Animation

Warner Bros. Discovery Shoot Themselves in the Foot and Act Like Everything’s Fine

It boggles the mind! At a time when every streaming service is racing to cram as much content as they can afford into their services, one decides to go in the opposite direction.

You’ve not doubt seen the stories; dozens of animated shows disappearing from Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming services, almost-complete films scrapped, artistic endeavours cast off as mere implements of a tax-avoidance strategy, creators finding out their own shows were yanked via social media. All in all, it’s a series of bad news eminating from the company no matter who you are. And before you ask, no, the company’s stockholders didn’t fare any better either.

The most obvious question (why?) is a bit odious. Numbers were crunched, the costs of merging two companies have to be met, and the results say as much. Except the response is near-universal and the only people that are apparently pleased are those at the very top. The less obvious questions concern the decisions that revolve around the strategy. The company cans a load of content to save a buck; then what?

Well, on the one hand, the company thinks that by slimming down their offerings, they can create growth from a smaller core audience. On the other hand, that’s 20th Century cable network thinking in a 21st Century streaming age. Perhaps it’s no surprise given that HBO pioneered the premium approach in the first place by charging more, but offering the kind of entertainment you couldn’t find anywhere else. That’s a business model that’s over the hill though. Streaming is a winner-take-all game that Hollywood only realised too late when Netflix lapped up streaming rights for basically nothing and locked studios out of their own content for those crucial first years.

You see, with streaming, you either offer everything to everyone, or watch consumers use your competitors. Now everyone is playing catch-up and only Disney, with its exceptionally deep pockets, can lay claim to gaining ground. They did not buy 20th Century FOX just for kicks, they needed that company’s library, production capabilities, and brand to expand Disney+’s offerings to truly cater to everyone.

Where does animation fit into all this? Animation tends to appeal to a wide variety of audiences and tends to remain perennially popular. That makes animation good for a service’s library. Old shows can sit there, waiting to be discovered (or rediscovred). I cannot fathom that the marginal cost of storing and streaming content (compared to producing it) is enough to justify removing it altogether. How easy could it have been for WBD to simply stop producing new shows instead of obliterating them like they did?

The other aspect is that kids like animation. They like it a lot. Kids don’t have control over which streaming services they use, but their parents do. It’s not as emphasised now as much as it used to be, but a key focus of Netlfix’s marketing approach is families and Disney have followed suit. How many parents are re-evaluating their subscription to TWD’s services now? Throw in a cost of living crisis and it’s not hard to see where the trimmings might come from. Fast forward 5-10 years and you have a company that’s broken just about all of the Twenty Two Immutable Laws of Marketing.

So is animation a root cause or merely collatoral damage? I’d say it’s a mixture of both seeing as animation is expensive to produce but also tends to deliver greater long-term value; emphasis on the tends to. One could argue that both Warner Bros. and Discovery have failed to devote enough time, energy, and resources to their animated offerings, saw the writing on the wall, and simply decided to give up.

 

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The Netflix Cuts and the Disposability of Contemporary Animation

The axe swung hard at Netflix’s animation department this week. Management were forced out and shows either cancelled or cut entirely. Such actions are hardly a surprise given that Netflix subscriber numbers fell over the past quarter, but more intriguing is the news of Netflix’s extensive use of data to create and produce shows. It all adds up to a new era of disposable animation.

Netflix

Animators are a proud bunch and rightly so. Animation is not an easy artform to learn, let alone master. Animators draw upon a legacy that stretches back a hundred years whose earliest works continue to educate and inspire. Live-action can’t quite say the same; nobody makes silent films anymore but while rubber hose animation is antiquated, it never became obsolete either. Such longevity may be coming to an end and while the cause is not a single one, one company looms large: Netflix

Alternatively the hero or villain of the entertainment business, Netflix nonetheless pushed the industry into the modern era by catching it off-guard with streaming. Everyone struggled to catch up, while Netflix attempted to cement its moat with original content in every shape and form. Animation forms a key part of that moat; all the better to keep Disney at bay by acquiring younger viewers before they know who Disney even is. Netflix never set out to replace your favourite cable channel, it set out to replace your entire cable service. Ergo the often contradictory personality of the company’s offerings. High culture critical darlings on the one hand, and bargain basement, lowest common denominator trash TV on the other.

