The producers of Avatar are a little bit ticked.
Although "Avatar" has blasted through box office records and scored nine Academy Award nominations Tuesday, its producers are frustrated that the movie's actors were ignored by Oscar voters.
Zoe Saldana and James Worthington failed to earn nominations Tuesday for their motion-capture work in the sci-fi spectacular.
"People confuse what we have done with animation," director James Cameron said at the recent Producers Guild Awards, where he and fellow producer Jon Landau lost to "The Hurt Locker."
"It's nothing like animation. The creator here is the actor, not the unseen hand of an animator," he added.
The Oscars snub is "a disappointment," said Landau, "but I blame ourselves for not educating people in the right way."
See the subtext?
"Hey people! We're doing real movie-making here! Not that icky, animated stuff! This is big-time- live-action movie-making! Even if it's got all those computer nerds attached to it!"
Which explains clearly why Up, like Beauty and the Beast before it, will never win a Best Picture Oscar. In the eyes of live-action movie-makers, it just isn't the real deal. And never will be.
It's made by all those geeky people sitting in small, dark rooms, staring at bright, flat screens.
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33 comments:
It'd be great if Up won for best picture, if nothing else, just to piss Cameron off.
PS) I'd be all for mo-cap actors winning acting oscars, if that means animators become eligible for the same award...
Mr. Cameron, sir, my Lord, indulge this unworthy serf in some questions : who are all those animators credited on your movie and what did they do ? Why were they working 70 hour weeks for months on end to finish your movie ? Did any of your live-action performers put in 70 hour weeks ? If not , why not ? (since the mo cap performers did all the real work, right ?)
Alright, enough negativity.
We ALL know Animation will NEVER take home the Biggie Oscar.
Who the hell cares???
It's just a popularity contest.
That's it...........OH! Suzie's my best friend...she's got MY vote!
Sorry if that sounded negative!
HAA!
What acting in Avatar was so great anyway that they deserved a nod in the top 5 of the year?
It was a great movie, yes. Great story. None of the acting though stood out for me as it was an ensemble's achievement.
LOTR trilogy had better acting in it than Avatar and none of those actors got a nom.
^ P.S. Check the movie message boards as well. Nobody is torn up over the fact that Sam Worthington or Zoe Saldana got snubbed. Nobody cares, James. Let it go.
Please!!!! Avatar is a motion capture film with animators ENHANCING their acting. How about best ANIMATOR award instead of actor for Pocahontas, I mean Avatar.
I still cant believe that so many would pay so much repeatedly to see 3D effects of furries for hours, with no substance. I guess its a reflection of the trained audiences of today.
I'm with Anon, Avatar wasn't snubbing acting nominations because it was confused with animation, it was snubbing acting nominations be of the mediocre to bad acting.
Nice to see two stereoscopic films for Best Picture, and a third in Best Animated. Not sure if any of the shorts films were s3d, but I'm guessing they'll be more s3d films next year, at least between animation and vfx.
LOTR trilogy had better acting in it than Avatar and none of those actors got a nom.
Agreed. Sean Astin deserved a best supporting nomination. Maybe not a win, but at least a nomination.
"It's made by all those geeky people sitting in small, dark rooms, staring at bright, flat screens."
In this day and age, what movie isn't?
Either way, people take award shows too seriously, it's a contest to woo some film snobs into liking your movie and then patting each other on the back for winning.
And LOTR effects were just as good, if not often FAR BETTER than Avatar. And the audience cared about the characters more altogether.
Most of this stems from the fact that most "fx" and "game" animators (even good ones) an't do real CHARACTER animation, and want that respect.
Although "Avatar" has blasted through box office records and scored nine Academy Award nominations Tuesday, its producers are frustrated that the movie's actors were ignored by Oscar voters.
Zoe Saldana and James Worthington failed to earn nominations Tuesday for their motion-capture work in the sci-fi spectacular.
I'd say that Sam Worthington has very good reason to be frustrated ... with Reuters.
LOTR trilogy had better acting in it than Avatar and none of those actors got a nom.
