Bye Bye PDI

When I started in computer animation in 1985, there were five studios that dominated the field: Robert Abel and Associates, Digital Productions, Omnibus Computer Graphics, Cranston-Csuri Productions and Pacific Data Images.  Three of those five companies didn't make it to the '90s.  I can't remember when Cranston-Csuri closed, but it was a long time ago.

PDI was the company that survived.  It was formed in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl, who was joined shortly by Glen Entis and Richard Chuang.  At that time, all software had to be home brewed.  There was no off-the-shelf software.  Every company that existed at the time had to invent (forget about re-invent) the wheel before they could do any work.

Take a look at this demo reel from 1983.  This was cutting edge stuff at the time.

PDI stayed at the forefront of the computer animation business.  It did many flying logos for broadcasters.  It moved into TV commercials, animating the Pillsbury Doughboy.  It created morphing software used in the Michael Jackson video Black or White.  It produced shorts like Gas Planet, and contributed computer character animation to the TV special The Last Halloween.

After Pixar got computer animated features off the ground and drawn animated features were suffering at the box office, Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks knew he had to get into the cgi game.  His way in was by partnering with PDI.  Initially a minority owner, DreamWorks eventually purchased the entire company.

Antz was the first film made by the studio, followed by Shrek, the film that really put DreamWorks animation on the map.  The PDI facility continued to create some of DreamWorks most successful films, such as the Shrek sequels and the Madagascar series.

Now, it's closing.  It's no secret that DreamWorks has been suffering financially of late.  The company has worked hard to diversify, buying existing characters and creating TV work.  However, it still needs to cut expenses in order to stay healthy.  Five hundred employees are expected to lose their jobs across all the DreamWorks facilities, but PDI is being closed. 

The last of the '80s companies is gone.  It held on longer and had a greater impact than its original competition.  With the closing of PDI, a chunk of living cgi history vanishes.  A lot of top talent passed through PDI through the years, and now it's just a memory.

Written in Water

Disney recently released its animation schedule through 2018.  There are two and sometimes three films a year slated for release.  There are people, like Charles Kenney, who fear that we're looking at a glut of animated films that will wear out their welcome at the box office.  I agree with that, but I also think that it is inevitable.  The nature of capitalism is for companies to keep making what sells until it stops selling.  Once that happens, they move on to whatever is selling next.  If that's not animation, we're out of luck.  For those who might be skeptical, I can point out that westerns and musicals, both of which were commonplace in past decades, are now rare.  Animation could suffer the same fate.

Whatever happens, it's important to realise that Disney's schedule is written in water.

All predictions are based on current conditions continuing into the future, and that rarely happens.  For proof, we only have to go back to the start of this year.  After DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians underperformed at the box office, there were layoffs and a schedule shuffle.  Peabody and Sherman was delayed and Me and My Shadow was taken off the schedule all together.

There will be no difference if a Disney film underperforms.  There's nothing like a write-off to get an executive to reexamine the plan and hedge his or her bets.

There's another elephant in the room that nobody is mentioning.  Robert Iger retires as CEO in 2015 and as chairman in 2016.  Iger was a marked departure from Michael Eisner.  While Iger is open to criticism for his decisions, his tenure has been free of the feuds that Eisner had with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz and Steven Jobs.  Iger's successor, whoever that may be, will undoubtedly bring different ideas and priorities to the job.  Those differences may have to do with animation, including the status of Pixar, John Lasseter and releasing films in 3-D.

Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, is currently 68 years old.  He'll be 70 by the time Iger steps down and he or the studio may decide to call it quits.  That may also result in changes to what happens to Disney animation.

No changing of the guard takes place without a change in the status quo.  While Disney and other studios can plan their release schedules for as far into the future as they like, the truth is that changing personnel and box office results are variables that they can't control.  As they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.  If it was, we'd be watching Lion King 8 by now.

Fortune Favours DreamWorks

Fortune Magazine has posted its list of the 100 best companies to work for. DreamWorks ranks number 10, and no other film or animation studio made the list.

