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Despairing of Pixar
An anonymous reader writes "According to AnimWatch, Despair Inc :-( has released the short films of stop-motion animator Mark Osborne on DVD. They're available through Happy Product.com. MORE, the first stop action short film shot in IMAX format has been nominated for an Academy Award, won a Jury Prize at Sundance, appeared in a Kenna music video, and even appears in the Hotline documentation, but this looks like the first time it's ever been available on DVD. According to the filmmaker he hopes to fund future films by selling his old ones. This is the best short film I've ever seen, so all I can say is I'm glad it's finally getting a proper release. Isn't this how
Pixar and Aardman got their starts?"
dident pixar get a major start (with the help of a lot of money) by steve jobs?
Lotas T Smartman www.lotas-smartman.net
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The classic essay on "worse is better" is either misunderstood
as their video for 'Hell Bent'
so all I can say is I'm glad it's finally getting a proper release
How about proper bandwidth...
I assume the subject line of the submission is trying to indicate that this hurts Pixar.
The truth is, Pixar will be around for awhile, and will continue to make great films. Really, I can't think of any other CG animation studio that has films of the caliber of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, etc. Sure, tools become better and better and are allowing a greater variety of people/studios to make similiar type of movies, but Pixar is one of the pioneers of the new technologies to hit the big screen and will continue to be for awhile.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I picked MORE up on DVD two or three years ago. It was on a compilation of a bunch of indie shorts. I don't have it in front of me, but I believe it was volume 13 of something (utopia maybe?) and it definitely had a picture of a mushroom cloud on the cover.
Actually, Pixar was a spin-off from the computer graphics division at Lucasfilm. It was sold to Steve Jobs at that time in 1986. Disney wasn't involved until 1991 - well after Pixar had made a name for itself.
Official Pixar History
Hey Gang, I saw this short quite some time ago on the Sci-Fi show Exposure. If you're interested in shorts, I really recommend checking their site out. Even though they don't have More available for on-line play, they do have shorts like Prelude to Eden, and Protest.
http://exposure.scifi.com
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Getting funding for a short film is quite possibly more difficult than getting funding for a feature film. A full-length film at least has the possibility of being picked up and distributed to vast audiences, where as an investor's return on a short film is more likely to be nothing, since they are rarely exhibited. To convince someone to give you money so you can follow your dream or experiement is quite difficult. Stan Brakhage, the world-renowned avant-garde film maker had trouble finding funding for his short films, since he was so prolific (he made about 400 films in his lifetime). He then decided to take a different approach and began painting on the actual film, which took more time, and thus was able to make his funding last.
For some other non-Pixar fascinating short films, check out:
Duck Amuck - Chuck Jones
Eye Myth - Stan Brakhage
Rabbits - David Lynch
The Heart Of The World - Guy Maddin
The Superbowl Is Gay - Andy Milonakis (yes, I'm serious. This is one of the most purely comedic films ever made)
Pixar initially worked on commercials before their movies. Not sure if these even predated the short films becuase they were initially geared to be like an advertising firm. Notable Pixar commercials include:
/w animated and Robin Hood Listerine bottle
Tropicana Orange Juice (with bouncy/dancing oranges)
Listerine
Gummy Life Savers that danced and such
Isn't this how Pixar and Aardman got their starts?" - I don't know about Pixar, but Aardman (based right down the road from me in Bristol) was originally two teenagers who got a commission from the BBC to produce a short kids ident (called the "aard man", hence the company name). From then on, the studio funded itself through producing advertisements and music videos (Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer for example), and put the revenue it recieved into producing quality shorts - it was this money that funded Nick Park's "A Grand Day Out". "Chicken Run" is an exception to the advertisement funding rule, as it's part of a five film deal with Dreamworks.
I'm unable to download the short. Who wants to make a torrent?
I'd quite like to see this film, but where's the tech spec for the DVD? From the lack of one, I can only assume that this is Region 1/NTSC?
