Opinion

Animation Directors Moving to Live-Action: Jumping a (Sinking) Ship?

Animation, Opinion, The Cleveland Show /

It has been a topic of debate for quite some time and even within the animation community, there is suspicion that many students who study the artform are really looking for an easy leg-up into the film industry. While this may be true for some, it does imply that animation really is a second-class citizen in Hollywood, despite the proven track record of box-office receipts.

Michael Barrier has an insightful post on the topic of animation directors and the opportunities open to them at the present time. I highly recommend you head over to his site and read it.

In the post, he singles out Brad Bird for not only being perhaps the greatest director of his generation, but also for moving onto live-action and the unliklihood that we will see another animated film from him in the foreseeable future.

In that he may be correct. Brad is no longer at Pixar, where he developed my favourite, The Incredibles, and the somewhat drama-strewn Ratatouille, but is in line to direct Mission Impossible IV. Michael Barrier speculates that Brad may have moved on for the simple reason that he is unable to find a studio that is willing to create his kind of film.

In this he may be right. I wrote on the topic previously and it is fair to say that of the main animation studios in Hollywood, none bar Pixar are suited to Brad Bird. Barrier hints that Brad did not figure in the long-term plans at Pixar, which may be true. In this I am reminded of one of David Ogilvy’s maxims:

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Brad is one of the most creative guys in the industry and the reality is he has been left to fend for himself in a sea of sharks. Directing a live-action movie may well be putting bread on his table but it is a real loss to the industry as a whole when one of its best people ups and jumps ship.

Animation directors are a enthusiastic bunch. The vast majority have a genuine love for the artform, and Brad Bird is certainly no different. He has three films to his name and each one is superb. In a way, he’s the Quentin Tarantino of animation, putting out a film every couple of years that wows people every time. The fact that he has a fine attention to detail is secondary.

With just three main studios and smaller independents (although even Henry Selick, director of Coraline has joined Disney in order to develop projects for them) the source of jobs is scarce to say the least.

Live-action represents a bigger pool to swim in with more variety thrown in for good measure. Unless and animator goes the personal or independent route, they are unlikely to be able to create an adult-orientated (i.e. serious) animated film. This is a shame but we have only ourselves and the studios to blame. They will never take a risk with animation, even Pixars supposedly ‘brave’ and ‘experimental’ film Wall-E was still well within the unspoken walls that imprison animation in the family-friendly market segment.

Time will tell how this trend develops. In the meantime, I agree with Michael Barrier in that studio head must make a dilligent effort to retain and nurture key creative talent, not insulate their favourites into an old-boys club of sorts. Fresh faces, even those better than you, will only serve to increase the studio as a whole. Their loss only serves to decrease the gene pool, with a corresponding drop in quality.

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Looney Tunes: Why Are They Falling in Popularity and What Can Be Done to Stop It?

Animation, Cartoon Network, Opinion, TV /

Word come through from Cartoon Brew about a feature in the New York Times about the new, upcoming Looney Tunes TV to be broadcast on Cartoon Network leter this year. There was plenty of consternation a while back after the upfront where the show was unveiled. The comments on the Brew then as well as now were pretty much about as big a backlash as you could expect from the animation community regarding classic characters such as Bugs and Daffy. (By the way, I know I’ve touched on this topic before, but this is more of a commentary/opinion post and not nearly as sarcastic as the last one).

The NYT piece made light of the fact that kids these days don’t seem to know much if anything about the Looney Tunes. Quote from the article:

Ask a first grader to identify Bugs Bunny and the response more likely than not will be a blank stare. Dora, sure. Mickey, alive and kicking. But Porky who?

Anyone over the age of 15 will give you a wry smile as all the memories come flooding back. the same can’t be said for youger folks, they may even look at you as if you had two head, or began speaking Japanese!

The distinction was made between the Looney Tunes and Winnie the Pooh in that the latter still pulls in close to $5 billion in contrast to the $1 billion for Bugs & Co. Such a comparison isn’t really fair though. Winnie the Pooh isn’t exactly aimed at the same market, skewing much younger. Additionally, Winnie the Pooh has been longer established and has a seperate set of books to his name, all of which continue to bring in merchandise dollars.

