Eisner's Thoughts on Pixar

[DancingBear]

You're a studio head and you have a wonderful story, a talented cast, a creative director, etc. You can make the picture as a hand-drawn feature or in "3-D."

Which do you choose?

 

[raidermatt]

Spirited Away... see my comments to Crusader. That one goes way beyond a simple case of 2d vs. 3d.

Personally, I think the "stories" behind Spirit:Cimarron or Spirited Away were just as good, if not better, as Ice Age or Shrek. I think its really quite clear that the difference maker between the two categories had little to do with story and much to do with technique.

The key is not just which is a "better" story, but who tells it in a way that connects with the masses.

I can see thinking the Spirit movies had better stories, but I can also see how they didn't have what it took to connect with the audience at large, regardless of the animation method used.

Really, are you seriously saying that had SA been done in 3d, and Shrek in 2d, their success would have been flip-flopped?

 

[raidermatt]

Gotta throw Tarzan in there as well... it came out just a shade under 5 years ago.

Also, are you really, seriously suggesting that ALL (except maybe Lilo) of the 2-D animated films from the last 5 years were unsuccessful primarily because they lacked great "stories".

Not completely, but yes, that is a big part of it.

Again, its not just a "good" story, but a story that is told in a way that connects with audiences. Good does not automatically equel big box office. That said, the truly "good" story in Disney's films has become the exception, not the rule.

As has been pointed out, Disney's animated films have become more assembly line driven, particularly out of Burbank. Atlantis and TP took stabs at a genre that has seen nothing but failures. Plus, Atlantis really was bad, which hurt TPs chances from the get-go.

Disney has also been releasing sub-par sequels in theaters over the last few years, further hurting their brand.

Disney has brand recognition that Dreamworks does not have, and it can be an advantage or a curse. When you're releasing a follow-up to The Lion King, its a blessing. When you are trying to get people to see your follow up to Atlantis and Jungle Book 2, its a problem.

Its also very possible that Disney's flooding of the home video market with sub-par product hurt their brand name as well.

Interesting that DW hasn't gone this route with Shrek spinoffs. Also, Disney's efforts with Pixar's films has been limited.

So, no, its not as simple as a "good" story vs. a "bad" story.

But that has a lot more to do with it than 2d vs. 3d also.

 

[KNWVIKING]

Is a CG movie cheaper to produce then a 2D ? If the answer is "Yes", then it seems like a no brainer to walk away from 2D.

Just as DB asked: Which do you choose?

I guess I really haven't read a good reason to keep 2D alive , other then "humans" look bad in CG , which I believe is a very fixable problem. Keeping 2D around for nostalgic,historic or because it's what was used when Walt was alive just doesn't make much sense.

 

[DancingBear]

My understanding is that CG and hand-drawn end up costing comparable amounts in production, although fewer bodies are involved in CG.

Part of my point is that I'm sure the folks involved in making Brother Bear thought they had a great project, as did Dreamworks with Sinbad. So, given a starting point of thinking you've got a great story and team, what medium would you pick? What reason would there be to choose hand-drawn?

 

[airlarry!]

Pick one? What is my goal? To make money, or to produce the best animated feature I can?

Your argument, in essense, is that if Finding Nemo had been produced with the same materials as Lilo & Stitch, it would not have been as succesful as it was.

Holy Hypothetical, Batman!

Did you ever hear one person or commentator say "Go see the CGI movie!"

Or did you hear countless friends, acquaintences, entertainment people, critics, newspapers say "Go see 'The Fish Movie'!"

To me, certain stories work whether they are CGI or handdrawn. B&B wasn't succesful because they did a CGI ball room scene, and neither was Aladdin because CGI did the monster sequences.

It was story. I agree with Matt that some stories lend themselves to hand drawn v CGI, but in reality most good stories can be told either way. Is it a painting or a picture that you have on your office wall? I have both, a Monet copy and a Print of LSU's sugarbowl win.

Which is better? Photographs or paintings.

Hey, I enjoyed Sinbad and The Road to El Dorado. (Please don't throw tomatoes). I liked Brother Bear and Treasure Planet.

Are any of these four on par with B&B, Aladdin, Mermaid, Lion King, or even Pocohontas or Hercules?

NO WAY.

Relying on Katzenberg's opinion on whether 2D is dead reminds me of a story with Ty Cobb. He was once asked what he thought of (then) today's pitching. He said, "Heck, if I was playing, I couldn't bat more than .280 against these pitchers.....course I am 60 years old.

