HERESY!!!

With Sheridan College's Industry Day fast approaching, bloggers like Mark Mayerson have posted some excellent advice for film school graduates and other job seekers. A lot of this also applies to people who are pitching shows. Mark makes some good points - so I'll simply refer you to his blog. That said, there is an idea that I'd like to suggest - radical? Yes. Heretical? Maybe. But here it is...

Look outside of your comfort zone. Graduates of Animation Schools look down on other types of filmmaking. "I'd never make a live action film." is a comment that I've heard time and again. I was banned from the website www.animationnation.com (2 lifetime bans and counting) because amongst other things - I'm a writer, not an animator. People in the arts - although they like to think that they're liberal, are really quite xenophobic. If you're not one of us - you're EVIL!!! For a really good look at this, check out www.boingboing.net - an artsy-techno site which once claimed to be a "directory of wonderful things" - and now boasts an "anti-everything" point of view.

BACK TO THE TOPIC

If you're pitching a show - does it have to be animated? Or live action? Or puppets? With the convergence of technologies available today, there are an unlimited number of options available to a producer.

If you have a vision for your show - that's the way you want to see it produced. But you have to ask yourself, "Is this the best way to do my show?" Times are tough - budgets are tight. Its easier to sell a less expensive show than a costly one.

My original pilot for FREAKY STORIES was a 5 minute animatic (a film made up of camera moves - zooms, pans - over static artwork). The network commissioned a 1/2 hour animatic pilot - which worked out very well. From that point, we went into fully animated production on the series. But my original vision was that FREAKY should have been done as animatics - with the artwork farmed out to a wide variety of artists.

That was my original concept - but for the network sale, we had to change it. For the better? Maybe.