Another aspect that is important to mention, Disney continually markets Winnie the Pooh. In contrast, Warner Bros. (or Time-Warner for that matter) has done little over the last 10 years. Let’s examine it together. Long ago, the Looney Tunes/Merrie Medodie shorts reigned supreme. Not only were the extremely popular, they were broadcast almost continuously, either as shorts themselves or as part of a TV show, e.g. The Bugs Bunny Show.

That time seems like the land of milk and honey compared to now. Would you be able to tell me where I could see a Looney Tunes short on TV today, or even this month? There’s no very many places is there? Sure we’ve had the odd marathon on Cartoon Network, usually on holidays when most people are distracted by turkey or what Santa Claus brought them.

Which brings us back to the age-old problem of “if it’s not readily available, no-one’s going to watch”. A fate which has befallen many fine cartoons and TV shows. Only a fool would try to convince you that an entertainment product can maintain its popoularity without advertising. Now when I say advertising, I don’t mean actual commercials, I mean the shows themselves! If a Looney Tunes short is on TV, that acts like a seven minute commercial that can entice people to watch another short.

The usual plan is to create a “new” TV show, or “update” the characters to the contemporary era, which in itself is a waste of time because within 5 years, the show is outdated. Remeber Lunatics Unleashed? Yeah, yeah I know, it still sucked when it was dubbed into Irish. Well, do you see any shows out there being “anime-fied”, doesn’t that seem so early-2000s? Well that’s basically what happens when you “update” classic cartoon characters, they go stale and end up getting locked in the Warner Vault.

So hear me out. Why not broadcast some of the classic shorts? Instead of, say, starting a TV show on the hour, why not show a short first? Your audience is already there, why not give them something new, or rather not really seen before? They’re still going to stick around for the show they got comfy for, right? The proof is in the pudding, Looney Tunes receipts are higher abroad then in the US. I know myself that RTÉ 2 in Ireland still broadcasts shorts during prime-time children’s programming. Guess how many Irish kids a re growing up with Bugs Bunny in their lives?

In addition, according to the NYT piece, there may be some new theatrical shorts on the way, not unlike “How to Hook Up Your Home Theater”, released in 2007. Well, that’s one thing, but why not plant the seed with some old favourites? Once you’ve guilt up a wee bit of an audience, you can then start throwing on some fertilizer in the form of new stuff. People are likely to be much more receptive to something fresh if they are more familiar with the old classics. Look at Tiny Toons, there was a TV show that gained a following all of it’s own. The classic crowd were mixed with newcomers, who eventually became popular in their own right, giving you a whole new property to exploit.

Personally, I think shorts should be filmed before every major feature film, not only does it increase my theatrical experience, I feel like I’m getting better value for money. That’s never a bad thing, eh?

While a new show is undoubtedly necessary to bring Bugs and Daffy in from the cold, a more comprehensive strategy is needed. Disney is the gold standard in this regard, Mickey Mouse is still as popular and well known as he has ever been, having said that, he as never exactly been out of the public’s attention either. Warner Bros. needs to do the same, starting with creeping the gang back onto screens slowly building their way up to the big stuff, i.e. films.

C’mon guys, Warner Brothers Animation is so much more than Detective Comics direct to DVD movies you still have plenty of fans out here.

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Anime And Me (Or Anime And I For All The Grammar Police Out There)

1 Comment / Animation, Japan, Opinion /

Anime. It’s one of those things, you either love it or you hate it, for the most part that is. Unlike the Philly Cheesteak place in Mechanicsburg, PA, where there is no middle ground; you either leave bursting at the seams or still wanting more, anime does have its casual fans. On the other hand, anime seems to have its fair share of fans and detractors alike. As for myself, I don’t love it to death but I don’t exactly hate it either.

For the longest time, my only exposure to the medium was Pokemon and the like. No joke, there’s not a lot of otaku (fans of anime, among other things Japanese) in Ireland, or at least not back in the day when I was growing up. It was only once I moved to the US the first time that I discovered (not entirely by accident I must admit) Neon Genesis Evangelion.

