‘Forevergreen’: How two Disney artists made a hand-crafted gem

CINCINNATI (WXIX) - Good things come in small packages. This is a saying that has been passed down time and time again throughout history over a wide variety of topics and subjects. For the artform of film in particular, such a phrase holds ultimate weight and power. Oftentimes, the smallest and most quiet films within a space can hold the most profound effect and meaning to them, and as audiences unearth these projects, they can begin to understand and connect with the artistry before them. Indeed, it seems that big ideas and profound insights can come from smaller and more independent films within this niche, and there is perhaps no short film project this year that highlights this more than “Forevergreen”.

“Forevergreen” is a new independent animated short film directed by filmmakers and animators Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears. Nathan and Jeremy manage to balance many different hats at once. Within their full time career capacities, both are employed at Walt Disney Animation Studios, where Nathan serves as an animation supervisor and Jeremy as a story artist. They’ve contributed work to many different films over the course of the studio’s illustrious history, including “Moana”, “Encanto” “Frozen”, and, most recently, on “Zootopia 2”. To say that their hard work and dedication within their respective areas more than pays off within these projects is clear and apparent, and their contributions to these projects helps contribute to the overall artistic vision that the filmmakers and animators envision for these films. However, outside of their collaborative roles within the studio, both Nathan and Jeremy wanted to create something impactful, meaningful, and overall personal to themselves. And this is where the genesis for their new project “Forevergreen” was born.

“Forevergreen” opens within a snowy forest environment, in which we watch a young bear cub as he moves from tree to tree, searching for food and companionship in an environment that otherwise seems forlorn and isolated. However, as the young cub quickly discovers, he is not entirely alone, and in a chance meeting, a living pine tree scoops up the young bear. Instantly, a bond is formed, and the paternal sense that the tree feels towards the bear is heightened as their relationship is formed and contextualized. And thus, the groundwork for “Forevergreen” is set. The film is as honest and poignant a project as you’ll find within the animation space, and holds more than an abundance of creative nuance and insight than audiences might expect heading into such a project. I was fortunate enough to sit down for an interview with Nathan and Jeremy, and they provided me with many profound insights into the process of making the film over the course of several years, and ultimately, why such a project mattered to them personally.

As we prepared for our conversation, it was clear that Nathan and Jeremy could not wait to discuss the film. There was a passion and enthusiasm within them in regards to their work, and sitting down and talking with these artists, I got the sense that these were individuals who truly cared about the art form of animation and the power it can hold to bridge and heal communicative and artistic gaps. And as I would soon find out, this was precisely an idea and theme that rang true throughout the process of crafting the film.

“Nathan and I had spent a lot of time together just getting lunch and kind of connecting week to week”, Jeremy reflected. “And this one lunch we had, I had just come back to work after having my fourth child. We were just kind of catching up, and he kind of shared some stuff that he was working on, and he had been working on this other project. It involved a tree, and he was using this kind of co-op program at Disney to do it, with grabbing different friends to come in and help work on it. And he said to me, ‘Hey, what if you directed it with me?’ And my expertise is that I’m a story artist at Disney, so I said that sounded great…Let’s try something new like this.”

However, for Nathan, a personal reflection and touch on the material really helped connect the content to himself. “There was a season where I felt very hopeless. I think we’ve all at one point or another in our lives have felt maybe a sense of hopelessness. I think that was very true of what happened to me…and that really became the catalyst for wanting to tell a story about hope and redemption.”

Ultimately deciding on how to tell a specific story about hope and redemption using vibrant animation was an interesting process in and of itself, as Nathan and Jeremy would soon discover. “I have a side business called Whittle Woodshop”, remarked Jeremy as he held up a hand-carved bear figurine to the camera. “I had just finished selling around 600 of these, so I was in bear territory when I started on “Forevergreen”, and so I think that’s why I probably thought of the bear…So I pitched that idea to Nathan, and there’s a key image of the film involving the tree and a waterfall, and when I got to that image, Nathan just lost it. He was like, ‘Oh my goodness, you don’t know what this means.’ And I was like, “No, I actually do”. Because I had gone down to his office the day before, and on his desk, he had actually drawn the same drawing in a completely different way, but with the same idea.”

With the idea and concept in line, Jeremy and Nathan both set to work immediately on the process of crafting “Forevergreen”, with a clear and distinct emotional arc in mind and the conceptual image of the bear, tree, and waterfall guiding their creative process along the way. However, for the first time in their careers, the duo would be working and creating a project of their own outside of the major studio system, which proved to be a challenge. However, the help they received on the project from over 200 volunteer artists and animators was almost overwhelming.

