Need I say any more? Far and away one of the best female villains ever to grace the TV screen is Mom from Futurama.
What makes her such a great character? Let everyone know with a comment!
The Great Animated Female Character Discussion: Mom Read More »
It’s a topic that strikes a nerve within the animation business, but celebrity voice acting (in features and TV) has become ubiquitous over the last 25 years. Today, practically all features from the larger studios rely upon celebrity voice talent regardless of whether or not the performer is right for the role. Aside from that though, is their cost, which is what we’re taking a look at today and why it’s detrimental to them.
For starters, there’s the salaries. Not all will make a killing, but certainly the ‘millions’ term is bandied about often enough when it comes to celebrities that it makes as good a starting point as any.
Yes, millions of dollars is a lot of money, especially for one person and especially when there is often a full cast of them in a single film. All those extra millions add up once you get larger stars involved. Chris Rock may get one million for Madagascar, but Cameron Diaz purportedly got around $10 million for one of the Shreks.
Say we have one or two big stars and, oh, five lesser known ones. The two at the top earn $10 million each and the lesser ones earn a million. There’s $25million right there; a quarter of the cost of a $100 million film!
Now, we have to double that to cover marketing costs so a $100 million film has to pull in at least $200 million just to break even. Where do the celebrity voices fit into that? Well, they were a quarter before and they’re just about a quarter now as well. So your $25 million voice actors are actually costing $50 million before you even make a cent.
Ah, but we’re not done yet. After all, box office grosses are no reflection on revenues since cinema chains keep a significant portion (up to half). Even at a conservative estimate (25%), that’s another $6.25 million that celebrity voice actors have cost the production.
Grand total: $56.25 million for seven voices before even $1 in profit is made and we haven’t even touched on those stars that can get gross points; you can add many millions for those if the film is successful.
You see how easily celebrity voices can get out of hand? Is Eddie Murphy voicing the donkey in Shrek and getting $10 million really going to bring in $22.5 million in extra ticket sales?
If you’re making a film, wouldn’t you much rather put that $25 million into the animation itself? Or better yet, save the money and realise it as profit?
Regular readers of this blog will know where I would put it (hint: employment is a profitable investment), the question is: why do studios insist that major non-professional voice actors are a necessity? Remember, it was Robin Williams performance that made is appearance in Aladdin so successful; not the fact that it was Robin Williams doing the voice.
Today, (and we’ll defer from naming names right now) it seems that studios attempt to grab as many celebrities as possible and throw their names on the poster without thought to their talents. Sure Beyonce is a great singer, but does that make her a great voice actress? The trailer for recently-released Epic suggests not in an avoid-at-all-costs kind of way.
Animated films will continue to suffer the blight of celebrity voice acting until there is a bit of a shake up of the business. It’s coming at some point to be sure, but hopefully it puts things right.
Lastly, for your viewing pleasure, here’s professional Marice LaMarche at work:
Doing the Math On Celebrity Voice Acting Read More »
Oodles of week links for you today!
Richard Leskosky over on the Animation Studies blog has a post that pretty much details all you need to know (in the general sense) about animated musicals. It should be noted that the genre has survived in animated form long after its live-action counterpart all but disappeared.
Mary Mayerson has yet another great observational post about the animation industry and where it is headed. Disclaimer: he references, and agrees with yours truly, but that’s not why you should read the post. Floyd Norman also weighs in with a strikingly accurate comment.
Erin over at the (highly recommended) Gagging on Sexism blog has this great analysis of perhaps the single greatest female character we’ve seen in US animation over the past decade.
Of particular note is the fact that Azula is also a princess but in a polar-opposite sense to what Disney would have you believe they should be.
Alex Williams over on the FLIP blog explores this, apparently true, claim. He also ponders a few questions:
A few days ago an old friend of mine (and a top animator) posted at Facebook about the absurdity of a client asking for him to make an animated film “for a few hundred dollars”. How ridiculous! But I wondered – why is it so absurd? What if we could do animation for such a low price – surely there would be a huge demand for this kind of work? In fact, there are tiny studios springing up doing exactly that – creating animation for a tiny, super-low price.
There’s a whole collection over on the tumblelog of Rainblade
The must-follow Yowp blog digs ever further into the history of our favourite pre-historic animated property (sorry Croods). This post looks at how (and from whom) Fred and Wilma got their names. A fascinating post that illustrates yet again how history can get terribly muddled by the people creating it.
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Week Links 22-2013 Read More »
Perhaps the first lady of animated television, Wilma Flintstone has been putting up with Fred for more than half a century at this point. Together with Betty, they were the yin to Fred and Barney’s yang and kept them honest too!
