In Admiration of David O'Reilly

1 Comment / Animation /

This isn’t an “Anomaly Approved” post, at least not yet. While Mr O’Reilly is certainly worthy of one, I don’t have the time to write it now. However, I feel that I should point out that David is currently putting the finishing touches on his latest film, The External World, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival later this year.

Just in case you didn’t know, David O’Reilly is an independent animator based in Berlin who has received significant praise for his previous work which includes Please Say Something and Octocat. His visual style is quite unique and suits his style of fimmaking very well. I highly recommend you check out his Vimeo channel and spend a few minutes checking out his work.

Without going into too much detail, I am waiting in anticipation of his latest masterpiece. David constantly manages to surprise and delight and I’m sure this time will be no exception.

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Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Animation

Animation /

It’s already been established that I like the Scott Pilgrim comic series and unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this last week, you will have probably noticed that there is a film of the same name currently playing in cinemas. Never mind that it isn’t number 1, the best is yet to come.

Tying in with the film is of course, the obligatory video game but what really set the film apart from others base on comics is the fantastic short film broadcast on [adult swim] right before the film’s opening weekend. It is of course embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitByGeWGxU]

What did you think? It’s pretty darn good isn’t it? I particularly like how the design plays very close attention to the comics. Too often we have seen an animated “adaptation” that looks like something completely different from the original material, in a bad way, shows like Teen Titans are proof that it can be pulled off successfully.

The film doesn’t stray from the comic script. This does work in it’s favour but perhaps only because it is a short film. Having seen this, I can understand why the Edgar Wright used the comics as a guide for creating a slightly more original film.

As I think I mentioned in the previous post, I would personally have preferred to see Scott Pilgrim in animated form. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the film (I did) but I just feel that animation is a far better form of expressing comics than live-action.

Titmouse Animation should be heartily congratulated on putting together this fun little film that offers a glimpse into what an animated Scott Pilgrim would look like. It’s great looking, funny, spares no expense (thankfully) and keeps all the comics details intact. We are unlikely to see something like this in the future but what we’ve got right now is just perfect.

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Toy Story 3's Record-Breaking Box Office Haul

Animation, Film, Pixar /

It hit the news over the weekend that Toy Story 3 is now the highest-grossing film of all time, with $920 million overall in the bank. While it is commendable that it has achieved this level of success, all is not what it appears to be.

There is a fairly comprehensive article over on Forbes.com that establishes how TS3, as successful as it is, has not quite broken the ultimate record for an animated film. That belongs to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which, when adjusted for inflation, raked in over $800 million at the US box office alone!

Of course there are a number of factors at play besides inflation. For one, ticket prices for 3-D movies have resulted in higher gross figures from smaller audiences. The latest Shrek film was blatantly pulling off this trick by having a higher gross than its predecessor with only half the audience.

Besides that, studios these days make more money from the likes of DVDs, broadcast rights, merchandise, etc. than back in the 30s, when a film had to make all its profit at the box office if its financiers stood any chance of keeping their shirt.

The best part of all this hubbub, is that the focus will once again be on animated films and their usual success. This can only be good for the artform as a whole and will hopefully encourage others to take a risk on an animated feature.

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The Longevity of The Secret of Kells

3 Comments / Animation, Film, Ireland /

It’s no secret among those who know me that I am a huge fan of The Secret of Kells, and not just because it’s Irish! I’ve already made my thoughts known in my review, which I wrote for Asifa-East’s Exposure Sheet way back in July 2009. What I’m posting about today is that the film is still making the rounds in US cinemas, in fact it is returning to New York’s IFC Center on August 14th, over a year after it premiered there.

What makes this incredible, year-long run even more extraordinary has been the unprecedented marketing campign, that is to say, the lack of one. The film was released in Europe in spring of 2009 and received the usual advertisement. However, such a campaign would have been prohibitively expensive in the US. The market is too big and crowded by the ususal suspects in California.

There was some talk about bringing the film to the States and things really got going when distributor GKids (the fine folks behind the New York international Children’s Film festival) entered the film for Academy Award consideration. The news that it was shortlisted for nomination gave the film a huge boost, suddenly people wanted to find out how a film they’d never heard of before was conisdered for an Oscar.

