Saturday, February 27, 2010

Synchrolux Says

... the following:.

... [T]here’s a common joke-slash-truism in the animation community: What are the three most important things in a great animated movie? It’s a variation on the old real-estate saw: What are the three most important things in selling a house? Location, location, location. In the world of animation, the axiomatic answer is usually story, story, story. ...

Now go and read the rest of the post.

7 comments:

Stephen Worth said...

Great article, Kevin.

Steve Hulett said...

This blogger has confused "story" with "storytelling." Story IS so important, but storyTELLING is more important. And everyone with half a brain knows that EVERY ELEMENT of supporting the story derives FROM STORY, or it is irrelevant to the proceedings. This includes art direction, cutting, composition, time, animation, music...all of it. But NONE of it matters if it isn't telling a story. It may be "pretty," but is it servicing the story? Animation for animation sake, no matter how proficient, is just bland movement if it's not engaging the audience through a character telling a story.

(This comment, snarky though it is, was moved by the kindly administrator from the post directly above, where it made no sense.)

Anonymous said...

Wow. It made perfect sense to me. Sounds like that koch fellow is getting a bit touchy when holes in his argument are exposed.

Steve Hulett said...

Uh, it made no sense attached to an investing post. That's what I mean.

And I fail to see how Kevin is touchy about anything, as he hasn't shown up here.

Anonymous said...

"That koch fellow" had nothing to do with either the misplaced comment, or it's reposting. My bet is that if you want to hear his response, you'd need to post it on his blog, not here.

And frankly, the anonymous comment Steve moved is a classic example of circular reasonsing: "Everything is 'story,' so 'story' is still the most important thing" is what is being claimed.

But then, if every element in support of the story is 'from story' (whatever that means), then we wouldn't call them 'films,' they'd just be 'stories.' And we wouldn't have any reason to talk about acting, cinematography, music, etc. We'd just say inane things like "Anthony Hopkins and Roger Deakins and Bernard Herrmann are so talented at story," and be done with it.

Not everything in a film is story, and as that Koch fellow points out, the same story can be told an infinite number of ways, some better than others, and yet it's still the same story.

Anonymous said...

"Animation for animation sake, no matter how proficient, is just bland movement if it's not engaging the audience through a character telling a story."
Norman McLaren, Oskar Fischinger, Faith Hubley, and many others would disagree with you...

yahweh said...

Since the names you mentiuoned might be considered ARTEESTS none of them would be considered successful monetarily and worth a big studio's interest. AND finding an large audience so the money rolls in is what it finally all comes downs to. This is a business not masturbation.

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