Ookaay. I'm back from tromping through the Sierras, and have just now come across this recent nugget from the NY Times:
Computer animation, once one of the most isolated corners of Hollywood, is rapidly becoming one of the most crowded. With the cost of computer animation coming down because of advances in technology and soaring box office receipts for family films, a broad range of new animation players are entering the multiplex ...
“I have lots of respect for Disney and DreamWorks, but I think we are going to easily compete in this marketplace,” said Erin Corbett, president of Imagi Studios USA. “Astro Boy,” based on the popular Japanese manga and television series, is about a young robot with incredible powers ...
All of the above, of course, has been said a bunch of times before (some even here). So what separates the royalty of the genre (Pixar, DWA, Blue Sky) from the pretenders? The simple, all-purpose, ever-workable one-word answer is "story," but let's face it. That really tells you next to nothing.
Thirty years ago, I sat in the Disney Animation building and listened to Don Bluth expound on the subject:
"You've got to make the audience care about your characters! You've got to make those characters live! You've got to involve them in the story you're telling!"
Everything Don said was true -- in a generic way -- but it turned out, as time went by and Don made a string of his own films, that Don wasn't particularly adept at pulling on audience into his type of story-telling. (Mr. Bluth has a plethora of creative strengths, but most are, I think, outside the story/character realm.)
Few would deny you need some sort of basic wire-frame structure on which to hang your elements, but the wire frame isn't, in most cases, the crucial thing. It's the characters frolicking through the structure, the characters' attitudes and the situations triggered by those attitudes that raise "formula story-telling" to the Olympian heights of "inspired film-making."
And it's an organic process, not a mathematical one. A computer could no more spit out Toy Story, Ice Age, or Kung Fu Panda than a robot could shoot hoops with Kobe Bryant. Writers and story artists with actual life experience have to sit in a room and analyze, puzzle out, and finally create the worlds and fragments of time that people want to sit in a theater and watch. And they do it with their heads, their hearts, their solar plexuses.
Which brings us to the newer challengers (see above) to the Big Three of Toondom. If the newbies can come up with stories and characters that engage and enthrall, they have a shot at becoming the New Pixar. But if they produce a feature that is flat and derivative (Quest For Camelot territory), they will probably fail. Because it's not enough to have pretty pictures. There's got to be ninety minutes of screen time there in the big dark room that cause folks to whisper "Yeah!" and then go out and tell friends "go see this!"
If the process we're easy, simple and inevitable after the computers and software were installed and the $100 million budget was spent, your Aunt Maude would no doubt be a wildly successful cartoon creator. But it's not, and Auntie is still back in Manhattan, Kansas doing the lunch dishes, and Pixar is still at the top of the heap.
So best of luck to Ilion, Imagi and Exodus, and may your inspiration match your ambition, may you turn out an animated feature that really clicks, and may you scale the mountain peaks occupied by Walt, John, and Jeffrey. A journey, after all, begins with the first pixel.
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28 comments:
"A journey, after all, begins with the first pixel... "
You just used several hundred words explaining why story is so important then destroy that notion by implying that a minute particle of a computer image is where it all begins.
To suggest that what separates the big boys from the pretenders is only "story" is far too much of a simplification of the recipe. That's like saying the most important thing in a chess game is the King. True, the loss of the King costs you the game, but so many other elements contribute to the outcome. The brilliant use of all the playing pieces determines the outcome of the game and the King is the least of the contributors.
A good story, supplemented by great characters with strong personalities, deep emotions, a touch of psychological understanding, some interesting motivations, clever plot twists, humor, tension, pacing, staging, acting and inspired visuals all contribute to the final package.
Writers and artists who are passionate, fearless, silly and open, who have adequate life experience, who are still in touch with their inner child and who have the ability to put it all into their work usually create the best material.
Astro Boy looks like crap.
Anonymous provided a pretty darn good list of what it takes to make a great film -- and make the big time.
However, he -- or she left out one very important ingredient. A management that is brave enough, and savvy enough to leave their creators alone. That’s the very thing that caused Pixar to soar back in the nineties -- and Disney to stumble.
The evidence suggests that it is easier to list the elements that make a good story than to actually implement them.
I think this is true... The evidence suggests that it is easier to list the elements that make a good story than to actually implement them..
...because studios dont do this...
A management that is brave enough, and savvy enough to leave their creators alone.
