Sunday, October 21, 2012

The Global Competition

Below, the English-language trailer for a new Indian animated feature.



Kamlu ...Happy Happy, a 3D CGI Hollywood-Bollywood co-production directed by Govind Nihalani that will be released on November 2? In India, anyway, in Hindi. Produced by Krayon Pictures, the same studio that made Delhi Safari, in fact.

This English-language trailer shows it to be a children’s fantasy about a young talking camel who wants to fly, who gets mixed up with a human princess, an enigmatic magician, lots of villains, and so on. Will it play in America? I’m sure the Bollywood producers hope so.


The question before the jury: How will this feature perform in the global marketplace?

Based on the trailer, I think Krayon Pictures has a steep hill to climb competing against the likes of Blue Sky, Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar. But we've seen this playbook before. In the nineties, there were the high-grossing animated features out of the States, and there was every other company on the globe, trying to catch up and failing.

It's not a question of doing your animated movie inexpensively. Because a low budget isn't going to help you much if nobody comes to see your product. A picture can be inexpensive and good, or expensive and good, but what it can't be in inexpensive and lousy.

Audiences aren't interested in the cost, you see, but the final result.

5 comments:

Diablo said...

Looks like it was animated by ten year olds...

Alice Marie said...

Uh. Have you animated before? Animation is freaking hard!

Diablo said...

Alice...maybe I was not clear enough. What I meant is that the animation on this flick is so terrible, that it looks like it was animated by ten year olds.

And yes, I've animated before. I have been for more than a decade.

r.

Unknown said...

I have yet to see an animated film from India that appeals to me. Everything has been either preschool-cute (like Kamlu... Happy Happy,) or epic and stale (like that mo-cap monstrosity I can't think of the name; I believe it was co-produced by Disney.)

Don't get me wrong. I want India to succeed. I have always loved non-American animated films, from Japanese anime to Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis." India needs to step up their game if they want to play with the big boys (and girls.)

Alice Marie said...

Diablo:

Well I can totally agree that it's terrible. I just remember trying to animate for the first time at 20-something and being so much worse. :) I just think saying 'animated by 10 year olds' doesn't give animation credit for just how difficult it actually is. (And how skilled good animators are.)

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