I met a bright young woman who manages an animation studio in Toronto. What I learned surprised me.
She can produce a ½ hour animated video for $350,000 and a 26 part season for $12 million.
All I need to get her is a good script with a good description of the characters.
Today, if you are buying a single TV series of ½ hour comedies with actors, you can expect to pay over $35 million for 26 programs or 13 hour long programs. And that is with ‘no-name’ actors. Get ‘name’ actors and the price goes up by $5 million per ‘name’.
I began wondering why we see actors at all. The current simple answer is that actors have identification that can bring audiences with them. Some big budget animations have prominent actors as voices and idiosyncrasies in the animated characters.
That may be true now. I see a different direction. In the feature film Her, Scarlett Johansson was the voice of a computer. She was so powerful as a voice that she got her own action film as the sole star, Lucy. Being a ‘voice’ can make you important to the audience.
I’ve talked to kids who tell me that the character in a pure animation, Inside Out, was so powerful that they expect to see the character again in other films and on TV. The character was a red male: anger.
I foresee the day when characters and voices in animation can be as important to audiences as actors. In that day, animation will become dominant.