I will freely admit that this is still the only anime show I have on DVD (unless you count one disc of FullMetal Alchemist episodes). It is by far my favourite for reasons I am still not absolutely sure about. It may be the characters who continually collide and explode (or implode as the series progresses) or the overall story arc, I don’t know. What I do know is that I was willing to cough up $50 for the boxset plus the End of Evangelion and I’ve never regretted it.

Fans of western animation sometimes tend to deride or sneer at anime. This happens in reverse as well I should point out. No one form of animation is perfect, despite what Pixar would have you believe. Indeed there is much debate about just what is “anime” exactly. Some consider it any animation to come from Japan, others consider it a more specific form of Japanese animation. I’m going to be lazy for right now and send you to Wikipedia, who is just as vague as you can get on the subject. I intend to post about the origins/differences in a later post anyway.

Anime in general suffers from budgets that would make most Western animators weep for days on end. That’s why they make so much use of recurring backgrounds, limited animation (to the point of using only two or three positions for the mouth, and often having that the only moving thing on the screen) and action scenes that are as generic as you can get. Imagine what the great John K. would say? Actually, not a lot. he has a grand total of three blog posts on the subject. Here’s a quote I couldn’t resist sharing:

A decade after I worked on shows like the Transformers and being ashamed of it, young Spumco artists in the late 90s would come up to me in awe and recite whole storylines about how Gangamons beat up Rotundabeast with his triple tread whitewall tires while his half-human, half-koala girlfriend chewed eucalyptus paste in delight and bore him 17 new Astroboys and girls – all with spiky hair as a reward.

Priceless stuff. Anyway, my opinion towards the medium is that it is certainly no better or worse than western stuff. There were plenty of horrendous cartoons put out for years (decades?) before things got funkier in the 90s. Granted, they were on a scale that doesn’t even come close to something like Pokemon, which has an episode count of well into the thousands at this point, but the quality was much the same.

As for the actual types of shows? Personally, I seem to be able to enjoy something as sugary as Paniponi Dash just as easily as Akira. Arguably, Japan seems to have been able to maintain a sizeable market in serious (i.e. non-comedic) animation. Such a market was sadly lost in the US a long time ago (even with the best efforts of Ralp Bakshi in the 70s).

I don’t watch anime on a regular basis (too cheap to pay for cable) but I do watch it if I find it one somewhere (airplanes, bored, etc.) and I still enjoy it. I guess in a way it’s my guilty secret, even though it’s not really guilty and it’s not really a secret. I did actually attend an anime club on a few occasions. It was fun, and I will say that I really do prefer anime fans to Twilight ones (ughhhh, just typing that gave me the shivers).

As for the genres of anime? Well they’re far more varied than in the west that’s for sure. You can have your pick of action, sci-fi, romance, comedy and even magical girls! Sure, there is some repetition among them, but it’s no worse than an American TV show where the whole family goes camping and calamity ensues when Dad tries to put up the tent or find “natural” food.

A lot of anime also get the feature-length treatment. It’s important to draw a line of distinction between anime TV films (and OVAs) and actual films though. I deeply love the work of Hayao Miyazaki, to infer that his films are on the same level as something like Escaflowne is something that just can’t be done.

We should not have contempt for anime. Sure, the fans can be annoying, the non-synching mouths can be distracting and the percentage of recycled material would make Al Gore proud. But I can’t help but think that even the most die-hard Western animation fan would have to admit that it has made a significant impact on animation here over the last 30 years. If you look past its shortcomings, it can be really rewarding entertainment.

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Should Dreamworks Make a Sequel to Dragon?

Animation, Film, Opinion /

Steven Zeitchik has an insightful post on the Los Angeles Times blog where he makes the case for not making a sequel to How to Train Your Dragon. It’s interesting to observe the changes in attitudes to HTTYD over the time it has been in the public consciousness.

Before opening weekend, it seemed that this would be one of the softer Dreamworks releases which we would go and see and enjoy but ultimately it would fade from our memory, just as Monsters Vs. Aliens has. At this point, there wasn’t much talk of a sequel at all, just the possibility of one.

