make it happen. Right. And it becomes kind of like a beast in and of itself, because the more you, I guess, succumb to like making things more expensive, the more 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 one on this one, it just kind of like spins kind of out of control in a way. 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 end game? Like, what do you do after these like massive, huge, you know, really well done and successful 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, to simple things. Yeah. I mean, I think people are really looking for like real and authentic things, you know, small things, I think. I don’t know. Did you see, have you, have you followed a little bit of our Snow White thing? Have you seen a little bit of what we’re doing? Yeah. Yeah. It’s great. I, I bought it. I’m waiting for my cousin. Oh, cool. I’m happy. 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. We’re, it’s like, I’m listening 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, real, 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 wanting, or they need is 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, it’s kind of a downer. It’s like, oh yeah, that is how, you know, as opposed to something that’s like, look at this beautiful thing, you know, and, you know, people might criticize, that’s just idealistic. That’s never whatever, but it gives people something to aim for. That’s higher that, that they can look up to, you know, you know, stories that, that give them something and also stories like that, but where they can find themselves in, where they like the psychology of the characters, you know, and 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, you’re like, oh, I’m on board with them. Like, I know what they’re feeling in this moment. I really understand what their wound is. We talk about that sometimes, like what’s a character’s like flaw and what drives a character, you know? Have you do write? No, but I know I haven’t ever written. I should. 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 just, I’m always a picture person, but I’m in the same. I don’t hate, I like words, but you know, I just, I haven’t. 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 stories. Yes, I probably should. Should. I probably should. Sometimes I just do my work and then I do my mom duties. I take my daughter to LA and all these things. And then by the end of the day, I’m like, oh, but I should try to make time for that sort of thing. How long have you been doing this? I started in 2008 as a story artist. Wow. So that’s, and now you’re head of story. I’m a co-head of story. Co-head of story. Yeah. So I have another coworker who’s doing the job with me, which is super helpful. And what does that mean? What does it mean? The head of 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 the project you’re working on now, this is the first time you’re doing this? Yeah, this is the first time I’ve been head of story. Yeah. And how is that? Well, it’s great. It’s great because that’s why in this job I have more say because the director’s really great. He has us in like all these meetings. And because we’re in 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 this needs to accomplish this. And this character, 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 to 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 pipe 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 and feel satisfactory. So you can really track that if you’re in all the meetings and 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, to fix something. Yeah. What did you study to do this? I studied animation. Okay. And I like you, I went to art school, but I did illustration. Um, 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 want to work at Disney like many kids. Yeah, I did. You actually went for it and ended up doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I studied drawing, you know, in high school I was that kid with a sketchbook at youth group drawing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Always drawing. So, yeah. 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. 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 ultimately the directors that take the story and make it into something. That’s right. Yeah. And they take you on a journey with, with the actors and 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 thing that everything needs to be pointing to. And if they don’t know what that is, then 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 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’ve given myself in the next few years with this fairy tale series, but then also God’s dog and then other stories that I have in mind. Yeah. And so hopefully we can also attract people around that, like people who, who are, so anyways, that’s my, I mean, like, you know, I feel like I’ve never heard of so many people interested in like, I mean, as, as people, more and more people recognize, wow, Hollywood’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, as the established system seems to be floundering. 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 it’s, it’s harder than it, well, at least for animation. So many people are like, turn animation student. Like, really? Do you really know what that takes? Like you need 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 now more easily than any time in the history. Like you could animate without knowing anything about animation. And then you look at it and you’re like, yeah, and then it’s horrible. 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 I talk about or that, or that, you know, Jordan talks about and into storytelling. Yeah, well, I’ll tell you how I came across Jordan. I came across Jordan first and how like, well, because I’m always looking at stuff and, you know, filmmaking things and story things anyway. And I think I was looking up, I had heard that Akira Kurosawa was influenced by Dostoevsky stories. And so I was looking up Dostoevsky and I found Jordan’s video about Dostoevsky and his personality series. I was like, wow, this is really interesting. And so I started following him and around that same time, he became kind of controversial and people- This was like back in 2016, like 2015, 2016? When was it? It was later than that. It might’ve been the, it was either early 2018 or late 2017, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s when it really blew, like it really blew up. Yeah, it was starting to blow up and people were talking about how this guy is really, he’s misogynistic. He’s this and the other. Really? I don’t disagree with anything that he’s saying. I’m like, oh, okay. And so I just kind of kept my interest to myself and just watched all his videos 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 of these things about movies. I was like, oh, cool. And so I watched a bunch of that. So that shook my worldview. I had pretty much been living in, you know, for like, you know, very worldly, like I was raised in the church, but then 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 Jordan was saying when, like he talks about the bottom falling out. I was like, oh, I know what that feels like. And 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. Phenomenal, 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 materialistic view and you see that really the spirit is the ontological truth, 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, it’s like that represents 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 problem solve stories. So I think that like listening to you in Jordan, I didn’t discover John Ravichito a couple years ago, I think, were kind of really just opening my eyes to seeing things not materialistically and seeing things and stories and patterns as more, lack of a better word, more spiritual in a sense. And it just made it clear to me to see the pieces moving underneath the physical reality. Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s hard to talk about these things. 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 seems artificial or tacked on because the story itself doesn’t need it or it actually sometimes goes against the basic pattern of the story. Yeah, yeah. And I think that was kind of like where I was seeing, like I think sometimes people can’t, 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 or 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 and a round hole or something. 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. Just like if you were 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’s was counter to what you had established before. You know, and people go like, well, that character wouldn’t do that. And he pulls you out of the suspension of disbelief and it, because it’s just like, it doesn’t jive with reality. It doesn’t jive with the patterns in reality. It doesn’t jive with what you’ve previously set up. Nobody would act that way in that situation. 