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MAJOR and INDEPENDENT studios

Student Notes

Different animation studios tend to produce very, very different types of animation. Your task is to choose one institution and prepare a presentation and a page for this wiki (you could put the presentation on it!) which your classmates can use to prepare for their examination. This task will be particularly useful to you when answering the more difficult questions 3 & 4 of the exam. Some questions to consider:

1. Choose a well known animation film and then ask yourself, who owns the film? Does anyone else own the studio who owns the film? Is everyone on earth owned by a huge, pulsating brain at the centre of the universe?

2. Choose a 5 minutes clip to show the class and be prepared to talk about
Representation
Genre/sub-genre
Audience
Narrative

3. Is there a tradition, which relates to the studio/producer in question. In other words, just like we look at the conventions of genres, do studios/institutions also have conventions or trademarks associated with their brand identity?

4. What is the relevance of film animation to our society and why is there an industry and various institutions devoted to the production of these products?

5. Finally, are there any other organisations who feed off the product you have analysed for Q2? (Think of other media forms) If so, who benefits from the alliance and is this a form of media synergy?


A few links to get you started...

Some notes and links on Disney.

Aardman - home of Wallace and Gromit...

Pixar

Studio Ghibli (Anime) Yes, Crystal Yip and Tina Lai...your day has come!



Dreamworks Animation

Alternatively, you could also consider the importance of entire television channels, devoted to the use of animation to reach their core audience. Some examples include:

Nickelodeon- Diego/Dora the Explorer...'thanks for choosing me!'


Note that Nickelodeon is owned by Viacom, who also own VH1 and MTV. Viacom are huge media conglomerate, owned by the media mogul Sumner Redstone.


C Beebies- Charlie & Lola, Yoho Ahoy, Bill & Ben etc



The Disney Channel- 'Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggedy dog.' (Disney Playhouse)

AOL Time Warner- Owners of The Animatrix, The CW4Kids, Cartoon Network and DC Comics

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Learning
Notice that many children's TV programmes work on the neoligism, infotainment, in other words children learn whilst having fun. This is a paradigm of learning first established by Sesame Street (produced by the Sesame Workshop) back in the 70s and which can still be seen in shows such as The Teletubbies and which makes use of repetition to communicate key ideas. Interestingly, this was marketing technique first used by advertiser Rosser Reeves back in the 1950s. Wikipedia reported that 'In 2005, Sesame Street launched its Healthy Habits for Life programming, to encourage young viewers to lead more active and nutritious lifestyles.[5] A major catalyst for this was data published by the US Centers for Disease Control regarding obesity in children.'



Links to student presentations on institutions:

DISNEY

GHIBLI

DREAMWORKS (VIACOM)

AARDMAN

AOL TIME-WARNER

SONY

NEWS CORPORATION (FOX)

BLUE SKY STUDIO (FOX)

NICKELODEON (VIACOM)

WARNER BROTHERS ARCHIVES (in addition to AOL TIME-WARNER)

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