But it's really hard to say to someone face-to-face, "I don't understand what you're saying" and "I don't like you."
Milstein and his Chinese colleagues have discussed why Zootopia became popular in China, but have not been able to find the answer: "Maybe the protagonist went from the countryside to the metropolis, and I don't know if it will be similar to the experience of many Chinese." ”
"2006-2016 was the golden decade of Disney Animation Studios..."
"No, no, no, I don't want this stage to have an end." Andrew Milstein laughed and interrupted Southern Weekend reporters' questions. Millstein is the president of Disney Animation Studios, he was the executive producer at Disney in 1997, and was promoted to executive vice president at the time of the release of Frozen, watching Disney transform all the way from a trough to a revival, ushering in the "golden age", until 2014, Milstein was promoted to president.
"We did start a new business in 2006." Milstein said. In 2006, Disney President Bob Egger bought Pixar Animation Studios for a $59 per share, $7 billion grant, and two of Pixar's souls, Edwin Catham and John Lasseter, were brought to Walt Disney Animation Studios, with Catham as president and Lasseter as chief creative officer.
In the past decade, Disney Animation Studios has produced many "blockbusters". 2013's Frozen was a landmark work that, in addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, broke the Lion King's record of ever winning at Disney with a box office record of $1.276 billion, becoming the highest-grossing animated film ever. Before it, the number one animated film at the box office was Pixar's 2010 Toy Story 3. In 2015, the cartoon "Super Marines" based on Marvel Animation once again won Disney the Oscar, and also made the cute intelligent robot "Big White" popular around the world.
The new climax was sparked by "Zootopia", released in February 2016, which exceeded $1 billion at the global box office, with 44% of the overseas box office contributed by Chinese audiences. The film is considered another promising Oscar-winning feat by Disney Animation Studios.
On November 11, 2016, Southern Weekend reporters interviewed Milstein at Disney's Shanghai office. Milstein came for the new film "Ocean's Edge", which will be released on November 25. "How important is Ocean's Adventure that requires the president to be personally involved?" Milstein put down the coffee cup in his hand: "Every Disney movie is important to us. "Every year, Milstein has three or four film projects on hand at the same time, each film from preparation to production, the cycle is at least five years, using a production team of hundreds of people, and finally ensuring the release of one film a year.
I've experienced Disney's decline
Ocean's Edge is exotic. Princess Moana of Oceania comes from a long-established seafaring family whose ancestors traveled to many of Oceania's islands a thousand years ago, but for unknown reasons stopped exploring. Encouraged by her grandmother, Moana embarks on a journey to find her roots, where she meets the half-human, half-god Maui and adventures with her.
Director Ron Clements began preparing for Ocean's Edge in 2011. To study the oceans, Clements and co-director John Musk went on expeditions to the islands of the South Pacific. They met an old local man who asked, "We have been immersed in your culture for so many years, can our culture also have a place in you?" ”
80% of the entire film is about the ocean. To bring the ocean to life, the entire Disney animation team didn't have ready-made technology. Some of the animation techniques used in Frozen can only be used to make sand — when a person walks into the beach, the sand will deform, leaving a footprint effect. The technical division of Disney Animation Studios has designed a new technical system to simulate ocean motion.
Clements worked at Disney Animation Studios for 39 years and was Disney's "old man." "We've lived through Disney's decline, we remember those hard days, and we don't want to go back in time." He said.
Disney Animation Studios was founded in 1923 by Walt Disney, and the animations it produces have been the collective memory of generations. Entering the 1990s, it was in rapid decline. In 1994, "The Lion King" was a peak, grossing more than $76.48 million worldwide. But then, Disney fell into a long-term trough — the nine films after "The Lion King" added up to only $75.8 million at the box office.
Due to personnel struggles, Disney Animation President Katzenberg left in 1994 to found DreamWorks Animation, becoming a strong competitor to Disney. In 2004, Pixar's "The Incredibles" produced by Pixar grossed $63 million, almost the sum of eight Disney animated films in the same period.
