As anyone who has tried to finance a
film knows, Hollywood has very clear ideas about what sort of film is
marketable in this country. And very, very clear ideas of what sort
of ANIMATED film makes money in this country. And since they are
very specifically in that business to make money, they attach a lot
of importance to these rules.
Among the rules are these: (a) an
animated film will have frequent breaks with music for the small
children in the audience, (b) an animated film will not be over a
certain length, and (c) an animated film will rarely if ever have a
female protagonist, and if it does, she shares center stage with a
male protagonist. From there, Hollywood goes on and applies a
number of other rules and requirements about story structure, most of
these ae applicable to other types of films as well, and includes
certain things about the types of conflict in the film, the pacing,
the reversals, the climax, etc. Hollywood has a strong opinion on
these matters. It is one reason so many Hollywood films seem the
same, one giant robot or alien invasion after another. That is
because they are the same at one level of abstraction.
My favorite animated film however
follows none of those rules. It has no happy songs, it is much
longer than average, and the protagonists are two little girls, one
about three years old. It goes on from there in its eccentricity.
It is not clear that there is a villain in the film, except perhaps
whatever it is that is making their mother sick such that she must
stay in a hospital. There is one homage to standard story
structure: the climax of the film involves the youngest girl running
away to see her mother, and the effort to find her. This could be seen as a classic 3rd act rescue mission.
What's up in the scary attic?
The film did not do well at first in
the Far East, where it was made. But eventually the toys got
marketed and that fed back to the film until it became successful
there. The film found no distribution in this country (1) until,
unusually, a firm with no experience in this genre picked it up,
added English subtitles and tried a theatrical release in N. America.
I believe it did not do well, and the film disappeared, except to
the few who knew of it and loved it, until Disney, at John Lasseter's
urging, picked up all the films of this director and started
marketing them in this country.
The director of course is Hayao
Miyizaki and the film is My Neighbor Totoro (1988).
This is my corn and you are not going to take it from me
The company that attempted the
distribution was Troma, a firm better known for making and
distributing films such as "Surf Nazis Must Die" and "The
Toxic Avenger". But in this case, they spent their own money
bringing Totoro to the notice of Americans and, I think, lost their
money. I happened to see it because my friend Chris Casady, owner of
Roto Efx of America, had worked for Troma in the past and was invited
to the screening at the DGA and invited me along.
I have excerpted my favorite scene from
this film and put it at Youtube. Well, I had put it on Youtube but it seems that someone is blocking it. So you will have to review the pictures below, or of course, rent the video, which is what they want you to do which is fine with me.
Its an umbrella
On another occassion we will discuss
the issues of trying to make a 3D character from one designed for 2D
and review all the reasons that is hard, using two characters from
this movie: the dust spirits and Totoro himself. Here are some
images of these characters which I hope will set you thinking about
why doing them in some sense in 3D (as in modelled in geometry) would
be very difficult if you wanted to keep the essence and charm of the
characters. And if you would not want to keep their charm, then why
oh why would you even bother?
My Neighbor Totoro on IMDB
Miyazaki on Wikipedia
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1. Most animated films, indeed most
films, made in the Far East never see formal distribution in this
country or North America. There have been a few exceptions and some
of them are quite notable, e.g. many Kurosawa films would find some
independent distribution here. This is especially true for
animation made in the Far East, where many of their best and most
successful films traditionally never made it over here, except in a
very limited form marketed directly to fans of the various genres.
By way of counterexample, Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro Non Troppo did get distribution of some sort in this country. I am not sure how that happened, but that does show that it is possible.
By way of counterexample, Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro Non Troppo did get distribution of some sort in this country. I am not sure how that happened, but that does show that it is possible.
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