Despicable Me trailer.
This could hit a nerve and really find an audience, or it could fall flat on its face. Right now I have no idea which will happen. There's some fun stuff here, and of course some cliche' cheese, some typical snark. Visually it looks pretty solid. It's not tough on the eyes like Space Chimps or Valiant. Some nice animation, good modeling, solid lighting, fun designs. What we're finding is that by now nearly everybody knows how to make a CG animated film look pretty good. No longer there this huge drop off in visual quality one you get past the big 4 (Pixar, DW, Blue Sky, Sony). That playing field has leveled off quite a bit. Is this enough to make Despicable Me stand out and make some money? I have no idea. Interesting times.
4 comments:
as much as I wish french animated feature to succeed, I think that the market is so saturated that most people only go to see the work of studios that have a proven track record.
Luckily the french feature animation business seems to be doing pretty well right now without having to conquer the global market.
I still believe that the audience is generally pretty lazy. By saying this I don't mean to under-rate the mean audience, which includes myself btw. I just I think it is quite normal that people tend to go and watch the movies they heard about the most. It is a given by now, that a good part of the success or failure of a film stays in how it has been promoted, especially today, when films, as fast-consume goods they often are, one day are out in cinemas, next day are out in DVD, next one again only a few can remember them.
The four, five main studios you are mentionig are big in what they do, but they are also big in selling what they do.
This been said, as far as we can judge from having seen a bunch of shots in the trailers, Despicable Me might have all it's needed to be a boxoffice success, but I am afraid it will hardly go too far without a proper launch. I hope it'll get it, because I think it totally deserve it!
Producing a good-looking and technically correct movie does not so much depend on "knowing how to make a CG animated film look pretty good" as much as on the budget a studio has to hire enough people to do the huge amount of work it takes, and to invest on developing the technology it needs.
I know, for example, because I worked on Planet 51, a made-in-spain CG film which was technically decent and good looking, but mostly because its budget was the highest ever in the national film-making history (not just for CG, for any type of film), while still being pretty low for US standards.
So, good-looking films can come from other companies than the big 4, but reality is that it is still difficult for european full CG studios to get enough funding to get to that level. It's good that more studios are finding ways to bridge the gap.
I agree with what you're saying, Keith. Of course, I really hope that DM will work out fine in the end, but you might say I have a stake in that...
Again, to your point, you're absolutely right. Visual quality is not a major dividing factor anymore between the 4 big and the other smaller studios. Which is a good thing; if only the audience can learn to discern what's good and what's not based on the movies' content, rather than their visuals...
But now I'm just day-dreaming... :)
Cheers,
Seith
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