Just cause Katzenberg was the captain of the ship during Mermaid et al, doesn't mean that El Dorado, Spirit, and Sinbad should EVER be compared to the 80s and 90s Disney classics.

It was a long rambling answer, DB, but the reality is that you should never chase a fad, you should strive for perfection, and the sucess will come. If that means that hand-drawn can tell the story better, but that you could make X% more dollars with CGI, you would probably go with CGI.

But I wouldn't. And Walt wouldn't either.

 

[crusader]

Spirited Away... see my comments to Crusader. That one goes way beyond a simple case of 2d vs. 3d.

Oh I see............It was poor marketing and distribution which led to its' untimely demise.

Are you seriously trying to argue that if Disney had launched an all out campaign to promote this film it would have been a success in the U.S.??

Please enlighten me. I'm speechless.

Pick one? What is my goal? To make money, or to produce the best animated feature I can?

HA!!! The goal in Hollywood is to produce that which makes money any way you can. Hasn't Shrek 2 taught you that wondrous little life lesson by now???

(Btw..........I'd be careful about calling a Monet copy a painting - it is a print with brushstrokes at best.)

Your argument, in essense, is that if Finding Nemo had been produced with the same materials as Lilo & Stitch, it would not have been as succesful as it was.

You can count me in on this argument. There's this phenomenon known as preconception which tends to hurt the entertainment industry. It's predicated on the idea that an audience will subconsciously fail to patronize a film purely driven on feeling.
The general public feels that CGI enhances animation in an unprecedented manner and want to see it on the big screen. This is what catapulted Nemo into the record books.

 

[raidermatt]

Oh I see............It was poor marketing and distribution which led to its' untimely demise.

Are you seriously trying to argue that if Disney had launched an all out campaign to promote this film it would have been a success in the U.S.??

Please enlighten me. I'm speechless.

No, that's not what I said, nor what I meant.

Putting Spirited Away in wide release with a full marketing push would have been extremely risky. Its style was not one that American audiences have embraces at all.

So Disney, in this case understandably, did not try to push it.

What I'm saying is that while it's a critically acclaimed film, its not the type of film that was likely to be a hit with American audiences. Whether you or I agree or not isn't really relevant, since that's what Disney thought, hence virtually no promotional push and no wide release.

So I don't believe it would have been a success at the American box office, but I also think its ludicrous to say that's because it was done in 2d instead of 3d.

HA!!! The goal in Hollywood is to produce that which makes money any way you can.

Yes, that is the way many look at it. And if that is how Disney is now going to view there animated division, there's really no point in discussing them anymore. They are simply another studio.

I don't dispute the idea that this is exactly what is happening. Its just unfortunate that a studio that carved out a nice name for itself doing some things differently has moved over to the "any way you can make money" bandwagon.

The general public feels that CGI enhances animation in an unprecedented manner and want to see it on the big screen. This is what catapulted Nemo into the record books.

At best, your theory contains some partial truth, but even then, it doesn't account for differences in performance between other 3d releases.

 

[airlarry!]

How did Lilo and Groove make all of that money with 1/50 of the marketing magic behind the Pixar releases?

Why did Atlantis bomb?

Why is Pixar 5 for 5 in box office hits? Shrek 2, as a sequel, HAS to make money...its got a built in audience that wants to see it.

Let's see the guys that make Shrek, come up with a different movie, and blow the doors off again. I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying you can't compare the Shrek phenomenon to Pixar or to Disney's amazing streak of box office hits in the New Classics (despite an obvious over-saturation at the end).

 

[crusader]

Why is Pixar 5 for 5 in box office hits? Shrek 2, as a sequel, HAS to make money...its got a built in audience that wants to see it.

Built in audience? Then take Toy Story 2 out of the Pixar 5.

That leaves 4 hits in how many years? You give Pixar way way too much credit here. They are a great company, but they have had a tremendous amount of time to master their craft. That's a big luxury in this business and the larger they get combined with the level of competition already building, the more difficult that will be to maintain.

Heck the landscape has already begun to change.

I'm sure Jobs is not very happy with the way Dreamworks has upset his little environment. What niche?

And toss Ice Age into your question and answer session. How did Fox make a hit with no track record whatsoever?

Putting Spirited Away in wide release with a full marketing push would have been extremely risky. Its style was not one that American audiences have embraces at all.

Fair enough and thank you for that reply. Great post by the way.