In 2003, Disney's signature animator, gran keane, the most famous hand-drawn animator in the history of animation, gathered 50 company executives in the 3rd floor conference room of the studio to discuss the way out of Disney animation. Three weeks later, Disney announced that it was abandoning its 70-year tradition of hand-drawing and making only computer-animated films. Whether to "break the wrist" caused a lot of controversy at the time, and many animators had to learn from scratch.
But the problems of Disney animation at the time were far from technical problems. At its peak, Disney Animation's staff reached 2,200 people, and the movies produced were rarely applauded and sold. More serious are the institutional problems. Before 2006, the main person in charge of an animated film decided the direction of the entire animation and interfered in all the production process, and the directors, animators, and technicians under the person in charge only carried out his will and did not have much say in the final film. Some media have described this as an "authoritarian system".
"Now, Disney employees are doing their part every day to spice up the movies on hand, and it's a collective sense of ownership. But before 2006, this sense of collective struggle was very loose, and the relationship between the production staff was not as open as it is today. Milstein recalled.
"I don't understand what you're saying"
The real change began in 2006. This year, Disney Animation welcomed Pixar's John Lasseter and Edwin Catham. Lasseter knew him when he was 18 years old, when Lasseter was just an intern at Disney Animation, "He had a lot of ideas and enjoyed working with people." Clements said.
Anxiety pervaded the whole of Disney. Milstein recalls that when he announced the news of Pixar's arrival to the entire studio staff, the air at the scene became serious, mixed with a little fear.
After Lasseter came to power, a series of reforms were carried out. The first is "tear down as many walls as possible and tear down the partition rooms." Catham set out to streamline the organization. In the end, the staff was reduced to more than 800 people. Before Disney Animation cut costs, the original funds for one movie were split into several movies. Catham believes that the problem of Disney animation is not the quantity, but the quality, it is better to use the whole studio to support a high-quality animation in a year.
Lasseter and Catham are very insistent on giving the director more freedom. Milstein recalls that the complex transformation of the mechanism, due to the strong advance of Lasseter and Catham, proceeded quite quickly, and the hands and feet of the creators were loosened. "At Disney Animation Studios, the director and the creative team must be dominant, in the first place, our administrative staff, which is the logistics of the film creators." Milstein said.
Lasseter continues to instill ideas in his employees, one of which is to strive for every bit of progress for his work. To do this, just like open office space, employees should work together and communicate more directly.
The StoryTrust was created in the process, and this mechanism soon became the engine for Disney's animated reboots. The "Story Trust" is similar to Pixar's BrainTrust mechanism: the creator of a film and the head of the other film story department, about 20 people, sit together when the film needs to meet, directly and honestly give advice on all aspects of the film from story to production, often criticizing. "I'm an honest person, emotions are written on my face, and I don't have the habit of talking behind my back. Hollywood is full of people like that — those in power always say what the leaders love to hear, but we choose to be honest and open. Lasseter described the "Story Trust" in an interview.
The "Story Trust" initially advanced with difficulty. "It's easy to talk about the benefits of a 'story trust' in theory – to be straightforward with each other and give each other instant valuable feedback. But it's really hard to say to a person face to face, 'I don't understand what you're saying,' and 'I don't like you.' You need to practice getting used to that way of communicating. After all, after so many years with my friends and colleagues, it is difficult to be completely honest with each other. Milstein told Southern Weekend Reporters.
Chris Sanders, the director who directed Star Baby, went through this difficult time. Sanders originally conceived of an animated film called "American Puppy," which tells the story of a Hollywood star dog who goes missing in the desert. At the "Story Trust" meeting, the story structure was collectively criticized, but Sanders was not used to it, stubbornly refusing to accept all suggestions. In the end, Lasseter had to replace him and let another director come.
Milstein recalls that in the old Disney animation era, there was also a mechanism similar to the "story trust", called the "Gong show", but the two styles were opposite. The "Gong Show" does not pay attention to cooperation, but catches the PK between the teams, and the loser is out. In order not to get out of the game, the barriers between the project teams are tight.