Ian McKellen got a supporting actor nomination for Fellowship of the Ring.
"Most of this stems from the fact that most "fx" and "game" animators (even good ones) an't do real CHARACTER animation, and want that respect."
Believe it or not, animators that work on games and vfx, can indeed do character acting. Some animators go from features to games and vice versa. And we're able to spell "can't" as well!
God.
I think we are all being a little hypersensitive, here. It doesn't have anything to do with disrespect for animators. It has to do with the collective nature of our work. Acting is an individual award. Nobody wants to give it to an anonymous group. If they "casted" individual animators in individual roles it would
be another story. When Robin Williams was able to single out Eric Goldberg for co-creating the Genie, he did. Does ASIFA give acting awards to animators? Maybe they should.
'Cast,' not 'casted.'
I suggest the Animation Guild purchase a page in variety to congratulate all the animators who worked on Avatar, and name them.
Cameron is trying to pretend they don't exist. How can artist ever be respected under that sort of treatment?
I would chip in $50 toward a full page ad.
"Does ASIFA give acting awards to animators?"
Yes. It's the award called " Outstanding Individual Achievement for Character Animation" (there's one for Features and one for TV)
It might make a better point to the industry at large if they changed the name of the awards to : "Award for Best Acting by an Animator in a Leading Role" and another for " Award for Best Acting by an Animator in a Supporting Role" , etc.
Let's face facts. Sam Worthington's "acting" in Avatar was emotionless and devoid of nuance. There simply isn't justification for an Academy Nomination for it.
I agree completely. He's devoid of any charisma.
However, I for one, thought Zoey did a great job. Don't know if it's of Oscar pedigree, but I thought she was pretty convincing.
On the other hand, they nominated "Inglorius Basterds" as movie of the year...I liked "IB", but, don't really think it was that good...
On the topic of animators getting some recognition...that would be a good idea.
God
Sam Worthington doesn't need to have any charisma ----- he just needs to stand there and look HOT!!!
If Cameron wants to nominate mocap actors, let him submit raw mocap footage and see how great they think the acting is. At least then they could see how much crap animators have to fix, throw out and re-animate.
Can Cameron identify even a single performance in there on par with Andy Serkis in LOTR ?
What do you mean "...on par with Andy Serkis"?
More like on par with what the animators turned his performance into!
I'd like to start out my post by saying that I am NOT a fan of motion capture. As an animator, I think it waters our skills.
With that said. I was told by someone who worked on Avatar that there was very little additional work done by animators. Sure, some things were cleaned up. But, large in part, it is the actors performances.
Whether this guy had some sort of axe to grind. I really don't think so.
That was NOT the case with Lord of the Rings. But it may very well be with Avatar.
That would all depend on what function that person had on the production. If he wasn't involved in the actual animation process then it's very likely he wouldn't have any idea what was or wasn't fixed and altered by animators and just bought what cameron was selling.
Sam Worthington doesn't need to have any charisma ----- he just needs to stand there and look HOT!!!
Pretty hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or not. If you are, good one!
If not, I bet you don't realize what a moron you sound like.
God
"Pretty hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or not...
If not, I bet you don't realize what a moron you sound like."
----
Yeah, I think we could safely say that sums up many of the comments on this blog.
I was told by someone who worked on Avatar that there was very little additional work done by animators.
I was told just the opposite by one of the animators. Apparently the flying scenes and a lot of the action stuff was mostly keyframed, and for some acting scenes the animators went off of extensive video reference but didn't even have mo-cap data to start with.
Mo-cap, no matter how much Cameron pushed the technology, just does not capture enough data for a meaningful performance by itself. And what it does capture often doesn't really work, and has to be redone almost from scratch. If anything, it seems MORE animators are involved in the projects as mo-cap advances, not fewer.
James Cameron is a D**k with a false sense of entitlement, just because he makes a movie once every 10-15 years doesn't make you any more special then the other visionary/great directors and producers around.
Sure his movie may be visually spectacular, and it made more money then any other movies, but the almighty dollar isn't the only way to see success.
... the almighty dollar isn't the only way to see success.
