TINTIN: "Exclusivity, Right?" A Few Get the Golden Ticket, Most Don't

I am not sure, in this day and age, the whole “flying a bunch of handpicked writers and bloggers to see such and such” is the wisest approach to build buzz for a movie.  See, like anthills, pig farms and male prisons on the web hierarchy and access matter.

Therefore, when I saw Anne Thompson’s link to Bill Desowitz‘ coverage of the event, I figured she would comment on that but, being the pro that she is, she simply linked the story.  WETA and Paramount are doing what they think is the right thing to do – send people whose audience will be most interested in the mocap technology.  There is nothing new about this.  But very often it does lead to bitterness.  Alls I’m saying.

Here is what Desowitz had to say:

In fact, The Adventures of Tintin (December 23) looks like the best example yet of the fledgling and controversial technique, thanks to noticeable improvements in facial modeling, skin texturing, and more believable eyes. The result is a unique hybrid of caricature and photorealism. And despite the fact that most Americans are unfamiliar with Herge’s Belgian comic books, Spielberg has potentially pulled off a rousing adventure in the spirit of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Speaking from LA via polycom, Spielberg told me that in spite of this brave new digital world, “it always gets down to the basics: story, plot, narrative, characters, especially with the Herge books, [and] our sensitivity in trying to capture a kind of art form that would be closer to [his illustrative] style.”

Did they really have to fly all the way to WETA to find this out?  Not quite sure.  Either way, the prospect of whether TinTin will be eligible for the animated feature Oscar is also discussed:

So what does this potentially mean for Tintin’s Oscar chances as an animated feature? Despite stricter Academy rules for performance capture and traditionalists decrying the technique’s lack of creative merit, Tintinclearly pushes boundaries with a new kind of artistic layering of animated expression.

“It all depends on how you define animation, but to me the tools and techniques [of visual effects and animation] are all the same,” suggested Joe Letteri, Weta’s Oscar-winning senior visual effects supervisor for bothTintin and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (August 5). “Performance capture is not a mechanical process; it’s still an artistic process. If the point is to bring characters to life, you’ve got some of the best actors in the world. So why not engage with them? Why not collaborate with them? With a face as pliable as Captain Haddock’s and a performer like Andy [Serkis] driving it, there are times when you want to go over the top and hopefully get away with it because it’s a fun movie.

“When you saw comics as a kid or 2D-animated cartoons, they always looked real, but the promise of what Pixar started with Toy Story was to bring it into a realistic world. We’re following in that same vein, but we can really get real now because the way Herge drew his characters and the way he worked from reference and his imagination really fits in nicely with the aesthetic of visual effects.”

I’m thinking this is to animators as Avatar was to actors.  But let’s just see what happens.

Links:
Comingsoon on the TinTin mocap

Slash Film’s blow by blow of the day’s events 

Movie City News short account of the event