DreamWorks: The Men Who Would Be King

I've read a fair number of business books about the film industry and this is a good one. Author Nicole Laporte does an excellent job of portraying the three partners, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who formed DreamWorks.

What's clear from the book is that the company and partnership were always tenuously held together. The partners each had very different personalities and more important than that, very different goals. It's this area where the structural flaws in the company eventually caused problems.

Most companies start small and if they're lucky and well-managed, grow larger. The two words that best define DreamWorks are grandiose and hubris. DreamWorks started out large with large expectations and then systematically shrank over time. The expectations of the partners, the investment community and the public were too large and the partners, for all their money and skills, failed to live up to them.

Those interested in the animation side of DreamWorks will learn relatively little. Shrek and Sinbad, the most and least successful of the animated features, are the only ones covered in much detail. Anyone who has followed Katzenberg's career since his Disney days will have a sense of his micromanagement style and his taste in content. What surprised me is that in this book, Katzenberg comes off the best of the three partners.

David Geffen used his wealth as a weapon to intimidate others with and seemed to have a pathological need for an enemy to conspire against, whether it was Michael Ovitz, Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone or Brad Grey.

Steven Spielberg comes off as consistently selfish, always making sure that he came out of any arrangement with what he wanted, regardless of whether it was good for DreamWorks or not. For example, on Minority Report, Spielberg made $70 million while DreamWorks only made $20 million. Spielberg was upset with Geffen for selling DreamWorks to Paramount, but had Spielberg directed more films for DreamWorks (he directed several films for other companies while a DreamWorks partner) or worried more about the company's bottom line, the sale would not have been necessary at all.

Each of the three partners also brought their own people into the company, and those people were often at odds, more concerned with protecting their relationships with their patrons than the good of the company as a whole.

In DreamWorks' defense, the media business underwent massive changes during the life of the company. In particular, Disney's purchase of ABC was the death knell for the TV division, both live and animated. However, the three large egos at the head of the company never came together on the specifics and their different agendas made it almost inevitable that the company would fracture as it did.

While this book may frustrate those only interested in the animation side of DreamWorks, The Men Who Would Be King is an excellent primer as to how politics within and between companies determine what ends up on movie screens. Unfortunately, Hollywood is a cross between high school and The Godfather, and while it can be fun to observe from a distance, I find the incessant maneuvering for status and money exhausting.

How to Train Your Dragon

(No spoilers.)

While I haven't seen all the DreamWorks animated features, I've seen most of them. How to Train Your Dragon is my favorite so far. While I enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, I didn't find Po's transformation from loser to warrior convincing. The arc for Hiccup, the boy pictured above, is better constructed and the plot points are all in place.

The story has elements of E.T. and is pretty predictable, but it is well told and emotionally satisfying. There's a good balance of humour and suspense. The film is built on a father-son relationship that works within the context of the film and resembles Disney's Chicken Little. The dragon designs are nicely balanced between caricature and menace and the Vikings are fun to look at.

There are things that I could criticize in the film, but they don't detract from the overall experience. I saw the film flat, not in 3D, as I was more interested in judging the story elements than I was the technique. I still found the camera moves too busy in the early part of the film and wonder if I would have suffered whiplash had I watched it in 3D. The children, except for the male and female leads, are one dimensional, which often happens with supporting characters in animated films. It's a bit of a stretch to have Vikings talking with Scottish accents, though I guess it is plausible. The relationship of the largest dragon to the others is not clear and probably unscientific. I can't say more without spoiling something.

I couldn't help thinking while watching the film that should it outgross Disney's Bolt (and it deserves to), it will be vindication for director Chris Sanders, who was removed from the Disney film by John Lasseter. Dragon also seems to me to be the DreamWorks film most dominated by it's directors (Sanders and Dean Dublois). With DreamWorks now set on releasing 5 films every two years, I think it would be all to the good for Jeffrey Katzenberg to loosen the reins a little and let directors put their stamp on films.

