There is a very interesting question being raised over on Variety today. Should Animated movies also qualify for the category of “Best Visual Effects” along side of non-animated films?
“My job is the visual effects supervisor for ‘Beowulf,'” says SPI’s Jerome Chen. “It’s the same title I had for ‘Stuart Little’ and ‘Stuart Little 2.’ My job function has grown through the years to the point where now, yes, I touch every single frame … but the essence for me, my main function, has stayed the same.”
Moreover, argues “Surf’s Up” visual effects supervisor Rob Bredow, it’s not just the job descriptions that overlap. “The exact same artists and exact same techniques were used on ‘Surf’s Up’ and ‘Spider-Man,'” Bredow says. “They were rendering sand, and we were rendering millions of particles of water. We were literally developing the same tools at the same time.”
When i first thought about the question, my initial reaction was “hell no, it’s a different medium and it shouldn’t qualify”. However, the more and more I think about it, the more it seems to make total sense.
Music in animated films is eligible for nomination right along side of the non-animated films. The musicians score the music the same way no matter if it’s animated or not. The same is true with visual effects artists. They get handed footage (doesn’t matter if it’s animated or non-animated footage) and they apply their digital visual effects the exact same way that they do for either.
So while on the surface it seems like visual effects in animated films should not be considered along side of their non-animated counterparts… when you think about it, there really is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t be.
What do you guys think? Should Animated films be eligible for best Visual Effects right along with live action films, or should they not? And most important… why?
