Digital Popcorn
Not that we’re counting, but on its opening weekend, Shrek Forever After kicked Iron Man 2's derriere at the box office, with a take of $71,250,000 compared with IM2's $26,000,000. Of course, given that IM2 had been around for three weeks and in number one for both of those weeks, and that its opening weekend was on the order of $133,000,000, Tony Stark has no blow to his ego.
“Wait a minute,” you might be thinking. “What’s going on here? Is this the Time Compression newsletter, or did I accidentally open up Variety?”
Don’t worry. You’re in the right place.
The point of all this is that when you’re looking at the kind of money associated with the film industry, the numbers are breathtakingly high regardless of the metric.
What’s more, if you think about the two films in question, you realize that in one case the actors are essentially voices and in the other the actors (the considerable talents of
Said another way, digital technology has come to the fore, whether the film is in 3D or not.
Consider this fact: According to HP (hp.com)—and the company’s HP Z800 were used extensively for design work on the project—the production of Shrek Forever After “required nearly 76 terabytes of data and more than 46 million render hours.” Those numbers are as startling as the box office takes.
DreamWorks Animation used not only the workstations but Cintiq tablets, ProLiant BL460C G6 blades, and DreamColor displays and printers from HP.
Yet for all that, according to Ed Leonard, chief technology officer at DreamWorks Animation, “We create two to three 3D films a year, and our intention is to ensure that audiences enjoy a higher-quality premium experience with each new film.”
Two to three a year. And the ante upped for each.
Clearly, this is akin to what happens in a variety of industries. But what’s arguably going on here is an embrace of technology that is probably more thoroughgoing than that of plenty of others, even those that would seem to be more advanced. Of course, when you’re displaying something on a screen 30 x 70 ft or more, there’s little you can do to fudge your outcome. . . .
Regardless of whether you’re making an animated film or a new cell phone, the consumers are getting more demanding and knowledgeable. Not only must development be done more quickly—after all, whether you’re at a studio or a handset firm, there are plenty of others that want to eat your popcorn—but the results must be as bullet-proof as possible. You can’t just get away with fast. It has to be good.
By the way: apparently there were 74,016 ogre variations developed for Shrek Forever After and just 51 used. Imagine where they’d been if they didn’t use time-compressive tech.
