Divide and conquer

Around here, as soon as the director turns his back, the producer is looking for stuff. Incomplete cuts mostly, so he can upload them to an ftp site or whatever and show them to people who should never get to see incomplete cuts because they have difficulty in understanding the concept of 'incomplete'.

It's like the old line tester days. You'd show a client a pencil test and you'd get a look of horror followed by, "it will be in colour, right?"

So the producer 'steals' incomplete cuts from the animators or compositors and then forms a series of rather stupid questions. But that's just one aspect. I have noticed that the producer will often ask a director how long something will take. Unhappy with the answer, he'll ask individual animators who only ever know how long their own particular part will take. As that answer is shorter, the producer happily takes it and makes up new schedules.

Divide and conquer.

Directors are people too

I remember years ago, when I first started out, I was animating on a really crappy feature film. I had nothing but contempt for the animation director (the actual director of the movie was nowhere to be seen ever). I figured the animation director was an idiot. For a start, his drawings were shit. He drew me a rough pose for a dog that looked like some sort of crappy rodent. With five legs. And, when people asked him questions, nine times out of ten he basically said just figure it out. It was like he didn't care.


I saw nothing that showed he earned that job. I didn't respect him.


Years later, I was in one particular place for quite some time. I saw an animator work his way up, animating for other people and then moving on to directing short films and so on. He was pretty good. Not fantastic but well capable of doing what he was doing.


And then a new guy joined the studio. A young animator. He seemed to take instruction from this director reluctantly and I couldn't really figure it out. Then, when things were tight on a project, the director jumped on to animation, something he hadn't done in a while. He sketched out a scene and, of course, it worked really well. When he saw it, the young animator said he now could respect the director. He saw his animation, saw he had some talent.


And I was left thinking - what an asshole. He didn't give him credit for being able to do his job. Didn't think that perhaps he had worked for that. That he had earned the position. Like that director had to prove himself to every student animator who walked in the door.

I knew how much work that director had to do. I knew the pressure he was under from the producers. I knew that he had about a thousand decisions to make each day. I also knew he trusted most of his team to do their parts. Direction, being an animation director or similar, is a seriously tough job. It's far easier to just sit there and animate the scenes handed to us, like most of us do. And yet, as a young animator, I completely assumed the director was inept.

The simple fact that someone can hold a position like that should give them the respect. And, most of the time, they've earned it.

But I've also learned that, often, our frustrations are their frustrations. Only more so because they have to argue with producers about them.

Directors are people too.

Who really cares?

On some projects it's just difficult to stay motivated. And animation is such a ridiculously long process that keeping up any pretense of motivation is simply impossible. I mean, what gobshite thought it was a good idea to make film a frame at a time?

One frame at a time?!

He'd be laughed out of the Dragon's Den with that one. Craziest idea ever. One frame at a time. It's nuts.

So it takes years to make a television show or movie or whatever. No way anyone is going to keep up enthusiasm for that length of time unless it is your own project that you have dreamt about making for years. And that rarely happens. Mostly, we're just hired to do a job. Get the job done, get paid. You can try to do your absolute best work and that's great but some jobs will inspire you less than others.

And you just can't give 100% the whole time without burning out (and don't get me started on the idiots who use the 'giving 110%' phrase).

So, sometimes, just getting something finished to a satisfactory level is okay.

Really though - one frame at a time? Completely ridiculous. I think I'll do something with puppets. At least then I can shoot in real time.

Anyone know anything about making puppets?

The endless struggle

I see this sort of thing happen so many times. How hard is it to do things in the right order? Why start animation before you have an animatic? Why work with 'temp' tracks that mean nothing will fit afterwards? Why is there always that long period of inactivity followed by the need to start every process simultaneously?


What is it with some producers' fascination with doing things arse-ways?