However, since then, the film has shown remarkable strength, remaining at number two before reclaiming the top spot again. Attention was drawn not only to the resounding quality of the film, but also that strong word of mouth among cinemagoers was playing an important role.

Now, some weeks later (on a fine May evening that may have me going to see the film for a second time), details are emerging of a sequel, spin-offs and a TV series, in much the same vein as The Penguins of Madagascar.

Steven makes the point that HTTYD marks the first Dreamworks film since Shrek that has appealed to audiences on the same level as a Pixar film and that that company is a bit more selective in which properties it chooses to exploit through sequels. On a side note, he points out that the film has performed “…not bad for a star-less spring cartoon.” which as regular readers (all three of you) will know really grinds my gears, seeing as the film very much has all-star “talent”.

This is a fine analysis except that it ignores who instigates the decision to create sequels at Pixar. It would appear that it is Disney, not Pixar that is pulling the strings on that one. Not only was Toy Story 2 originally supposed to be a direct-to-video release, the slate of sequels announced in recent times have all occurred after Pixar’s sale to Disney, even though some films (such as Monster’s Inc) were released while the Emeryville firm was independent.

Steven calls for Dreamworks to hold HTTYD up as an example of their creative capabilities. I myself recommended at the end of my review that you should go and see it before its affect is reduced by the deluge of sequels to come.

Realistically, we will see sequels, lots of them. Besides being based on a series that encompasses seven books in all, Jeffrey Katzenburg has a long history of milking properties for all their worth. Shrek is perhaps the finest worst example and we’ll finally see that flogged-to-death series finally put out of its misery later this year.

Being an engineer means I tend to have more of an analytical mind than creative folks. I like to point out that creative folks are more likely to read The New Yorker while I tend to read The Economist. It also means that from a hard business perspective, sequels are a lot more profitable than the originals, mostly because studios tend to reduce the budgets and stretch everything just to make the extra nickel. In Monsters Versus Aliens’ case, the foreign performance didn’t justify a sequel. Fair enough, but I would rather see that movie succeed and get a sequel than  a superior movie like Dragon.

Right now the success and praise that HTTYD has received from the general public, fans and serious animators alike is certainly well deserved. Enjoy it while it lasts, because the second the sequel is released, the aura will fade.

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Live-Action Movies Based on Animation

Animation, Opinion /

I very nearly went with Scooby Doo for the picture, but this one has Robert DeNiro in it!

Although the trend has died down somewhat, the genre just doesn’t seem to die. The Smurfs is the latest to get the treatment and although we will be treated to Hank Azaria as Gargamel, I still can’t quite look forward to it,

Although it has been common to mix animated and live-action characters (most notably in several Disney films and a scene where Jerry Mouse dances with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh), the latest craze has been to use CGI characters.

There have been numerous releases over the last number of years and I can’t honestly remember a good one among them. People are familiar with the characters so that’s not a problem, but of all of them, the main problem seems to be the downright atrocious quality of the script or the actors hired (seriously, Daphne as a blonde???).

All of them have skewed towards the young market. Fair enough if that’s what you’re going for, great! But seriously, with the likes of Pixar churning out movies with complex, believable characters and smart, clever jokes, there really is no excuse for toilet humour.

Sure some of these movies are based on cartoons that were never great to begin with (thank you ACT) but at least they never tried to make us believe they were clever.

Of course, by aiming at kids, the adults who actually remember the cartoons when they were broadcast on TV, they are making a fortune. That’s why we got a sequel and prequel to Scooby Doo and why we’ll continue to see ever more annoying Alvin movies for years to come.

I realize that Hollywood turns out the same crap all the time, but as an animation connoisseur, I find it deplorable what has happened to some characters as they’ve been hauled out and flogged like a dead horse.

There are plenty of examples of studios being able to create interesting movies with original characters, why can’t we see the same with established characters, or do studios assume that the movies will coast on the remnants of the characters embedded in the millions of us who are familiar with them?

Sadly, it doesn’t look like the practice will die anytime soon. My advice? Spend your hard-earned money on an original movie with some depth to it.

