Yesterday Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew posted an interesting article about animated features for older audiences.
I agree with Beck that the general perception out there is that animated features are ‘kid stuff’ whilst their television counterparts like South Park, Family Guy, Adult Swim (as Beck states) have clearly shown people that just because something is on TV and it is animated does not mean it is made for children necessarily. As we embark on a mission to write and direct animated features for audiences in their teens and twenties, this subject is of real interest to me.
For so many years, the bulk of traditional animated feature films by Disney and the like were made for children and family audiences. Every now and then a film would pop up such as Animal Farm or Yellow Submarine that was pitched at an older audience yet still could be enjoyed by children. Then Fritz The Cat became probably the first well known animate feature film specifically for adults and not to be watched by children at all.
Why are we only just starting to see dribs and drabs of animated features for different specialised audiences ie. Coraline, 9 and The Fantastic Mr. Fox appearing to mainstream audiences now ? Surely people would have realised that it is another mode of storytelling and by no means a genre?
When I tell people I want to develop feature films for people in their teens and 20s, they say one of two things: ‘Hey, you’re right, there isn’t many animated features in that audience bracket as there is for animated tv series… what gives?’; OR ‘People that age are the hardest audience to get and they don’t go and pay to see movies, they would rather download them or play video games.
Both statements excite me and motivate me to do what I am endeavouring to do. Maybe I am simply naive and unaware of all of the statistics of this demographic, but I’m pretty sure young people in their teens and 20s go to the movies. After all, I am in my 20s and most of my friends are also in this age bracket and believe it or not, we’ll go to the movies. I believe it comes down to whether the film looks like it will talk to them in some way on an emotional level (something which many of the ‘kiddie’ features do not), provide ‘something different’ and impressive on a visual level and a story and characters that echoes the attitudes and sense of humour that they have.
This has clearly been achieved in the live action realm by directors such as Tarantino (Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds) , Judd Apatow (Superbad, Pineapple Express) and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City), Zack Snyder (300, The Watchmen) and Sacha Baron Cohen’s films ‘Borat’ and the upcoming ‘Bruno’. Why isn’t there a young, dynamic, risk-taking animated feature director in that bracket? It does suprise me it hasn’t happened yet but I believe with the changing landscape that soon there will be a growing number of them and I am really excited to try and make films that have the same impact on an audience as these films have.
