on "Director Driven Projects"

[acroyear]

MR. FUN: (Floyd Norman, Disney animator and story man in the 60s, story consultant in the 80s, Pixar story consultant in the 90s - named a Disney Legend)

There’s been a fair amount of chatter on the web about “director driven” projects at major animation studios. I still find the notion of director driven films, with a few exceptions, a major cartoon fantasy.

I first learned my lesson back in the sixties when as a young, green story artist I had to show a storyboard to my director, Woolie Reitherman. After staring at my board for a long while, he finally turned to me and said, “show the board to Walt.” At that point it was pretty clear who was really directing the movie.

Of course, there are a few director driven studios. Lucasfilm is a good example - as long as George Lucas is directing. Steven Spielberg is another name that comes to mind. In any case, these guys are the exception, not the rule.

A feature length motion picture represents the investment of a considerable sum of money. Naturally, the bank or the studio will continually be looking over the director’s shoulder. It’s not pleasant - but it’s to be expected. What’s truly silly is when executives at major motion picture studios speak as though it was otherwise.

This in reaction to all the stories about about John Lassester's veto-level control at both studios, having relieved Chris Saunders (Bolt formerly An American Dog), Glen Keane (Tangled, formerly Rapunzel), Jan Pinkava (Ratatoille), and most recently Brenda Chapman (Brave, formerly The Bear and the Bow) from their director's chairs since taking charge of all WDAS and Pixar projects.  John really is Walt's Heir Apparent in a LOT of ways.

At least, unlike other studios, John's still willing to put in the money to get the project to completion even after a major rewrite and new director assignments.  AND just like Walt's influence in the golden age (most of the time), it works (again, unlike other studios - how many writers and directors to make Superman and it still sucked big-time...).

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

You know, you don't hear as much about this with Japanese animation. I don't know if it is because there is less money to throw around or if projects that are failing get canned, but you don't really see this type of behavior.

But, I don't know why anyone would suggest that American animation is "director driven". Fact is, I probably can count on my fingers animation directors who are "known", and none of them would be the ones that were canned above. Guys like Brad Bird and Pete Docter probably have some pull, but I doubt many beyond them right now.

BTW, it seems like almost every project that Disney has been doing has needed a major overhaul at one point or another, with "Princess and the Frog" being one of the few exceptions.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

actually, Princess DID go through quite the overhaul, they just managed to do it with the same directors. Lasseter has this knack for complaining about "the second reel" in almost every project, usually because the writers and directors lose too much focus when trying to give depth to the story. Bolt (Chris Sanders directed Lilo & Stitch) in particular was chided for trying to be too many things (Ratatouille was also getting to be too big and unfocused).

By contrast, Rapunzel (Glen Keane was originally an animator (Beast, Tarzan), and he at least stayed on the project and in the company as executive producer - Sanders was kicked out and now is working for Dreamworks) had the problem of doing too little to move the story - there was too much focus on the beauty of the film and not enough things happening.

Then again, even the pre-merger films had hassles. Toy Story 2 was rewritten entirely from the crap that the Direct-To-Video people were doing, and the final plot ended up based on story notes of the original Toy Story that were thrown out and rewritten at the time because it needed more time for the characters to develop their relationship - they actually in effect wrote the sequel first.