Duke City Shootout gets animated, talks 'toons

New Mexico Business Weekly - April 14, 2006 by Haley Wachdorf NMBW Staff

The 'toons are coming to the Duke City Shootout -- and to New Mexico's growing media industry.

Entering its seventh year, the Duke City Shootout annually chooses seven, 12-minute original screenplays and brings the writers of those screenplays to New Mexico, where they are given digital equipment, crews, a mentor from the industry and one week to produce their movies. At the end of the week, those creations are screened, and a winner is selected. The environment is hectic and the days are long.

"It's crazy for that week," says Reggie Russell, CEO of the Digital Filmmaking Institute, a non-profit entity that oversees the Shootout and provides digital film training year-round. "People are flying all over the state, filming all over the place, making movies."

And now, they'll be drawing all over the place, too. Ten animators -- some of them Academy Award-winners and creators of their own series -- have been invited to participate in the inaugural year of an as-yet-unnamed Duke City Shootout animation extravaganza, and they aren't likely to get any more sleep than their motion-picture-making friends.

A ballroom at the hotel where DCS filmmakers are lodged will be reserved and transformed into a makeshift studio for the animators, who will set to work creating two 22-minute animated films as well as a video game based on the characters and plot of the film. In keeping with the spirit of DCS, which encourages interaction, the animators, too, will be on display while they work. During the week, anyone who wants to will be allowed to visit the makeshift studio at scheduled times and see how the animators bring their work to life, and the animators also will participate in panels about the state of the animation and gaming industry.

Aside from being a cool idea, Chris Kientz, creator of the animated series "Raven Tales, " which is aired in nine countries, and director of animation studies at the New Mexico State University Creative Media Institute, says the addition of an animation aspect for DCS is an acknowledgment of the growing power that animation has in the world of movies and multi-media.

Kientz cites figures from Nash Information Services LLC indicating that in 2004, the total gross revenue of feature-length, digital animation films such as "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" was $2.7 billion -- 34 percent of the total $9.3 billion box office gross sales for all movies that year. That figure does not take into account traditional films that use computer-generated imagery to create landscapes or non-human characters.

And the take for the gaming industry, a product heavily dependent on animation, dwarfed the movies at $11 billion in 2004.

Those are numbers that are getting the attention of the entertainment industry, Kientz says.

"One of the things that has happened in this business is that animation has gotten cheaper and cheaper and more and more viable and accepted as a media, so that everyone wants it, and the same with video games," he says. "On the business side, people are looking and seeing that the total revenue for the gaming industry went beyond the Hollywood industry's for the third year, and by a considerable margin, and they know it's not going away. Almost every film has some CGI (computer-generated imagery) somewhere, and it's reached a threshold where people can't not talk about it. They have to talk about it now."

Kientz says animation has the potential to become a big player in New Mexico's efforts to establish a strong media industry here, and with junior animators making approximately $40,000 a year to start, the earning potential if an animation or gaming studio were to set up shop in the state is high.

The inaugural animation event for DCS will not be a competition, but rather a collaborative project. In future years, Russell says the animation element will push the boundaries of production timelines for animation studios.

"We will be ridiculous and do it in seven days, but the idea is that we can take it to a studio and say 'We have this matrix that you can review' and it can be something that can get done in 30 days," Russell says. "Imagine the cost savings to studios and production companies."

This year's Duke City Shootout is scheduled to take place from July 21 to July 29.

Posted by Admin on 07/19/2006
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Comments

Posted by anna on 07/21/2006 at 08:38 AM

Hi all…

Just a quick comment on the overall effort behind the Insomnia Lounge—bringing creative people from various backgrounds together to share ideas and create new work (and new business opportunities)—just like the Media Industries and just like NMITSA.

Hope to see you at Insomnia sometime… More info at the Duke City Shootout site: http://www.dukecityshootout.com

eric

Posted by ewhitmore on 07/26/2006 at 09:37 AM

NMITSA

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Duke City Shootout gets animated, talks 'toons

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