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?"

Comments

steve jobs?

[lotas]

dident pixar get a major start (with the help of a lot of money) by steve jobs?

Re:steve jobs?

[RLW]

and Disney.

Pixar will be around

[flewp]

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.

Re:Pixar will be around

[karmaflux]

I don't think it implies a threat to Pixar, I think it's just a way to put across the fact that both despair.com and a computer animation house are in the body of the article. A misleading and confusing way, but a way nonetheless.

Re:Pixar will be around

[EMH_Mark3]

Eh DreamWords did a pretty good job with Shrek.

Re:Pixar will be around

[EMH_Mark3]

ffs.. DreamWorks :/

Re:Pixar will be around

[IWorkForMorons]

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.

Pretty sure the movie "Titan A.E." from the now-defunct studio who's name is forgotten would qualify...

Re:Pixar will be around

[twoslice]

Movies are all about quality. It does not matter what your company name is - if you make a quality product people will fill the seats and buy the DVDs. Just because you have a recognizable name - does not mean that you will have an instant hit.

Conversely, if you make a lousy product investors will not make any money at it...

Re:Pixar will be around

[flewp]

Agreed, they did a wonderful job. But as I mention a few posts down, no other studio can really claim to have a portfolio (for their type of work) of the caliber of Pixar. That is to say, they have multiple films that are of extremely high quality, both in technical aspects and in storytelling.

Re:Pixar will be around

[flewp]

Movies are all about quality

And that's why Pixar is the leader of the field. They are both extremely talented on the technical side and, just as, if not more importantly, the storytelling side.

Just because you have a recognizable name - does not mean that you will have an instant hit.

Agreed, but a recognizable name means people will at least look at and consider your work, especially if your recognized name is associated with quality.

Re:Pixar will be around

[Khomar]

but a recognizable name means people will at least look at and consider your work, especially if your recognized name is associated with quality.

Absolutely. Consider the past couple trailers for the Pixar films. Both "Monsters Inc." and "Finding Nemo" contained very little about the actual story. In fact, after seeing the trailer for "Finding Nemo", I was not exactly enthused about the story. However, I knew from experience that Pixar uses excellent stories and expressive, fascinating characters, and so I, like millions of others, went and say the film and loved it. Pixar has built such a good reputation that they could almost just display a screen that said " - A Pixar Film - Summer 2005" and people would flock to see it.

I would also like to point out what I see that makes them great. They combine a fantastic story with great characters told through cutting edge computer graphics with content that is great entertainment for kids while having enough sophistication in their humor to highly entertain adults (note: this means no "adult" humor in the bad sense of the word). This is why Pixar is now the reigning champ, and as long as they stick to this formula, they will never lose that title.

From across the sea

[Bazzargh]

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.... ;)

Re:steve jobs and other red herrings

[1u3hr]

Neither Steve Jobs nor Pixar are even mentioned in the article linked. Why on earth is Pixar in the headline?

film length

[theMerovingian]

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).

Wouldn't it make more sense...

[GeekLife.com]

For the title of the article to be "The Pixaring of Despair," considering there's nothing happening to Pixar at all?

Re:Forgotten studio? Not quite.

[a1englishman]

I'm not defending Don Bluth, but your supposition that something has to make money in order to be considered good is erroneous. Making money is an indicator of being popular, not necessarily good. There's plenty of popular films that are utter cods wallop. There are also plenty of good films that were utter financial flops.