Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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31 KEYFRAME WINTER 2018 31 come down to old-fashioned budgeting concerns: Does an animated film's studio have the money and the resources to devote to promoting it in both the Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories? The trick, he says, is to find a way to "prove that you're worthy of really being Best Picture and also seed in people's minds that if they're not quite sure that it should be Best Picture then they don't feel like they can give Best Animated Feature to someone else." It's also extremely important to get actors on a film's side. After all, SAG- AFTRA makes up the biggest voting contingent of AMPAS and Stachler says that, from a prognostication standpoint, the Screen Actors Guild Awards' Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture category "is a huge precursor for Best Picture." Trousdale and others say this strategy has been an uphill battle for animated films, as some actors have fretted in the past that the medium is too different from live-action films for them to be treated the same. It is possible that this sea change is coming. Animation expert Sito reminds that in "the last five years, we've been averaging about 26 animated releases in the United States per year and there are [also animated] films from all around the world." Because of the advent of streaming, Sito says, we now have more "platforms for more product and opportunities for more filmmakers." "In the 1970s, animation was the Disney feature and what we called the Saturday Morning getup: four hours of animation in between cereal commercials," he says. "Now, there's primetime animation, there's streaming animation, there's feature films. There's so much product being done and it's all very good." BLURRED LINES As visual effects and computer animation improve, so too do we enter murky waters on what even constitutes an animated film. "Having really good directors and really good production values on live- action films is terrific, but it's a different thing," stresses Trousdale. "Even though there's a lot of VFX in [movies like Disney's 2016 remake of The Jungle Book, it's difficult to call them animated movies. Once you do that, then how much of Lord of the Rings is animated? How much of Gravity is animated? How much of Life of Pi is animated? It gets hazy. It used to be a lot clearer, but the lines got very blurry." Sito jokes that "to me, Avatar's live action is five minutes of Sigourney Weaver smoking a cigarette in a laboratory. The rest of it is an animated film." He adds that he sees a benefit in the increase of live-action filmmakers' embracing of traditionally animated works, like Guillermo del Toro's Netflix series Trollhunters and cinematographer Roger Deakins' work as a consultant on films like WALL·E or the How to Train Your Dragon pictures. "In the classic period of the 1950s and '60s, live-action filmmakers would never bother themselves with animated features," Sito says. "It was considered too small potatoes for a lot of them." Meanwhile, Stachler points out an example like Andy Serkis. The English actor's mastery of performance capture work has been lauded since his days in the Lord of the Rings film series. This year, he was on shortlists for an Oscar nomination for his work in director Matt Reeves' science fiction visual effects feat, War for the Planet of the Apes. That recognition from other actors (and voters) theorizes that the same could happen for a star of an animated film. 2007 Happy Feet 2008 Ratatouille 2009 Wall-E 2010 Up 2011 Toy Stor y 3 2012 Rango