The Buzz: November 2006
Networks Continue to Seek Gold in Primetime Animation
Here's a frightening figure for you... The Simpsons has made $2 billion dollars over the past 17 years and even it's shorter-lived running mate, Family Guy, is fast approaching its own staggering set of figures. Small wonder then that, despite some rather high-profile failures, the networks are still looking for the next primetime animated hit. Variety reports on the ongoing quest for a new toon TV blockbuster.
posted: Nov 29, 2006 by athena
DVD Release Round-up
Pondering what to put on your wish list? Well here are a few new releases coming out in time for Christmas.
- Robin Hood, Most Wanted Edition (11/28/06)
- The Ant Bully (11/28/06)
- Barnyard (11/28/06)
- His and Her Circumstances, The Complete Series (11/28/06)
- Animaniacs, vol.2 (12/05/06)
- Pinky and the Brain, vol.2 (12/05/06)
- Dungeons & Dragons, The Complete Series (12/05/06)
- The Simpsons, Season 9 (12/19/06)
And a heads up on some releases coming in 2007...
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Complete Season 1 (03/06/07)
- the latest Platinum Editions from Disney--Aristocats in the spring, and it is rumoured 101 Dalmatians in the fall.
posted: Nov 27, 2006 by athena
A Happy Weekend for Happy Feet
George Miller's tale of tap-dancing penguins managed to win the US weekend box-office with a strong showing of $42.3 million, managing to edge out the latest Bond movie by about 2 million dollars. The success of Happy Feet is encouraging for the CG industry after a string of under performing animated features this past year.
posted: Nov 21, 2006 by athena
New Trailer for The Simpsons Movie
Taking a friendly jab at its 3D competition, the new trailer for The Simpsons Movie is now available on Quicktime.com. The Simpsons will hit theatres June 27, 2007.
posted: Nov 14, 2006 by athena
Interview with Pixar director, Dan Scanlon
Keyframe guest writer, Steven W. Beattie brings us a great interview with Dan Scanlon, director of Mater and the Ghostlight and story artist for Cars. Scanlon talks of his experience working with and learning from John Lasseter and what it's like to come from a 2D background in a 3D dominated animation industry.
The Cars DVD is released today, and it comes bundled with several special features, including an exclusive seven-minute short entitled Mater and the Ghostlight. In the vignette, Mater (“Like ‘t’mater,’ but without the ‘t.’”), the loveable, slightly goofy tow-truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, takes centre stage from Owen Wilson’s race car, Lightning McQueen. In the short, Mater, who has a reputation as Radiator Springs’ practical joker, is spooked by a story the sheriff tells about the spectral “Ghostlight” (an apparition that was mentioned briefly in Cars). When Mater finds himself on an abandoned stretch of road after dark, he confronts the ghostly blue light and learns the truth about its provenance. Mater’s encounter with the Ghostlight follows a somewhat predictable story arc, but has a certain folksy charm nonetheless.
The short was co-directed by John Lasseter and Dan Scanlon, who worked as a story artist on Cars. Mater and the Ghostlight marks Scanlon’s directorial début for Pixar, an experience he couldn’t be happier about. “I feel that I had an incredibly charmed experience working on this,” he says. “Everyone in every department is so good, especially by this point, when they’re dealing with the characters they’ve been dealing with for years. We always joke that the shorts we do for the DVDs featuring the characters from the film, in some ways, quality-wise, are almost better with the animation and everything else, because everybody has finally got those characters down.”
It helped that Scanlon was a story artist on Cars before making the leap into the director’s chair for the short film. His experience working with the characters in Cars provided him with a level of relaxation that allowed him to focus more closely on the technical aspects of the Pixar filmmaking process. “I felt pretty comfortable with the story and the characters and that type of thing, in the early stages of the writing, but as we got further down the line of the actual production, I didn’t know a whole lot about what comes next. In story we draw a terrible rough sketch and send it off, then months later it comes back looking really beautiful, and I had no idea how that happens.”
Scanlon credits much of his education on Mater and the Ghostlight to the tutelage of Lasseter, who was very concerned that his young protégé take something away from the experience. Lasseter exemplified what Scanlon feels is Pixar’s dedication to growing young talent: “A big part of things here at Pixar is the idea of always teaching the people around you.” Scanlon describes working with Lasseter as “the coolest thing ever” and likens it to a one-on-one directing class. “The great thing about John was that as we were working, he would know everything; we had deadlines and we had things we had to get done and problems to solve, but John always took the time to make sure that he was teaching me something.”
