August 21, 2003

It’s so nice to see a really good film that is a complete surprise…

Sony Classics picked it up in Cannes, so there won’t be a bidding war. It’s animated, so there won’t be a junket. And there is no oral sex involved, so it won’t cause a jam at the door of the Varsity 3 & 4.

But I will promise you this… the Toronto festival crowd that wanders in to Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville (aka Belleville Rondez-Vou) will find themselves as charmed as charmed can be. I can’t think of a movie better to beat those mid-festival blues than this breath of absolute fresh air and joy.

The French film is the story of… you know, there is no point in trying to explain. There is a boy, his grandma, his dog, the Tour d’ France, some mafiosos, a really big boat, a really little boat and a set of triplettes who seem to be the result of a marriage of MacBeth and Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk.

One of the most extraordinary things is that this French film manages to play its entire 80 minutes without subtitling or dubbing. It is a visual feast in the unspoken international language of comedy. Really. I can’t wait to take my 12 and 14-year-old niece and nephew to see this film. I’m sure they will love it and if I told them it was French, they would scream bloody murder about not seeing it. And so, it is our job to help people overcome their prejudices. And it is up to Sony Classics to find something more appropriates than The Chubb Chubbs to play before this film to fill out a 90 minute running time. Some classic Max Fleischer, which I believe they own the rights to, would be spectacularly appropriate.

ALSO: I attended an interesting evening presented by the Producer’s Guild of America, presenting visual effects producers and supervisors, including an ILM rep and the team from The Matrixes. There’s not much to report about the event. But it did make me think…

A major element of the discussion was the current trend towards a much more integrated effort between departments on the major effects film. Every piece of the puzzle, which has gotten more and more complicated, can be a part of not only a better product, but a more cost effective product, if the different groups communicate before the move forward in what is, by some necessity, a trial and error business.

What struck me is that the way we make movies is changing dramatically and will keep changing dramatically. As digital effects become cheaper and cheaper and continue to fill the void in ways that wouldn’t have been considered just a few years ago, standards will change.

For some reason, the bug on Brittany Murphy (or was it on Ashton Kutcher?) in Just Married always comes to mind. You could tell that they animated the bug and I suppose that the bug was more realistic than it would have been in the old days, when they would have used a rubber bug in the wide shot and a real bug in close-up. But the actors behaved differently in that scene than they would have with a rubber bug in the bed. They were playing to something that was not there. Does it really matter? A little.

I guess the point is that as angry as it has made some people out there, George Lucas is not insane. Virtual production will happen. I don’t think that virtual actors will become a norm. There is an emotional connection to real people. But already, virtual sets are more commonplace than we are even aware of.

Even in animation, all the grousing about the end of “traditional animation” in the wake of the success of some “CG animation” is based on a false notion. As far as I know, since the CG chandelier in Disney’s Beauty & The Beast, there has not been a major “traditional animation” release that has not had a significant amount of CG work in the mix. The movie that was the focus of the discussion this summer was DreamWorks’ Sinbad, but even in the ads for that film, you could see CG work on the ocean, the ship and a number of the creatures that Sinbad fights.

Then there was the conversation during DreamWork's presentation of their next four animated projects… when Jeffrey Katzenberg explained that the look of traditional animation would soon be able to be duplicated on a computer and that when that happened, the traditional look would become a palette worth considering for future use, taking advantage of the best of both art forms.

This also tracks to conversations I keep having about the integration of the internet into studio marketing mindsets. The web is, in the end, just another media opportunity. But it is completely different than any other medium ever known to man. It is truly reactive. The relentless recklessness of rumor mongering and the willingness of “traditional” media to print anything unsubstantiated piece of information as news so long as they can foist the “it was written on xyz.com” lie on it has become the one clear downside. Yet, the skills to fully exploit the opportunity continue to be dismissed by most... which is not to say that some studios are not making major strides.

I don’t want to get into a history of internet movie marketing. My point is that like the process of making films... like the process of evolving animation tools… the internet is another evolving tool that requires integration into the mindset of the great pros we have working in the marketing and publicity game these days.

