Hollywood's digital wake-up call

Studios have long dreamed of the day they could digitize their way to box-office success without the ballooning payroll of Hollywood actors. While it might be too soon to replace Julia Roberts with an avatar, small digital production houses are showing that technological advancements can drastically lower the cost of movie-making, at least for animated features.

This weekend, a start-up called Vanguard will begin its U.S. release of "Valiant," about World War II homing pigeons--and the debut will be watched just as closely on Wall Street and studio back lots as it will be in the theaters. Thanks in no small part to relatively sophisticated off-the-shelf technology, Vanguard was able to create the movie for about $40 million, less than half the usual going rate for such a production and actually under budget--something unthinkable in Hollywood.

The story behind the story has been a happy one so far, with Disney lending its imprimatur as the distributor. But will "Valiant" herald a new era of independent digital filmmaking? As many bloggers and others have noted, the success of any movie--digital or not--depends on the quality of writing and acting.

Blog community response:

"Disney had been churning out pretty dull 2-D movies like 'Brother Bear' and 'Home on the Range.' But they were flops because of the mediocre stories, not because they were hand-drawn. We've seen some remarkable storytelling told through CGI--'Finding Nemo,' 'Shrek'--but come on, let's move away from the little creatures and go back to the humans? Please? I don't know how many more furry animals I can take!"
--edify.

"Do you know how long it would take to render just one scene from Monsters Inc? Just a one-second CGI clip (about 24 still frames) with all of the hair on Sully could take up to 24 hours to complete on a massive render farm costing millions to implement ... Well those days are coming to an end thanks a company called Render Rocket and the new CGI movie Valiant."
--RuTHlezz1

"Motley Fool thinks Disney's strategy is a little murky with this one. I have to disagree. On its face it seems flawed to release this under the Disney label when it is the fruit of another studio. But that is exactly what the Disney Studio did with Pixar and Toy Story. It might be a wise move by Disney to develop a little farm league of cg animators that produce films and animators that Disney has first dibs on."
--The Disney Blog