Ellen Keneasha began her Disney career as an editor at Walt Disney Animation Studios on The Lion King, staying with them through Meet the Robinsons and lending her talents to documentary films like Waking Sleeping Beauty and Disneynature Oceans. She recently joined the Walt Disney Family Museum’s Happily Ever After Hours virtual speaker series to share stories from her career. Here are 10 things we learned from Ellen Keneasha.
1. Her career started with legendary filmmaker Roger Coreman
“I was hired to work in the advertising department at New World, so not actually making features,” Ellen shared about her first job in Hollywood for award-winning filmmaker Roger Coreman. “I have to say when I think about mentors, I think about someone who's going to inspire and encourage you and pat you on the back and Roger was not that.” She shared that Roger Coreman had a great eye for talent, but he was tough and told her that he doesn’t expect artists to stay with him for more than one film. But he was great about letting people try new fields they were interested in, which is how Ellen moved from advertising to editing trailers for New World.
2. Some of her New World colleagues went on to big success.
“While I was there, Ron Howard came through,” Ellen shared about a filmmaker she worked with who was already famous for being an actor, but got his start in directing at New World. “One of the people who was there as an effects animator was James Cameron.” But her favorite interaction with an artist who went on to big success came when she was editing a trailer for Battle Beyond the Stars and was waiting for the music to come in from the scoring stage. “I just thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing. It’s a huge orchestra… It was James Horner’s score.”
3. A friend from college got her into Disney Animation.
Ellen Keneasha moved around Hollywood as a trailer editor, eventually branching into low budget live-action features through a connection at college. “A friend called me and said I’m over at Disney Animation right now working on this feature about Lions and we need some help. Would you be interested?” Ellen loved Disney movies and passed on a feature film to take the temporary position at Disney.
4. She was initially hired for just two weeks of work on The Lion King.
“I started on The Lion King for a couple of weeks and that turned into more weeks.” After The Lion King, Ellen was kept on as a Development Editor on short projects like the Roger Rabbit cartoons and segments for Fantasia 2000. She began in the days when Disney Feature Animation was working out of warehouses and trailers in Glendale. “When I first started, they were even allowing people to bring their pets in… I enjoyed working with low budget features, but most of the people working on those features were trying to get somewhere else. When I got to Disney Feature Animation, everyone was where they wanted to be.” Her work on shorts was occasionally interrupted to help on features. “They also pulled me off to work six-months on Pocahontas.”
5. Pixar borrowed her for a bug’s life.
Ellen Keneasha was assigned as the lead editor on The Hunchback of Notre Dame for producer Don Hahn, who she would work for several times on other films including Atlantis: The Lost Empire. “In between the end of Hunchback and the beginning of Atlantis, they sent me to Pixar for eight-weeks to work on a bug’s life.”
6. She helped cut songs from Disney films.
Disney has cut some pretty famous songs from their animated films, such as ‘If I Never Knew You” from Pocahontas. “The songs that we cut actually felt like they needed to be cut. It was unfortunate because there were some great songs.” She shared that the song was cut because test audiences laughed at it. Pocahontas had arrived to try to save John Smith and then they stopped to sing a duet. “We had a song in Hunchback, “As Long As There’s a Moon,” and that was in it for a while, but then it wasn’t really forwarding the story. You just kind of talk things through.” She also edited “Human Again” for the special edition of Beauty and the Beast, but feels the film plays better without it.
7. Meet the Robinsons was considered a “Low-budget” film at Disney Animation.
After Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Ellen was assigned to a project called A Day With Wilbur Robinson, which became Meet the Robinsons. “It came about because they had decided they wanted to do some low budget, down and dirty animated features now,” she shared about the fan-favorite film’s humble beginnings. In those days, they would edit together a storyboard version of the film and pitch it to Disney’s CEO to get the greenlight. “We screened it, the deal was we would screen it for Michael Eisner… At the end of the movie he stood up and said yeah, that’s great, let’s make it.”
8. Roy E. Disney asked her to edit the “Pastoral Symphony” from Fantasia for Fantasia 2000.
“They were trying to decide which sequence to leave in and they were thinking of Beethoven's “Pastoral Symphony” and they had already done a cut in 1959 to remove the Black centaurette.” Roy E. Disney wanted to use this segment as the one that would be kept from the original Fantasia and Ellen was asked to do a better edit to remove the controversial centaurette named Sunflower. “He was very nice, he was a real gentleman. I kept expecting lightning to strike, not because I'm cutting Fantasia, but because I’m cutting Beethoven.” In the end, Roy E. Disney decided to use “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” instead and the studio never used her edit of “Pastoral Symphony,” instead releasing a new zoomed-in edit on the home video releases of Fantasia to eliminate Sunflower.
9. She edited Waking Sleeping Beauty, a film about Disney Animation during the era she was there.
“I’m the third editor on the film so when I came on, Don [Hahn] had a structure that he wanted already. What I did was go in and finesse things and make some cuts… What I found was the most difficult thing was you want to stay true to the facts that were and sometimes it's more dramatic if you don’t do that, so we had to be very careful… There’s a place in the film where they brought the lions in for the artists to draw and you hear a woman say ‘Everyone stay behind the line, we don’t want you to get too close.’ And then Jeffrey [Katzenburg] came in, so I put her line over him entering and that didn’t really happen, but it’s true to the essence of who he was… We actually screened the film for Michael Eisner and he said to Don, “You’re making it seem like I didn’t care about what was going on and I did.” And he said ‘You’re right” and we changed it.”
10. Bob Iger requested an edit on Waking Sleeping Beauty.
“One of the funny things was we had a lot of caricatures of Roy Disney because Roy was there and at the time, Roy was a chain smoker,” Ellen shared about her original edit for the film. “He did quit, but in all of those characters you see he’s got a cigarette and when Bob Iger saw the movie, he said you can keep the caricatures but you’ve gotta get rid of the cigarettes.” Prior to the film’s release, Bob Iger implemented a company-wide policy banning smoking from new films.
Fans can see the full schedule of Walt Disney Family Museum virtual events, including the Happily Ever After Hours speaker series, at waltdisney.org/calendar.