Is 'Beowulf' eligible in Oscars' race for best animated feature?
When I asked Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com to pipe in on the Oscar race for Best Animated Feature (CLICK HERE), he brought up a fascinating question: Is "Beowulf" eligible?
Jeff saw a reel of footage yesterday and it "may not, according to the Academy's 'Rule Seven,' be an animated film," he warns. "It's a real eyeball-popper and clearly something else in the realm of animation — each and every frame is, in fact, animated by the standard of digital animation — but the Academy seems to be saying that any film that starts with live action footage and then uses digital animation to enhance or augment that footage (like Richard Linklater's 'Waking Life' and 'A Scanner Darkly') is not eligible.
"The animation in this film, however, is real animation. It's not unvarnished reality. And it's also live action at the core. It was shot at Culver Studios against a green screen. It just doesn't seem to fit the Academy's definition. Roger Avary is calling it digitally enhanced live action, but it's also, in my view, unquestionably, animation. It's also mind-blowing. I loved it."
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING JEFF'S RIFF
Here is Oscar's Rule Seven: CLICK HERE
It's really simple. Action created in real time is not cinema animation. In animation, action is imagined, and is created in single-frame increments. The motion is only seen when projected or played at speed, generally 24 frames per second. Motion capture is indeed interesting and a valid form of cinema. The Gollum in LOTR was great, and so was the Jackson KING KONG, but they didn't pretend to be animation. We animators are custodians of a great historic art, involving creating the illlusion of motion by the skillful and painstaking manipulation of static images. Let other ways have other names, but only frame-by-frame creation can rightfully be called cinema animation! To include mocap in the animation category could quickly kill our art and craft!
Posted by: Gene Deitch | August 17, 2007 at 11:56 AM
It's really simple. Action created in real time is not cinema animation. In animation, action is imagined, and is created in single-frame increments. The motion is only seen when projected or played at speed, generally 24 frames per second. Motion capture is indeed interesting and a valid form of cinema. The Gollum in LOTR was great, and so was the Jackson KING KONG, but they didn't pretend to be animation. We animators are custodians of a great historic art, involving creating the illlusion of motion by the skillful and painstaking manipulation of static images. Let other ways have other names, but only frame-by-frame creation can rightfully be called cinema animation! To include mocap in the animation category could quickly kill our art and craft!
Posted by: Gene Deitch | August 17, 2007 at 11:50 AM
Let's remember that the Academy didn't award 2001: A Space Odyssey for Best Makeup Effects because the Academy members thought that the monkeys in the beginning were real. The Academy are dinosaurs. Zemeckis is evolving the form, and they need to keep up. It seems to me that Beowulf should be eligible as a live action film. It's live action cloaked in digital costumes and backgrounds. A hybrid.
Posted by: Donald Taft | August 03, 2007 at 06:18 PM
"But wouldn't that have made Happy Feet ineligible last year?"
The rule was put into place after the Happy Feet win.
Posted by: Lightyear | August 03, 2007 at 04:35 PM
so... only 'toons (talking animals or objects... or superheroe types) for Best Animation...
Posted by: Armando (Caracas, Venezuela) | August 03, 2007 at 08:35 AM
So the Academy goes through all this trouble to get a Best Animated Film Catagory, and now they're saying that if it's animated over something it's not animation...so that basically means that the ever-wise Academy is knowingly disbar an entire genre of film. Completely stupid...and untill they add either a Best Ensamble or Best Stunts...I'll still hate the Academy...
Posted by: starbucks10172 | August 01, 2007 at 01:55 PM
But wouldn't that have made Happy Feet ineligible last year?
Posted by: AJ | August 01, 2007 at 10:43 AM