For instance, I have noticed this month that the AP wire is running movie reviews days before the general embargo dates in a weekly basis. As one smart cookie pointed out, AP is providing copy to newspapers who generally print those reviews on the embargo date. But the review is still on the web, like any other. Meanwhile, the Reuters wire is running reviews from The Hollywood Reporter before the embargo date, as the trades are generally free to run their reviews 10 days early or so. Also, Ebert & Roeper & The Movies have introduced a new segment, standardizing the rare choice to review a movie a week early when there are two thumbs up into a feature of the show.

What are the rules now? Publicists will tell you, understandably, that the rules are whatever they tell you. We are all creatures of habit. But the rules are changing around us. A few years ago, Time & Newsweek were doing deals that allowed them to do early exclusive features on films. This summer, there were a number of early reviews, by deal, by both magazines. Forget for a moment the monumental irrelevance of both outlets in the current era, spurred along by the delegitimization of both by just these kinds of deals, making their covers indistinguishable from the cover of People or Entertainment Weekly one or two week a month. Why are the deals still being obsessed on at the cost of others? Habit.

Marketing, in most cases, has become as much about control of the product roll-out as it is about the product itself. Advertising dollars open movies, with few exceptions, and anything that gets in the way of the effect of those dollars is a problem. (We’re talking about movies that expect to open to more than $10 million.) But control has been lost. And now the question is, how do you take all the tools available to you and make the best of it?

The question in production is, how do you take all the tools available to you and make the best film?

The question in animation is, how do you take all the tools available to you and make the best animation?

This may seem rather obvious, but the resistance to change is as great in this business as in any. The daily risks are so enormous that change is incredibly intimidating. But as we try to keep the cap on the familiar by holding the tide against the small attacks, the cycle of time causes our traditional allies to change tactics. The newsweeklies feel the need to compete with celebrity covers… Ebert & Co. feel the pressure of ratings… DreamWorks positions Sinbad as “traditional animation”… critics feel the need to point out and rage against the imposition of CG the way they once railed against sound and color.

The notion of making choices individually and not systematically is a challenging one. Staffs are already terribly overworked and the idea of getting down and dirty with every journalist out there for every movie is more than daunting. On the other hand, staffing is still the cheapest expense of any marketing department in the business. I don’t think there is a marketing or publicity team in town in which the top five salaries for a year total as much as a minute ad on Friends.

On the PGA panel, the Effects Supervisor for Spider-Man 2, who also worked the original film, told the story about doing the first one without a special effects editor and that she and others refused to work the second show without one. Bully for them. But how could that fight even take place? What is that? A $200,000 budget line on a movie with a $150 million below-the-line budget? Come on!

The way things are going these days, whether you are dealing with production or press, you need to reset your perspective and expectations every six months or so. That’s hard, especially when you have the weight of releasing movies on you all the time. And if you are not in a position of real security, it can certainly be dangerous. But it must happen because the map is changing more rapidly than ever. The lessons of the Summer of 2003 were based on the Summer 2002 lessons, but were quite different in substance. And the same will be true about this summer’s lesson upon reflection on the Summer of 2004.

The irresistible force of change always ends up hitting the immovable object of tradition. Until then, all noise.

THEN AGAIN: From Cynthia Turner’s Cynopsis: “On August 26 ESPN airs its original drama series Playmakers, and being fully sponsored by Universal Pictures' The Rundown, the show will air minus commercials.”

As David Mamet once had the late, great Don Ameche say, “Things change.” Oh, how they do.

READER OF THE DAY: OFF THE REZ writes: “Now that Freddy vs. Jason is a hit, and Aliens vs. Predator is about to start filming and there are tons or rumors about Michael Meyers and Ash and Hellraiser joining the fray or getting their own movies, it might be fun to pair off other “franchises” into potential blockbusters (not!!!!)

How about Charlie’s Angels vs. Tomb Raider
Lethal Weapon vs. Rush Hour
Shrek vs. Monsters Inc.
Pirates of the Caribbean vs. Cutthroat Island
I Spy vs. Hollywood Homicide
Bend it like Beckham vs. Ladybugs

I’m sure there are a million more better ones people can think of…”

E ME: Well?

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