00:04
Søren Fleng
I chose the sketch Interior With Violin by Matisse.

00:11
Søren Fleng
It immediately reminded me of those moments of inspiration I think we all as humans get once in a while. And Matisse was just a master of catching that moment.

00:27
Søren Fleng
I felt I was standing in that room. I experienced a moment with him when I saw the sketch. I could feel him feel the moment, where you don't know yet whether or not you will succeed with that inspiration you got. And that actually made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. 

00:48
Søren Fleng
And I think that ties really well with how I work as a producer, in looking at animation from new and upcoming directors. And I think that's just very, very beautiful.

01:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Søren Fleng, a Danish producer. Welcome, Søren.

01:30
Søren Fleng
Thank you.

01:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are based in Viborg, in Denmark, but you are visiting Los Angeles this week. And I know you've been here before because we met many years ago. What is your relationship to LA and how often have you been here throughout your career?

01:47
Søren Fleng
When we started working with animation back in Viborg, I worked at a world renowned school for animation. We didn't have teachers on staff, so we invited the best animators and animation professionals we could find across Europe, but also from the West Coast. It was part of that whole journey that I would call up great animation professionals from here.

02:09
Søren Fleng
After a few years we realized we had the best contacts. We started regularly coming here visiting and getting tours — Pixar in the early days and later on again when they moved into the new facilities and then we came here to Los Angeles. So I think I was here almost every year between 2001 and 2010.

02:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Pixar is up in San Francisco, right? What was it like seeing those studios? It looks like a playground. Everybody has toys everywhere and they're playing games, they have pools—

02:44
Søren Fleng
It was fantastic. We went to visit the Skywalker Ranch, and just walking around seeing all those Star Wars things. And so much movie history. And I guess that we all grew up in the '80s and '90s with Hollywood films. So it's just Hollywood all over the place. And then just meeting all the people you looked up to.

03:05
Søren Fleng
We went to the movie theater to see premieres, and this great art director was there and that great animation director was there and that fantastic director — and we just met all of these people. So it was just very amazing and very inspiring. And I think that's probably also why I've kept on being in the business because it's just a fantastic environment.

03:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And how did you utilize that network you created here?

03:30
Søren Fleng
Whenever we needed people to come to Viborg to teach, I could invite people to come to Denmark. And the more people we got to know over here, the more people we could get in contact with. So eventually you could just call pretty much anyone and ask, Hey, do you know that person? And then, Oh, yeah, I do. And then they got us in contact.

03:53
Søren Fleng
And then in the later years, we've gotten some fantastic people like John Musker, the Disney director and Don Hall, also a Disney and Pixar director. And they just came to Viborg to visit us and to do speeches and talk. So we've just built a fantastic network. And that has also helped us now because it's one from that network who saw our short film nominated for the Annies. We know him from years back. So I guess there's something in that whole thing — build network and talk to people.

04:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today we are having a rainy day in Los Angeles, which is a good day for LA, because we often have droughts. Usually LA is covered in sunlight, the sky is blue, and it's kind of magical. As a visitor, what kind of impression do you have of our city when you dig a little deeper than the magic of the sun, and when you're here as a businessman?

04:50
Søren Fleng
I think everyone who's been here knows how magical it is to arrive in Los Angeles and just the views and the vastness of the city and especially if you arrive at nighttime and just see the lights go on forever and ever. It's a beautiful sight and you have all these places from the tv series and the films and you can go and you can visit them. You can see them even from games. It's just amazing.

05:16
Søren Fleng
And then you realize eventually how different it is from where I come from, because there's no city center. It's still weird to me that you can go to this specific shop on this corner, and that's great. They have the perfect tea. But if you want a good cake or a good record or you want some specific music, you have to go into a car and drive five blocks down and there's this perfect shop for comic books.

05:47
Søren Fleng
But you don't have one place we can walk around and find everything. So I think that's the interesting thing because you need to know someone who knows the places and then you drive to that specific place. Yeah, I think that's the biggest difference.

06:00
Søren Fleng
It is a super tough business and you don't get any free rides coming from outside. Maybe 20 years ago when I came here the first time, you were still a bit exotic coming from a different country and maybe people would welcome you a little more. But there's no free lunches in this town. Absolutely not. You have to work for it. And that's how it is. That's fine.

06:20
Søren Fleng
But I do think that coming here physically, specifically in these days where there's so many video calls, does give you, obviously, the edge, for just getting these personal contacts. But you don't just get them just by arriving here. Absolutely not.

06:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are here this time for the Annie Awards, which is the highest accolade in animation. It is an award that has existed since 1972. And they currently take place at UCLA's Royce Hall. That's the university in town. It's a beautiful old building. It is a celebration of animation. What else can you tell us about this award show? Who are the voters? Who are behind the Annie Awards?

07:09
Søren Fleng
So the Annie Awards is the award show owned by ASIFA-Hollywood. And ASIFA is an organization for animators globally. ASIFA-Hollywood is obviously the Hollywood branch of that organization. So it consists of pretty much every animation professional in town. So it's all the people we look up to, from Disney, from DreamWorks, from Netflix animation, from Warner Brothers. It's just all our heroes basically. These people really, really care for the art of animation.

07:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You were nominated in the category Best Short Subject, for Fleng Entertainment and Tumblehead Productions' The Swineherd. What does a nomination like that mean to you? 

07:56
Søren Fleng
It's such a huge honor for us because we know that it means the elite of world animation basically have selected our film. With that, in the animation circles, everyone now looks at us and what we can do, and not least Tumblehead Studios, who produced the film for me, and have this particular style.

08:21
Søren Fleng
So from a promotional point of view, I don't think we can do any better, basically, in global animation. It sounds a bit crazy, but it is Hollywood. Hollywood is still the center of film, so it really can't be much bigger than this.

08:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's the Oscar of animation.

08:38
Søren Fleng
Yeah, there's only the Oscar that is bigger than this one. And this one is only voted by animation professionals. It actually means, for our profession, more.

08:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you go to events like the Annie Awards, it is not actors who are stars, it is the animators and the directors and also the producers like yourself. Who were present at this Annie Awards show that you really looked forward to meeting— some of your heroes in the business? And tell us who they are and why you look up to them so much.

09:13
Søren Fleng
Nick Park from Aardman, he's just such an amazing director. And then Chris Sanders, and he did Lido & Stitch as well. And not least because I have a daughter who's just completely crazy with Stitch at the moment. And then, Pharrell Williams is there with his LEGO biopic.

09:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Piece by Piece?

09:33
Søren Fleng
Yeah. I think those were probably the biggest stars that I really wanted to meet.

09:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Pharrell Williams is not an animator, as we know.

09:44
Søren Fleng
It's an interesting thing about animation though, because you don't have those broad superstars. And I think that's one of the things that also attracts me to the business, is that it's really about the art of producing animation, so we're all in the same global family. And we are all, in a way, super equal when we meet around on the different festivals around the globe.

10:13
Søren Fleng
Because we are just animation people and we don't have that hysteria that can also be around the live action films sometimes. That doesn't exist in our part of the business, but we still make films that people around the globe love. So that's really attractive to me to the entire business as well here.

10:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's the product, the animation, that is known, not the faces behind it.

10:35
Søren Fleng
Yeah.

10:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But you do have some famous people in animation, famous to the rest of us because you have voice talent. You have, in the category for Best Voice Acting, Maya Hawke in Inside Out 2 and Lupita Nyong'o in The Wild Robot. How different is voice casting from live action casting? How do you cast the actors for an animation and what makes a good voice in terms of animation?

11:05
Søren Fleng
Yeah, I will say that my biggest knowledge in animation or one of our bigger knowledge, is to produce non-dialogue films. But we have been involved in a few castings. Obviously, the biggest difference is that we have to close our eyes and listen to the voice. That's what we need to hear and understand. And then we need to picture our own characters on top of that voice.

11:30
Søren Fleng
And then it can be different whether it's a feature film you need to make or a tv series. And obviously also, what is the target audience? Because some of the voice actors are cast because they have a huge variety in the voice, so they can do multiple characters or they can just do all kinds of different funny voices.

11:52
Søren Fleng
And then you have the other types of films, typically feature films and in-depth feature films where you just need a voice that is recognizable. So not only does the star need to have a name that's recognizable, but also the voice itself needs to have a certain kind of what you call crispiness that people recognize. And then they need this ability to imagine the scenes that they're doing without being in them themselves. So it's a very specific art form, I think, to be a voice actor for animation.

12:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The film that you were nominated for is called The Swineherd and it's a comedic interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. How did you twist the famous fairy tale and does it take courage to mess with our cultural pride and have techno music, for instance, in a movie that takes the name from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales?

12:53
Søren Fleng
I think that simple question demands maybe a little longer answer and hope you're ready for that.

12:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes.

13:00
Søren Fleng
The Swineherd is a short film that is part of what we call a distribution platform or a tv special called "Nordic Christmas Hour." So we were tasked to do seven short high-quality animation films based on famous Nordic authors. Individual short films, but bundle them together in a Nordic Christmas special.