Thanks to its qualifying run in Burbank and of course, the Academy Awards themselves, the film was assured national showings of some sort. What has sepereated Kells from other independent films has been the potency of people’s word of moouth. OK, sure you have superfans like myself telling everyone to go see it, but in addition to that, I am pretty sure that every single animator/illustrator in the country has gone to see it and told all their friends to go see it to.

This type of promotion has been the key to the film success statewide. Well, that and the fact that it really is an amazing film. People listen to their friends and family more than anyone on TV or in the newspaper and The Secret of Kells is proof of that.

The film was released on DVD last year in Ireland (and sales received a very welcome boost with the Oscar nomination) and will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD in the US later this year and will undoubtedly make its way into a high percentage of those who saw it at the cinema.

The Secret of Kells is proof that you do not need to spend massive amounts of money to have a successful film. Sure the money doesn’t flow through the box office as quickly as it does for a blockbuster, but it does flow for longer, far longer and the fact that The Secret of Kells is still being talked about 2 years after it was completed is proof that it is better to be a slow burner than a bright flash.

 

 

 

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Preliminary Thoughts On Disney’s Tangled

3 Comments / Animation, CGI, Disney, Film /

Poster from the Internet Movie Poster Awards Gallery

By now you should be aware of Disney’s upcoming film based currently titled Tangled. Those of us who have been following the film for a while know that it was originally supposed to be called Rapunzel and featured the heroine much more prominently than the hero.

Why the change, well Disney felt it had too many upcoming films with female leads and that it would basically be painting itself into a corner it couldn’t afford.

Perhaps this is true, but perhaps boys just aren’t attracted to “girly” films rather than films with females as the protagonists. There is a difference between the two. Plenty of Disney films in times past have featured female leads: Pochahontas, The Little Mermaid, The Aristocats (animals count!), Lady & the Tramp and of course, Snow White. As far as I know, plenty of boys liked those (even if they would never admit it publicly).

Disney’s argument is that boys don’t contribute enough to the gross of such films. Poppycock I say! They do, just not in ways that Disney expects them to, in other words, in giggling groups at the cinema on a Friday night. So what if they don’t contribute at the box office, that isn’t where most films make their money anyway. But that’s the subject of a post for another day.

A balance is of course necessary between male and female leads, which is why Pixar will is finally getting around to correcting their off-kilter slate of films. However, I think it is foolish to dramatically change a film when it is well through the stages of production. That’s a waste of resources and amounts to changing the destination when you’re halfway there. It would make more sense to change your next destination and plan accordingly.

The film will do well regardless, I just wish studios would be a bit braver and not pander to demographics and their supposed tastes in the chase for a quick buck. Better to make a good film that will stand the test of time than to one that will date quickly with people regardless of gender.

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What Does the Google/Verizon Deal Mean for Animators?

Animation, IT, Opinion /

There’s been a lot of hoopla on the internet over the last couple of days in regards to the announcement that Google & Verizon have joined together with the aim of constructing a framework that would help legislators create a new set of regulations governing the internet and the content served on it.

Basically up until now, all traffic has been treated as equal no matter what. That means that a text file is given the same priority as a video stream. In years gone past, this was not a problem, mainly because there was more text files than video. However, with the advent of YouTube, Hulue and netflix et al, there is concern that things will not be quite as equal as they were.

The reason? Well, there is a perception out there that the pipe owners (Verizon, Comcast, etc.) will begin accepting payments by content providers (YouTube, Hollywood studios, your local TV station) in return for allowing their content to flow faster through the pipes. The idea being that if you want higher quality entertainment, you will have to pay for it (because  the content providers will only pass the costs onto you).

When you think about it, that is not much different to now. If I want to see Mad Men or whatever the latest hit is, I have to pay for cable. The problem with the idea is that it favours certain players over others. Witness Comcast’s purchase of half of NBC-Universal. Can you take a guess who would get top priority on the Comcast network if bandwidth space became an issue?

