How to Produce and Distribute Your First Animated Feature — At Any Cost

Teasers and Trailers As you are putting the finishing touches on your feature, you’ll need to build momentum by cutting a few different teasers. A teaser is an interesting, attention-getting snippet of your film that doesn’t necessarily tell a full story. A good teaser will often leave the viewer with more questions than it answers. If the viewer watches your teaser and is left with a “What the? I need to find out more about this!” feeling, then you’ve done your job. Teasers are efficient, powerful tools because they are short, relatively easy to put together, and you can start populating social media outlets to grow interest well before completion of the film.

A trailer, on the other hand, is a much more polished, complete story that tells the viewer everything you want them to know about your film. (Spoilers not included, naturally.) A good trailer will showcase some of the most impressive and interesting aspects of your film, whether it’s a signature action scene, celebrity involvement, something shocking or a powerful cliffhanger.

Utilize your teasers and trailers by saturating all social media outlets with them. The major video and social media sites are invaluable for spreading the word about your film and are for the most part free to use. However, you can also set up pay-per-click accounts that practically guarantee people will watch them in large numbers, budget-allowing.

Film Website You will need a website, preferably named exactly as the title of your film. If your film has a very long title, create a shorter, easier to remember one for your WWW address. This helps with branding and makes it infinitely easier to find.

Your website will be command central, so to speak. It will contain your teasers, trailers, notes about the film, news updates, contact information and a store. In your store, you can sell a wide variety of swag - from t-shirts to mugs to calen-

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dars to mouse pads and even DVDs of your film. Despite the enormity of gloom and doom that has been spread recently touting the end of hard copies of movies forever, digital and streaming revenue generated approximately $6 billion in sales vs. DVD sales and rentals of $12 billion in 2016. Hardly the end of DVDs as we know it. Plus, DVDs come in handy when doing promotions and in-person giveaways. Do-It-Yourself Digital Distribution Sharing your work is great, but making royalties from your work is even better. There is a wonderful list of 20 do-it-yourself digital distribution plat- forms available among the resources at pbs.org/ pov/filmmakers that makes the concept of giving complete ownership and control of your labor of love to a traditional distributor, not to mention a lion’s share of the profit, kind of silly. If you want to maximize your do-it-yourself digital distribution and subsequent revenue, mastering each and every one of these platforms is key.

Film Festivals? With very few exceptions, spending significant time, money and energy on the film festival “circuit” is more often than not a fruitless endeavor that does little more than help you meet other independent (i.e., struggling) filmmakers. Unless you get accepted into the top three or four film festivals, your resources would be better utilized elsewhere.

Inspired by Technology Technology’s impact was also the theme of E-delivery, the national Bronze Medal winner animated by Young Gul Cho, who recently completed the M.F.A. program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Her 3D CG film depicts robots that churn out designer babies. As Cho explains, “The idea is that as artificial intelligence keeps developing, it might finally come to the area of making babies by following the customers’ orders.” E-delivery clearly makes an analogy to single-cup coffee makers, with each baby’s characteristics chosen from a menu of choices. “When people see my film, they just laugh. It can be humorous and horrifying at the same time.”

Among the influences Cho says inspired her to depict a future of machine dominance was Dada artist Raoul Hausmann’s 1919 piece Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Time). Though Cho uses no dialogue, E-delivery makes it clear what is going on, as her beautifully lit and detailed machines assemble the humans of the future. “That realism is exactly what I wanted,” she says. Especially notable is that her sophisticated computer animation was created completely by Cho over six months’ time.

After seeing this film, it’s not surprising that the visual effects powerhouse Framestore offered her an internship. But she is also skilled in 2D motion graphics, and has worked as a freelancer for Nickelodeon. “I’m interested in both 2D and 3D,” she says, adding that her goal is learning to work with other team members.

Misfortunes of War It’s actually a hallmark of this year’s Student Academy Award-winning films that the animation was done almost exclusively by the honorees themselves. Silver Medalist Devon Manney did enlist some of his fellow USC students to handle color and background work on his hand-animated film Cradle, which runs over 14 minutes long. He was able to pay those artists, as well as Julliard-trained composer Saad Haddad, with funds raised through Kickstarter and a grant from the Sloan Film Program.