13:26
Søren Fleng
And we have Tove Jansson's stories, the Mumins, and Astrid Lindgren and some other famous Nordic authors there. And the other Nordic countries wanted me to do obviously Hans Christian Andersen, but in Denmark we do a lot of Hans Christian Andersen. So I knew it was a very, very tough sell to make to Danmarks Radio (DR) who are our main investor.

13:48
Søren Fleng
We talked a bit about it, and Hans Christian Andersen is an excellent writer. But it's not all his stories that are actually for kids. They're actually a very difficult proposition for kids, most of them. But he is known as a kid's author. It's very interesting. But we decided to not do Hans Christian Andersen at first and went with the more contemporary Danish kids author Jakob Martin Strid and did one of his films. And then we produced that.

14:17
Søren Fleng
A year later, I spoke to my co-producers for the project and they said, Søren, we need a Hans Christian Andersen story. We cannot do this project without it. And I was like, okay, that's okay, we need to figure something out, because if I go to Danmarks Radio, we need to have something funny.

14:35
Søren Fleng
So the idea was to figure out which stories should we choose. But in Denmark, all primary schools, I think it's typically fourth graders, they have a theme of Hans Christian Andersen, because he is Danish—

14:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Royalty, basically.

14:52
Søren Fleng
Yeah, exactly. So everyone needs to learn about Hans Christian Andersen. So I spoke to a local school, a fourth grade class, they'd read 12 of his fairy tales, and asked, which three did you like the most? And then they mentioned three and two of them were some of the most well known ones. And then they mentioned The Swineherd.

15:13
Søren Fleng
And it was very interesting to me because I was kind of okay— so who, why The Swineherd? And then I asked them, so which of these three were the funniest? And then they mentioned The Swineherd again. I was like, okay, so why is that? And then they said, well, the pigs are funny. Okay, that's interesting. I am looking for the fun bit.

15:37
Søren Fleng
And then there was one of the boys, he blushed a bit, and then he looked down into the ground, "and then they kiss—"

15:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh!

15:43
Søren Fleng
—"the swineherd and the princess."

15:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's cute.

15:45
Søren Fleng
And I was like, okay, that's it. That's exactly what we need. And the interesting thing again was that I couldn't recall the actual nitty gritty of the fairy tale. I knew The Swineherd, but mostly as a title. So also knowing that we had six other short films in this hour, we also wanted to make a lighter touch to the whole project.

16:11
Søren Fleng
And so I wanted us to treat this film as if we take a piece of a feature film, the funny bit of some feature film that doesn't exist. But if this was a part of another feature film, we just go in and see these few scenes and I wanted it to be a musical from the pigsty and there's some kissing. And we didn't necessarily need a very deep beginning and end. We just needed this middle piece. With any scene shot in any kind of film, there's always a beginning and a middle and an end.

16:46
Søren Fleng
And with that, I also tried to figure out, how do we make it funny? How do we really make sure that it just has that edge? And that's when I thought about Tumblehead who I know,  great colleagues of mine, it's a studio based in Viborg as well. And they are known throughout the world for their specific style.

17:03
Søren Fleng
And then I went to them and asked them, Hey, do you want to do this with me, and they were like, yeah, that sounds so cool! And I think that was where the idea was born to really make a relatively light pass and a very light interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen.

17:22
Søren Fleng
And it was very interesting because throughout that process, we learned so much about how to treat and work with Hans Christian Andersen material in terms of how we get kids to laugh and get interested nowadays. That's the best answer I have to that question. But it has been really an eye opener to how we can deal with Hans Christian Andersen.

17:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah. Twist him into making pigs dance to techno music!

17:51
Søren Fleng
And that as well. Yeah.

17:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Wow.

17:54
Søren Fleng
And I have to say, I've been observing so many kids afterwards also when we show them this film, and they go bonkers, they dance and they— it's so funny. It was one screening, I guess it was a test screening, they're all laughing, all dancing, and everything was exactly as it should be. And then the almost-kiss, the princess and the swineherd. And all the boys, all of them, every single one started spinning around in the room. They just couldn't stand it. "Oh, they're kissing. Ew!"

18:25
Søren Fleng
It was so funny to watch. And I think for me, it's perfect for what I really want to do with animation as well, because I really like that we can entertain kids and make them laugh. And if we can activate them a bit in the process, that's amazing. So I think we hit it spot on with this.

18:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How do you think Hans Christian Andersen would have reacted to your film?

18:48
Søren Fleng
Well, that's a very interesting question. One thing we are trying to do in this whole thing is also to read between the lines, in the context of his life and what was the world around him at that time. Why did he write the stories he did? And they were a comment on that society and a pretty harsh one.

19:10
Søren Fleng
So we're trying to read between the lines and try to figure out what is it that he actually wanted to say. So we're trying to get some of those themes out in the film, but without making them too heavy. So the idea is at least that when you see the film, you'd be intrigued, try to read the original story, and then maybe you can have a discussion about what that actually meant.

19:34
Søren Fleng
But I think nowadays, that's a way of getting under the skin of kids. And I actually think that Hans Christian Andersen would appreciate that. Because he also knew there was an audience. Otherwise he wouldn't have written fairy tales in the first place. But, we would never know. But I wish to believe that he would like it.

19:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
He wanted to be a dancer, so he'll probably like the dancing pigs.

19:58
Søren Fleng
I would like to see him dance to techno!

20:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are an animation producer and executive. Would you please explain to our listeners what this means and what your job entails and how is producing animation different from producing live action?

20:16
Søren Fleng
See, I've never produced live action, so I don't know. But I do know that live action has a lot to do with reality because you have gravity and stuff can fall to the ground. You have actors who can act and act up or whatever.

20:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have locations.

20:34
Søren Fleng
You have locations and so much of that practical stuff. In animation, of course we invent everything. We come up with everything. So it can be different from production to production, what I do. But what I do is, in the shortest term, is that I structure creativity. I want to make sure that the creatives can be as creative as possible. And then it's my job to ensure that bridges to the financial reality.

21:01
Søren Fleng
I guess that's the shortest form of what I do. And I really believe that very, very strongly. So any productions I go into, I try to visualize artists coming into the office every day, sitting down by their computer, and opening up the computer and it should be very, very clear what tasks they are supposed to do today.

21:24
Søren Fleng
And the budget and the quality has to match so that they can actually produce what they're supposed to produce that day without being frustrated as much as possible. So I'm really trying to bridge that gap and really make sure that all the artists know what's expected from them, and that the expectation meets the output they need to deliver.

21:46
Søren Fleng
When we're successful with that, I get happy artists, and in my opinion, happy artists produce just better work and you can see it. It's tiny, small things they can just give it a little extra here and there. And I think it just makes for better products.

22:01
Søren Fleng
So that's my take on what it means, and that can be even on the executive level because it comes from the top. It always comes from the top. So I try to be the guy who can guarantee that at the same time as we need to reach financial goals and deliveries and deadlines, et cetera, et cetera.

22:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You studied at The Animation Workshop, a school for animation in Denmark in Viborg. How did you realize that this was what your career path was going to be?

22:30
Søren Fleng
Yeah. And that's interesting because I was actually not educated at The Animation Workshop. I worked there. And I'll do a quick step back—

22:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay, please do!

22:42
Søren Fleng
— because it was random that I ended up there, because I wanted to sail container ships — 

22:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay!

22:50
Søren Fleng
— and I did follow that career path since eighth grade. And I ended up on a school ship, like a tall ship, a three masted wooden ship. And it was very cool, but I actually realized after talking to a few of the people working in this business that there was not me at all. I left that path very abruptly from one day to the other.

23:14
Søren Fleng
And my brother, he had moved to Viborg, actually, to attend the school for animation. And he worked as an animator as well on the side. And then my best friend from high school, he was also going to Viborg for photographer school. So I just came up there and I had no idea what to do with my life. I had known for my entire life the path of sailing on container ships, for whatever weird reason.

23:39
Søren Fleng
And I went to the photographer school. And there we had two weeks where we did animation. And our animation teacher, Hanne Pedersen, was, is, just a fantastic person. And when we were done, it was a half year pre-education thing. She had gotten money from the government to do animation workshops for kids around Danish primary schools.

24:03
Søren Fleng
And I had actually a reasonable flair for working with kids and also for the basic five principles of animation. And I had always been really much into filmmaking both in primary school and high school. So it was a big interest of mine. And so she invited me to join this workshop.

24:22
Søren Fleng
So we would travel around to two new schools every week around Denmark and was back when the computers we used were the size of a normal refrigerator. It was huge, it was heavy, and the cameras were big. Nowadays you can do it with a phone or an iPad, but not back then. You needed a small truck to travel around the country with the equipment.