Animation was not going to escape the same fate and for every Midnight Gospel, there were a half dozen DreamWorks spinoffs. Yet the allure of a creative space with minimal executive interference was potent. Numerous high profile creators joined and excelled at Netflix and much like Nickelodeon thirty years prior, the results showed.

A Ruse

Yet, one wonders if their endeavours were actually part of a ruse. Not in the sense that Netflix would cast them off once the audience was acquired (which may or may not be or become true), but rather that Netflix, in its mad dash to build a library of content and reliance on data to get it there, was willing and able to actively devalue their contributions by drastically increasing the rate of production. There was a time when Disney would put out an animated film only once every three years. Then it became one every year, then it became one a quarter. Now Netflix is releasing one practically every week.

The company uses data extensively and in a capacity far beyond what Nielson ratings can ever hope to provide:

To put it simply, if you’re watching any TV show or movie on Netflix, it knows the date, location, and device being used to watch, as well as the time of your watching. On top of that, Netflix also knows about how and when you pause and resume your shows and movies. They also take into consideration if you are completing the show or not, how many hours, days, or weeks to complete the episode or a season or a movie.

Ultimately, it tracks every action taken by the user on Netflix and considers it as a data point. How many metrics will be there in total which Netflix might be using for data collection?

People and the data they produce changes over time though. What you liked as a kid is not what you may like today or what you may like in ten year’s time. Netflix does not care about the past or future though. They only care about the now, or rather, the future as far as it takes to produce and release a film or show. They produce things to appeal to viewers now. To grab their attention now. To keep watching Netflix now.

Netflix’s credo: Why rewatch an old favourite when a sparkly potential new favourite awaits to be discovered?

Caring (or Lack Thereof)

Truthfully, do audiences really even care? Netflix zeroed in on a formula that’s worked and will continue to refine it as the data suggests they should. Audiences demand entertainment; artists are among the few looking for fulfillment and a call to a greater cause. The former are concerned with their immediate gratification, not with the effort it took to gratify them or what happens to those involved thereafter. American football satiates an immediate need for pleasure; the lasting physical and psychological damage done to the players is the last thing on viewer’s minds.

Creators pour their heart and soul into passion projects hoping they will provide a lifetime of enjoyment but the reality is a flash in the pan. Culture moves so fast and things have to hit instantly and powerfully to even create awareness let alone viewership. Hence Netflix’s policy of only starting any marketing efforts a month in advance of release; any sooner and audiences will consider it old news by the time they can watch, if they even want to. Like I wrote in my recent Oscars post: stuff released in 2021 may as well have been released in 2001; that’s how old they appear now. Animation is not safer on other platforms either; all of which have the same library problem Netflix did but additionally face breakneck production schedules to catch up and keep pace with the industry leader.

Consume and Throw Away

What this adds up to is a new disposablness of animation. Artistic endeavours designed to be popular now and not the future, to be binged instantly before spending an eternity in a library; only ever a click away but obscured by a thicket of new content. The latest news out of Netflix reinforces this fear. A fear that even the greatest is simply no better than the average and no less fitting of a similar fate.

A final word of warning: animation is not a genre but may as well be as far as audiences are concerned. Westerns are a genre, and as they increased in popularity they too became formuaic and disposable and have deservedly languished in limbo for the past half a century.

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The Animation Oscars are So Utterly Not Relevant and We Should Stop Pretending They Are

The Oscars in general are struggling with relevance in an age of streaming and a population that has better things to do yet the animation community, year after year, finds plenty to alternately celebrate and complain about the animated awards. Why even bother getting worked up over something that is no longer relevant?