;)
Just goes to remind us what a disaster the DVD region encoding is. Its a system that can only help large conglomerates staging their worldwide releases, not small operations who'd like to sell to all and sundry via the 'net.
Ho hum. Wish more folk would release their wares on Region 0, like the good folks at MindCandy did.
BTW, Aardman had been going for a long, long time. Those of us who grew up in the UK have been watching their stuff all our lives on Vision On, Take Hart, and Morph. The rest of the world probably saw their work first on music video - Peter Gabriel's 'So' was out 3 years before W&G. So its probably more accurate to say that Aardman got their start by years of slog on TV work.
As for "hopes to fund future films by selling his old ones" I think that's also the business plan of Disney, Universal, Sony....
i remember pixar demoing some of their medical imaging systems at princeton university back in 1987.. they sold some high-end unix-based servers to help generate graphics, the kind that are easily done on a PS1 these days. making movies wasn't even on their radar back then.
didn't buy any of the servers, but they were pretty pictures (for the time).
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I got this on the Utopia collection of independent shorts a few years back, and all I have to say is that it's simply one of the finest pieces of animation ever done. And watching it on in a small, low-res QT window is not the best way to check out the amazing texture brought about by it's Wide Format (aka IMAX) filming. This guy is fantastic, and I hope he gets some great funding because I can't wait to see what he does next.
Titan A.E. was done by Fox Animation at their defunct Arizona studio. They located their studio in Arizona to avoid paying animators union wages. The head of Fox Animation was Don Bluth. Titan A.E. basically bankrupted Fox Animation.
Fox recently bought Blue Sky Studios in upstate New York, the creators of the short "Bunny" and the feature "Ice Age." They are now working on "Robots" for early 1995 release.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Oh my god I almost fainted.... I kept reading looking for a close parenthesis in the article. Dont do this to me before coffee!
Neither Steve Jobs nor Pixar are even mentioned in the article linked. Why on earth is Pixar in the headline?
... didn't Aardman get its start working for the BBC in kids TV? "Morph" and all that?
This is the best short film I've ever seen
I am surprised more film people don't make short movies of their 'concepts', and use them as a demo to pitch to major studios/investors. If I were a film executive, I would be much more willing to consider spending $ on someone who would take that much initiative on their own dime. Also, you could sell the short film to recoup some of your costs (even if it doesn't get picked up).
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
For the title of the article to be "The Pixaring of Despair," considering there's nothing happening to Pixar at all?
that looks AWESOME too.
While I wholeheartedly agree that More is the best short I've ever seen, it's certainly been on DVD before now. I own it!
It's in a collection of other short films called short 7 - Utopia. I do highly recommend anyone that hasn't seen it to look into it.
This is not the first time MORE has been put on a DVD. Warner Brother's released a series of DVDs called "Short." The one that has more is the 7th in the series called Short: Utopia. It's somewhat of a rarity, but all the DVDs in the collection are fantastic and have some truly amazing short movies and animations. Amazon.com has a few used copies for sale still: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 03JRCL/002-9775621-7736809?v=glance
Something intelligent here.
I don't know about Aardman, but Pixar got started by making brilliant shorts like Luxo Jr. They now make features, and in Pixar's case, MAJOR BANK.
The original poster seems to be saying This guy made a brilliant short film, can we expect HIM to go on to make feature films?
He's also got a Steve Jobsian sugar daddy in the form of Dr. E.L. Kersten. But somehow I don't see a feature length film with this tone exactly cleaning up at the box office with the kiddies.
Actually, MORE is on the Film-Fest DVD - Issue 2 - Cannes released in 1999--the main reason I purchased it; well, that and the picture of Selma Hayek on the front (yum). Just do a search on Amazon or your favorite DVD shoppe.
there's a link on the gethappy.com site for an earlier film called GREENER. the trailer is online and looks interesting. does anyone know where this movie can be watched online? has anyone seen it?
If I recall correctly weren't they originally manufactuers of lamps, unicycles and snow globes?
This sig has no nutritional value...