3D and DreamWorks

Jeffrey Katzenberg was in Toronto last Monday, talking about DreamWorks' commitment to stereoscopic 3D and showing clips from the forthcoming film Monsters vs. Aliens.

Katzenberg believes that in 5-8 years, all movies will be projected in 3D. He stated that there were 10 or 11 films (both live and animated) slated for release in 2009 and two dozen for 2010. All future DreamWorks releases are slated to be 3D, starting with Monsters vs. Aliens. Dreamworks' features currently cost $150 million, and 3D will add an additional $15 million to their price tag.

Bloomberg news reports specifics about what 3D films are coming:

Next year's 3-D releases include a version of the original "Toy Story" from Disney and James Cameron's "Avatar" from News Corp., the director's first feature film since "Titanic" in 1997. Disney plans five 3-D films, the most of any studio. In February, NBC Universal will release "Coraline," based on the book by Neil Gaiman. "Monsters vs. Aliens" is set for March, DreamWorks Animation's only movie of the year.

Katzenberg foresees theatres adding a $5 surcharge over regular admission rates for the 3D experience. There are currently 1000 screens in North America able to project 3D. In 4 months, there will be 2500 and by 2010 there are expected to be 7500. The Bloomberg article implies that the current economic downturn is going to slow the spread of 3D venues.

Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp., a supplier of software to run digital theaters, had planned to convert as many as 1,500 screens by March 2009. Now, with funds on hold, the company expects 100 to 200, chief executive Bud Mayo said.

While box office grosses have gone up, movie attendance has gone down. The increase in ticket prices is responsible for the increased grosses. The same economic downturn that's slowing down installation of 3D projection may also cut into 3D box office if the theatres charge more for the dimensional versions.

Because not all screens are currently equipped for 3D, DreamWorks will continue to release its films in flat versions to theatres and for home formats such as DVD. Katzenberg acknowledges that films are going to have to be satisfying experiences without 3D and that 3D will be the icing on the cake. He does foresee 3D becoming available at home in the future and expects that its first successful home application will be in gaming.

Katzenberg admitted that it was going to be up to the audience to determine if 3D would become the dominant projection method, but that he was excited about the possibilities since seeing The Polar Express in 3D.

I found the first clip from Monsters vs. Aliens to have some problems, though I'm not sure if it was the clip itself or my need to adjust. 3D imagery contains more information than a standard movie in that the viewer is taking in depth information in addition to everything else. I found the cutting in the first sequence, where the President confronts the alien, to be too fast. I couldn't decipher some shots before they were replaced by others.

However, I found the later two excerpts, the first introducing the monsters and the second a battle on the Golden Gate bridge, worked better for me. I don't know if it was the nature of the direction and cutting in those sequences or if by that time I had seen enough that my brain was more in tune with reading the images.

Certainly, as a society, we take in visual information faster now than in the past. I remember reading an interview with Ward Kimball who talked about having to trim older Disney shorts when they played on television as they were paced too slowly for the TV audience. I don't doubt that with greater exposure to 3D imagery, the audience as a whole will be better at deciphering what's in front of them, but I do think there's a danger of cutting too quickly for the time being.

3D has been tried many times before. Katzenberg said that he felt the move to digital was going to make the difference in terms of audience acceptance. Maybe 3D will be a way for studios to attract more people to theatres in the current economy or maybe bad economic news will prevent that. For now, Hollywood is betting heavily on 3D. Only time will tell if it becomes the new standard or remains an occasional novelty.

Aardman and Dreamworks

Courtesy of Harvey Deneroff's blog, here's a link to an interview with Nick Park from The Guardian. In the article, there are some interesting comments about the relationship between Aardman and DreamWorks, including the following:

Aardman fought hard to retain the rights to [Wallace and Gromit], which left DreamWorks feeling uncomfortable about losing control of an area almost as important to the bottom line as the box office take. "They found it difficult working with characters they didn't own," says Park. "They were trying to respect that at the same time as trying to completely dictate to us. There was a sense of tension."