David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. An animated suggestion on how to get new episodes of striking scripted shows
Just a thought (a pretty sneaky, weasely thought, but anyway): The writers strike continues unabated. Some writers, actors and plenty of crew people are hurting. No one wants to watch “Secret Talents of the Stars” (see post below). Being a voracious and insatiable species, viewers’d like a modicum of original scripted programming.
Fact: “Pencils Down” doesn’t apply to animation.
Solution: Create new episodes of TV series via rotoscoping, which is basically just putting cartoon colors over stuff shot in live action. Richard Linklater made a couple of movies – “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly” – using rotoscoping; currently, there’s a series of commercials for some investment company that has rotoscoped people complaining about their brokerage firms (what do people in investment-company commercials do except complain about their brokerage firms, anyway? Are there any reputable financial corporations out there?).
And rotoscoping couldn’t possibly take as long as single-cell animation or be as costly as CGI, since it looks so half-assed anyway, so turnaround on episodes wouldn’t likely take as long as getting the producers back to the table. So the writers who are particularly hurting could gang-write some episodes, the actors could return, some crew members come back, and voila! Paychecks for almost everyone, some really funky-looking new episodes for viewers and the producers have more cash to roll around in naked while they chortle sinisterly about keeping the little guy down.
And even though rotoscoping just barely qualifies as animation and, to be honest, just kind of looks weird, some shows would seem to lend themselves to the rotoscoping technique rather easily: “Pushing Daisies” and “Ugly Betty,” for example, as they already boast fanciful, cartoonish visual sensibilities, as does “American Gladiators” (oh, wait, that one doesn’t cop to using writers). “Chuck” and “Reaper” would work. “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” would probably actually cost less to produce this way, as they could just wreck toy cars and blow up cardboard miniatures instead of resorting to expensive CGI. “Scrubs” is really itching to do its series finale and it’s already over the top, so there’s another candidate. A part of me that I strive to keep deeply concealed would like to see a cartoon David Caruso whip off his sunglasses and make a bad pun as he stands over a cartoonishly mangled corpse, so count “CSI: Miami” in. Animating “Tell Me You Love Me” might take some of the dreary edge off of all those whining couples, plus the sex’d be even creepier to watch.
And, lastly, a cartoon version of “According to Jim” would at least look funny, so that show might finally get a laugh or two.
I’m surprised no one at any of the networks has been devious or desperate enough to consider this.
Comments
That's it. This is the last straw! This murder-suicide pact between the producers and the WGA has GOT TO STOP before something like this comes to fruition. Damn, you Mr. Mayor, for putting this idea out there! You know some hack will run with it and actually get a show. Which will be foisted upon us Little People. Argh!
Posted by: FanGirl | January 14, 2008 3:36 PM