There was a time when the animated Oscars could be considered relevant but those days are over. In case you missed it, this year’s ceremony dispensed with the Best Animated Short category from the live broadcast (relegating it to a prerecorded segment), and the Best Animated Feature went to Disney’s Encanto; the studio’s ninth win in ten years, and 13th win in 15 years (including Pixar films).

Which, if you’re the director of a Disney animated film, almost has to feel like a participation trophy, right? You received it because of what you did not how well you did it. The award may be worth something personally, but to everyone else, it’s like the New England Patriots winning another Superbowl; exciting for them, boring (and skippable) for the rest of us, and a concern for the NFL that needs high viewership. Disney is going to release a film every year, so what’s the point? That’s strike one.

It’s not a perfect system, but at least the Annie’s acknowledge that award ceremonies are capable of becoming dominated by the films intertwined with the voting membership. Hence their ‘Best Indie Feature’ category. The Oscars skates long and hard on its reputation as the pinnacle award in movie-making yet repeatedly baulks at recognising the downright refusal of its membership to consider animation as an equal to live-action. Why even bother participating in something that shows no sign of treating you any better? That’s strike two.

Do you know anyone who watches an animated film because it won an Oscar? Of course not, everyone watches them when they are released and instantly move on to the next new film. Let’s be honest here, the Oscars are as much a promotional/marketing machine as they are a recognition of the best. There is, however, no longer an ‘Oscar bump’ to boost winning films and in any case, films on streaming networks don’t obtain the same financial benefit. Recognising the best film from the previous year is also a laughable exercise in 2022. We’ve moved on to this year’s films which are so often in practice, simply better. Everything from 2021 is so far in the rearview mirror, we can’t even see it. So you watch a film and nine months later it wins an award? Do you care? Do you feel validated that you spent the time wisely? I wouldn’t and I suspect I’m not alone in that regard. That’s strike three.

Studios may continue to see value in gunning for an Academy Award but perhaps its time the industry as a whole just moves on. Consumers certainly have.

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Getting a Grip on Anxiety with Gremlin Girl

Franny is an independent, seemingly confident woman with neurotic anxieties that manifest themselves as Gremlin Girl. The webseries by Emily Rifkin and Rebecca Warm is a humourous look at the personification of anxieties and they were kind enough to answer some questions I had about their endeavour.

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Six Questions Every Creator Needs to Ask Themselves

Everyone can create, but should everyone create? Plenty of great ideas never get off the drawing board, and seemingly terrible ones manage to make it all the way to YouTube. Everybody is different of course, but before they even start creating, here’s six questions every creator needs to ask of themselves.

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Independent Animated Features: 10 Questions That Need Answering

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Yesterday, I was treated to a screening of an independent animated feature film called The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead and Roundhead. Written, directed and animated almost single-handedly by Australian Elliot Cowan, it’s a film that I’m still mulling over in my head the next day; a good sign if ever there was one. I’m not going to comment on the film itself just jet, however, the entire project has prompted some questions of my own on independent animated films in general and especially those done by one man bands or very small studios.

  1. If Elliot can make a feature, why do so many others either fail or never try?
  2. Is perseverance the key to finishing an animated feature?
  3. What’s the general gameplan for what happens after the film is made if there even is one?
  4. What’s the ‘secret sauce’ to making related merchandise that sells?
  5. Why is financing so ridiculously complicated, and costly for even small budget films?
  6. Have characters in general become too complex in animated features?
  7. Should independent films even worry about targeting an audience?
  8. Are traditional promotional/marketing channels already dead or merely dying?
  9. Why are international sales such a formidable barrier in the age of the internet?
  10. Are 35mm prints dead for technological or cost reasons?

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The One Surprise From the Cartoon Network Upfront

Although the recent Cartoon Network upfront presentation (they still have those?) didn’t reveal any major surprises as far as programming goes. Two new concepts and surfaced. The first is that the network is now ‘Always On’ but given the previous iteration of the idea, my money is that you have to be a cable or satellite subscriber to access. Boo. The second is a bit more interesting and is another attempt by an established network to figure out the teen mindset.

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