Cradle explores the heartbreaking trials of a war veteran who lost both of his lower arms while fighting in Iraq. Manney explains, “I don’t have first-hand knowledge of anybody like this character, but I grew up in the post-9/11 period and I wanted to try and understand it more.” Especially poignant is the excruciating phantom limb pain that his main character endures, which Manney viewed as a profound metaphor. “It’s still misunderstood,” he points out. “You see amputees in the media sometimes, but their phantom pain never comes up.”

Manney believes that the animation medium enabled him to portray this vet’s plight more directly than live action would. “That would be a lot harder because of the suspension of disbelief that you’d have to break down, which really doesn’t exist in animation.” Still, it took two years to develop Cradle, and Manney credits the support of USC professor Sheila Sofian (a Student Academy Award medalist herself). “What kept me going was the hope that people will look at it and feel an emotional connection. I want to use animation to tell stories that no one else has done. This medium has only been in existence for about a century, so there are so many things that no one has done.”

Embracing Diversity That’s also a pretty apt description for this year’s Gold Medal-winning film, In a Heartbeat. The CG-animated film follows the adventures of a closeted adolescent boy whose heart literally drags him towards another boy he’s pining for. Co-created by Beth David and Esteban Bravo at the Ringling College of Art and Design, In a Heartbeat is that rare graduation film that became a viral sensation within days of being posted on YouTube. Its sweet portrayal of the two boys discovering their mutual attraction even prompted a supportive tweet from LGBTQ champion Ellen DeGeneres, and the Human Rights Campaign posted a link to the film.

All of which left David and Bravo amazed. The pair first got an inkling of the impact their film would have when they posted an animatic on Kickstarter to raise the funds that paid composer Arturo Cardelús. Their goal was $3,000, but they raised $14,000. “That was a moment of: Wow. We’ve got something here. Hopefully we won’t screw it up!” recalls David.

Bravo credits Ringling classmate Hannah Lee for the idea of a boy whose heart pops out of his chest to chase down a girl that he likes. “I was reluctant because I thought I didn’t have anything new to say. Then Beth and I asked ourselves, ‘What if these people were the same gender?’ It was something we were able to relate to that we thought wasn’t being done in animation.”

The pair shared the animation duties equally, often finishing each other’s drawings. They hope to collaborate again, although for now David is working on JibJab’s StoryBots, and Bravo is a story artist at Blue Sky Studios. As David notes, “Working together on a project like this was helpful in understanding how the industry functions … if only on a small scale!” Student Academy Award winners automatically qualify for Oscar consideration. Learn more at www.oscars.org/saa.

Creating the dazzling visual effects for required a superhuman eye for detail and exceptional attention to the actors’ gestures. By Trevor Hogg

Things never get any easier for Marvel Studios vfx supervisor Jake Morrison. This past year, the industry veteran worked with lead vendor Framestore along with 17 other companies — including Method Studios, Rising Sun Pictures, ILM, Double Negative, Digital Domain and Iloura — to produce 2,700 shots for a cosmic road trip undertaken by an Asgardian prince and his green giant friend in Thor: Ragnarok.

“We go everywhere and see everything. It’s bonkers!” laughs Morrison. “It’s not like working with Captain America and, to some degree, with Spidey, where there are a certain number of rules because Cap and Peter Parker are flesh and blood. You don’t have any of that in the Thor universe because your main character is a god. Then you’ve got the Hulk, who is like an atom

Visual effects master Dennis Berardi discusses the stunning effects of Guillermo del Toro’s By Karen Idelson

There are few directors who’ve loved monsters, creatures and ghosts in the way that Guillermo del Toro has loved them. As an auteur and cinephile himself, the Mexican helmer’s vision of these beings has carried on a legacy that stretches back as far as the history of film. With his latest release, The Shape of Water, del Toro gives us his own fascinating take on a kind of “fish man” who became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, with the help of Dennis Berardi, vfx supervisor and CEO of the elite effects house Mr. X.

Berardi and the director became friends after working on a half-dozen projects with one another. And del Toro hinted at what he had in mind during one of their talks. “Guillermo and I did Crimson Peak together and that was an entire year of our lives together,” recalls Berardi. “While we were working, he said he was toying with an idea for a film. Then he sent me the script and I was absolutely blown away, because the leading man had to do things that I thought were beyond what an actor in a special effects makeup suit could do,” says Berardi. “He had to emote, he had to swim, he had special bioluminescent power, he had to exhibit unique properties like healing, and there was lots of screen time.”