That’s not particularly fair. It may hurt the larger players, but it will absolutely crucify individuals. Imagine if you’re an animator/filmmaker, and on your website you have a page with your demo reel on it. How well do you think the video will play unless you cough up a fee to the ISP to ensure that you’re viewers see it at full quality? Are you gonna pay a fee like that? I doubt it. I wouldn’t, and the truth is, I probably wouldn’t sit around to wait for your video to load if you didn’t either. Who loses out? Everyone.

The internet is proof positive that when there is minimal regulation in an area, business thrive. YouTube would not have even got off the drawing board if the founders had to pay a surcharge on the delivery of their videos. Time and time again, we have seen that consumers have realized that the only commodity that the internet costs them is time. Money doesn’t even factor into it ever since AOL went to a flat monthly fee.

Besides, they way things work now is pretty OK. If I want my videos to load faster, I’ll cough up an extra $10 a month to Verizon to bump up the speed cap on my DSL line.

The biggest problem is perhaps the assertion that the “mobile internet” is separate from the fixed one. This is complete nonsense. Granted, there is only a limited amount of the wavelength spectrum available, but that does not mean that mobile users should have to settle for a different standard. Heck, if you wait much longer, Wi-Fi should be near ubiquitous in cities across the country. Why should I pay a data plan to the mobile carrier when I can find an free hotspot?

Again, this only hurts the small folks, i.e. you and me. If it will become hard enough to watch video on the regular internet, how hard do you think it’ll become on the mobile one, which by the way, is just the regular one on a smaller screen?

Animators and studios (big and small alike) need an open internet now more then ever. Why should either the ISPs or Google dictate how they can and cannot run their businesses? Charge them for the connection, charge them for the extra, scarce services that they decide they need, but don’t run rampant over the top of them in the scramble for profits. In the end, everyone gets hurt.

[sigh] You’d expect that a free-market economy like this would operate a little differently wouldn’t you?

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"Are adults finally getting the cartoon capers they deserve?"

Animation /

As I was reading through that excellent resource for animated news that is Line Boil, I came across a link to an article originally published by The Guardian newspaper in the UK, where it asks whether adult animation has finally begun to be accepted as a serious film genre.

It is worth a read, if only to see what the neighbours are up to. For you see, that is the main, I don’t want to say “problem” with the piece. it is quite well written and researched considering the nonsense that some magazines tend to publish. However it is clearly written for the average person who has never really had an interest in animation.

For those of you reading this blog, I would hope that you are aware that adult animation has been around as long as animation itself has. In fact, that’s who the first films were intended for and contrary to what the article says, Walt Disney did not make Snow White specifically for kids, despite the fact that a significant amount of its gross from later runs came from children’s receipts at the box office.

It is fair to say that the mainstream popularity of adult animation has increased in recent years and when I say this I refer to the more western styles; we all know anime has had a large adult following for decades on both sides of the Pacific.

It is encouraging to see this increase which has been sorely needed for a long time. On too often an occasion, adult animation has entered the mainstream consciousness for the wrong reasons, i.e. Fritz the Cat, Beavis & Butthead, South Park, etc.

I suppose the main problem is this stubborn image that persists in places like Hollywood that animation, “real” animation is for kids and kids only. Thankfully, the likes of Pixar have challenged that perception and are still working on it. If one were to read the TAG Guild blog, you will find Steve Hullett constantly admonishing the benefits of animation over live-action as a revenue-generator.

While this image is unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future, it is encouraging to see signs that people are starting to move beyond it.

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The Analogue Nature of Going to the Cinema

1 Comment / Film /

Picture from the wonderful blog of Nina Paley

Yesterday while at the cinema, just as Inception was about to begin, I realized that right above me, there was a can of film ready to be unwound before my very eyes. It was then that I realized that the moviegoing experience is still very much an analogue adventure in this digital age.

OK, so the film itself was full of special effects that in no way could have been recreated in the real world, but it’s still kinda funny when you think that they were shown using a method that’s well over 100 years old. I suppose it’s all part of the experience. I find it hard to imagine seeing a film at the cinema where there isn’t a projector whirring away in the booth.

With the rise of digital projectors, this will become a thing of the past, at least in the mainstream. Which I think will be a shame. Fo me, it just won’t be the same, knowing that behind me, there’s just a digital projector streaming content from the internet. Perhaps it is becuase there is no setup involved in the digital age. With film, it has to be loaded, threaded and adjusted so that it appears correctly on the screen. That suggests that watching a film is an event, something to anticipate with excitement and to enjoy immensly.

