One more studio dives into the Middle Kingdom.
[DreamWorks Animation] is to open a new Shanghai operation to make films specifically for China's booming market, a recruitment firm told AFP on Wednesday. ...
DWA is (apparently) going to leap into the "Develop local content" game.
They aren't the first, of course. Disney partnered with Indian an animation studio to create Roadside Romeo, one of the box office non-starters of 2008.
Which might explain why there haven't been a cavalcade of newer animated features coming out of sub-continent.
But now, if the reports are accurate, Jeffrey's place is going to try its hand at production in China. It hasn't worked like gangbusters in India, but maybe China will be better. Or otherwise. Because as a wise and seasoned animator related half a month ago:
"India still has quality issues regarding theatrical features, and China is ten years behind India. China's approached animation like it hascars and computers. They reverse-engineer hardware, and they do the same with animation. They take existing scenes and duplicate them, move for move, gesture for gesture. Not the way to push animation to a higher level ..."
The problem with developing viable (and quality) animation studios abroad is, you have to build a talent pool and infrastructure equal to the task, and current economics and business models make that difficult. To date, top talents inside foreign facilities have exited for better gigs in the U.S. and elsewhere when their talents and ambitions collided with home companies' low glass ceilings. So until overseas studios develop more innovative and creative mind-sets, they'll be working at a disadvantage.
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10 comments:
Kinda sad it's just not quite there yet.
Kinda sad it's just not quite there yet.
I'm skeptical about whether it will ever "be there."
I've kicked around a while, and seen how it goes. Decades back, in the ear of "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast", the fear was that hand-drawn studios in Asia were going to eat Americans' lunch.
Then came "Once Upon a Forest," "My Little Pony, the Feature" and hearts stopped trembling.
I've been waiting for overseas studios to start dominating the market for years and years. It still hasn't happened, and I doubt that it will anytime soon. Job shops in foreign lands will get pieces of things, and do a lot of low-end work, but our fine American entertainment conglomerates can't run the risk of getting burned qualitatively or quantitatively by shipping high-level features to China or India.
Face it: If Mumbai studios can't make a go of the home-grown stuff, what are the odds they're going to take over Pixar's, Blue Sky Studio's, or DreamWorks Animation's production slates?
Top talent does'nt move exclusively to the US nowadays. Especially when studios don't offer a stable job situation. People leave Pixar and the rest every now and then...
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WOW... You almost....sorta....kinda.... finally admitted that Dreamworks has been working with India...
Impressive.
I think this is less about trying to get Chinese labor doing DreamWorks' typical animated films (which everyone there knows would be a disaster), and more about getting around Chinese restrictions on getting films released there. I'd also wager that there are restrictions on getting the profits made on releasing KFP2 in China out of China, and so DW may need to spend some of that money there.
Remember decades ago when Disney started producing live action films in the UK? This was done because of restricting on bringing the profits made in the UK on animated films back to the states. So by producing films there, and spending those profits locally, they could create content.
The fact that China or India can't produce high quality animation is very relative. True only when you're talking about american animation.
They should try to make and develop their own brand of animation instead of the american version, that's the only way to succeed artistically and financially. See Japan and ,to some extend, France and Russia for example.
WOW... You almost....sorta....kinda.... finally admitted that Dreamworks has been working with India...
Impressive.
Where you been?
I've noted that parts of "Pus In Boots" have gone to India for months now.
Maybe they can get the commies to do all their sequels so dream works can finally focus on original stories again. As far as animation quality, it's hard to tell any difference any more. A lot of Kungfoopanda 2 was done in Asia and no one noticed. Same with the Tinkerbell dvd's, and rango.
"This was done because of restricting on bringing the profits made in the UK on animated films back to the states"
This was done because Britain and Europe were in the midst of reconstruction after WW2.
The point was that China's is a state-run economy, and this is the number one reason that Western companies relocate to China - to get favorable treatment from the Chinese government for their product. It is NOT about cheaper labor.
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