When I did "Tales of Worm Paranoia" I hired a dialogue specialist (Mark Schirmeister) to help me punch up the dialogue. Thanks to Mark I got "...from the lowest protozoan crawling on his belly in the lowlands, to the great speckled trout that leaps in pristine, crystalline lakes in the uplands (sorry I repeat these lines so often). " When I hired Mark I was only doing what live action producers routinely did in the big studio era. They brought in specialists to punch up every aspect of film making. There were action, romance, comedy and lighting specialists just to name a few. These people didn't do the whole film, just the parts that lent itself to what they do well. Today advertising still follows this practice. A beer commercial will call in a glass photography specialist to film the close-up where the beer pours into the mug. That seems perfectly natural to me.
The question I'd like to pose here is, why doesn't the animation industry follow this practice?
One of the differences between classic animated features and present-day ones is that modern features are almost completely devoid of imaginative set pieces. Dumbo had the "Roustabouts", "Casey Jr.", and "Pink Elephants. " Where are the modern equivalents? What happened? If modern studios have trouble conceiving of stuff like this then why don't they seek help outside the studio? Why don't TV artists working on serious shows run their comedy sequences past outside comedy specialists and visa versa?The audience doesn't want to see the best that a particular unit can produce, it wants to see the best that possibly can be created, no matter who does it. My advice to both TV and feature producers is to build time into the schedule to run some of the finished scripts and storyboards past appropriate specialists for a punch-up.
13 comments:
I think Rob Zombie did a trippy, cactus-induced set-piece in the "Bevis and Butthead Do America" movie.
You mean that sort of thing?
Sounds like a good idea!
I'm pretty sure at least some feature studios do run their movies through a "comedy pass", where they get especially funny people to punch up the gags. At the place where I work, it's usually one of the last things that gets done to the story, and it always makes it 100% better.
I think it's a great idea!
I have no idea how practical it is to hire out several specialists within the financial constraints of a project - but I imagine if handled correctly, you could use your budget to your advantage.
>>If modern studios have trouble conceiving of stuff like this then why don't they seek help outside the studio?
I don't know if this is applicable or not - but while doing some free prop work on a popular primetime drama (it was for kicks, I wasn't working for them), I was told the art director really liked my stuff and wanted to use me for all sorts of art related goodies within the show. "I have two people on staff, but they suck!" she said.
After weeks of waiting patiently by my phone I sheepishly called back and inquired what had happened to all the work they had for me and the reply I got was, "Oh. We found out we could only use studio people. Sorry."
"But you said they suck!" I retorted.
"Yeah. But our hands are tied."
I can't say the name of the studio but their initials are W. .B. .
- Corbett
-Corbett: I had the same thing happen to me! Different department, different kind of work, but it was the same studio and I was told the same thing. Apparently it's a studiowide problem: everyone on the payroll sucks! Now that I think about it, it does explain a lot.
At this point the only people still on staff at WB are development execs, whose jobs are secure for life...
Eddie your great suggestions,as well as John K.'s, of how to improve the sinking animation industry in this country leads to one big ass question,why are they no smart executives ? You can make an entirely sperate blog on that one question.
Eddie,
When have we stopped having lighting specialists ,comedy specialists etc?
has that stopped? Am I that far out of the loop?probobly..
Seeing that Worms poster remindes me to ask what ever happened to Dog & Rat?
I have all those original world premier toons somewhere on video -But I cant seem to remember ever seeing that one as well as Bakshi's Melvin & Malcolm among others that were promised in the begining.
-If it did air and I forgot dont think that means it wasnt memberable-I may have just been overloaded with new cartoons. : )
-Matt
"Bill Watterson OWNS Dinosaurs! It's all so clear to me now! His later Calvin & Hobbes had the BEST drawings of dinosaurs of all time!"
Ahem....I agree with Jorge.
aaaah the elephants! thats such a cool piece (especially for a disney movie)
it totally creeped me out as a kid
I have been saying the word 'lowlands' in a silly voice all week and desperatly trying to remember where i got it from.
Thanks for jogging my memory!
i applaud your humility in actually seeking and hiring someone who is better than you to do a particular job on your film. i hear pixar and samurai jack crew bragging about how their storyboarders write their episodes as they board... however people usually only brag about stuff that they didn't have to do and sometimes probably should have left for someone else... i think toy story 1 had great dialogue but it went to their head and maybe some of the story crew who could actually write dialogue peeled off and went their own ways (from the so and so of "Toy Story" got a lot of pitches sold i think). anyways i think pixar dialogue has really gone down the tubes since toy story, especially after seeing most of "Cars".
Great dialouge partly due to Joss Whedon. Hollywoods 'put some jokes in this script without turning it into a comedy' specialist.
Hurrah! we found an example! We're clever!
Lar: Sorry I didn't answer earlier. The Dog and Rat never got pat the storyboard stage. I guess Cartoon Network has the board somewhere in their vaults.
Post a Comment