“I think that collaboration is the heart and soul of what we do at any major studio,” replied Nathan. “If you don’t have that, you won’t be able to make that grandiose thing where it’s the culmination of so many disciplines coming together from so many different artists…Jeremy and I wouldn’t have been able to do “Forevergreen” if we didn’t have all these generous artists, technicians, production managers, and musicians just to make this thing…“Forevergreen” was an entirely donated project, so this was a passion project. We devoted about five and a half years of our non-working hours. So we were still holding down full-time jobs. And it was artists from all over the United States who contributed. So that was incredible to see people come together under a singular vision to be able to create this project.”

When telling the story of “Forevergreen” through animation, the duo wanted to create a specific vision that would fit inside of the confines of the core thematic content of the story. A solution to this quickly arose, which involved a style within Jeremy’s side business work that would suit itself perfectly for this project. “One story was that I brought in a bear head I was working on to show Nathan,” laughed Jeremy. “He was like, ‘Can I borrow that?, and he ended up taking it home. He had an idea like a strike of lightning. He’s like, “I know how we could make this woodcarved stop motion kind of film”...And he was making it look like every frame was a new wood carving.”

“We wanted every new frame of animation to be as if it was a unique wood carving that Jeremy had whittled out of wood”, Nathan said. “There’s a kind of a handcrafted feeling that the characters have. We didn’t want it to feel like ‘bendy wood’, we wanted it to be like a truth of materials; that is, of things we’ve learned in our own craft at the studio. So we were doing what’s called “twos on fours”, where every other frame or every fourth frame would be a new pose…We developed new techniques and technology for our amazing artists to even make this.”

However, in keeping with the artistic vision on display, “Forevergreen” is a personal story of forgiveness and connection, told through such a vibrant and creative animated lens. In just 15 short minutes, the project lays out such a vivid and heightened exploration of its core themes, and as Nathan and Jeremy explain, the influences here are plain to see.

“It essentially is loosely based on the Prodigal Son story from the Bible. Jeremy and I are Christian guys, and so we had a sort of desire to tell that story of hope,” remarked Nathan. “It felt like the perfect vehicle to tell a spiritual allegorical story. But also with Jeremy’s wood carving, it also felt like a really neat way to tell an appealing story…There’s two materials really in this world. There’s sort of man-made material with plastics and metals and things like that. And then there’s the wooden material, and so there’s sort of these antithetical materials at play with one another in the film…But the wooden materials were very important for the story because we wanted it to feel like the bear could have been carved from the tree. So that when you see the bear and the tree together in the same frame, it would look like a great pairing sort of in a Genesis way.”

Ultimately, “Forevergreen” has had quite the long journey on the film festival circuit so far this year. The duo and their project have been welcomed with open arms at festivals such as Animayo, Annecy, and many more, and the project is now eligible for major awards, which means the sky’s the limit for the potential of this powerful little project. However, Nathan and Jeremy have not taken any moment of “Forevergreen” and its journey for granted.

“It’s been such a joy”, Nathan remarked with a smile. “We’re very grateful to God for the opportunities and every film festival we get in, it’s just an answer to prayer. We’re very thankful to be able to share something so deeply important to us. I think that’s every filmmaker’s dream. I think you, as a filmmaker, want to have something you feel is worth talking about and that you can share with other people and hopefully that’s a benefit to humanity. And so I think that sort of the aspiration of great art is to be able to say something with a meaning and have a purpose…We love it all, and we love being able to talk to people afterwards. It prompts rich discussion, and it’s just so cool to be able to do that.”

“I was sitting in the theater in France at Annecy..and there was a gal next to me, and during our film, she was really reacting to it,” replied Jeremy. “We don’t have any dialogue in the film. It’s pretty much just bear sounds and nature sounds. So it’s just really cool to see how it can be translated anywhere.”

Crafting a project like “Forevergreen” through collaboration and hard work was an artistically challenging and motivating process with lots of room for personal and artistic growth. Because everything in life is a learning experience, I closed out my conversation with Jeremy and Nathan by asking each for one specific takeaway or lesson they learned in the process of making and crafting the film that they felt would stick with them or help them on a future endeavor within both of their careers at Disney.

“That’s a big one because I do feel like I walk away from this now, and I feel like I’ve learned all about the different departments and what they do,” Jeremy remarked after careful consideration. “I’ve learned about that so much more than I ever knew. So, going into anything in the future, I am just so lucky to have gotten to experience this.”

“I have to give a shout-out to my wife and my children. And I know Jeremy would want the same.” Nathan replied. “You know, there’s a lot of sacrifice that goes into making one of these in your free time. And my wife was just such a superhero. She was a rock and support. And this film wouldn’t have existed without her support and my family’s support. So, it was just another lesson of seeing the love that sticks by you, even in difficult times. Just seeing the support of your loved ones and the places you can go when you have that kind of support system.”

You can learn more about the project, Nathan and Jeremy’s work, and future viewing opportunities for the short film at www.forevergreenfilm.com.

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