One thing that Lasseter did not have to teach Scanlon was how to work with voice actors, who in Mater and the Ghostlight include screen legend Paul Newman and Owen Wilson. “Larry the Cable Guy [who voices Mater,] was just hilarious,” Scanlon says. “You write lines for him and then you hear him read it back and you think, ‘That’s totally weird, that’s not going to work.’ Then you hear it a second time and you think, ‘That’s hilarious.’” Scanlon is delighted that all of the actors returned to do the voices for the short film, and attributes their enthusiasm to their love of the characters and a desire to follow them further. “I think that John really creates a relationship with the actors that he works with and I believe that gets them excited about the film to the point where they care about the film and they care about their characters and they want to be a part of those characters’ futures.”
Certainly for anyone who has seen Cars, there is an identification between the characters and the actors who voice them. There are moments in Cars, as in Mater and the Ghostlight, when the animated characters seem to adopt the features of the actors who are providing their voices. “So much of that is the animators,” says Scanlon, “who do their homework in every respect. They study those actors.”
Scanlon is relatively new to the Pixar family. He studied illustration and fine art in college, then did some animation early on in his career, but quickly gravitated to story artistry, which he felt was a perfect marriage of filmmaking and drawing. He admits that it would probably be difficult to go back to animation at this stage. “I don’t know anything about computers at all. I never learned computer animation. Story is one of the few departments that doesn’t use a computer.”
This may seem like a bit of an anomaly for an artist working with Pixar, a company that for twenty years has been in the forefront of 3D animation and photo realism. But Scanlon is quick to point out that he was weaned on 2D animation, and still loves it. “3D animation is a tool,” he says, “as is 2D animation. I don’t really see one as taking over [from] the other, or even necessarily one as being better than the other. A lot of people here, myself included, came from 2D backgrounds, so it’s definitely not something we see as better or worse.”
Scanlon takes issue with the notion that Pixar’s style of animation is geared toward photo realism. “I don’t think the idea here is necessarily to do a photo realistic thing in the end. I think that it’s to find a sort of middle ground, or a stylized version of reality.”
What would be ideal, as far as he is concerned, would be for 3D and 2D to find a way to comfortably coexist. “We’re all fans of 2D animation and would love to see it make a proper comeback.” In Scanlon’s estimation, it’s not the technique that’s important but the story, and the story ultimately determines what approach is appropriate. “It’s unfortunate that 2D animation became a scapegoat for a few bad stories, or maybe that 3D became kind of a fad at first. I like to believe that it’s all going to balance out at some point.”
posted: Nov 07, 2006 by athena
Oscar Finalists for Best Animated Feature announced
It's perhaps a little early to be getting excited about the Academy Awards, however it's noteworthy this year that there were so many animated films released that there may in fact be enough for five nominees in the "Best Animated Feature" category. Since the category was first created in 2002, there have only ever been enough for three nominees each year.
The nominees have not been announced yet, but these will be the films in contention for those five slots:
- The Ant Bully
- Arthur and the Invisibles
- Barnyard
- Cars
- Curious George
- Everyone's Hero
- Flushed Away
- Happy Feet
- Ice Age: The Meltdown
- Monster House
- Open Season
- Over the Hedge
- Paprika
- Renaissance
- A Scanner Darkly
- The Wild
posted: Nov 05, 2006 by athena
Coming Soon from Dreamworks Animation
Not tired of Shrek yet? Let's hope not because in addition to Shrek the Third in 2007, we can now confirm Shrek 4 coming to theatres in 2010. The rumoured Puss in Boots movie has also been confirmed, and will be a full theatrical release, (not DTV as had been reported). It will be coming out shortly after the release of Shrek 4.
ComingSoon.net is also reporting a new partnership for TV between Dreamworks and Nickelodeon. Two series are currently in development--one based on the penguin characters of Madagascar and the other on the film, Kung Fu Panda (scheduled for release in 2008).
And two more feature films to add to our Coming Soon from Dreamworks: Monsters vs. Aliens (an original concept from the studio) and How to Train Your Dragon (based on the book by Cressida Cowell). Both are scheduled for 2009.
posted: Nov 01, 2006 by athena