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 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 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 reflecting to you something precious and powerful and sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic, sometimes, you know, but it’s more than a moral. Right. And it’s, yeah, like, and that’s where like, it seems like that’s the feminine thing, you know, like 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 territory. 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 like, I have a little post-it, I have tons of post-its 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 didacticism. Because, and there’s a time and place for it. Like, I mean, I feel like Aesop’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 didactic flavor. 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 straw man the opposing value, or it feels didactic. You have to let the antihero or whatever the antithesis be as strong as the the protagonist, or whatever, because otherwise it feels rigged. It feels rigged. I love that word. I never thought of it. You think about it that way. It feels rigged. Yeah, that’s a great idea. And then, and then it makes you realize in some ways that, like you said, 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, 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 Deo Six Machina 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 are putting in there, you know, because, or what you already like have in your head, 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 we should take that out of it. Because by this shot, or saying this, we’re imposing ourselves as the storytellers onto the characters. Right. And the, 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 can also, you can imagine it too, that as, so 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 haven’t succeeded because nobody cares about your 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 making. And so what happens, I think too, is like, 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 relate to each other in ways that 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, that you can just see it starting to emerge, like, like somehow you just stumble across it, and they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s so much deeper than, than 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 the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, it seems like that. I think you’re totally right. 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, the, 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, is like an antenna, almost more than, it’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. And then the muse idea becomes way more coherent. Like, we can kind of understand why the ancients, 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 it doesn’t totally come from you. Yeah, there’s like a, you kind of have, yeah, like you’re like some sort of conduit. You’re half, you just kind of have to shepherd it. 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 in creative, I don’t know, I’ve been in creative rooms, you know, that there’s a certain flow that happens in creative rooms too, where things just go back and forth and they just kind of go. And there’s ones where it’s just like, oh, can’t say that. 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, 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 Rovecki talks about it, there really is this, the logo is right, that John also brings up, which is that in the end, 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 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 jived 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 hive of creatives and they amassed all these great creatives, but then 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 going to need this and this is going to be great. And so they’re, yeah, they’re like shepherding the creative process and moving it forward, you know. And for sure there’s something unreasonable about those early Disney movies. I mean, when I, I remember just a few years ago, I watched Pinocchio 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? Who animated the water? Like just, and it’s all, you know, it’s all hand done and everything. And there’s just something so completely unreasonable about it. And, but also this, you can just feel the absolute care and love, like if you’re looking at a handcrafted violin or something. Right. Yeah. And the, you know, and like early Pixar, they created, they had, they were visionary and they wanted to tell the story and they wanted to do it with such care that they created technology. They bring in like people that can help them to do these things. And that’s kind of where like, you know, early Pixar would 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 quite, you know, they can’t, they don’t have the tools to create what they want. And so the, the, the technological people will come in and help them create like the multi-plane camera. Like that wasn’t a 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 that way. So you felt like a camera moving and you know, all this stuff and it gave depth and beauty to the shots and the final product, you know, like, but they didn’t have that before. They had to create that. Yeah. So I’m going to, I think, I think maybe I’ll end with the dark question. Sorry to end with the dark question, but the, so AI is all a buzz and everybody’s talking about AI and you can see, you know, the different software, the different platforms that are like stable diffusion and a mid journey and all these platforms that are kind of pushing on us. And so what do you think in terms of, as we watch 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 the, these tech tools that are just coming down very fast? Well, honestly, I don’t know that much about AI. Like I don’t, you probably 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 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 to, to do something and you, and you, you overcome and you overcome, and then you put, you have something and you’re like, wow, that looks great, you know, but now people are like using AI to get there faster. And I’m like, 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 somewhere that like, you know, if you spend hours drawing and really honing your craft, that can’t be taken away from you, right? That can’t be taken away from you. That’s something that you’ve put in the attention and the time to do. And I think AI kind of robs people of that, you know, like that handcrafted thing is so valuable. I think it devalues some things if, if it was just a machine algorithm. Yeah. 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 tech, the computer might bring to us like technically proficient images that will be very fast to produce and will be visually stunning and, and surprising and all that. 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, will 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, the result and it’ll necessarily affect the, the perception that people have of that result as well. But I mean, 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, that’s great. But then when something comes out that really has the care and attention, people are going to like walk onto 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, 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, 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 are just a bunch of mid-journey generated ads. And people use it for thumbnails too on, on, 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 out, flashy, really fast. Like it just, obviously it’s flashy, you know, but then it, it wears off really fast. Yeah. I mean, I’m also an artist, so I probably have a similar like mindset to you. Like I’m also like, my eye is really attracted to things that are like handcrafted or there’s something, I don’t know, something, just something nicer about, you know, like handcrafted things. And I, I kind of have like, I’m like, oh, look at that one. And then I’m like, oh, look, it’s really expensive. And there’s a reason for that. Like, dog on it. But yeah. And a long time ago, I, I turned off to most of the like comic book movies because like, oh, same thing again. It’s like flashy, flashy, flashy. It’s like the same thing. And 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 that is really good quality and appeals to people, it’s not like high artsy or whatever, that it will attract their attention. I think people are just built to see things like that. Like the early Pixar movies or the early Disney movies, like things like that. Like people are drawn to them, you know, and they, they withstand time. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So, well, thanks for your time, Kendall. I appreciate it. No, it was great. Next year, February 29th to March 2nd, we’re going to have the very first Symbolic World Summit in Tarpon Springs, Florida. A lot of people involved in the Symbolic World community will come together to explore how we can recover the ancient cosmic image to further this community and to further this type of thinking in the world.