XPost: rec.arts.tv, alt.tv.simpsons, alt.fan.simpsons
From: ANIM8Rfsk@cox.net
In article ,
"Victor Velazquez" wrote:
> "Anim8rFSK" wrote in message
> news:ANIM8Rfsk-80C570.10430022052007@news.phx.highwinds-media.com...
> > For me it floundered when they changed studios. Klasky Csupo brought
> > the funny.
>
> Now that's interesting. Does it just mean that their notes were actually
> useful or do studios do more than I imagine they do (at least in this
> context). If the former, it sure would be interesting to see some annotated
> scripts (or whatever the medium).
I honestly don't know. I worked for KC on Wild Thornberries, but it was
some years later, and nobody I dealt with really knew, and I didn't want
to push the question, as I imagine it's a sore spot. As I understand
it, somebody at the Simpsons really really hated a KC producer and said
"she goes, or we go" -- KC stood by their person, and the Simpsons moved
to another studio. Now, while it's admirable to stand by your people,
in this case it sounds like she's out of work either way, and by losing
the Simpsons a lot of other people are out of work as well. If a major
client won't work with one of your people to the point of losing the
account, you'd think you'd find something else for that person to do.
Now, I can certainly theorize. :)
We routinely get completely unfilmable scripts (granted for shorter form
projects). As an example: we did a series of commercials for a
consortium of car dealerships. The format was mostly animation, with 3
short live action 'testimonials' sprinkled in each 30 second ad.
Because they were using actors and not real customers, the dialog had to
be short and generic, such as "You'll get a great deal at Victor's Cars!"
We needed IIRC seventeen lines like that so they could mix and match
them to build different ads. The agency copywriter never got around to
writing them at all the first time and we had to cancel the shoot.
Finally, hours before the second shoot, we get the script. Every single
line contained every single concept and broke every single rule. "Hi,
my name is Victor Velazquez, and I bought this very car I'm sitting on
right here at Vic's car consortium, which is located at the corner of
5th and Main, where you'll get a great deal every time!"
The lines averaged about 20 seconds each to read (you needed to get 3 of
'em in a 30, remember) and were so overtly fraudulent they have landed
us all in jail. So we did what I'd known we were going to do for weeks;
took 20 minutes and knocked out a new, viable script, which the agency
hadn't managed to do for 6 weeks. But if there's been credit to be had,
they'd have gotten it. And typically people at that level are so stupid
they don't even notice you haven't used their script.
Another time we did a children's film that had to contracturally be 10
minutes in length. The (late arriving, as always) script ran more like
15 minutes. I rewrote it extensively and got it into manageable shape.
Then when they recorded it, they decided it would
be charming if the narrator
character was very
old and talked really
really slow.
Viola, we're back up to 15 minutes AGAIN. So I do another extensive
rewrite, except this time with the recording lines, dropping scenes
wholesale, cutting sentences apart and reassembling them. The original
writer has screen credit, even though almost none of her work survives.
In either of those cases, if you'd had another production company in
place, you'd have ended up with a totally different final script.
I'd be willing to bet that's what was happening with the Simpsons. The
contrast when they changed studios was just too stark for it not to be
something like that.
--
This message came from the number one poster
on rec.arts.tv for the month of May 2007,
as officially certified by Ken from Chicago.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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