24:44
Søren Fleng
And then we did these workshops with the kids. Super, super interesting because back then we did a full week and then a class would divide into four or five groups who had to do a film, each of them. And then we'd work with them to come up with a story with the beginning, middle and end, and they did storyboards and they had to do cardboard figures that you cut out and you could put them together.

25:05
Søren Fleng
It's a relatively easy technique to work with in animation. And some of them did claymation. And we let the kids do their films. Whatever interested them, they could do that. Very often, probably in every single workshop, one very magical thing happened. And the normal teachers from the classes looked at this workshop setup, thinking, what did you do?

25:30
Søren Fleng
Because what happened was that the dynamics of the classroom would flip 180 degrees almost every single time. The kids who could normally not sit still and were just super annoying and just noisy and running around, they became super, super focused because they figured out something about how this animation process worked.

25:51
Søren Fleng
So they would figure out the equipment, they would figure out how to take each of the pictures and they just had a complete overview of this chaos. Animation is a very chaotic process, and they all intuitively knew how to deal with that.

26:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Interesting.

26:09
Søren Fleng
And all the students who typically would be really, really good at sitting still and doing what the teacher said, they would be so frustrated about the process because they didn't know what was going on. They didn't know what would come out of the next step. We didn't give them any facets of, what is the outcome? And I think that was magic, honestly, to kind of experience that.

26:33
Søren Fleng
And then after that, Hanne's kids workshops were a part of The Animation Workshop. It was in the very early days of the school. And then I figured out that I was just very good at coordinating. And typically, people in my business are not very good at coordinating anything. So it just made sense. I started to be the one calling around for new teachers and organizing events, making sure that things happened at the right time and had the papers signed and all that stuff.

27:04
Søren Fleng
I just know how to do that. And that just became my love affair with animation. And then eventually, the school wanted to start to produce short films with the students and it was just very natural for me to be the one actually producing them. That's my education.

27:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How did Viborg, which is a smaller city in the northern part of Jutland, end up being the animation town in Denmark?

27:30
Søren Fleng
That's also a weird story and I can't go too much into all the details but essentially it was a project made for unemployed young people, and it was run by a very energetic guy called Morten Thorning, who is a lovely person. He also can't sit still at all, and he knew these creative souls in Viborg, and they would start these creative workshops.

27:56
Søren Fleng
And I guess he also did some music in the beginning, but they started to do animation as well. I'm not entirely sure why and where the animation bit came from, but that slowly grew. And then he got in contact with the animation industry, if you can call it that in Copenhagen, and they would start to send professionals over to teach the guest teachers.

28:17
Søren Fleng
And this is all the way back, from 1988, 12 years before I arrived. More probably, but that worked really well, that way of having professionals come and teach someone for a couple of weeks, and then they would go back and work on the film. And then you invited some new ones.

28:35
Søren Fleng
So that's how The Animation Workshop was born. And then they started to reach out more around Europe to get more teachers. It's word of mouth, and suddenly it became a cool place to come for great animation artists around the world to teach. And it culminated when Morten managed to get the triple Academy Award winner Richard Williams to come and do master classes.

29:02
Søren Fleng
He had been trained by Disney's great old men directly, and he was the guru of global animation at the time. Putting his name on The Animation Workshop meant that it actually became a world known institution. And I organized a bunch of those master classes and we had people from all over the planet.

29:22
Søren Fleng
We had an Atlanta-based studio flying 15 people in. I had studios from the Philippines flying people in. That's where that came from. So the love of animation and animation people, I think is what really built that place.

29:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Would you say we have a large animation film production in Denmark?

29:39
Søren Fleng
No. Well, we have some production and typically for Europe and maybe particularly for Denmark, the budgets are low. So what happens is that we have to be extremely efficient when we produce. And I guess in a way that you can never have enough money for when we produce a film, but in Denmark you have a very set, finite number of money you can get for a film.

30:04
Søren Fleng
So you just have to be really efficient. And at the moment, there's a bunch of features in production right now, but it's not like a huge amount of production that happens. It has been a few difficult years and hopefully it's slowly picking up again.

30:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Recently FredagsTamTam took over from Disney to entertain the children on Friday afternoons in Denmark. They swapped Disney with locally produced animation. How significant was this? And can the Danish animation world keep up with the demand for this?

30:41
Søren Fleng
We can definitely keep up with the demand. It's a matter of funding, of course, if we can produce it. The shift was very significant. As far as I understand from Danmarks Radio, it was a wish to be more flexible in what they could put on Friday programming, because as you said, they had a very specific Disney show every Friday, and it was very limited to only Disney productions.

