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Vicky Jenson

Victoria Jenson is an American film director of both live action and animated films. She has directed projects for DreamWorks Animation, including Shrek, the first film to win an…

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Victoria Jenson (born March 4, 1960) is an American film director of both live action and animated films. She has directed projects for DreamWorks Animation, including Shrek, the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, giving rise to one of Hollywood's largest film franchises.

Biography and early workJenson began painting cels at the age of 13.
DreamWorksIn 2000, Jenson began working for DreamWorks as a production designer and story artist for The Road to El Dorado.
Live-action workShe directed a live-action short, Family Tree, which "premiered at Sundance, screened at countless festivals, including Sundance, SXSW, Aspen and Malibu and we…
Skydance AnimationIn July 2017, it was reported that Jenson was directing an untitled animated fantasy film.

Victoria Jenson is an American film director of both live action and animated films. She has directed projects for DreamWorks Animation, including Shrek, the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, giving rise to one of Hollywood's largest film franchises.

Biography and early work

Jenson began painting cels at the age of 13. She attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and California State University Northridge, and learned to paint backgrounds on The Flintstones and The Smurfs at Hanna Barbera Studios where she worked summers to cover fall semesters. She later became a storyboard artist for Warner Bros., Marvel and Disney Television, and variously worked as a production designer, art director and co-producer". In the early 1980s, Jenson worked on the storyboard backgrounds on the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon series for Filmation. She was also a design and color stylist on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, John Kricfalusi's influential reboot of Mighty Mouse, in the 1980s. Due to her connections with Kricfalusi, she was offered a job as a painter at Spümcø to work on The Ren & Stimpy Show on its second season; she migrated to Games Animation with other background painters including Bill Wray after Kricfalusi's firing, working sporadically on the third and fourth seasons. In 1992, Jenson was the art director for FernGully: The Last Rainforest, and the production designer for Computer Warriors: The Adventure Begins and Playroom.

DreamWorks

In 2000, Jenson began working for DreamWorks as a production designer and story artist for The Road to El Dorado. After working on the film, the studio initially hired Jenson to work on Shrek as a story artist, with the directors to be Andrew Adamson (also a first-time director) and the late Kelly Asbury, who had joined in 1997 to co-direct the film. However, Asbury left a year later for work on the 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Jenson was selected by producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to be the new director of the film. Jenson recalled her experience being brought into Shrek, and eventually tapped to direct, as follows:

For a long time, the movie didn't know what it wanted to be. One problem was unavoidable: Chris Farley had died, and the story had been geared around him, so when he went, the story kind of went with him. It went through an upheaval while they tried to find the right tone for it. I think they were really close to shelving the project when a few of us came into story to try and find a tone that we could work with. When Kelly Asbury moved on to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron I became head of story, along with Randy Cartwright. Along with Andrew Adamson, who stayed on as director, we started pulling little pieces together out of what remained, and part of the way through, Jeffrey decided that I should be directing. A few months later, we started production.

Jenson described the directing process as one in which "we didn't try to figure out how to make adolescents laugh. You have to use yourself as the best judge and use your own instincts. We figured if we laughed at it, chances are good someone else would too". According to Adamson, the co-directors mutually decided to split the work in half, so the crew could at least know whom to go to with specific questions about the film's sequences: "We both ended up doing a lot of everything", "We're both kinda control freaks, and we both wanted to do everything." Following the success of Shrek, Jenson went on to co-direct Shark Tale with Eric "Bibo" Bergeron and Rob Letterman. In 2003, while working on Shark Tale, Jenson received the first annual Kiera Chaplin Limelight award given at the Women's Image Network Awards.

Live-action work

She directed a live-action short, Family Tree, which "premiered at Sundance, screened at countless festivals, including Sundance, SXSW, Aspen and Malibu and went on to win multiple festival awards". In 2009, she finished her first live-action feature directorial work for the Alexis Bledel-starring comedy, Post Grad. The film received generally negative reviews. Also in 2009, Jenson directed all of the spots for the year-long "Modelquins" ad campaign for Old Navy, including the "Supermodelquins Christmas" ads. She was represented by the Anonymous Content agency for the campaign.

In 2015, Jenson directed a stage production of the play, Time Stands Still, by Donald Margulies. The Los Angeles Times wrote of Jenson's stage directorial debut: "the staging by Vicky Jenson successfully captures the script's broad contours", and Broadway World praised the production, stating that "Vicky Jenson smoothly directs her uniformly skilled four-member cast".

Skydance Animation

In July 2017, it was reported that Jenson was directing an untitled animated fantasy film. The film tells of a teenager who "comes of age using magical powers to defend her family when the opposing forces of light and darkness threaten to divide her kingdom. The untitled project was later titled Spellbound. In 2026, Jenson announced that she had lost her job with the studio during the previous year.