The number of animated movies that have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars can be counted on one hand. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) was the first, breaking the veritable glass ceiling; Disney-Pixar’s Up (2009) was the second nomination in over a decade; the latest Oscars have DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon and Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story 3 as two nominees.
However, animation historians Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi said on their website CartoonBrew.com that James Cameron’s Avatar could have counted as an animated feature when nominated for Best Picture last year if it had been submitted to that category, based on the Academy’s rules.
“Due to the tremendous advances in digital technology associated with image-making, animation has been incorporated into live-action film-making to the extent that it can be difficult to define a film or character within a film as animated or not,” said Chuck Grieb, associate professor of entertainment art and animation at Cal State Fullerton.
Kimberly Neebe, president of the Pencil Mileage Club Club (a student organization at Cal State Fullerton focusing on animation and cartooning), said that after Beauty and the Beast was nominated, a separate category was created for Best Animated Feature in 2001.
Neebe said it was almost a way to divide it from the other films, and until Up, another animated movie hadn’t been nominated for Best Picture.
“They had to better themselves to get into that category,” Neebe said.
Neebe said such improvements included evoking greater emotion.
“More people cried at the beginning of Up than they did at Finding Nemo,” Neebe said. “We’re getting better each time.”
Lilly Hull, secretary of the Pencil Mileage Club, said more Best Picture nominations have to focus on the story and scripting.
“If you look at things like Up, Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, they follow a very old rule,” said Lilly Hull, secretary of the Pencil Mileage Club.
She explained it was a rule of three — the final product had to appeal to a child, her mother and her grandmother. That could make a classic, appealing to all three generations.
“You didn’t limit yourself to only things for a second grader, or only adults,” Hull said.
However, completely apart from the Academy are the Annie Awards — as its website reports, it’s “animation’s highest honor.”
” (Animators) value the Annie Awards more than we value the Oscars because it’s by our peers for our peers,” Neebe said. “For the Oscars, it almost seems like a little group of old men in a room voting with no input from the general public on what they want to see.”
Whether it is a separate awards ceremony or a separate category, animated movies don’t seem to be acknowledged as movies first.
Dana Lamb, chair of the Visual Arts Department and entertainment art and animation program coordinator at CSUF, compared animation’s history of exclusion to the treatment of comedies at the Oscars.
“Why don’t comedies get more Oscars? There can be tremendous acting and storytelling in comedies, and yet they can be dismissed,” Lamb said.
Lamb explained that with all the laughter they inspire, comedies can be seen as lacking in drama.
“People will dismiss it as superficial,” said Lamb.
Comedy is a genre, while animation is not ? it’s a medium, a vehicle for stories from all sorts of genres and for different audiences.
“When you look at Lion King, it wasn’t about cute animals; it was about parents and children, about the shame of a young boy who felt responsible for the loss of his father,” Lamb said. “That’s pretty dramatic stuff, as opposed to lighter comedy. There was an undercurrent of very serious drama, even with the music and comedic elements.”
Brandon Strathmann, assistant professor of entertainment arts and animation at CSUF, discussed how animated movies could be just seen as full of cute animals.
“There’s a preconception that cartoons are kid’s material,” Strathmann said. “And that’s mainly due to Saturday morning and afternoon cartoons.”
Strathmann said another preconception is that the computer does all the animation.
“There’s more of a human touch involved in the process,” Strathmann said.
Neebe talked about the animator’s desire to improve.
“We had to go back and make ourselves better and prove it wasn’t just some computer spitting images out,” Neebe said.
Strathmann said if there were no animators or humans controlling the motion, it wouldn’t be animation, but a special effect instead, like makeup.
Yet recently with Up, How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 following in the footsteps of Beauty and the Beast, more animated films are being nominated for Best Picture.
“One of the reasons why there are more nominations for animated pictures is because there are more of them than in the past,” Strathmann said.
He listed Pixar Animation Studios, DreamWorks Animation, Blue Sky Studios, Sony Pictures Animation and other start-up companies as examples.
“I think this current generation of artists and people grew up seeing the classic Disney cartoon boom that ran through Oliver and Company to Pocahontas,” Strathmann said. “These kinds of blockbuster films were considered higher cinema.”
Chuck Grieb, associate professor of entertainment art and animation at CSUF, talked more about the history of animation, explaining that it was rejuvenated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, beginning an expansion of the market and the general public and filmmaking industry’s acceptability of animation as something more than children’s films.
“Some of this change in perception may have been the result of the adult viewers who had grown up watching and loving animated cartoons, preparing a more receptive adult audience for the animated features produced in the late ’80s and on,” Grieb said.
Disney experienced particular success in the ’80s, influencing other major studios to explore animated movies, attracting live-action filmmakers like Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
“3-D digital animation created a new aesthetic for animated films, an aesthetic that seemed to find acceptance with an older audience more quickly than the traditional cel-painted stylistic associated with the ‘children’s’ fare of the past,” Grieb said. “PIXAR found quick and consistent success with their focus on strong stories based on solid characters. DreamWorks/PDI’s success with the more adult-oriented Shrek reinforced the idea that contemporary animation, especially 3-D digitally animated animation, was acceptable adult entertainment fare.”
Strathmann also said the increasing popularity of video games could be a factor in more animated films being nominated for Best Picture.
“People are used to playing video games that are in 3-D, and that makes these environments more acceptable and interesting to people,” Strathmann said.
Within the medium of animation, Strathmann said 3-D or computer-generated animation may be considered a higher art than 2-D or hand-drawn animation, given that other than Beauty and the Beast, only 3-D movies have received the nomination (and even the hand-drawn Disney classic had 3-D elements in its iconic ballroom scene).
“They’re ‘realer’-looking than flat 2-D,” Strathmann said. “3-D animation seems to have something to do with the public accepting animation as more grown-up.”
Strathmann said this idea of animated films being applicable to Best Picture could be spreading due to online articles and discussion.
“The Internet is where everything is these days,” Strathmann said.
The idea could also be thrown around within the Academy itself. Strathmann said those who vote in the Academy have more people among them who are employed in the computer-animated aspects of movie-making, and who are more aware of computer animation.
“There’s more of a voting base and more of an awareness of 3-D animation,” Strathmann said.
He also said more animated features being accepted for Best Picture prove beneficial.
“It’s good for animators. It means there’ll be more animated movies made,” Strathmann said. “There’s more of an opportunity for free expression.”
Neebe was reluctant to label the increase in Best Picture nominations for animated movies as a clear pattern, describing it more as hit-or-miss.
“Lately we’ve had a lot of hits,” Neebe said. “It’s always a case-by-case basis.”
Final decisions on the victor for Best Picture and other awards will be announced Oscar Night, March 7.
Source http://www.dailytitan.com/2010/12/13/animation-and-the-academy/