Technological advances will change this, albeit slowly (digital projection has been talked about for well over a decade). There’s still plenty of time to enjoy the romanticism that goes along with watching a film down at your local picture house.

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The New Yogi Bear Movie

Animation, Film /

The Washington Post (my favourite US newspaper) has a pretty good list of why we already hate the thing despite it being months from release:

TEN THINGS WE ALREADY HATE ABOUT DECEMBER’S “YOGI BEAR” THE MOVIE:

10. The new, winking double-entendre tagline (above) from veteran “That ’70s Show” writers who have made millions out of crafting winking double-entendre “one-liners.”

9. The continued crass and shameless plunder of the favorite cartoon shows from our childhood so a studio can turn a quick holiday-season buck.

8. The shameless plunder of a favorite cartoon show IN POINTLESS 3-D, so a studio can make 20-percent more quick holiday-season bucks.

7. The slick, soulless CGI “art” that goes with the double-entendre tagline.

6. The once-great Dan Aykroyd stooping to immediately challenge the still-great Bill Murray (“Garfield”) for the title of Cheesiest CGI Cartoon-Film Character to Be Voiced by an Esteemed “SNL” Alumnus.

5. The fact that the always-funny “SNL” host Justin Timberlake will make us enjoy the CGI Boo-Boo character at least a little bit, thereby eroding our self-righteous fit of pique.

4. The worrisome prospect that this could be the best available animated film to take visiting young relatives to during the holiday season.

3. The prospect that the swarming hordes of plastic tie-in toys will feel far less artificial than this film, judging by the trailer (below).

2. The realization that we will ultimately tithe 80 bucks for the film/3D glasses/toys that will line the pockets of the geniuses who wrote that winking double-entendre poster tagline.

1. The inevitable sequel: “Step Up Yogi 3-D: Electric Boo-Boo-ga-loo.”

It can’t be good for a film to generate this much antagonism thise far from its release. Can it really be that bad? Well, it’s hard to tell. All we’ve seen so far have been snippets that don’t really tell the full story. However, they do tell us enough in much the same way that the Tone-Loc tune in the Smurf’s teaser trailer does: it doesn’t raise our hopes much.

 

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A Crazy Idea: Cartoon Shorts on Mobile Phones

1 Comment / Animation /

What if there was a service (app, website, etc.) that allowed you to watch some classic animated shorts on your mobile phone?

I think it would be a great idea! Being in and around the 6 minute mark, such shorts would be perfect for watching on a mobile device. Imagine being able to blow off steam from work with some Tom & Jerry on the train home? I’d do it.

OK, granted, you can already do that thanks to the power of YouTube and the like, but you have to search and organize the content yourself. Why not be able to, say, search for all Chuck Jone’s Looney Tunes, or say only ones with Porky Pig?

If there’s one thing these short have shown is that they stand up to repeated viewing, by young and old alike. Why not make them more accessible to everyone so they can enjoy them? It might even help increase their popularity among certain demographics who’ve long forgotten them.

Anyways, just a thought.

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Quick Note: Two Guys Named Joe by John Canemaker

Animation, Book /

Yes, we have indeed arrived at the launch of yet another of John Canemaker’s excellent tomes. This one centres on two extremes of the Disney animation universe, Joe Grant and Joe Ranft. Two fellows who are surprisingly similar despite their differences (mainly their age).

Both Michael Sporn and Mark Mayerson have posted details of the book, as have Cartoon Brew who posted a brief interview with Mr. Canemaker. Suffice to say, I did not need them to tell me to be excited about this book.

It centers on two animators who worked at Disney over different periods and gives an account of their experiences, noth good and bad. While I have not yet read the book, those who have espouse that it is yet another book that is required reading for anyone with a remote interest in animation.

John Canemaker is one of those people who are unique for a very good reason: they are emphatic about their chosen subject and put supreme effort into everything they do. he has written numerous books on animation history before and there is no reason to doubt that this will be any different.

The book launches today (August 3rd) and can be had over on Amazon.com for a tidy discount. I’ll publish a full review in due course.

 

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