They did Red's Dream in 1986. It was their first short film. They would compete with Pacific Digital Imaging (Images?) to see who could do the best demo movie each year at Siggraph. Even Apple did one.
I think they did Luxo Jr. in 1987.
They always had their eyes on making feature films. Selling hardware was only a sideshow. Selling Renderman seemed barely more than that.
Many people saw Creature Comforts before Sledgehammer.
Also, given that Region 0 exists, I don't see how you can say region encoding hurts the small guy. If the small guy wants to sell his stuff worldwide, region 0 allows it.
I'm not a fan of region coding, but don't go making up fake problems for it.
Pixar started life as a spin off of ILM, with Jobs as a major investor. He hoped to make money off of rendering technology and the shorts were mostly done as promotion. Little did he know there was more money in feature films than Renderman software.
Aardman got it's start in the 70's by two animators who loved clay. They sold a show called Morph to the BBC and that made the studio. Nick Park came a decade later. The first Wallace and Gromit was a student film he couldn't finish on his own. Aardman provided the resources for Nick to finish it and the rest is history.
That said, there are a number of OTHER animators who have made decent careers by using one film to finance the next. Bill Plympton comes to mind, as does Don Hertzfeldt.
Mark Osborne's films are similarly great, I wish him lots of luck.
feel like they were watching a Radiohead video?
Who am I to blow against the wind? -- Paul Simon
I've seen this before, long ago. I wasn't impressed in the least. It's the typical pseudo-philosphical shit that every "independent" filmmaker spews out. And claymation just isn't impressive anymore. Not that it every really was.
Cause at the time Andy made The Superbowl is Gay peice of crap he wasn't paying his half of the rent.
Calling that a Short "FILM" is like calling yourself "smart."
http://www.toonzanimationindia.com/ Office presumably in Burbank ( CA ), but actual animation studios back in India.
i'm not sure which compilation DVD i've seen with More on it- but whichever one it was - the encoding looked kinda sucky. i guess because they are cramming lots of data (short films) onto one DVD? i'm assuming if the More dvd for sale by the mark osbourne has only the film More on it that they would encode it at a high data level - making for a better picture. maybe?
This was mind-blowing animation, and the story/characters were not bad (Roger Ebert liked it too). However, as with Titan A.E. (which I thought was just kind of OK), the studio was basically destroyed in the process.
I thought that The Iron Giant was a really excellent movie, though perhaps the animation wasn't as flashily spectacular as Pixar. It certainly wasn't _bad_.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
...2005 release, sorry...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
In case no one has pointed this out, MORE was on the SHORT series of DVDs, Short 7 to be precise.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372521/
Disney and Pixar first got involved in 1998, before Pixar won its first Academy Award and a eve before they started selling Photorealistic RenderMan to the general public. Yes, Pixar had made a name for itself, but it wasn't as big a name as it was in 1991.
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Leo Schwab, who hangs out here occasionally ran afoul of Pixar in 1987 over Red's Dream.
I can recommend Leo as a houseguest. He fixed my toilet that year as well when I put him up so he could attend some convention in Anaheim. What a multi-talented guy.
Need Mercedes parts ?
_The Wizard of Speed and Time_ should be a lesson; God help anybody that tries this. Really.
Need Mercedes parts ?
On the topic of Pixar I have a little piece of insider info that may or may not be common knowledge yet... I don't know. The new Pixar movie will be entitled Gnomeo & Juliet... A girl's love of one particular open-source desktop environment? No, sadly it's about a girl's love affair with a man of small stature... It'll be like Shrek but she sticks with Farkward and there won't be an Ogre but a gnome that's also the man of small stature and... Well you know... if the formula works, a love story at any rate.
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I meta-moderated this as unfair. Not because the moderation itself was unfair, but because I'm fighting back against moderators who use their mod-points to attack people. I'm sorry, but you're probably innocent in this matter. However, you should consider modding up insightful or funny posts instead of modding down people posting anonymously.
"Derp de derp."
This is why I never use any negative mod except for "Overrated". It's better to be positive, but there are some things that need to be modded down.