Have the Disney Brand associated with your movie and 50+ million $ in marketing also help to make a hit
a shite childhood, heavy drinking, large debt and a shotgun nearby to end it all also helps quite a bit.
Recipes for becoming the next Pixar:
1. Get a sugar daddy like Steve Jobs to foot the bill while the creatives "create" for 3 plus years.
2. Be sure to stock the staff with Cal Arts pals who love smelling each other's farts.
3. Make everyone read Robert McKee's "Story", or at least a Cliff Note's version before writng a script.
4. Find an established movie to basically adapt and disguise it as paying homage.
5. Get Disney to spend a shitload of moola to promote it.
6. And give everyone Segway Scooters.
And Presto you have your next Pixar!
:)
"A management that is brave enough, and savvy enough to leave their creators alone."
If that's what management should, then what is management?
No management is going to shovel money at some artists (who by this premise couldn't raise it on their own) to make a movie and expect to have no input on it. The ideal situation would be management with good movie-making sense who can direct all the conflicting artist ideas (do you really think all those artists are going to agree on everything?) toward a final product.
Astroboy looks cool. I saw a trailer for it while attending an UP screening, and audience response was pretty positive. The trailer could have been a bit more informative, however; a mention of Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astroboy and the God of Manga, would have been nice. But I'll have to admit that while I, as a Tezuka fan, am looking forward to the film, I'm not at all sure how today's kids will react to it. Hopefully it'll be a hit. I'd love to see more of Tezuka's creations get the bigscreen treatment.
Thanks to the piss poor management and lack of film making skills of Fred Dachau, Frank Gladstone, and Max Howard, quest for camelot isn't only "flat and derivatie," but just plain CRAP! And it flopped big time.. If you want folks who can run a business into the ground, hire them!
"Recipes for becoming the next Pixar:
1. Get a sugar daddy like Steve Jobs to foot the bill while the creatives "create" for 3 plus years.
2. Be sure to stock the staff with Cal Arts pals who love smelling each other's farts.
3. Make everyone read Robert McKee's "Story", or at least a Cliff Note's version before writng a script.
4. Find an established movie to basically adapt and disguise it as paying homage.
5. Get Disney to spend a shitload of moola to promote it.
6. And give everyone Segway Scooters.'
Somebody wasn't talented enough to get a job at Pixar.
""You've got to make the audience care about your characters! You've got to make those characters live! You've got to involve them in the story you're telling!""
don bluth couldn't tell a story that anyone but patients at bellvue could care about.
"You've got to draw their eyes crossed! And have their tongues sticking out! And make sure every dialogue scene looks like the character is chewing a great big wad of bubble gum!"
- Don Bluth
"No management is going to shovel money at some artists (who by this premise couldn't raise it on their own) to make a movie and expect to have no input on it. The ideal situation would be management with good movie-making sense who can direct all the conflicting artist ideas (do you really think all those artists are going to agree on everything?) toward a final product."
By your analogy, management couldn't make a film happen either, because if they did, they wouldn't need to hire artists.
Management should manage the production. That's different from running it into the ground. That's different from ASSuming that they can make as good or better artistic decisions as the artists management has hired to do artistic jobs.
Artists have to let management do their job...management should let artists do their jobs. In my dreamland, this would happen with a touch of respect on each side for the other, since usually both sides can't do both jobs.
"A journey, after all, begins with the first pixel... "
You just used several hundred words explaining why story is so important then destroy that notion by implying that a minute particle of a computer image is where it all begins.
...
Dear Mr. Literalist:
It was a play on an old, cliched Chinese proverb. A jokey, word pirouette at the end, as it were.
But if you haven't noticed, scripts and storyboards are now created on computers.
Therefore pixels.
To suggest that what separates the big boys from the pretenders is only "story" is far too much of a simplification of the recipe. That's like saying the most important thing in a chess game is the King.
"Dumbo", one of Disney's best animated features, was done with (mostly) B-list animators.
Animator Frank Thomas dissed the picture ("There's a mistake in every scene), but it's still great.
And it's great, IMO, because of characters and story.
The unfortunate truth (unfortunate for animators) is that good animation can not ever save a bad story.
And bad animation can't ruin a good story.
"A good story, supplemented by great characters with strong personalities, deep emotions, a touch of psychological understanding, some interesting motivations, clever plot twists, humor, tension, pacing, staging, acting and inspired visuals all contribute to the final package"
And great distribution and marketing that supports the film.
