The New Travelers to Animationland

To follow up on how animation has been increasingly successful (read "profitable") and pervasive over the past dozen years, the LA Times notes how the live-action community increasingly wades into the medium.

... With the extensive use of computer-generated animation, or CG, in movies such as the "Pirates" franchise, "Avatar" and "Alice in Wonderland," the lines are blurring between live-action and animated pictures in a way that Walt Disney himself could have scarcely imagined. That has created opportunities for directors, cinematographers and even production designers to transfer their skills from one medium to another.

"As live-action filmmaking, in terms of its process and tools, comes closer and closer to the way we've always made our animated movies, the crossover has been made much easier for filmmakers,'' said Bill Damaschke, co-president of production for Glendale-based DreamWorks Animation. "It's probably exploded over the last two or three years."

In a sign of that crossover, DreamWorks Animation recently partnered with Guillermo del Toro, director of such dark fantasy films as "Pan's Labyrinth" and such supernatural action movies as "Hellboy." Del Toro spends at least two days each week at DreamWorks, where he is writing and directing his first animated feature, "Trollhunters," a story about kids experiencing growing pains in a magical world.

"It's almost an irresistible medium to play in,'' said Del Toro. "I'm a filmmaker who is interested in truth and not reality, and I think there is great emotional truth and power to be found in animation." ...

Sure, the "lines are blurring," but it's more than that. Live-action filmmakers aren't coming to feature animation simply because many of the processes have merged. They've gotten their passports stamped and immigrated because "animated features" have become more legit in the eyes of the public. Just look at the grosses. (And yeah, there are holdouts. James Cameron heatedly maintains that Avatar is a live-action feature even though sizable chunks of it are animated.)

While it's true that live-action movies have become more like animated product, and animated features have taken on much of the visual sheen of their live-action cousins, the larger point is this: There is no longer a stigma to working in animation. Live-action writers might chafe under the fact that the scripting isn't under the WGA, but they still take the work. And live-action directors don't perceive the medium as step down in the industry pecking order, but honorable service in a co-equal branch of the business.

This wasn't the case twenty or thirty years ago. Back in the day, animation directors with lofty ambitions strove to climb to the sunlit uplands of "actual movies" shot on actual movie sets. Animation was a sleepy, backwater ghetto of the entertainment business that hard-chargers used as a stepping stone on their way to "real movie making."

By and large that's no longer the case. The times, as they say, have changed.