31:04
Søren Fleng
I watched it as a kid. It's a huge part of Danish culture. They decided to shift away from it. They really wanted to have local Danish and Nordic productions, and it's a huge undertaking to make sure that happens. But they have been doing that now for, I can't even remember, one and a half years, and it's a huge success.

31:23
Søren Fleng
And there are some fantastic shows there. There's Monster Loving Maniacs by Aarhus-based Ja Film, it's a beautiful show, and you have Tor Fruergaard and Michael Hegner's Team Nuggets. And so that means that the Danish animation industry is now thriving again, because Danmarks Radio takes all these new pitches in and we really get a window for pitching really original content.

31:55
Søren Fleng
And all this fantastic talent we have. And then the next question is, do we have financing for it? And that's probably the more difficult part because Danmarks Radio cannot fully fund all the productions. So we as producers have to go out to the international markets and fund the majority of our productions. But at least we have a very good foundation to kick it off from.

32:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are part of the Danish Animation Society. What do you do as a member here and how active are you?

32:28
Søren Fleng
The Danish Animation Society has been around, I think, since 1997, and I have been a board member since probably 2001, and I think head of the board since 2005, 2006. I actually tried to look it up, and no one seems to be able to find the file. I've been the head of the board for many, many years. And we have 400 members, which is quite a lot for a little country like Denmark, in a film business to have that number of members.

32:59
Søren Fleng
So we work to ensure that Danish animators have a place that connects us socially, and we represent the residual rights through Copydan. So we also pay out some residual money to animators. And then we use the money to help animation film festivals. And we also have a little magazine where we produce stories of Danish animation.

33:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And are you involved with any American association?

33:29
Søren Fleng
Well, now I am considering becoming a member of ASIFA-Hollywood, of course. And other than that, I actually just stay updated with my old friends and colleagues from the business here. But it does seem that ASIFA-Hollywood is the glue that binds people together over here.

33:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you have strong connections to the world of animation here, like Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, and Leica Studios? How do you help each other from across the Atlantic, really?

34:03
Søren Fleng
I remember that was actually Jørgen Klubien, a Danish animator, fantastic animator, he showed us around Pixar just when they were in the very early days of pre-production for Cars. And back then it was mainly about getting this fantastic talent to come and teach.

34:19
Søren Fleng
And nowadays when I'm a producer, it's a more difficult proposition to figure out how we actually work together because the business of US and Hollywood-based animation and European and specifically Danish-based animation is very different. We work from very different ways of financing it. And Denmark is not necessarily the cheapest country to produce in.

34:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have a lot of films on your resume, and one of them is a feature animation called Olsen-banden på de bonede gulve, translated into The Olsen Gang Gets Polished. Olsen-banden appear in very popular comedy crime live action films in Denmark. How was it received as animation?

35:04
Søren Fleng
Yeah, I co-produced the part of the film that we did in Viborg, and it was just when the West Danish Film Fund was born, so it's some regional funding coming from that. And I remember the whole idea of doing the Olsen Gang as animation was also another kind of interesting thing. Because again, it's a big part of Danish culture, the live action versions, how would people react?

35:27
Søren Fleng
But I remember it was one of the most watched films that year, it sold more than 400,000 tickets in Denmark, which is again quite a lot of tickets. And so the audiences really embraced it. And again, I think that's one of the things that animation can do. And the original Olsen Gang films were also super comedic and it's a perfect match, in a way, for animation.

35:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know that creating an animated film takes a lot longer than live action. Try to break down for our listeners how you make animation films and how many animators work on a short film like The Swineherd, for instance?

36:08
Søren Fleng
Well, there's a bunch of similarities, of course. Someone has to come up with an idea, and someone needs to write some sort of script. Interestingly enough for The Swineherd, and this was very frustrating to the film funds, we didn't do a script. We had an idea, and then we wrote one page of text about what story we wanted, and then we went straight to storyboarding.

36:31
Søren Fleng
So one of the biggest differences is that we really create the film before we produce it. So in live action, you have a script. And you go out and you film the actors, and then you bring all that film back to the editing room. And then there's an editor putting all the pieces together and creates a film based on the stuff that they filmed.

36:55
Søren Fleng
We do it completely opposite. We edit the film first. So we have a lot of storyboarders who produce black and white sketch drawings based on the scripts, if you have a script. And then you throw them to the editor who then edits those 2D drawings into a film as a sketched film. We call it the animatic.

37:17
Søren Fleng
And once that's done, once we look at that animatic and we have the right laughs and we know the story, then we produce the actual images. Which means, generally we don't produce anything more than exactly what we need. Whereas with live action you just let the camera roll.

