Space: The Final Frontier

Guardians of the Galaxy released at the beginning of this month to booming success. Thus far the summer blockbusters hadn’t been raking in as much as expected, and predictions were placing the box office numbers for Guardians at tragic lows. After a few weeks in theaters Guardians of the Galaxy was just recently usurped from the number one box office spot by the new TMNT movie. The worldwide box office number for Guardians so far is at $334 million and continuing to climb. The soundtrack for the movie featuring Peter Quill’s Awesome Mix is at number one and the movie has more than made back what it invested.

So what caused the movie to meet all of this unpredicted success? At its heart, Guardians of the Galaxy followed a pattern of popular trends over the years in cinema and television. It is a unique blend of many things that make it seem out of the box, but its core elements were time-tested ideas. For as long as film has been around, people have been making films about space. Even Georges Méliès, one of the early pioneers into film and special effects, made a silent film called A Trip to the Moon in 1902. Perhaps it’s because we have only scratched the surface of what is out there that we have become so enamored with stories of space. Or perhaps it is our human nature to explore and seek out new adventure that draws us to these stories. Whatever the cause, stories of aliens and space are often released to great applause from audiences everywhere. Just look at Star Trek, Star Wars, and even Doctor Who. Doctor Who stands as the longest running science fiction television show and has over 800 episodes to its name.

So from its start Guardians had a strong premise. However, its similarities to our favorite science fiction movies don’t stop there. The main character of the movie, Star Lord, is eerily similar to everyone’s favorite sort of bad, sort of good character, Han Solo. He has the same swagger and confidence of Solo, and starts his character arc as a good guy mixed up with bad jobs and bad people. And just like Solo has Jabba the Hut after him for what Han owes Jabba, Peter Quill has Yondu chasing him down for the infinity stone that Peter owes him.

Guardians of the Galaxy takes what we love from Star Wars and other space sagas, and combines them with Marvel’s infamous superhero team formula. Marvel has brought back the superhero movies in a way that no one else has and made them into a product that reaches a much wider audience than before. Guardians expands this target audience even more now by reaching more into the science fiction genre. Looking at all of the pieces, it’s no surprise that Guardians is meeting the success that it is. Everyone is talking about how Marvel took a big risk with Guardians being outside of the box. But the truth of the matter is, while it is outside of Marvel’s normal box and safe genre, they ventured into the well-established and well-loved territory of space sagas.

References

Doctor Who Breaks Guiness World Record 

Box Office Mojo: Guardians of the Galaxy 

Guardians of the Galaxy: What is Next? 

Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon (Full Film) 

Pixar's Release of Renderman

Pixar’s Renderman has been widely known throughout the animation community as one of the best pieces of rendering software in the industry. Up until now it hasn’t been accessible for students and animators alike to learn without paying the price tag. This past month Pixar announced that Renderman will be free for educational and non-commercial use. This is significant and wonderful news for both the studio and the artists. While some people are confused as to why Pixar would release it for free, it really makes a lot of sense. Pixar is not in the software business, they are in the film business. In order to make excellent films, they need people who are comfortable with their software and pipeline. By providing the software for free, they are ensuring that they will have applicants that are already trained in their software. In return, the artists are put at an advantage because they can expand their skill set and portfolio.

Renderman is not a standalone software. It is a renderer that is built for software for Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D, and the likes of those. It is primarily for Maya, as this is the primary software that Pixar uses for its animations. As a result, artists and students must have access to one of these other programs. Luckily for students, Maya has a student license that lasts for four years. Other artists will have to invest a lot of money in order to legally obtain Maya for themselves.

There is yet another advantage to their release of Renderman. Making this advanced software available to the public gives programmers the opportunity to improve the technology. Pixar hopes to encourage the industry to improve itself by giving up what information they already have. It is a smart move on their part, and hopefully will prove beneficial to the entire industry.

For news articles and references please visit these websites:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/06/02/pixar_renderman_it_s_distributing_a_version_free_for_non_commercial_use.html

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/registration

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27677712

 

The Trend of Character Driven Trailers

This week Disney released the first teaser trailer for its new feature film coming out later this year. Big Hero 6 marks the first collaboration between Walt Disney Animation Studios and Marvel. Big Hero 6 is the story between a boy and his huggable and squishy robot, which he wants to transform into an action-packed hero.

This teaser trailer followed the same pattern as the Frozen teaser trailer last year. Instead of trying to summarize the plot these trailers both took a decidedly character centric approach. In both trailers they took two main characters and put them in slapstick comedy scenarios in order to endear them to the audience. This unique approach has caused a lot of people to talk about them, generating the buzz that a trailer should.

In the Frozen trailer above, Olaf and Sven were introduced to the audience in a clip of them fighting over Olaf’s carrot nose. It introduced us to characters that were not in the original story or synopsis, and peaked audiences interests through their unique personalities and movements. Although Big Hero 6 is based off of a comic, and the characters are already established, Disney modified the characters from the not very well-known comic books. Since the average audience has not been exposed to these characters, the followed the path of Olaf and Sven and introduced them in the same way. In the Big Hero 6 trailer however, there is more of an element of the film’s plot included since it shows Hiro making his soft robot into a mechanized warrior. But all the overall focus was still on the characters.

So will other future films follow suit? This method certainly seems to be working for Disney, as the response to the Frozen teaser trailer was overall more positive than the response to the second trailer. The response to the Big Hero 6 teaser has been mixed so far, but people are talking about it in a mostly positive light. Time will tell if this trend will catch on or not, but in my personal opinion I like the character based approach much better to the traditional trailers.

Big Hero 6 Teaser Trailer 

Frozen Teaser Trailer 

Disney's First Oscar for Best Animated Feature

The Disney name invokes a sense of history and magic. The studio is well known for it’s pioneering spirit and high quality work. It’s films are award winning and wildly popular. Even films from over 50 years ago remain relevant in today’s world, having withstood the test of time. With that being said, many assume that Disney has had the academy award for best animated feature category wrapped up for years. What people don’t realize is that until this year, Disney hadn’t won an Oscar for this category.

Negotiating Interview

For my interview this month I interviewed my coordinator for work, Sam. Sam has been with the company four years, and has been in a variety of leadership roles in multiple parks. The type of negotiating that he primarily does involves his cast members and the guests. The thing that strikes me the most about Sam is that he always strives for mutual benefit and excels at this particularly with the cast. When asked about how he accomplishes this he said that, “Treating cast members with a basic level of respect and appreciation works wonders in any area.” He believes in treating them as he would like to be treated and that this creates a better environment, which in turn creates benefits for them. He believes in explaining “the why behind the how” and how this basic understanding of how it can benefit the cast member can change around attitudes.

Dave Kellett and the Importance of Studying Other Artists

Something all artists do is study other artist’s work. It is what makes us better at our craft. A day in another artist’s shoes can help evolve your own style and expand your view of what seems possible.

Elsa vs. Jack Frost

It amazes me how time and time again, certain design elements carry through to different characters from different creators. As I was watching the new trailer for Frozen, I was struck by this as Elsa first came on screen. The similarities between her design and the design for Jack Frost in Rise of the Guardians are very interesting. They reveal just how much we need the design to tell the story for us as much as the words tell the story. Every good character design has this storytelling quality, and Elsa and Jack are no exception. For them both, major parts of their designs speak to their powers with snow and ice. This is only the surface of these characters and there is much more to them than their powers, but at the beginning this is most of what we need to know and their design communicates that.