{"id":171,"date":"2010-11-15T17:50:27","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T14:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/?p=171"},"modified":"2020-04-16T13:10:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T10:10:27","slug":"animation-is-a-born-global-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/animation-is-a-born-global-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Animation is a &#8220;born global&#8221; business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The headline is borrowed from Petteri Pasanen, producer of the Helsinki-based <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anima.fi\/\">Anima Vitae<\/a> studios, who put it forward in his presentation at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/animation-financing-seminar-twitter-transcript\/\">Animation Financing Seminar<\/a> last June. The gist is that compared to live-action films, animation travels between territories much more easily, even naturally. This statement is also supported by statistics:<\/p>\n<p>According to an analysis by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.finnanimation.fi\/\">Finnanimation<\/a>, animation makes up 45% of the audiovisual exports of France, even though the sector only contributes 4% to the total of the country&#8217;s film production. The exports of course also includes animation used in games etc, but it still is a staggering difference. Even in Hollywood the proceeds from animation are around 15%, while animation makes up only 3% of production.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But what is it that gives animation such international potential?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, there&#8217;s <strong>no language barrier<\/strong>. As animation is always dubbed, there&#8217;s no problem with the reception by audiences. The voice vs. actor\/character relationship is always similar and lip-syncing is not a problem &#8211; unlike live-action.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Second, there&#8217;s <strong>no cultural barrier<\/strong>. Whereas you can often tell that a film has been made in Europe or the US or on another continent just by the look, animation has a universal visual language. Besides, the world of most films is a fantasy world after all and the audience is already expecting it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>There&#8217;s <strong>no star cult <\/strong>within animation. Yes, the US market often moves according to which celebrity voices are attached to a project. But even there a foreign production has the possibility of attaching a strong, possibly even partially A-list cast for the english version. And it doesn&#8217;t raise the budget in the same way as it does with a live-action film.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, many films are <strong>children&#8217;s or family films<\/strong>. Even though there are subjects that don&#8217;t translate, children are remarkably indifferent of things that would keep adults from embracing a film. This last point naturally applies to both animated and live-action films.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, this ability to travel is a prerequisite for European animation. As most projects are impossible to finance in only one country or territory, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/co-production-as-a-form-of-financing-animation\/\">coproduction is a must<\/a>. If animation wouldn&#8217;t translate so well, the European animation industry would be seriously underdeveloped.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What does all this mean for a European producer?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That you even have a shot at making your project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>That a) if you didn&#8217;t have to presell all your international rights to finance the production, and b) you completed a great project and c) you didn&#8217;t choose an approach that&#8217;s too local, you have a chance of making a decent profit from the international exploitation of your title. Congratulations!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>To keep current with Nick Dorra Productions subscribe to our mailing list:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<!-- Begin Mailchimp Signup Form -->\n<link href=\"\/\/cdn-images.mailchimp.com\/embedcode\/horizontal-slim-10_7.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text\/css\">\n<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;}\n\t\/* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.\n\t   We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. *\/\n<\/style>\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup\">\n<form action=\"https:\/\/nickdorra.us19.list-manage.com\/subscribe\/post?u=c764010b6c270ceb664deb5d8&amp;id=56bb807d43\" method=\"post\" id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" name=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" class=\"validate\" target=\"_blank\" novalidate=\"\">\n    <div id=\"mc_embed_signup_scroll\">\n\t\n\t<input type=\"email\" value=\"\" name=\"EMAIL\" class=\"email\" id=\"mce-EMAIL\" placeholder=\"email address\" required=\"\">\n    <!-- real people should not fill this in and expect good things - do not remove this or risk form bot signups-->\n    <div style=\"position: absolute; left: -5000px;\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><input type=\"text\" name=\"b_c764010b6c270ceb664deb5d8_56bb807d43\" tabindex=\"-1\" value=\"\"><\/div>\n    <div class=\"clear\"><input type=\"submit\" value=\"Subscribe\" name=\"subscribe\" id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe\" class=\"button\"><\/div>\n    <\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n\n<!--End mc_embed_signup-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The headline is borrowed from Petteri Pasanen, producer of the Helsinki-based Anima Vitae studios, who put it forward in his presentation at the Animation Financing Seminar last June. The gist is that compared to live-action films, animation travels between territories much more easily, even naturally. This statement is also supported by statistics: According to an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,5,6],"tags":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nickdorra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}