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Why Smoking in Cartoons Is Not As Bad As You Think

1 Comment / Animation, Opinion /
From Michael Sporn's excellent Splog

It’s an issue that crops up regularly: cartoon characters smoking on-screen (image above from Michael Sporn’s Splog). Kids (the usual, if regrettable, consumers of animation) are more susceptible than adults to what they see and hear, the whole “monkey see monkey do” factor at work.

What gripes me is the apparent need among people out there to go back and retroactively edit out any and all references to smoking in old cartoons. The article itself is from 2006, but is still relevent today as a practice that’s a bit reminiscent of Senator Ortolan Finisterre for sure.

I don’t agree with smoking on-screen, in fact, I highly detest the habit in all shapes and forms. But for old stuff, like Tom & Jerry pictured above, it’s important to remember that they were made at a different time, when smoking was not only much more socially acceptable, it was actively encouraged. There were advertisements for cigarettes everywhere.

Kids often grew up with one or more adults smoking in the house and it is widely known that kids learn more from their parents than anyone else. Also that if a parent smokes, the kid is much more likely to smoke too. The whole argument that a kid is going to start smoking because Tom lights one up to impress a lady friend smacks of pettiness. Did you happen to remember that Professor Utonium in the Powerpuff Girls was often seen with a pipe in his mouth? He never actually appeared to smoke it however.

Smoking has been absent from cartoons for a very long time. Today, kids are much less likely to start smoking from seeing a character smoke on-screen. Granted, they shouldn’t be bombarded with such images either. But it is fair to say that for all that cartoons I watched as a kid, not one of them made me want to step outside and light one up. Common sense has to prevail. If not, the world is poorer for it.

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Spendthrift DVDs

Opinion /

DVDs are perhaps the best thing to ever happen to home video since the invention of, home video! Fancy that. Besides offering a resolution far beyond that of VHS (side note, what does CHS stand for? Hint: It’s not “Video Home System” The answer is at the bottom, no cheating!)

Besides that, DVD meant that extras could be included, such  as director commentaries and the now-ubiquitous “making of” documentary. All of these have had the effect of increasing the viewing experience. Animation-wise, this has meant the inclusion of animatics, pencil tests, character sketches and even side-by-side comparisons!

All of these things are taken for granted now, which makes it all the more ridiculous to hear that studios are removing extras from DVDs to encourage people to buy the Blu Ray discs instead. Now granted, we’ve already heard of this kind of thing happening to rental discs, but for regular DVDs? They’re having a laugh.

I can’t recall any good examples at the moment, but it’s slightly encouraging to see studios package DVD/Blu Ray combo packs, which should ease the pain of upgrading. The simple solution is to buy a Blu Ray player and hook it up to a regular TV, of course some players don’t allow that.

DVD is not going away anytime soon, certainly not as quickly as VHS disappeared. For plenty of people, the difference simply isn’t worth going out and spending a couple of grand on a new TV and player, complete with surround sound system.

Removing features will do nothing to increase the uptake of Blu Ray. And when you think about it, Blu Ray may be eclipsed by streaming anyway, where extras can be watched at will.

OK, a bit of a sloppy post I know, but it’s Friday and I’m about to run out the door. Did you guess the answer? It’s

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Creator’s Block

Opinion /

We’re all familiar with writer’s block, that agonizing thing when it feels like you can write nothing. But what about creator’s block? I certainly got it today with this blog! This is the third attempt at a post and yet I am somehow getting it together piece by piece.

One thing I’ve learned from the readings and teachings of Mr. David Levy, is that opportunity is always knocking, even when you think it isn’t. Case in point, today’s post. I thought about recommending a book, commenting on cel-shaded animation, even about posting about the Fleischer Brothers move to Florida! Could I get past the first paragraph on any of them? Not a chance 🙁

Yet here I am, posting about a subject that should have stopped me from writing about it in the first place!

What is it about creative block? Why is it that we feel we are simply unable to write or draw or paint or whatever it is we do? It’s a mystery to me, although I would like to blame the fact that is is still very early in the week and the joys of the weekend are still a long ways off.

Nevertheless, animators continue to amaze me in their prolific output. Of the many blogs I follow, there are naturally the few that update maybe only a few times a year, but others have new stuff up every week! Does this mean that the latter are better than the former? Nonsense, some of the slackers simply don’t have the time (or at least that’s the excuse the present whenever they post).