My reason for using Spirited Away initially was to quash that broken recording of yours which goes something like.................

Once again, most of Disney's problems are related to the quality of their films, not the tool they used to make them.

because if nothing else, that film demonstrates how quality is not the only reason a picture doesn't fare well and to say that all of Disney's films post mid 80's were poor quality is absolutely ludicrous.

I don't dispute the idea that this is exactly what is happening. Its just unfortunate that a studio that carved out a nice name for itself doing some things differently has moved over to the "any way you can make money" bandwagon

It's not unfortunate at all. Walt himself always knew that there was a market for animation if he could find a way to get the audience to respond. How is that any different than today?

 

[raidermatt]

because if nothing else, that film demonstrates how quality is not the only reason a picture doesn't fare well and to say that all of Disney's films post mid 80's were poor quality is absolutely ludicrous.

I know with all of the noise around here its sometimes difficult to keep who says what straight, and also to pick up the subtleties of positions. Certainly I have had trouble with it.

So with that in mind, I don't really disagree with you. Part of the issue is defining quality. I (and some others) have said in the past that we aren't talking about "art house" type quality here. We aren't calling for Disney to shoot for critical acclaim and nothing else. I don't remember the exact quote, but even Walt had a few words to say about critics.

I'm talking about determining a vision for what you want your end-product to be, and doing everything you can to fulfill that vision. Of course, a part of that vision has to include something you believe audiences will want to see/buy. But that comes at the macro level, and shouldn't permeate every facet of the project.

That's the Disney that created things that have resulted in us discussing them here on an internet message board.

Its that type of vision and mission that Disney no longer uses as its driving force in its creations.

That does not mean that everything it produces now will be crud that flops, just as not everything it produced in the past was a gem that succeeded.

There's a key quote from the car 3 definition at the top of this forum:

Generally believe that today's business processes aren't producing products that people consider Magic with the same consistency as throughout Disney's past...

That came from the Frozen Head, but it speaks for many of us. We are simply saying the chances for success are greater for any given project where Disney uses the "old" method, as opposed to jumping on the Hollywood bandwagon.

It's not unfortunate at all. Walt himself always knew that there was a market for animation if he could find a way to get the audience to respond. How is that any different than today?

He had a vision for what he wanted to create, and he believed people would respond to it.

He didn't merely look around at what others were doing successfully and try to copy it.

 

[WDSearcher]

And speaking of Walt ... don't you think that if CGI had come along while Walt was alive that he'd have jumped at it? With Walt it was all about new technology. I honestly don't think that he'd have thought twice about abandoning 2D for CGI -- he'd have had no nostalgia about hand-drawn stuff ... he'd have been all over using the newest technologies to their limit.

 

[Phoebesaturn]

Originally posted by WDSearcher
I honestly don't think that he'd have thought twice about abandoning 2D for CGI -- he'd have had no nostalgia about hand-drawn stuff ... he'd have been all over using the newest technologies to their limit.

Yeah but that is not what the current Disney is doing...they are abandoning 2d for CGI as a cheaper route to a lesser product. They aren't raising the bar with CGI...they are going lower and lower because its cheaper. Nobody at Disney is saying now that we cut 6 monts off of the production becuase of hand drawing we can put that effort into the story. Pixar is the company doing that.

 

[crusader]

I disagree with the idea that Disney is abandoning traditional animation for 3-D because it's cheaper.

Disney has to move in this direction right now because the audience wants it.

WDSearcher is right. Walt would have seen this medium as the next forum to display his art and unquestionably advanced the technology toward it.

We aren't calling for Disney to shoot for critical acclaim and nothing else.

Matt, to be perfectly honest, that is exactly what I read from many of the criticism's posted here. It's just spun a little more creatively under the guise of: "failing to invest less than someone's ideal of a minimum standard based on a 40 year old re-interpreted formula is the only thing that defines excellence and equals success for the Walt Disney Company today".

It's a losing argument because it is built mainly on hypotheticals and theory. Whenever a defined event occurs which disputes this logic, all kinds of explanations are presented to excuse and dismiss the reality of the situation.

For example: (and not meaning to single you out but I did want to examine this a bit further)

I'm talking about determining a vision for what you want your end-product to be, and doing everything you can to fulfill that vision. Of course, a part of that vision has to include something you believe audiences will want to see/buy. But that comes at the macro level, and shouldn't permeate every facet of the project.