37:35
Søren Fleng
That doesn't exist in animation because it's so expensive. So basically when you have the animatic, you pretty much have the film. We try, as much as the budget allows us, to include a little overage for producing additional animation so that the editor has something to edit from when he sees the final image.

37:55
Søren Fleng
But I think that's the biggest difference, where the animation, the acting, is pretty much the last bit. So after you have the storyboard and the animatic done, then you push it to the layout artists who then looks at each shot and try to compose it perfectly again in sketches. And then those layouts would go to the background crew who paints the background and draws up the background.

38:23
Søren Fleng
And then it goes to scene planners who make sure where the characters are supposed to be on that background is carefully planned out, so that when it finally goes to the animators, they know exactly where the character needs to be when, and then the animator starts to do their magic and pose it out and do the animation.

38:41
Søren Fleng
And then after that you have, depending if you do traditional 2D then you do need to do some cleanup and some coloring. And in 3D animation, you would need to go to light and render, and then it ends up, like live action, in composites, and then you finalize the film with the sound design.

38:58
Søren Fleng
And the other thing is that the actors are brought in, the voice actors, at the animatic stage, so that when we push the animatic into production, the animators know exactly how to make sure the character's lips function with the voice actors.

39:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There was not a lot of talking in The Swineherd.

39:21
Søren Fleng
No.

39:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So not a lot of writers to write the dialogue.

39:26
Søren Fleng
I love that part about animation, that we can do non-dialogue and we can make very, very expressive animation without it. It's actually a very daunting task. It can be very difficult to make it work. But that's also why in this specific case, we didn't really need as much of a script than you normally do. You simply just look at the pitch of the animatic, and then you'd have a few corrections and you just try it out.

39:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We are currently seeing more and more use of AI in filmmaking. What is your take on it? How significant will AI be in the future? And is it a good or bad thing?

40:05
Søren Fleng
Yeah. AI is a big thing for everyone, everywhere, right? Since we got our first version of Word, we have, what do you call it? Correction of spelling mistakes.

40:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Spelling correction.

40:17
Søren Fleng
And that is the predecessor to AI, in a way. And now it's just better. So AI will help us do a lot of boring tasks quicker. AI will be a tool that can help us be more efficient. Where it's probably more problematic is when it comes into what we as producers call the generation of underlying rights, where at the moment it's very difficult.

40:44
Søren Fleng
Film business is the business of rights. You generate and you buy and you sell rights. And rights at the moment can only be produced, the core rights, by humans. So if there's a computer that generated art that you use in your film, currently you can't copyright it. And if you don't own the underlying rights, you actually don't own anything really, so you have to be really careful about that.

41:13
Søren Fleng
The other thing where I'm worried, is if we lose the soul of the arts, that could be a concern. On the other hand, when I look at AI right now, it's very good at doing stuff that's photorealistic. But when it comes to animation where we create new styles that AI has no concept of knowing, because AI doesn't know anything, it only knows the data you put into it.

41:40
Søren Fleng
So when we do a new animation film with the new style, it doesn't know where to find the knowledge of how to produce new images in that style. So I think it will be a productivity enhancement and probably to a certain degree that's probably just good because we can maybe do more films for lesser budgets.

42:02
Søren Fleng
And I guess that's good for the artist, for a lot of the artists as well. But a lot of the core work, at least for a considerable amount of years, will still have to be done by real humans. But you don't know, because things move so fast at the moment that in two weeks it could change.

42:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you leave Los Angeles to go back to Viborg, what will be your main focus workwise? What is on your desk right now?

42:29
Søren Fleng
Well, the main thing is that the concept from the shortfilm The Swineherd, we have come up with an idea for a full TV series. And we pitched that a few years back at a European event called Cartoon Forum. And I was picked amongst, I think, 80 projects, as the one that got support from EBU, and that's the European Broadcasting Corporation, and it's all the public broadcasters in Europe, basically.

42:59
Søren Fleng
We got a grant from 13 broadcasters to develop this tv show. And my business partner is actually living here in Los Angeles, which is also why I'm here. Because I also wanted to talk to her and prepare her for the work she has to do with the financing of it. But that's my biggest thing at the moment.

43:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What's her name?

43:22
Søren Fleng
It's Jane McGregor, a fantastic American executive producer who has more than 35 years of experience. So she's helping me just making sure that it is all done correctly. And she has so many good contacts here. So that's definitely the biggest thing.