So what makes Wilma great character? Is it her steely resolve? Her never-ending patience? Or the fact that she was perhaps the first real strong animated female character on TV?
Get commenting with your thoughts!
The Great Animated Female Character Discussion: Wilma Flintstone Read More »
The series of posts on great female characters in animation while Charles wraps up grad school continues. Today, it’s Harley Quinn.
What makes her such a great and enduring character? You lead the discussion with your comments!
The Great Animated Female Character Discussion: Harley Quinn Read More »
OK, the gist of it is, I have class four nights a week from now until the middle of July. regular posts unfortunately take time to plan/write/edit/post and while it may seem easy to shoehorn it into a regular day, given my upcoming schedule, it won’t be possible to continue a daily posting regime.
So, instead of letting the blog gather dust on the off days, instead, we’re going to have some debate. Three times a week I’ll post a character and you (the reader) must describe exactly what it is that makes her commendable.
It doesn’t matter if you know exactly why, or whether you like them or not. Nobody is a mind reader and a comment is the one and only way to share your knowledge and opinion with the world.
So without further adieu, I give you
The Great Animated Female Character Discussion: Katara Read More »
It’s a rather quaint title borrowed from a book that happens to be required reading this semester:
Long story short, it is a fable of instigating change within an organisation filled with bodies that are quite resistant to change, until they are convinced otherwise. The lesson at the end is that the penguins, having been convinced to leave their established, unsafe iceberg, must now adapt to the annual moves necessary to sustain their colony. The key lesson is that it is hard to instigate the change and it takes effort to establish it in the routines of normal people (or in this case, penguins.)
Well, it actually has a lot to do with animation. Studios are organisations and often they must adapt to change or instigate it themselves in order to survive into the future.
Walt Disney faced this challenge when he moved his facilities from Hyperion Avenue over the hill to Burbank. The top down nature of the move resulted in some grumbling and, in a way, led ultimately to the strike of 1941.
Such dramatic moves are rare within the industry, but change occurs frequently on a smaller scale. Leading the change within organisations often falls to managers and executives, but how many of them are effective in their leadership?
Consider the recent controversy surrounding Merida and her ill-advised transformation for her ‘coronation’. Such change seemingly emanated from the Disney organisation and when it was not well received, there was nary a leader in sight to apologise or announce the change back to the CGI model. What does it say about Disney that not a single person too charge of the brouhaha?
Could you easily say that studios today lack effective leadership when it comes to change? Are they managing the (undoubtedly) negative perceptions that recent layoffs have had? How could they turn such negative vibes into positive ones? It’s not impossible. There are examples of companies instigating layoffs that resulted in workers that were actually happy to leave and go on to bigger and better things.
So who is the animated leader in the United States today? Who is the one man/woman who is instigating and leading change within the industry? Who sees the need for the necessary changes that the industry and studios within it will have to undertake in the coming months and years?
Can you name them?
Is the Animation Iceberg Melting? Read More »
Halfway through the year already??? Well, have some more week links, and don’t forget to check out the archives for more that you may have missed.
Coming via the Kidscreen iKids blog but surely trumpeted elsewhere too is the news that Amazon is moving ahead with it’s original series as chosen by viewers. Of interest to us are the three animated properties as the post details as well as when we can expect to see the first episodes; later this year is all we know for now.
Fred Patten over on Cartoon Research has a very thorough and insightful post about translation and the comedy of errors that can result. That’s something that continually seems to haunt animation. Live-action has less of an issue because, quite simply, less of it travels across borders thanks to its lower cost. Animation, being as expensive as it is, seems to require international sales in order to succeed and that means a lot of translation. Latin-based languages aren’t too difficult, but once you cross the Pacific, things get tricky; a fact that Fred’s post does much to enlighten us about.
Animation is tough business, and the latest casualty is the Australian studio that produced Happy Feet 2:
Unfortunately, the only story Dr D managed to share was Happy Feet Two. The continual slate of production that had been anticipated failed to materialise, and the 650 or so staff who had been hired (mostly on contract) at the peak of production dwindled in the months after to about 50. In more recent times, it is believed fewer than half a dozen people were employed by the company.
Animator Robert Kohr is hard at work on his latest short film. Entitled ‘Europa’ after Jupiter’s moon, he recently posted some character models. Here’s the character Cindy:
In a rare self-referential link, Michael Sporn read my post on Animation Scoop questioning the race for the easy dollar among major animation studios and posted his own, well-measured thoughts. The topic is of concern to me primarily because the gold rush that animation currently is has lead to a lot of formulaic films that I fear will result in audience burnout and an industry downturn.
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Gotta love that sly Looney Tune humour.
Week Links 21-2013 Read More »
