I am not the kind of person that tries to break from the crowd to look cool. I hate that actually. In fact, I almost didn't write this post, but I feel compelled to share my concern only because the market of animated features affects all of us, directly or indirectly. (By us I mean animators). If the Great Pixar does not pull through (and there are those that have been waiting with baited-breath for the first Pixar flop - I am not one of them, but I digress) then shudders will be felt down to the lowliest tweener. Running a small studio is EXTREMELY stressful. When the big guys take a hit, it's the little guys who, down the road, have to scramble even harder to compete in a reduced market.
My apprehension lies in the fact that I've heard more than 30 minutes of celluloid pass without a single line of dialogue. I foresee little kids, (the "DEMOGRAPHIC" as we call it) being bored, even potentially getting fussy in their chairs. It takes a little more maturity to sit through a half-hour of character study, the entire point of which is to glean little detail of Wall-E's personality. Young kids, on the other hand, need the wacky dialogue and happy pokey plucky fun to stay interested. I am not saying the animation is going to be lax. Absolutely not. I anticipate some of the best animation the world has ever seen. I only started my own studio after finally coming to the realization I would never work at Pixar... No, I'm sure the craft will be present. I am just so scared of the idea of yawning preteens. Because it is they, by way of the purse-strings of animation producers everywhere, who decide if us little guys get a crumb every once and a while.
2 comments:
Hey Kenny, that's so funny that I just stumbled upon your blog today and it's only a few days old. I just started mine up yesterday!
I definitely get what you're saying about Wall-E. If anybody did yawn it would be the preteens. Darn those preteens. I can see smaller children enthralled with Wall-E sans dialog, they're probably not paying attention to the dialog in the first place. And older folks should be able to appreciate the character study. But you can just see a preteen twittering away during the film, "hes like not even saying anything, sooo boredz"
On the other hand, I think back to the appeal of R2D2. I think about that scene early on in A New Hope where he is just rolling through a canyon in the desert and all we have to go by are his pace, rotating top, and sound effects. But I love that scene. Wall-E, even when not speaking, seems to have a lot more articulation and means of expression.
So... there's hope. A new hope? I wonder what Johnny 5 thinks of all this...
I never thought of this movie that way... There's much worthy in your words. Anyway, the movie makes us all think about different but important things. If you haven't watched it yet - don't miss the opportunity to download it from rapidshare
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