The unfortunate truth (unfortunate for animators) is that good animation can not ever save a bad story.
And bad animation can't ruin a good story.
I hear this all the time, yet there are plenty of examples that prove it false. An animated film with bad animation is like a live-action film with bad acting -- it's unwatchable. And a film that is wonderfully acted, even if the story is wacky, still has a chance to be enjoyable, just like a film with great animation.
Ideally the story AND the animation are both great, but good animation is an absolutely vital part of good storytelling.
Animators have a hard time seeing past the vitues of good and bad animation, though I'm surprised Kevin was the one to bite.
One of the best examples of a well told story that became a hit with really poor animation and design (verging on really bad at times)is Shrek. There are are other examples, but I think Shrek helps prove the point nicely.
Maybe Kevin is right in some ways though...Disney didn't benefit from putting great animation into bad stories (Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Black Cauldron, Rescuers Down Under, etc), but Pixar certainly has. Would Cars, Ratatouille, Bug's Life (not a big hit, but in retrospect seems to have benefited from being part of the canon)and even Nemo (one of the weakest stories they've ever told) have been hits without strong animation? Hell, I doubt they would've been hits if they had been made with good 2D animation...
Did Shrek 2 benefit from far superior animation than the first Shrek? It was a bigger hit than Shrek 1, but I don't think the animation quality had anything to do with it.
So let's ammend the maxim. The unfortunate truth is that good animation can not ever save a bad story. And bad animation can't ruin a good story. This holds true for all other studios except Pixar...?
Gee, thanks Joseph Campbell for enlightening the Great Unwashed with your Maxim's of Formula for Perfect Film-making. I'll be sure to spin out crap scene after crap scene on your next epic.
My two cents.
Good animation makes a huge difference in the quality and success of an animated film.
I think people who state otherwise don't know a great deal about the cartoon industry or the history of animated films. (And yes, you can always point to "exceptions." But if you look at the history of animation -- both features and shorts -- I think the overal rule is inescapable. Quality animation is anintegral part of the quality of the finished product.)
Even "Dumbo", which didn't have much of Disney's top-line staff (most were on "Bambi"), enjoyed the talents of Ward Kimball and Fred Moore.
I would agree with this article except that I know for a fact what the animators have to go through in order to work at Imagi in Hong Kong.
Most are under the age of 25. Most make less than 20K a year. And to me the worst part is that most literally had to bring cots to work to put under their desk during TMNT so that they could work for a while, sleep for a while, and roll back from under their desk to keep working without going home for days. 80-90 hour weeks for months at a time.
So, as much as I would love to pull for a studio like that...I can't. Not with those conditions. And not when other studios around the world look at an inkling of success Imagi might have and decide that THIS is how you make movies.
No thanks.
Animation matters:
Hoodwinked
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1155109-hoodwinked/
"Someone give these folks a real budget so they can make a movie that looks as good as it sounds. "
"The animation isn't even comparable to the original Toy Story, but the clever wit behind the plot and characters is."
"The idea is so great that it's a crying shame that the end product is such a sheep in wolf's clothing."
"..the computer animation is adequate at best, but that doesn't get in the way of some genuine cleverness."
Rotten Tomatoes score: 48%
Box Office: $51 mil
Had it been animated well, they could have seen double or triple that
"Had it been animated well, they could have seen double or triple that"
Yep...but the return on investment was something like what...340%?
Executives will take that return any day of the week. Quality animation be damned.
I mean, the Weinsteins have crapped out how many features since that one? I think I counted 6 or so on the blockbuster new release shelves last weekend alone.
As long as people are willing to pay for crap animation, we are fighting a losing battle with this one.
People are more than willing to see movies filled with bad writing time and time again. Hollywood thrives on bad writing. It coddles, rewards, promotes and perpetuates it. THAT is the Mother of All Lost Battles.
"Animators have a hard time seeing the virtues blah blah blah"
No bias on your opinion there.
Thanks for painting all of us with the same brush, as well.
Although I do agree to a certain degree, that the general public, can only vaguely tell good animation from bad animation. Which is sad. Bad animation has to be "Hoodwinked" bad to be recognized as such.
Great animation is the cherry on top. After all, we animators put the "animated" on "Animated Feature".
R.
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