43:40
Søren Fleng
And then I also have a feature film in development — it's a very popular theme at the moment. It's Greenland. It takes place in Greenland and basically it's—

43:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Explosive subject right now.

43:51
Søren Fleng
Explosive subject. But basically it's the birth of the new shaman of the future. It's a boy called Mikisoq, who really doesn't like all the stories about the old spirits from the Greenlandic folklore, but his granddad is a shaman and Mikisoq tries everything he can not to become a shaman.

44:15
Søren Fleng
But then he learns that he needs to take over to save the world. So we create a new Arctic superhero. So that's a fantastic project where we're working both with Danish talent but also talent from Greenland and have a lot of fantastic Greenlandic advisors on board.

44:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh, that's wonderful.

44:32
Søren Fleng
So that's a big thing for me as well.

44:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Wonderful. Søren, you've been here so many times and you must have experienced a little bit of Hollywood. Have you met some of the biggest stars and have some fun anecdotes to tell us?

44:44
Søren Fleng
I guess the first time we met, actually, was in 2004. We were here with another short film I had produced. It was the Hollywood Film Festival, it was called back then. And I do remember we had been invited to the premiere of Scarlett Johansson's film, where she would act together with John Travolta.

45:02
Søren Fleng
And first of all, it was just amazing to come into the Arclight Theater for a Hollywood premiere, but we were also invited for the after party. And it was one of those, I don't know how rare it is, but rare occasions where it was really raining in Hollywood. So we were invited to The Athletic Club for the after party.

45:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
On Sunset Boulevard.

45:23
Søren Fleng
On Sunset Boulevard.

45:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Just across the street from the Arclight.

45:27
Søren Fleng
And I wear glasses. It's not just raining, but it's also relatively humid and warm. So we arrived in the building and my glasses immediately started to just be very foggy. So I had to figure out how to get to the bathroom to be able to see something. And I was pushing myself through this crowd of people to get to the restrooms.

45:49
Søren Fleng
And I do remember some very big guys trying to push me away, but I snuck behind them. I actually came up completely close to John Travolta, kind of rubbed my chest. And he looked at me and I looked at him like, oh, okay. And then I went on to the restrooms and cleared my glasses.

46:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But you could see enough to notice that it was John Travolta?

46:08
Søren Fleng
Yeah, yeah.

46:10
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay! That's a very nice story. Unfortunately, Arclight closed down. Yeah. So that's a shame. Well, that's fun. Did you talk to Scarlett Johansson, who is partly Danish?

46:21
Søren Fleng
Partly Danish. I missed that opportunity.

46:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So my final question for you. If you were to choose, where would you be and what would you be doing ten years from now? What dreams are still there to be realized?

46:33
Søren Fleng
Well, at the moment we are building that dream with the tv series Pig & Andersen, because one of the things that I've always—

46:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What did you call it?

46:44
Søren Fleng
Pig & Andersen.

46:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Pig & Andersen. OK.

46:46
Søren Fleng
It's a working title. It will change. But I've always been very drawn to entertain as big audiences as possible. And I've done a few tv series early on, like the Angry Birds Toons, etc, where we just know that you have billions of views and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of kids who sees this around the world. If I could build something that would be part of the kids' childhood, I think that's super, super powerful because it builds character, if you know what I mean.

47:25
Søren Fleng
Not many weeks ago, a director I also work with, Peter Hausner, who did all the LEGO NINJAGO tv series. They have a room in their house they rent out via Airbnb, and had a  family from Holland, from the Netherlands, staying there for a couple of days. And I just happened to be in the house the day that they left, and it was a mom and dad and their 14 year old son.

47:50
Søren Fleng
And then he came up just as they were about to leave. Is it right that you directed the NINJAGO tv series? And Peter was like, yeah, yeah, that's right. I think they did ten seasons or something like that. You should just know that that was my entire childhood. And it was such a touching moment, because all those characters and stories, if you have kids and are around kids, you just know that they are just so much into that.

48:14
Søren Fleng
And I think that's what I want to create with our tv series. Of course, it's also a business, absolutely. But if I get a shot at creating that kind of content that the kids interact with, that's my big dream. So my big dream, if you ask me, in ten years, is that we've done three seasons of Pig & Andersen, plus a feature film, and that all the kids around the globe loves it, and they love to dance to techno music while they're watching fairy tales.

48:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Wow. Well, on that note, Søren, thank you so much for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us today.

48:49
Søren Fleng
Thank you.

48:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Søren Fleng chose Henri Matisse's Interior with a Violin or Interiør med violin from 1917–1918 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.