Good luck convincing Viacom, Disney, Time-Warner, News-Corp, and Sony.
Sorry, I was going to leave off at the one thread, but I'm still trying to follow the logic:
Which explains clearly why Up, like Beauty and the Beast before it, will never win a Best Picture Oscar. In the eyes of live-action movie-makers, it just isn't the real deal. And never will be.
It's made by all those geeky people sitting in small, dark rooms, staring at bright, flat screens.
Maybe I'm just confusing the post with gratuitous showoff cynicism, but there are a few counterpoints here:
1) B&B didn't win because it wasn't -supposed- to be nominated: JFK was still hidden away in limiteds, pundits were convinced the Academy would "never remember" Silence of the Lambs from way back in spring, and Prince of Tides still looked like a dark horse even in Streisand-worship Town. So, pundits shrugged in November, "Sheesh, what good reviews have we got LEFT to nominate...Beauty&Beast??"
Once the words were out, the genie was out of the bottle: West coast voters were so smitten by the Neato factor of a Magic Animated Movie being nominated Just Like A Real One--and the Disney revival was still coasting on Mermaid's popularity--they've been frustrated and lusting for history to repeat itself ever since.
But Neato isn't the same as -deserving- an award, and looks like the Academy remembered Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster after all.
Just how and when the 90's obsession with seeing Lion King get a "real" nomination turned into the 00's obsession with Pixar getting "real" nominations dates back to their frustration over why Toy Story 2 didn't get a Best Picture nom solely on the basis of Jessie's song--And their constant pestering of the Academy to nominate -something- to make up for it is pretty much the issue that pushed the Academy to separate the Animated category in the first place...Just to shut 'em up. :)
Which brings us to
2) They WANT Pixar to win this year, whether it's "likely" or not. Diplomacy has sunk to the point that voters would consider one more "mere" Best Animated for Pixar as nothing short of an insult.
Yes, there are a few starstruck voters amazed that Cameron could make two Big Important Movies by himself, and will give him an award if he'll be their bestest pal...But one of the reasons we have ten nominations this year may be that the Academy was SO determined to get a mainstream populist movie back in as a front runner again, they were reduced to borrowing a few ideas from the Golden Globes just to do it. And the fact that this idea came the very next year after "Wall-E" was passed over for a Picture nom--in favor of another movie none of the voters were particularly excited about by the time it won--you may read into what you wish.
The general Picture-voting live-action community does not believe that Pixars are created by "geeks at a screen" (as the poster aren't-I-negatively believes); they believe that Pixars are magic, holy creatures created by wise elves in a hollow tree. The fact that no one in the "regular" movie community knows exactly how they are made, or just how they "magically" keep getting big box office or 10-Best reviews, only adds to their "mystique" as something the community wants to prove about "normal" movies.
(This may be a problem, as live-action isn't exactly clear on what an animation director DOES, which is how Pete Docter and his co-director may have been passed over for nomination--Thus preventing the usual two-punch noms for Picture and Director.)
Me, I thought Up was passable as Pixars go, IMHO, but if this is finally the year the Babies Get Their Bottle, it's one I can live with--I remember the year the same voters were nagging about "If a voice can be nominated, could we give a Best Actor to 'Ratatouille'?...Or maybe a Best Picture!" Yes, they won't be stopped until they get it. :)
Eric J -
Please stop.
Mo-cap, no matter how much Cameron pushed the technology, just does not capture enough data for a meaningful performance by itself. And what it does capture often doesn't really work, and has to be redone almost from scratch. If anything, it seems MORE animators are involved in the projects as mo-cap advances, not fewer.
Agreed, but you have to admit at the core, JC is right. The animators did NOT provide the humanoid performances. They either copied the video reference frame by frame, or cleaned up the capture.
Either way, other than creatures, no animator provided a performance for AVATAR.
In the end,there was a need to employ animators for one reason or another. Otherwise, why would JC employ so many of them? Would Avatar be possible without animators?
I simply wonder wether he built a negative impression of animators after his experience dealing with Steve Williams, so many years ago, on "The Abyss" and "T2".
rufus.
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