I agree with this statement in principal, but I want to know if you are actually saying that Disney predominantly fails to do this?

 

[dcentity2000]

Hey everybody, just posted a thread on hand drawn films based upon the film Spirited Away. Such features seem to be sitting well (another example being the Animatrix or more recently about one quarter of Kill Bill) so don't give up just yet - hand drawn is still around, even if it has evolved into it's own niche.

Perhaps the art is no longer American and is now firmly Japanese?

Discuss.



Rich::

 

[Phoebesaturn]

Originally posted by crusader
Disney has to move in this direction right now because the audience wants it.

That is not the current Disney...Disney is not doing anything that the Audience wants....they are doing whatever they think will make them the most money. If they were doing what the Audience wants then Pixar would not be company supplying Disney studios with half its profits. Disney would not be wasting billions on Internet and old cartoons. DCA, AK and DLP would not be the ghost towns they are known to be. IF Disney was giving the audience things it wants....20,000 seas lagoon would not be barren for 10 years. DinoRama would have never happened...Star Tours would have a new film and updated ride. Walt was really good at predicating what the audience wanted before it even knew it....maybe I'm wrong....maybe 10 years from now we'll all look back and think hey Go.com was worth the billions Disney pumped into it because the Audience wanted it.

 

[dcentity2000]

Surely doing what the audience wants generates money Phoebesaturn? Just a small nit pick



Rich::

 

[WDSearcher]

Phoebesaturn,

Not everything Walt did was right. The audience didn't want Fantasia, but he made it anyway and now it's a classic. If Walt had fallen back on always doing what the audience wanted, there'd be a lot that never got done.

Audiences want CGI right now. Maybe next year they'll want 2D animation. But that doesn't change the fact that CGI is the popular thing right now.

As for the rest of the things you claim the audience wants ... you might want to define where you got that sample. I know a lot of people who would be perfectly happy to keep Pixar in the picture, supplying Disney studios with half its profits. I have also been in DAK over the past two months, and it is far from a ghost town, and DinoRama was packed. Star Tours is just as dependent on Mr. Lucas wanting to make a new film as it is on Disney wanting to spend money on it. And, let's face it, Go.com wasn't the only dot-com to not work.

There are also people out there who are angry that Mission to Mars is gone ... does that mean we should bring it back because that's what the audience wants? There are people pining for Mr. Toad. There are people who believe France should be taken out of Epcot because of how the French government handled the war in Iraq. There are people who think Candlelight Processional should be taken out of Disney because it's a religious production. Should all of those people be listened to? And let's not forget about all those people who demand that Gay Days be banned from WDW. Those are all things that the "audience" wants. So ... how does Disney decide which audience to listen to and which to ignore?

It was easier in Walt's day. Audiences weren't as sophisticated; entertainment was simpler.

 

[Phoebesaturn]

Originally posted by WDSearcher

Audiences want CGI right now. Maybe next year they'll want 2D animation. But that doesn't change the fact that CGI is the popular thing right now.

....and still I maintain...its not CGI people want it's a good story. It just so happens the only people putting out a good story along with CGI is Pixar. (Dreamworks Too if you count the Shreks') I have never heard one person say....gosh we got to so see that new Pixar movie because it's CGI. Just as I've never heard a person say gosh that new movie is great hand drawn anamation. ....well not regular people...some comicbook fans.... yes. I don't count those types though.

Of course there are plenty of pople that would love Pixar to keep making money for Disney...however Disney has sold its self out as a compnay that made movies to a company that distributes other peoples great work. Well now that deal is about up....and Disney has fired every creative person in sight. I guess you and Disney are counting on another Pixar to come along and save them again?

"A lot of people"..."some people"...this is not the Disney Audience I was speaking of. "How does Disney decide...who should they listen to ". ....well I can tell you one way that does not work ...and that is the current thinking...of Profits first.

If Go.com does not work for you....we have a multitude of other things that they Audience didn't know it wanted we can pick from. Does everyone need to see the failues again? You know the ones where Profits first got us great things???



"Is there two AK"- Yes we all know that park that closes down at 5:00 everyday does so because of the "crowds". Or is it to rest and save the animals this week?

 

[DancingBear]

And, once again, if you are running the studios, given the choice, what medium do you chose to produce? Is there any reason to choose hand-drawn?

Agreed that you gotta have a good story and all, but none of that is precluded by using CGI. I don't see how choosing CGI in itself is reflective of a "Profits First" mentality.