Because the director had something very special in mind, he knew finances would be tight. During a live Facebook appearance, del Toro said his budget for the film was $19.5 million and that getting what he wanted on screen for that number was an exhausting journey that made him lose sleep and gain weight.

While Berardi and del Toro talked about the creature they would make together, they started to call him “Charlie” as an affectionate nickname, and soon this being would come to take over all their discussions. “With Guillermo very early on he told me he wanted us to be able to make Charlie a full-frame, digitally animated character without compromise, whenever he asked for it,” says Berardi. “So, he needed to be able to have Doug Jones [the actor who played Charlie] in a suit and then cut next to a digital version of the character and have them exactly match shot to shot and in close up, and that was really rough.”

Berardi was excited by the challenge but immediately realized there were times when matching footage of the actor in

‘If you know anything about Guillermo, you know he’s an animator at heart. He wanted the fish to swim by in a certain way and things to move in particular way, and even the bubbles had to move in time with the music the way he wanted.’ — Dennis Berardi, vfx supervisor

post captured or post animated. Now, we can really leverage an actor’s performance, have [actors playing CG characters] interact with other actors, capture it at that time, and then turn it all around so much quicker. And that can really help directors, cinematographers, and the whole moviemaking process.”

So with these concepts in mind, here’s a look at a handful of developments that industry professionals say are altering, evolving or improving their creative approach to designing and executing visual effects. Ultra High-Resolution

Imagery The rise of high dynamic range imagery for broadcast and cinema, 4K, 8K, and the renaissance of 70mm film for large-format moviemaking, among other developments, have increased rendering demands and caused technical changes to many facility pipelines, and how visual effects artists approach such work. According to Andy Lockley, visual effects supervisor at U.K.-based vfx house, Double Negative, “extra resolution required for [an IMAX movie] has had a big impact on the way

view a performance. We can now see real quality very soon. This has sped up much of our workflow, and allows us to process hundreds of shots much quicker than we could before, because we are now seeing very close to final outputs quickly.”

Meadows is particularly excited about these kinds of developments because they are allowing the previz process to become a far more important collaborative piece of the overall filmmaking framework.

“What is happening is that, a lot of times, they are figuring out a story in previz now,” he says. “The director may use it to come up with a clearer idea of what he wants, or during the process we come up with entirely new ideas. So you get to work with the director to start laying paint onto the canvas, so to speak, and that is really great.”

Beyond previz, Legato elaborates that the game engine phenomenon’s great potential offers “not only a visual entrée into the virtual world, but a visceral one, as well. In the game engine, you are ensconced in a full 360 3D immersive world that responds in real time to your every move and whim. You sense and feel the same visceral response to an object, person or creature that invades your personal space, along with the sensation of height and peripheral vision. The end result, while still one step removed from the actual physical world, reproduces the sensations that are felt as if they were the same. ‘What if’ scenarios and abstract thoughts abound while being unencumbered by physical space, practicality or cost. It’s a remarkable degree of freedom, bringing to life an abstract idea that was otherwise deemed too impractical to explore conventionally.”

Performance Capture The stunning seamless union of human actors with CG augmentation that has swept the industry in recent years in such franchises as the Lord of the Rings, Avatar and Planet of the Apes franchises seemingly sets a higher ing, so that when we are doing post-viz, we have all the data there and can use it in our software for tracking and to quickly do temp stuff for editorial. That is real human emotion data to drive digital humans or creatures, and it is speeding up the entire pipeline.” Better Pipelines Another offshoot of these developments is the fact that major facilities are busy these days upgrading pipelines and workflows to

ample, are two pieces of software that allow you to create different levels of detail very quickly,” he says. “After all, you have to make the assets work in the pipeline, no matter what level of detail is required.”

Looking Ahead Industry professionals say more evolutions are percolating that they expect will further improve efficiency and how their creative process works. These range from cloud computing to a wide range of digital simulation and rendering breakthroughs to a revolution in virtual set systems for broadcast television, and all the way to the prospect of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning computer algorithms into the vfx process.

Dr. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and President of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, says he expects deep learning technologies “to have an impact” on the industry, even though it remains unclear in exactly what ways. Catmull points out that major studios like the Disney/ Pixar/ ILM sister companies and others have major research groups hard at work today trying to figure out how to integrate such things in a way that broadens creative vistas, ranging from automation to faster applications to increased interactivity, and so on.

“It’s the early days, but [deep learning tools] appear likely to be very important to visual ef-