If you’re an animator working on a personal project, creator’s block can be your worst nightmare. Luckily, you can find inspiration from anywhere! Either on TV, radio, outside, your favourite movie, you name it. That’s what’s so nice about being in a creative industry, you can take inspiration from anywhere. Unlike myself, who is normally limited to the AASHTO Green Book, where the numbers are a bit more preceise.

My point is, creator’s block affects all of us at some point. We all hate it, but before you know it, an idea will pop into your head and away you go like it never even happened.

Hey look at that, I wrote an entire post after all those false starts 🙂

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Mickey Mouse’s Copyright Law

4 Comments / Animation, Opinion /

How old is Mickey Mouse? Well, he’s about 82 years if he’s a day. So why is he still under copyright while other early cartoon stars are not? Well, for one, plenty of companies from that era went out of business long ago and their associated copyrights are either forgotten about or expired.

Yet Mickey’s has not. He is still fully owned, and will continue to be owned, by the Walt Disney Company for the foreseeable future at least. Consistent enforcement of copyright is part of it. Disney is still very much in business, and is certainly enforcing its legal rights regarding infringement.

So why exactly does Mickey Mouse have his own copyright law? Well for one, it isn’t really his, its Sonny Bono’s (the guy with the bomb in Airplane, also he was a singer of some sort in the 60s). The act itself extended copyright terms in the US for 20 more years, on top of the life plus 50 years already offered. Corporate authorship is now 120 years, increased from 75 years.

The reason it’s called the Mickey Mouse law is the presumption, and possibility, that it was the looming date on which Mickey Mouse would enter the public domain, that coerced the Disney company to begin lobbying for such an extension.

What advantage does this serve? Well for one, it means Disney can continue to extract license fees for the old films for a start. It also prevents anyone else from making similar or derivative works based on the films.

Is this a good thing? Well for the copyright holder? Yes, they can continue to make money. Personally, I think this is a bad thing. OK, so you continue to own the character, but if he is freely available, then even more people can enjoy him, It may even push up demand for the films that are almost as old but still covered by copyright.

If you think about it, if the public domain was such a bad thing, publishers wouldn’t be publishing all those Jane Austin or Charles Dickens novels. Sure you can read them online for free, and yet people still buy the books, and publishers still make a profit from them, even though they aren’t covered by any copyright! Amazing isn’t it?

Do you think Disney would lose a ton of money just because a few films from the 20s and 30s enter the public domain? Unlikely. When was the last time you seen one of those films? For me it’s been a number of years.

So there you go. Mickey Mouse has his own law, and the company behind it is all the worse for it.

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Toys As A Creative Source For Cartoons

Animation, Opinion, TV /
I was rather gutted when I found out they were toys first...

To be frank, I don’t remember an awful lot of these. being a child of the mid-80s, I missed more than half the decade, also having been raised in Ireland, I was dependent on whatever RTE could afford or care enough about to import.

What made cartoons of that decade stand out more than anything else? Toys of course! Yes indeedy, this was the decade where cartoons reigned supreme as the marketing vehicle to children, even moreso than today or the 1990s for that matter.

You couldn’t turn on a TV without seeing a show based on a toy. be it The Care Bears, Transformers, G.I. Joe and so on. The strategy was successful, but of course, the shows themselves dated quickly. Although some managed to achieve a certain level of cult status.

Thankfully, somebody wised up in the 90s and realized that cartoons worked much better if they were the source of the toys, not a cog in the marketing machine. Today we have smart, funny and intensely entertaining cartoons to watch 24/7 and the toys that go with them are top notch too. How much nicer is it to see Spongebob getting into trouble in Bikini Bottom than, say, the Transformers off to stop the evil Deseptacons, again!

The reason for this post is the word filtering through the internet that the two guys behind Ruby-Spears have announced that they intend to start marketing old Jack Kirby ideas as a combined TV show and toy line.

