**** MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC AND PERSONAL - Thief stuff continues after this. ****
Yeah, the pitch session was tonight ... and my desire to come up with some kind of trailer for two animated pilots that haven't been animated yet is why I haven't replied in this thread in a in a couple days! Was working hard. Drawing like mad ...
So I did manage to create two very rough trailers - not finished animation by any means, but they give some of the flavor of The Chosen Ones and Dance With Grandpa.
Here, actually - have a look:
http://orangecow.org/videos/chosenonestrailer.mov
The Chosen Ones - Cody, a 24 year old slacker, is thrown out of his aunt & uncle's house, and winds up homeless on the street. He meets Juliet, an eccentrically brilliant poet whose apartment has been blown up (actually by aliens, but only we know that) and who is also homeless ... they strike up a friendship and wind up getting an apartment, next door to Rex Roper, who lives with an alien named Jefferson and a robot named Lionel, and who in his spare time battles intergalactic crime. Together they will save the world from alien invasion, along with the usual trials and tribulations of twentysomething life. A heartfelt comedy.
http://orangecow.org/videos/grandpatrailer.mov
Dance With Grandpa - A rather strange little sketch comedy show. We are the laughing few who understand your soul's torment, sent from hell to love you. In the vein of David Lynch and The Muppet Show.
http://orangecow.org/videos/squiffytoon.rm
Squiffy the Derelict Cat - I animated this back in 2002 - I didn't write it (apart from the scene with the prostitute) - but I showed it tonight as a sample of my work.
Anyway, I had those ready to go .... and the pitch session was a very strange experience. It was for the Animation Co-Op at awn.com .... six people were pitching ideas looking for artists, and I was two of them. I was there with Daniel Geduld who is doing voices for both shows but mostly Grandpa, which he's also writing stuff for ....
The first guy to go was a clearly insane man whose previous film was about LSD. Looking like a cross between the seventh and eigth Doctor Whos, he pitched a story about the Buddhist God of Booze, who wants to enter a contest for the best moustache, but is destroyed by a jealous horse - then Buddha rides on a motorcycle. The end?
Um, yeah. I can't describe how insane this pitch was. It was also illustrated by various terrible drawings, and one quite good piece of computer animation. Pretty much everyone was pitching 3D material, so it didn't matter that none of them could really draw. It was very strange to see that lack of interest in good artwork in an animation pitch session. Sign of the times. I recall Richard Williams writing about this once too.
I don't do 3D, so I guess I'm a dinosaur already.
The next guy was a radio host who had recorded something like 5,000 episodes of something incredibly uninteresting. He couldn't draw and wanted someone to animate it for him. He'd been shopping this round for 17 years, and been optioned and rejected by every network. "You had your chance," was my comment.
Then there was quite a nice Silly Symphonies type piece called Birdland Swing, by some renegade ex-Toy story 3 employees. Once again, the artwork was bad, but it was a 3d piece so that doesn't matter anymore. Would like to see this, as it looked like a throwback and very entertaining. The storyboards got laughs, which is a good sign.
Then I was up. Hm.
I'm normally pretty good at off the cuff public speaking ... at least I can be pathetic and funny ... but it was hard to get the audience interested, and on my side. Their minds were elsewhere. LA audience. Er.
I asked, any fans of The Thief and the Cobbler in the house? Yeah, I had brought 5 copies of The Recobbled Rough Cut. If nothing else I could be the only one there to give out free gifts. At least 9 people raised their hands - 5 people got copies.
Audience still not with me, despite free gifts. Can't buy me love.
Played Dance with Grandpa trailer. The sound quality was awful, the bass thrown way up and everything so distorted you could hardly understand it. Damn. I wasn't that happy with this trailer anyway. Got a couple scattered laughs, but er.
Started to explain Dance With Grandpa, then realized there was no explanation for Dance With Grandpa. Started to tell the story of The Chosen Ones instead, where my heart really lies.
Funny thing - there was a fellow in the audience, who presented later ... who is almost finished with a flash-animated feature called The Chosen ONE. He has an all-star voice cast (Tim Curry! Laura Prepon! Lance Hendriksen! Debra Wilson! Chris Sarandon!) .... although the animation is, well, Flash. I knew about this film because of all the bizarre similarities between it and my own baby, The Chosen OneS. We had been throwing round ideas, as a gag, of which celebrities we'd cast in it if it were a big budget feature. Laura Prepon got a nod for my lead, Juliet. Well, Laura Prepon is already in The Chosen ONE. I read up on this and the similarities were ridiculous ... slacker with sideburns thrown out of where he is, genius girl with glasses, Robot Wars, "sarcasm in place of makeup" ... replace aliens (in my script) with religion (in theirs) and you've got more similarities than Aladdin and The Thief.
So.
Ah.
I was presenting my baby the same night as he was presenting its parallel universe twin. Great.
I explained that I was really looking for animators, anyone to help out, explained the plot briefly, said that it was basically cramming everything I loved into one story, and trying to convey how heartfelt the project is.
Played the clip.
The sound was so warped and distorted that you couldn't make out half the dialogue. And guess what - the entire trailer is just dialogue, with no real animation. So I was screwed, basically. Its entire entertainment value was ruined by crappy A/V quality.
No laughter when I wanted it - there was laughter when the Beatles' Golden Slumbers kicked in, which is somewhere I didn't really want anyone to laugh, but oh well.
Oh well indeed.
I opened it up to questions from the audience. There were very few. I wound up finishing early, which I never ever do.
Sigh.
The next guy came up to show his project Nubbinwood, a computer animated feature concept which he's doing as a short. It was brilliant and blew everything else we saw that night out of the water. It was just 2 minutes of gorgeous visuals (like Ice Age crossed with Nick Park). The sound was inaudible, and it didn't matter. Wish that had been true of mine. He opened the room up to questions and the comments were just praising him for being a genius.
On some level, we all want to be "that guy." The brilliant guy. I've directed seven features and thirty shorts, written dozens of screenplays, and I wouldn't have done that if I didn't think I was a creative guy with talent and a lot to say, but I've never gotten to be "that guy," who nobody has any comments on except to say they're now his biggest fan. I'm "that guy" whose work no one watches, understands, or has any comments on. "That guy" who's an east coast man at heat and has never been understood by pretty much anyone in Los Angeles.
Anyway.
The "alternates" were two flash-animated ditties, both pretty ... a short about a flower, and the first five minutes of The Chosen ONE. I spoke with the creator of this afterward, but did not touch him, because if you actually touch your doppelganger, or negative self, matter would meet antimatter and we would both disappear in a flash of logic.
I hung around afterward, and almost no one talked to me. I stood in silence and eventually talked to a couple of people.
Daniel, who drove me there, had to go because he was really tired. I had decided to stay to see the Chosen ONE, despite having no idea how I was going to get home. I sat on a bench waiting for a bus, not knowing where the bus would be going. An Irish woman saw me sitting there, and asked if I needed a ride. She was going in my direction, and took me home.
Whew. What a relief. Sometimes I feel blessed or lucky, and sometimes I feel exactly the opposite. Guess that's life. The positives and negatives in my life are constantly crashing. My highs high, my lows low.
The nice thing about this pitch session is that it forced me to get these little trailers in shape. I slapped them together in a matter of a few days and they're not very good, but they're a start. It forced me to START and put something on video. My goal is now to animate the trailers themselves, fully and gorgeously.
Shouldn't be impossible just to do some trailers. Trailers aren't super long ....
Wish me luck ... and hey, if anyone's an artist wanting a project ... =D
**** END PERSONAL POST. THIEF STUFF CONTINUES AS SCHEDULED BELOW. ***