My Family and the Wolf

2ner · Post by **2ner** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:56 am

Here's a beautiful cartoon:

http://vimeo.com/38309931

Looking forward to it.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:54 am

Yes, saw it via cartoonbrew, looking forward to the finished film (it's just the trailer).

Feature films of that high design standard emerge regularly from France, but in the last 10 years I've only seen one of them - on a festival. They don't get distribution in Germany, which is a shame.

AmigaMan · Post by **AmigaMan** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:09 pm

That does look amazing!

JaMike · Post by **JaMike** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 2:12 am

slowtiger wrote:Feature films of that high design standard emerge regularly from France,

I think it's Spanish, actually.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:00 am

You're right, I read it the other day. Headless had this great trailer in 2008, see http://vimeo.com/headless/videos, which I think gave the studio its name. But I haven't heard about that project since.

Me calling it "french" might be understandable, they seem to have a completely different brand of designers in France and Spain, sometimes joined by artists from Argentina. Fresh, vivid, very "human", always with a strong sense of colours. German designers don't seem to grab that, most seem to go the "Pictoplasma" direction of characters completely constructed from geometrical shapes.

Feature films from Europe are never done by just one studio in one country. Most studios are still too small for that, so they team up. And there' the "Media" program by the EU which helps with quite a lot of money, but only if more than one country is in the deal.

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 4:42 pm

I just looked at their vimeo pages, and all of their work is superb! There is also a teaser of a finished feature film available on DVD called "Nocturna". Has anyone here seen it? I'm considering ordering it from Amazon.

AmigaMan · Post by **AmigaMan** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:44 pm

I didn't realise it was the same studio but yes, I have seen Nocturna and liked it. It's beatifully designed, as you can tell from the trailer, and quite surreal. Well worth getting.

JaMike · Post by **JaMike** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:55 pm

Nocturna (which is amazing) was made by Filmax, and Headless is the studio of the directors of Nocturna.

I don't think Headless has actually produced a feature film by themselves, they're too small. But what they are developing looks great!

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:37 am

It's pretty usual for studios to collaborate on large projects, especially outside the US, I suppose. Most European studios are too small to take on a whole feature film by themselves, and there are grant incentives from the EC to form associations across boundaries.
I am currently working as 1st AD on a TV series for a studio in France, partnered by production companies in Belgium and Ireland. In addition, I am British, the director is American, the producer Canadian, and the animation is being handled by studios in the Philipines and China.

I still hesitate to order the DVD of Nocturna after reading a review on Amazon that sounds quite well informed:

"Nocturna is one of the most creatively designed and beautifully animated films I have seen in years. The look of this film is superior to some of the juggernauts, Disney in particular. The movement of the characters is beautifully captured and the world they live in is lushly detailed and lit. The attention to detail and light is on par with recent 3D Dreamworks films. It showcases many of the virtues of 2D animation, and is clearly a labour of love by its creators. Headless Productions is an excellent company, and if you peruse their production blog you'll see that they have a stock of brilliant ideas just waiting to be funded and realised.
I can't give it five stars though.
It's a beautiful looking film but it has a story that really needed tighter editing and direction to shine. The central conflict and its cause are not foreshadowed in a particularly effective way, which means that dramatic conclusion isn't as satisfying as it could be. There are a few too many characters and loose ends. The initial villain isn't intimidating, and while you expect the main character to fall from grace late in the story, he's given an immediate out. This is a kind message for children watching the film (it's ok when you make a mistake without meaning to) but it means that the end of the film meanders. It's not very satisfying. I consider it to be a good film to put the kids in front of but it won't necessarily capture their interest for long. It's value is that it shows just what this company could be capable of and what you can achieve with good art design and a stellar animation crew.
With some decent marketing it would've done very well but I don't think it got that. It's a gorgeous film though and I consider it a must for animation fans."

As you see, the review is very positive on the visual appeal of the film, but less so on the structure and story. Unfortunately, European animated films often fall down on their writing. It is something the Americans are particularly good at.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:39 pm

European animated films often fall down on their writing. It is something the Americans are particularly good at.

Interesting view ... but I think we need to dig a bit deeper.

I'd somewhat agree that Hollywood scriptwriters have more training and experience than most european, especially in the domain of animated films. This is no surprise since Hollywoood pumps much more money into their projects than european producers could spend. If you can afford to spend years on pre-production, and re-write the script several times, even by different authors, then I'd naturally expect a more polished result than what european screenwriters come up with under not so comfortable conditions.

However, Hollywood is only good in doing one thing, and that is doing Hollywood movies.

This means two things: first, the structure of Hollywood movies rarely bears any surprise. It's formula, admittedly a proven formula, and the results are always pleasurable enough to watch. But any formula bears its own weakness: that it isn't surprising, exciting, new, exploring, different. I see books about screenwriting emerging by the dozen, and they all propagate that one streamlined well-trodden path of Hollywood storytelling. Boooring.

Second, Hollywood has a very restricted set of topics, characters, events, any element, which are allowed to be dealt with. They're good at putting the old elements into any possible combination, and sometimes it's good fun to see an old cliché twisted - but it's still old. Even more: the setting of any Hollywood movie, the "internal world" of it (especially in animation), is always WASP - white anglo-saxon protestant. Isn't that a pretty small part of the real world?

So the more interesting films in terms of storytelling don't come from Hollywood. They're coming from Japan and Europe, and I expect to see even more from China and Russia and South America which deal with interesting topics, which show a different part of the world, and which tell their stories in a more interesting, at least in a different way.

(I have to make an exception for Germany, though. Since we don't have any real animation industry, and all productions depend on TV money, animated films are still seen as something for kids only, which shows in the scripts. I've been at an award ceremony of the "german animated feature film script award", and it was continuous facepalming. The 5 scripts on their shortlist were all meant for 5yr olds, and 3 of them had the same plot point: the animals of the forest unite against the building of a dam. Go figure.)

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:36 pm

slowtiger, I would tend to agree with your analysis of the weaknesses of the Hollywood system, and the formulaic nature of much of their subject matter. I also find Japanese and European cinema more interesting in general, and less manipulative of the audience's emotions.

However, on a skill level, Americans excel at dialogue, story structure and pacing. Simply throwing large sums of money at a project is no guarantee of quality in the end result, although trying to skimp and treat people cheaply, as is the case in a lot of European film-making, will never extract the best from them either. Financial considerations aside, the films of Pixar are masterpieces on many levels.

There is such a vast catalogue of films being produced that it is perhaps worthless to generalise like this, and there are certainly many, many examples of extremely poor screenwriting in America as in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the best American writing has a crackle and pace that is a hard act to follow.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:06 pm

on a skill level, Americans excel at dialogue, story structure and pacing.

I agree with that. If they're good, they're brlliant, and even if they're just up to standard, that standard is quite a bit higher than what european, and especially german, screenwriters are able to do.

This is especially visible in TV productions. In animation: Spongebob, Fairy Oddparents, Phineas & Ferb, Kim Possible: they all just sparkle with wit and speed and good timing. Life action: Dr House, NCIS, How I met your Mother, Big Bang Theory (that's just stuff running recently in german TV): I really wish german productions to be just that good. But there's only few examples which hold up, and none in german animation.