Mike Bonds - 21 June 2007 07:32 AM
KenKRK - 20 June 2007 09:35 PM
I feel like we’ve overtaken the Oscar thread with this topic, so I felt we should move it to its own thread. Basically, I’m tired of Anime being the only place to find animated films and series that venture into more mature territory and work in a wider variety of genres.
I know American audiences have been very much conditioned to view animation purely as a medium for family entertainment, but eventually, soemthing’s gotta give, right? Even with venues like Adult Swim and Fox’s animated primetime programming, let’s face it, it’s still very skewed towards a juvenile sensibility.
What has to change?
IMO, the big hold ups are writing, marketing, and distributing.
First, the writing really needs to improve, big time. I’m a sci-fi dork, so the nifty concepts appeal to me, but running on concept alone won’t appeal to a wider audience. The effort expended on the screenplay needs to be as intensive as that spent on the visuals.
Second, we’ve got to have a clever marketing campaign. I think that many moviegoers think that if an animated feature isn’t a kids movie, it’s probably not repsectable—the kind of flick you’d want to check out in a trenchcoat and shades. The marketing, and the film for that matter, needs to be aimed at a teenage audience. Marketing needs to be provocative, but not so much so that it scares away their parents. They buy lots of tickets and are attractive to studios.
Finally, we need a distributor to put the thing into wide release. No “limited release;” a real all-out effort. Launching in LA and NY only is a one-way ticket to video.
Don’t feel too badly for the Oscar thread. After all the real Oscars already has sold it’s soul (if it ever had one) six ways to Oscar Sunday after all these years so what’s a little more exploitation connected to the name “Oscar”?
Hmm… it seems to me the few times Hollywood tried to even attempt to branch out (Titan A.E. is the first to come to mind) we as an audience have not been the most rewarding to their efforts. We didn’t go to these movies, we didn’t see them, we didn’t support them or made their effort worthwhile. So I guess, in that regard, we can’t entirely blame Hollywood for not being the most accomidating to them when, when they did try in their own way to innovate, we didn’t return the favor to them or show them any “love”.
It’s not like they haven’t had the occasional bout of inspiration worthy of mention (and praise).
Better not go into it though, I noticed my list is abit long.
I do agree with the most askew view of animation (also comics) as a kiddie medium of entertainment. Backwards thought from backwards people.
Which brings me to a point.
Before you change writing, marketing and distribution you have to change something else.
People’s wrong mindset that animation = kiddie entertainment.
It’s not like there isn’t enough animation (start with Miyazaki and work your way onwards) that show the maturity of animation, but getting the backwards people to not think backwards isn’t as easy as duct taping them to a theater seat and forcing them to watch the right movies.
Still, after that we have…
Writing? Erhmm… what’s good is the writing if you can’t get studios out of defensive mode in order to take a chance on it when they would rather work the tried and true scenario that is presently running… yes, there’s a scenario.
Here. This formula should just about match 90% of animated movies out now (With exceptions like The Incredibles, Lilo & Stitch, and a few more being the exceptions).
1-Take a cast of talking animals or inanimate objects set in either a similar world or the human world.
2-Set them in some improbable wacky situation and make them like fish out of water in the situation.
3-Don’t forget to work some “plot” into it… you know, seperate family or friends, get the cast lost in a strange new place, make someone an outcast and he/she ends up doing something great, have someone with ambitions try to better themselves through some great task or life affirming quest or whatever. Etc, etc, etc.
4-Don’t forget obvious plot twists, conflict and a resolution which ends in a feel good ending.
5-Make sure everything is marketable and don’t forget a tie-in video game.
I probably left a few notes out but that is your standard formula to make an “animated” movie in America. Boring, isn’t it.
I don’t think we need a clever marketing plan. We need a simple yet good (i.e. widespread) advertising campaign that gets people out, and into theaters. Also reviews of the product that point out the good points of the movie and not it’s failings (lest we forget past reviews of Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” upon it’s art theater release that wasn’t the most flattering to the movie in some respects).
The problem with anime in art theaters isn’t they lack a clever marketing plan, it’s that they lack ANY marketing plan (I have reported in the past on several art theater releases and you’d be shocked as to how ignored they are, even Dreamworks is guilty of it putting together their anime friendly label only to practically ignore whatever few things they released on that brandname (“GITS : innocence” & “Millennium Actress” (If I remember the name right or wrong) being two).
(Oh, and don’t start me on the long bitching we had to go through with with Disney about it’s “Limited” release of Spirited Away which bordered on accusing them of some sort of anti-asian conspiracy… odd though that, after we accused the Academy of the same thing, they couldn’t give the movie an award fast enough putting it at the start of the show).
I agree we need a distributor that will put it on full release… or to be more precise put a fire under Dreamworks, Columbia etc who ALREADY release Anime to do the full release thing.
