Thursday, February 11, 2010

Zinc Oxide And You!

Can you imagine a motion-capture version of FALLING DOWN?
Would the Academy nominate the star who did the pre-animation acting for Best Actor? Or would they be shut out like the cast of AVATAR?

Things are still happening with my bronze medal winning screenplay VOLATILE. An actual agent is reading it now, from an agency you've all heard of. Cool!

Still think it's strange that *at least* one producer at every studio in town is reading it, but agents and managers don't seem interested. But, screw it - If there's anything I know, it's that you don't need an agent or manager to sell a script.

Hmm, do motion capture writers make crappy animation writer wages? I may have to say no to that company.

Okay, while I'm e-mailing scripts to producers from around the world, I thought I'd share this skit from KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE:


- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:

TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Visual Contrast - showing emotions visually using images and situations... and a Hitchcock film.
Dinner: Ate really late - burgers from Carls jr.
Pages: Still too busy sending scripts to producers all around the world... so for the next 2 days I'm writing articles for Script.

2 comments:

Scott Squires said...

There's no such thing as motion capture writers.
There are actors and stunt people working under the direction of the director who are motion captured. There are visual effects artists who take that performance data and apply it to computer graphic animation.

"pre-animation acting"
There can be previs (previsualization) motion capture but the real production uses the real actors such as in Avatar. You're seeing the actor's performance going through a CG Avatar. On a motion capture film the animation tends to come into play for the creatures, distant shots and making the motion capture work correctly.

wcmartell said...

Most animation writing is covered by an IATSE contract that sucks - animation writers being paid peanuts compared to live action. WGA minimums do not apply (though they are trying to organize IATSE shows into WGA shows right now - animation caucus). On all of those Disney films, the writers were paid crap... much much lower than they would be paid if the exact same script had been made with actors on the screen.

Because motion capture is still animation on screen, it *may* fall under the same rules as animation (I don't know - which is the subject of my joke) so the writer would be paid next to nothing for writing something like BEOWULF if it's animated, and at least WGA minimum if the film had actors on the screen.

Because there *is* a majopr difference between writers for animation and writers for live action (different unions, very different pay scales) there may actually be "motion capture writers".

- Bill

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