Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/944397
30 KEYFRAME F E AT U R E "In the classic period of the 1950s and '60s, live-action filmmakers would never bother themselves with animated features... It was considered too small potatoes for a lot of them." Festival and also eventually becoming the first animated film to ever win the Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy. (Another Disney favorite, The Little Mermaid, made history the year prior as the first animated film to be nominated in that category). "Half the people were like this is so great that it gets recognition and the other half were like 'why hasn't this happened before?'," recalls Tim Gray, the senior vice president and awards editor of industry magazine, Variety. But it would be several years before we'd see another animated film in that race again. More importantly: When Pixar's Up and Toy Story 3 did receive respective Best Picture nominations in 2010 and 2011, they both came after an AMPAS rules change expanded the category to include 10 films as opposed to only five (in 2011, that rule was tweaked again, now allowing for a sliding amount of five to 10 nominations, depending on voting results). Although reportedly put in place to allow for stunning works of genre-centric live action movies like director Christopher Nolan's 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight to receive recognition as well as animated films, these amendments have not resulted in a nominations windfall for our sector of the industry. TOO MANY EGGS IN ONE BASKET Veteran awards campaigner Andrew Stachler, who is the founder and CEO at Max Stax Media, says that while it's no easy feat for any film to get nominated for Best Picture, animated features have an even harder time marketing themselves in that race. He says this is partly because they don't have the luxury of catering to below- the-line workers like costume designers and hairstylists who vote for Best Picture as well as for their specific categories. "I think there's a way you campaign these things that speak to it,"he says, explaining that there's also a layer of marketing films to niche committees who usually decide the nominees for specific categories before the entire Academy votes. There's also the risk that putting too many eggs in the Best Picture basket could eliminate the chances of an (all considering) easier win for Best Animated Feature. Itself a relatively new category that was put in place starting with the 2002 Academy Awards, Best Animated Feature is both an honor as well as a bitter reminder for people like Beauty and the Beast's Trousdale, who says animation filmmakers only got the category after kicking "in the door to even have them notice us." Stachler says a lot of campaigns 2002 Shrek 2003 Spirited Away 2005 The Incredibles 2006 Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 2004 Finding Nemo TRAIL OF GOLD The Academy voted to add the Best Animated Feature Film category in 2002 with three nominees that year, including Shrek, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and Monsters, Inc. Though Pixar did not take home the trophy that first year, since then they have collected eight Oscars, more than any other studio.