On March 22, the Eastern Region Special Projects Committee hosted the online event, Illustrating a Vision: Utilizing Animation in Documentary Filmmaking. In a discussion moderated by Director Susanna Styron (Out of My Head), Directors Geeta Gandbhir (Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power), Alex Gibney (The Forever Prisoner) and Alison Klayman (White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch) explored how Documentary Directors utilize animation to supplement and enhance their filmmaking. The Directors were joined by Animators Nick Gibney (Crazy, Not Insane), Nikon Kwantu (Washingtonia) and Kelli Miller (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver), who shared their expertise from their side of the equation.
Following a welcome from Eastern Region Special Projects Committee Chair Raymond De Felitta, Styron engaged the panel in a discussion that covered topics including how Documentary Directors use animation to supplement the commentary, how and when they decide to use animation and how they collaborate with animators to create the perfect visual.
Director Geeta Gandbhir explained how she decides to use animation, “If there’s no archival for something, a recreation may not fit, or it’s something challenging to depict in that way, animation really allows us to push boundaries. The idea of it being a wonderful device to sort of fill in blanks and illustrate things in a way that really bring out the imaginative part of filmmaking process.”
Animator Nikon Kwantu shared his thoughts on the style of animation in documentaries saying, “I find you often want a more ‘sketchy’ feel because documentaries are often more serious. You want something that feels a little more textured. If you have, like a straight-line quality, that feels like the cartoons that you might see on the weekend.”
Director Alex Gibney spoke about collaborating with his son, Animator Nick Gibney, on the documentary Crazy, Not Insane. “He was the perfect person. The thing that I find easy to work on with Nick is that he’s an animator who has a great story sense. The interesting part of this was it was an organic process. It was an ongoing conversation we had.”
Animator Nick Gibney discussed the advantages of using animation vs. recreations. “You don’t want to do a recreation for [this] sequence because that would be highly inappropriate and weird, and it would take you out of it, whereas animation brings you into an imagined space. It gives you an opportunity to get into the more psychological elements and go from the real into the surreal.”
Director Alison Klayman shared her approach to the look of the motion graphics in her film White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch. “The photography of Abercrombie and Fitch is iconic, so having something that was not animated, but rather working with manipulating photographs, felt kind of natural. The collage effect really became a nod to the subject with the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue being such a big thing. You think about the photos in the stores.”
Animator Kelli Miller, who worked on the project added, “This is motion graphics, not really like your traditional cell animation, like we saw in the previous examples, which serve different approaches. This film was so much about that nostalgia of the print materials of Abercrombie and that brand aesthetic. The other thing about this [is] the actual storytelling is informative. That’s where design really shines when you’re trying to visualize the information and use that to add to the story and lead people through.”
After a lively and informative discussion, Styron thanked the panelists and opened the floor to questions from the online audience.
See video from this event in the gallery below.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
 Director Geeta GandbhirGandbhir’s directorial credits include the documentary features Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, Hungry to Learn and I Am Evidence; episodes of the documentary series Black and Missing, Why We Hate and Doc World; and episodes of the documentary mini-series Through Our Eyes and Rapture. She was nominated for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Grand Jury Prize for Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr. Gandbhir has been a DGA member since 2016. |
 Director Alex GibneyGibney’s directorial credits include the documentary features Boom! Boom!: The World vs. Boris Becker, The Forever Prisoner, Citizen K, No Stone Unturned, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, Freakonomics, My Trip to Al-Qaeda, the DGA Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and the DGA Award-nominated films Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and Taxi to the Dark Side. Gibney has been a DGA member since 1998 and has served as an alternate on the Eastern Directors Council and is a member of the Eastern Independent Directors Committee. |
 Director Alison KlaymanKlayman’s directorial credits include the documentary features White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, Jagged, The Brink, Take Your Pills and 11/8/16 and episodes of the documentary series Enhanced and Op-Docs. She was nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary for her 2012 film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. Klayman has been a DGA member since 2017. |
 Director Susanna Styron (moderator)Styron’s directorial credits include the features Out of My Head and Shadrach; the documentary 9/12: From Chaos to Community; and episodes of the series All Downhill from Here and 100 Centre Street. Styron has been a DGA member since 2001 and serves on the Eastern Region Special Projects Committee. |
 Animator Nick GibneyGibney is an Emmy Award-nominated animator, motion graphics artist and producer. As the Director of Graphics and Animation at Jigsaw Productions, he manages freelance artists and third-party vendors across Jigsaw’s feature and series productions (like BOOM! BOOM! Boris Becker vs. the World, Dirty Money, and Agents of Chaos), and designs motion graphics and animated sequences for select projects (like Crazy, Not Insane and How To Change Your Mind). |
 Animator Nikon KwantuKwantu’s most recent work as an animation producer was for Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power. His credits also include Washingtonia, an animated feature for Comedy Central and Our Cartoon President, for Showtime. He has also been an animation and digital producer for Sesame Workshop, Late Night Cartoons, Flicker Lab, Animation Collective, Animagic and served as the animation producer for Whoopi Goldberg Presents Mom’s Mabley and the TED TALKS LIVE Short - Unconscious Bias. |
 Animator Kelli MillerA Partner, Director and Executive Creative Director at And/Or Studio, Miller has worked in motion design and branding for over 15 years with entertainment networks and brands like HBO, MTV, Netflix, Amazon, and CBS. She has directed show titles and live action packaging for Netflix’s White Hot, FX’s CAKE, HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and Paramount’s Lip Sync Battle, and film titles for Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, and Eliza Hittman’s Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always. |
About The Special Projects Committee
Special Projects is the educational and cultural arm of the Directors Guild of America, providing its members opportunities for creative exchange to advance their craft and celebrate the achievements of directors and their teams.