It took several years for the direct communication advocated by Story Trust to be established, "and we learned the huge benefits of doing that and made it a feature of Disney Animation Studios." Milstein said.
We live in Zootopia
In 2010, Disney Animation released its 50th feature film, Rapunzel, a $260 million animated film that eventually grossed more than $590 million, becoming the first "blockbuster" of Disney animation in the Lasset era, which boosted Disney's morale.
Adapted from Grimm's fairy tale The Lettuce Girl, Rapunzel is Disney's classic princess route – a princess and a prince living happily together. At first, Milstein remembers, everyone was quite cautious, "What we did in the early days was to make the whole work look more traditional Disney style, while incorporating elements related to modernity, adding modernity to the dialogue and so on, enhancing visual complexity and ornamentation." He said.
But Lasseter believes that the reform of small fights will only be an itch in the boots, and too many routines are not only easy to aesthetic fatigue, but also annoying. In the end, the story of Rapunzel is completely subverted - the prince is no longer a "rich and handsome", but a fool who does not understand, and rapunzel in the animation country does not fall in love with the prince, but falls in love with the ordinary man in New York.
In 2012, the anime game adaptation of "Invincible Destruction King" also performed well. Tired of being a villain in the game world, The Destruction King is determined to leave his game to break into other video game worlds, and the story begins a wonderful villain counterattack. The film grossed $470 million worldwide and managed to win over a young male audience. But Disney's ambitions don't stop there, "If possible, we won't give up potential audiences in any region or age group." We don't have a precise plan to go in a certain direction, to cater to a certain group of people, we want to absorb everyone. Milstein said.
In 2013, "Frozen" was a real turnaround of Disney animation, leading the box office and word-of-mouth, and even a cultural phenomenon, and the film's theme song "Let It Go" became a popular hit on the street. Since the Academy Awards established Best Animated Feature in 2001, Pixar has dominated the award seven times, and DreamWorks has hosted other animated feature awards. The award of "Frozen" has finally saved disney animation.
Frozen goes further in subverting the princess route. The love of men and women is placed in a secondary position, with two girls as the protagonists, telling the story of family affection, sisterly love, such a role setting is rarely seen even in live-action movies. "Love comes in many forms, and Disney used to show it when a prince gave a princess a kiss, and I think it's time to look for something new." "Frozen" director Chris Barker told Southern Weekend Reporters.
At the "Story Trust" meeting, Buck and the team show the ending to everyone, the prince did not save the princess, but Anna's love for her sister Elsa finally saved them. After listening to this ending, Lasseter was so excited that he even stood up and applauded, "This has never happened."
2015's "Super Marines" is disney animation's first animated film to cooperate with Marvel after Disney's acquisition of Marvel Studios in 2009. Compared with the films before Disney animation, "Super Marines" is more "adult", and "Crazy Animal City", released in early 2016, has gone further on the road of "adultization", and many viewers have read a lot of political metaphors from it. Milstein hopes this will be a trend in disney animation production in the future. "We want to attract a large number of children who want to grow up quickly. Know that children often wish they were more mature than they actually were. He told Southern Weekend Reporters.
The first time he saw the script for Zootopia, Milstein was drawn to the theme of the story: "About stereotypes, discrimination, this is a very human and rich topic." I like to use the animal world in the form of allegories to confront the widespread discrimination that exists around the world. We're actually living in a world like Zootopia. In this animated film, the paragraph is no longer just a paragraph, but hides some "connotations", such as the "civil servant" sloth "lightning" that moves very slowly, "every country has a kind of inefficient bureaucracy, such a metaphor is wrapped in humor, cleverly spitting out a very common social phenomenon." ”
"Zootopia" was extremely hot at the Chinese box office, which surprised Milstein. The film wasn't specifically designed for Chinese audiences, it has more universal human values, and Milstein thinks that may be better than being designed to cater to the Chinese market. He and his Colleagues in China discussed why, but didn't find the answer, "Maybe the protagonist went from the countryside to the metropolis, I don't know if this will be similar to the experience of many Chinese." 」 Milstein said.