Former Sony Exec Brings Animation to the People

It’s not just broadband distribution that’s undergoing a seismic shift. The former head of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment Yair Landau thinks he can revolutionize production on the web by crowdsourcing a five-minute animated short. The goal: beat the astronomical production costs that burden the majors and give upstart animators a chance in the big leagues. It’s a bold experiment for a small studio looking to compete with the majors.

What kind of a guy quits his job to crowdsource a film short from Facebook users around the world? At Sony 17 years, Landau earned a reputation as a progressive thinker — he helped start the first digital download service, movielink.com (now a subsidiary of Blockbuster), grew Sony Online Entertainment into MMOGs, and effectively turned Sony Pictures Imageworks into an animation and visual effects powerhouse. He also produced CG feature films for Sony Pictures Animation, which is where the expertise for his current Facebook project, Mass Animation, comes in.

Landau wants indie animation to be the equivalent of indie live action. “You can have movies like Star Trek and Transformers as well as little art house films made for $1 million - but but you don’t see the same in animation. You have Up! and Monsters vs. Aliens but you don’t have a true indie equivalent,” he says. He’s hoping his Facebook project, Mass Animation, will foster that. “I’d like to see people taking more risks in animation,” he adds.

Right now Landau’s the one shouldering the risk. Over the course of a year, Mass Animation produced “Live Music,” a short that chronicles the love affair between a guitar and a violin. Landau uploaded storyboards, 3D models, and audio to Facebook, and broke the movie into 107 shots for the crowd to animate. Those who got green-lighted — 51 artists around the world — got $500 and on-screen credits. (Some call this exploitation.) The short opens for TriStar Pictures’ animated feature Planet 51 on November 20^th, and will be distributed on mobile phones as well.

It’s one thing to crowdsource photos (Getty’s IStockPhoto), 2D design (Threadless) or even code (Netflix). But can you really build a business model on crowdsourcing a highly trained skill? In an industry known for hanging onto its old-school ways (DVD windows, romcoms, overpaid stars), it’s a stretch.

Landau didn’t go it alone. He got Intel, Dell, Autodesk, and ReelFX on board as sponsors. Autodesk provided 60-day trials of their Maya 3D animation software and Intel hoped to peddle its new Core^TM i7 chip, which specializes in tasks specific to animation and video manipulation, and hit the market this fall. Intel gave eight animators money with which to buy Dell Studio XPS* desktop PCs (powered by Core i7).

But it’s not just about partnerships, it’s about taking a crack at a new process — even while broadband distribution remains up in the air. At a time when studios are wildly protective of their IP, Landau is pushing a transparent and public form of production. “There’s no way Pixar or DreamWorks are ever going to put their boards up online — they’d never expose a work-in-process to the public,” he says. By using Maya, the industry standard, Landau raised the stakes to create a prototype with highest quality possible. Once the bar is set, he knows what he has to work when he starts producing direct-to-video animated films, in-game animation, and game trailers via the crowd.

There’s certainly plenty of demand. In 2009, eight out of the top 10 best-grossing films, according to Boxofficemojo.com, are full-on animated and visual effects-driven movies, with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the lead. Dreamworks‘ Shrek 2 is #11 in worldwide grosses, at $919.8 million. And while most years there are never more than five animated movies fighting over an Oscar win, for 2009 there will be 15. Increasingly, studios are sticking to risk-free animated and effects-driven tentpoles and family fare — their bread and butter. On the other hand, studios are releasing fewer films because they’ve gotten so expensive to produce. Dreamworks and Pixar spend about $150 million on an animated movie, says Landau. His cost $1 million, a fraction of that. Landau says the experience proves you can indeed crowdsource film-quality production from talented but inexperienced artists and animators. The big question is the economics of it, says Landau, which could go either way.