The Animation Options Blog

Finally saw “Bolt” this evening here in Beijing… in stereo, and entirely in Mandarin - no dubbing or subtitles!

While I look forward to viewing the film in English, I have to say that I found it to be extremely entertaining, even while only catching the few Chinese words that I currently know. There’s a lesson here for all those “talky” animation filmmakers (and you know who you are)!

Congratulations to everyone at my old stomping grounds of Walt Disney Animation Studios on a fine piece of work! You have much to be proud of.

Best wishes to everyone for a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever floats your boat!

Here’s to health and happiness in the New Year!

Kevin Geiger
Beijing

Pretty low, it turns out. Seven years in the making, this slo-mo train wreck “opened wide” to the tune of barely a half-million dollars: roughly two people per screen per showing. So, what can we learn from this?

• Lesson #1: Don’t geek out on obscure, “epic” subject matter at the expense of characters that normal audiences can truly identify with.
• Lesson #2: If you find yourself on your sixth screenwriter, you probably don’t have a story worth telling.
• Lesson #3: Don’t tempt fate by appearing on magazine covers touting the “success” of your indie film… before it opens!
• Lesson #4: Don’t tempt fate further by boasting about how your film “violates” all of the conventional rules of successful animated feature filmmaking.
• Lesson #5: If you can’t find a distributor, don’t try to self-distribute. Get a clue, and go back to the drawing board… or abandon ship.

Unless you prefer to sink with it. And I can’t “Fathom” that.

Indie filmmakers, please - do yourselves a favor and begin with the end in mind.

It was my pleasure to participate in the inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia conference here in Singapore. On Thursday, I delivered the best (and last) version of my popular presentation, “CG Production Principles and Practices: Keeping Your Money On The Screen And Off The Floor”. Having evangelized on this subject over the past year for international audiences ranging from boardrooms of executives to conference halls of animation artists, I feel that those who are open to the message have gotten it. This SIGGRAPH Asia attendee certains seems to:

Hi Kevin,
I am totally blown away by your awesome talk about CG production, the good and the bad. Frankly, I have been involved as supervisor on many animation projects, and I am facing those same problems that you have mentioned. This time, I got lots of inspiration and solutions from your awesome sharing. Too bad there were time constraints and you had to make it so fast. - LWL

Glad it spoke to you, LWL… and glad you were able to make it, because with SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in the can, this presentation is officially “retired”! Stay tuned for the book.

In the meantime, you can check out my YouTube excerpts from the fmx edition of the presentation in Stuttgart this past May. Animation Xpress did a nice write-up on the Singapore version, so thanks to the folk in India for that!

On a separate note, thanks to Laura Dohrmann of NVIDIA for inviting me to participate in this afternoon’s “Emerging Markets” panel discussion, relaying my experiences in China. It was a lot of fun, and a great opportunity to meet new colleagues. It’s always refreshing when you meet like minds from clear across the world.

Congratulations to WALL-E for its Best Picture win from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Who knew that a movie filled with trash could be so seductive? Of course, when assembled by the fine folks at Pixar, it’s hardly surprising at all.

A joke going around Hollywood (so I hear from Beijing) is that some of the Los Angeles film critics voted for the movie they saw in the first half of WALL-E, while the other film critics voted for the movie they saw in the second half of WALL-E. Clearly, this film suffered from a case of split identity, but I don’t think it was WALL-E’s sojourn into outer space that made it seem like two different films. Rather, I believe that it was something more fundamental: WALL-E is a weak hero - not in the “good” sense, but in a poor storytelling sense. And coming from the fine folks at Pixar, that is surprising.

In a good film, EVERYTHING should impact upon, and emanate from, an active hero. Unfortunately in WALL-E, we have a rather reactive “hero” from whom much is taken and little is given. Eve completely steals the action from WALL-E, who is left with little more to do than be in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. But the biggest flaw in WALL-E is this: the REALIZATION moment of the film lives not with the hero (where it should), but with a secondary character: the corpulent captain of the Axiom. What does WALL-E learn? Apparently nothing. And how does WALL-E feel about humans after discovering that they abandoned him to clean up after the party? We’ll never know. As in Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.” WALL-E merely gets his memory back to square one, and is satisfied to finally hold hands with Eve while self-indulgent humans stand gleefully around a seedling that is sure to be wiped out in the next massive dust storm (forgot about those?). So, we can expect WALL-E2 to feature the humans ditching earth again after pizzas fail to grow on trees.

But, hey, at least the fire extinguisher gag was cute.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) announced earlier today that the Beijing Cultural and Creative Industry Cluster Area, the animation film/TV industrial zone in the Xiamen Software Park, and the animation industrial park in the Shenyang High-tech Industrial Development Zone have officially been designated as the fourth generation of national animation industry bases.

There are now 18 national animation industry bases and 8 national animation instruction and research bases throughout mainland China.

The 2008 National Senior Research Class in Animation Script Writing wrapped up today here at the Beijing Film Academy, and I was honored to be voted “Best Instructor” by the class of Chinese animation professionals.

See the Animation Options press page for additional info and pics.

I had the pleasure of inviting the illustrious, effusive and extremely generous Blake Snyder, author of the seminal screenwriting guide “Save the Cat”, to the Beijing Film Academy as a guest speaker for the 2008 National Senior Research Class in Animation Script Writing. Blake’s evening lecture and subsequent day class in story structure was quite illuminating for the assembled Chinese film industry professionals, who immediately took to his warm, interactive presentation style. In addition to getting Blake’s take on our animated feature “Road to Home”, we also enjoyed showing him the sights in and around Beijing (the Great Wall has become my new Disneyland as far as destinations for out-of-town guests is concerned). You can read more about it in Blake’s blog at www.blakesnyder.com

My own seminars in story development, storyboarding and pitching went very well. The highlight was our final session, in which I led the class in collectively working out an animated feature concept from scratch, and then pitched it back to them - filling in the blanks between beats as I went. It was a powerfully interactive demonstration of creative brainstorming, and a welcome scratch to my old improv itch.