The Old Story Axiom
I was reading through my Google Reader feeds this morning, as I usually do each day, and I came across an article that another friend of mine had shared. It was an article written by Kevin Koch and posted on his site SynchroLux. It is a great read about the old saying that Story is King in animation.
He makes some very valid points that story is important, but it is not everything when it comes to film, which I have to agree. A large part of film is visual, so it is hard to say that you could have some really bad visual elements, but a great story and still have a wonderful film. Kevin makes a great point when he mentions the number of remakes that have been done. He asks the question, how many times have you seen a movie redone (i.e. Planet of the Apes or Psycho), and do the remakes have the same success just because the story is the same? The short answer is no, because although the story is basically the same, the director and very importantly, the acting is different, along with many other parts of the film such as sound and cinematography.
This is very important to keep in mind especially as it pertains to animation. The story can be the same but the quality of the visuals can vary dramatically, which really changes a person’s opinon of a film. Story is not necessarilly king. Take the recent film Avatar for instance. It has proven to be a very successful film and a film that I myself love. Although, this is the case, I would argue that the reason for its success is not due to story. The story is pretty good, but it is the visuals which make this movie stand out and is what brought so many people to the theaters to watch it.
To conclude, I just liked that someone brought up this topic and supported the claim so well. I eagerly await what he will be writing for his continuation of this subject as it moves into how important quality animation is to the success of a film.
Quick January Blurb
No posts for a while, so I thought I’d say at least a little something and try out this QuickPress on wordpress at the same time. Anyway, I’m still around. I’ve been playing a lot with this new theme (Modularity-Lite by Graph Paper Press). I have been customizing and altering the code to fit my needs. The last couple of days I have been consumed with getting up some header images and getting them to work as I want them and appear on the correct pages. Finally I figured it out. I have three different images up as of now and hopefully will add a couple more in the near future.
Now that’s what I have been doing for the site. I have also been working a lot on my AM assignment. We are currently trying to flush out some story ideas for the short film I will create next class. As I whittle my story down further, I probably will post a little here.
Now, a little more personal information. I am very, very happy to say that my wife and I celebrated 6 months of marriage yesterday! We went out to dinner on Sunday at a nice Irish restaurant and had some good clam chowder and pub chips, mmmm! I can’t believe that it has been 6 months already and can’t wait to share the next 50+ years ahead with her. She really is an amazing woman and I’m so happy to have found her!