Great! If that’s what they want to do, then more power to them. There can never be enough cartoons in this world. There will always be good and bad shows, sometimes (like the 80s) there will be more bad ones than good ones. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that some form of animation on TV or otherwise is better than nothing. Now if I was in charge, you can bet you’d only see the best, creator-driven cartoons ever made. But unfortunately I’m not in charge, so we’ll have to deal with what comes out between now and then.

Nope, what I’m wondering is where they’ll find a willing buyer. Disney is only interested in its own properties (or those developed in-house). Nickelodeon, while sometimes going outside Viacom, has so far chosen to develop their own shows and market them accordingly. With the stunning success of Spongebob Squarepants, I can’t see them changing their tune either. As for the Cartoon Network, they’ve decided to change their direction away from cartoons. Although they have bought in shows, such as Cookie Jar’s Johnny Test, the network has an abysmal record of translating their shows into marketable products. Ben 10 is the exception rather than the rule, and even then the show has a very, very narrow focus on boys aged 6-11.

That leaves the broadcast networks. Which as we all know, are a bit of a graveyard for kids shows these days. ABC airs constant (and I mean constant, i.e. the same 20 episodes) re-runs of Disney shows. NBC has handed their Saturday mornings to Quobo, the quasi-cable channel. That leaves the CW and CBS. The former entrusts 4Kids, the latter used to use DIC before they got swallowed up by Cookie Jar.

Of all of these, the most likely prospective buyers are 4Kids and Cookie Jar, although 4Kids has focused more on anime imports, such as Sonic X and TNMT in recent times. DIC of course, has brought us many toy-related shows over the years. So perhaps they may be the buyers for and toy-related show that comes out of this. Such a shame the ratings are in the sub-1.0 level.

There is plenty to be hopeful about, but the last 20 years have proven that cartoons that are creator-driven stand to make much more money for toy makers than themselves. They would be wise to realize this.

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Celebrity Voice Acting Part Deaux

1 Comment / Misc., Opinion /

This morning I was watching CBS Sunday morning. It’s a show I particularly like because, quite frankly, there aren’t many shows like it being broadcast, at least not in the US anyway. Long story short, they had a quick segment on voice-acting, focusing initially on Dora the Explorer followed by the world of commercials, etc.

During the course of the report, I learned even more about celebrity voice-acting than I knew when I previously wrote about it, surprisingly enough, in April 2009. As it turns out, celebrities do all sorts of voice-acting nowadays, not just for animation shows or films.

Just some examples from this morning include:

  • Morgan Freeman: CBS Nightly News
  • Michael Douglas (!): NBC Nightly News
  • Gene Hackman: Lowe’s Home Improvement

With the likes of Wanda Sykes, George Clooney, Tom Selleck (!!) and so forth doing various TV spots. What I find fascinating is that at least for a TV show or film, the producers can at least broadcast or notify the public as to who is in the production in question. For advertisements, there’s nothing of the sort!

If I hadn’t been told this morning, I would have no idea that it was such well known celebrities doing such voice-overs. Why on earth would you, as a company allow your advertising agency to engage in such behaviour?

For one, celebrities are expensive (hey, I’m sure George Clooney, as damn fine a voice as he has, doesn’t rent it for nothing), and unless it is clearly obvious that the person in question is in the advertisement, your basically wasting money.

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of professional voice-actors out there that are more than capable of conveying the fact that Boniva isn’t for people with a heart condition or whatever.

Recently I’ve been reading the excellent book, Ogilvy on Advertising. Witten by David Ogilvy, a Scotsman who went from being a farmer in the Pennsylvania Amish country to the head of one of the most successful advertising agencies on Madison Avenue, it offers many lessons he has learned on the basics of advertising.

One thing he points out numerous times is that celebrities don’t improve your sales. Imagine that! People normally believe (and most of the time they are right) that when a celebrity appears in an ad, they are getting paid to do so, not just because head & Shoulders really does leave them dandruff free.

Ogilvy points out data that he believes proves that normal, unknown actors are more effective at selling stuff than celebrities. More so when it comes to voice-acting, which is a profession with a lot of skill. Any eejit can stand in front of a microphone, but to put emotion into a voice takes work and sadly, I think celebrities aren’t the best people to do that, real voice-actors are.

Celebrity Voice Acting Part Deaux Read More »