Despicable Me hits the double century mark ....
... and I gotta wonder what this does for feature animation's business model.
The Pixar and DreamWorks Animation approaches certainly work, but now Illumination Entertainment has shown that a smaller crew and quality contractor can make some magic.
Feature animation artists from various Big Animation Studios sub-contracted story work from IE, then Mac Guff did production in Paris. All this could be replicated top to bottom in Burbank or Culver City. In fact, the oncoming Winnie the Pooh feature with its $35 million price tag could, in many ways, be considered a hand-drawn cousin of DM.
The question looming in my mind is, how many more companies and start-ups will now jump into the feature animation game and pursue Cartoonland's holy grail using Illumination's blue-print?
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As we all know, this model is not new--not at all. Been done for decades.
And one hit (and I liked the film) does not necessarily mean "consistant" magic--or hits. Pride goeth before the fall.
I liked the film, it was cute and had a nice charm to it. But was it good as Toy Story 3?
Not by a long shot. Not even close.
It ain't the critical hosannahs. It's the bucks that flow into the box office. But you know that already, Wilfred, I'm sure you do. (And I loved your work on Snow White ...)
Disney attempted it with Valiant and The Wild. Look how those turned out.
the success of this film will keep more films in production...that means work for us all.
That's a good spin to what could happen! I prefer it to my initial thought which was, oh great, now they're going to lay off more people and try and get the same products.
Being that the film was farmed out and on the cheaper side of the spectrum. It makes me curious how well people were paid, what the time line was, and what the hours were like. There are companies that will knowingly tell an employee a shot is due on this date because they know the employee will put in free hours to finish it on time, sometimes stay up all night. (I know TAG is looking out and these people need to report it, but lets face facts, people don't) When it comes to deadlines though a lot of employees just want to get it out and at least they get paid; even if it's not accurate or takes time from family. But it shouldn't be like that, but I guess that's in a perfect world where our craft is held in higher esteem by the suits.
I just hope instead of firing people from bigger companies a lot of smaller companies pop up, that would be fantastic. And I'm glad I read this because it can bring hope. But it so hard to tell what is going on those money hungry Exec heads.
Hoping for the best and a bright fruitful future haha
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