the road to disaster

[egypturnash]

"The Simpsons Movie" is coming out in two and a half months. Its writers still barely seem to know what happens in it. They've been working on the script since 'late 2003'. They're throwing entire animated scenes on the cutting room floor.

The poor bastards who actually have to draw this endlessly-revised shit are, of course, barely mentioned in this story. Except for a quote from Groening about the suppressed tension of the animators every time they make them try to twist in yet another direction.

From outside, this sounds like exactly the same kind of obsessive revisionism that I saw happening on "Ren And Stimpy Adult Party". There were episodes that turned into two-and-a-half show epics due to endless storyboard "improvements", eating up all the budget and time, leaving no room to actually animate it well. The bar for the Simpsons is lower, in animation and drawing quality, and the budget is higher, so they can just drag in more people to hack out half-assed scenes and slap some shadows on top of them to make it look 'cinematic' and probably get away with it.

But I bet there's more than a few people in the trenches of this show who're going to have the last spark of giving a damn for animation burnt out by this death march. There're going to be scenes someone put their heart and soul into, that set some new milestone for them, that get tossed because these fucking writers can't nail down a story in the boards and stick to it. Yeah, let's have a widescreen shot of every character who ever appeared in the show. Maybe we'll cut it later.

Fuck. In another world where I'd iterated on the test for the show a couple more times, I might be one of those people. I could see settling into a comfortable rut on that endless show and putting enough into the odd scene to get asked to work on the movie, and actually really love a few scenes of my own. Would I get to see my work up there on the big screen? It wouldn't be down to my well-honed skill; it'd be up to the whims of the writing committee. That's a horrible place to imagine being in.

Comments

[barberio.livejournal.com]

In these days of DVDs, they can always claim justification of 'we can still use it for the bonus features'.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I've seen some of my animation work up on the big screen, and trust me, being a bonus feature on the DVD is a poor, poor substitute for that.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Not really a particularly good justification, no.

This is something that Actors have had to put up with for some time. You can put your heart into a role, and end up with most or all of it on the cutting room floor. Animation hasn't had as much of it due to the expense of production leading to most of the cutting happening at the animatics.

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

I actually know a guy who animates at Film Roman, and I am fairly sure he is sick of drawing the Simpsons.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I figure that show turns into "just a job" really quick. All the fun is in writing the dialogue; you're lucky if there's two scenes in any particular episode that might actually be fun to draw. You're more likely to get yet another crowd scene, judging from my mental survey of Every Simpsons Episode I've Ever Seen...

[coyoteseven.livejournal.com]

I know someone who was sick of drawing The Simpsons a long time ago.

I know I was sick of watching The Simpsons a long time ago. I keep forgetting about this movie. I will probably conveniently forget to go see this movie. I will also forget to buy it on DVD. I will probably forget to see it for the rest of my life. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I have no plans to see it, myself. But happening across this article and reading it pissed me off, because I could so easily imagine what it's like to be the people stuck working under these indecisive writers...

Oh hey, that rhymes.

[coyoteseven.livejournal.com]

They lost Conan O'Brien. They lost Brad Bird. Yeah, this movie's gonna be one giant stinking turd.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

I had no idea this film was even in production. Isn't it a little like making a _Cheers_ movie in 1997? Even if it's still on the air, The Simpsons really feels like a spent cultural force. It's basically lost the ability to surprise.
As for the poor animators... yeah. I can see that being pretty ugly.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

See, I keep hearing "The Simpsons is passe", and yet they continue to crank out a show or two every season that surprises me. The recent MMORPG parody managed to hit several notes omitted by other parodies.

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Sounds a lot like when I was working on the animation for "Toonstruck". I'm still a bit pissed that they cut stuff that I spent weeks on; story that would have helped turn the game into a much more enjoyable experience, imho. -.-

[xyzzysqrl]

...I want to HEAR about this, if you could? I adored and cherished that game and actually phoned the number on the back of the case to beg for a sequel.

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Well... It's been a while since I worked on it but some of the stuff they cut out was:

- the injection that Count Nefarious gives Drew Blank was supposed to turn Drew into a toon! We did a lot of work on animations of toon Blanc interacting with the other characters, all of which was cut

- Count Nefarious and Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun were eventually combined (I'm not certain how) into a single character.. a huge, horiffic rabbit monster thingy, which terrorized Drew and Flux until...

- they get it into a crazy machine that first sucks the colour of of a toon, then sucks out the line cleanup turning them into rough animation, then sucks that up turning them into a rough doodle, until finally they are completely gone.

I know there are other sequences that were cut, but I don't remember exactly what.. I worked on a lot of bits and pieces so I never got a good overview of what the whole storyline was supposed to be.

Nelvana was one of two studios working on the animation.. I believe we were initially just contracted to do layout and design but the animation coming back from Korea was just atrocious and had to be fixed.. in many cases just re-done from scratch. I bet it would've been cheaper just to do it all at Nelvana in the first place. -.-

According to Wikipedia there was plans for a sequel, using some of the material that was cut from the first one.. guess it just wasn't meant to be...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Somehow, I'm not surprised that stuff like that still stings years later. The stuff I poured something of myself in, only to get screwed, still hurts when I poke at it. I remember you mentioning that before but don't remember why... knowing the era, my first guess would be 'painful triage for disc space'.

[eriscontrol.livejournal.com]

The more I read about this movie, the less I want it to ever happen; the more I dread what might happen to the new Futurama episodes/straight-to-DVD features. Matt Groening apparently doesn't care about The Simpsons any more, so why care about a show that didn't do nearly as well, aye?

Reading what he says here on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bender%27s_Big_Score), argh. There goes the future.

December now holds nothing but pure, unadulterated dread for me.