moozooh said:
This covers only a part of the "container", and much less the "content", and thus doesn't play much of a role to me. The amount of budget says nothing about how much I will enjoy the piece; moreover, it doesn't warrant anything at all.
I mean, I spent months on ADoM, a free ASCII roguelike. No presentation, no budget, but months of pure and honest enjoyment. What does that say about quality, or effort, or anything?
First, the logic in your words is flawed. If a container doesn't exist then nothing is contained and thus there is no content. We all know that with anime, that is not the case. There are always ideas before there is a container. They might be brilliant ideas but the expression of them in a visual medium is what dictates exactly how we understand those ideas.
This is coming from someone who works within the arts. I've seen plenty of work that has great, great ideas behind it but the execution was so poor that they wouldn't transfer to the viewers. The result? People walk away from your work with nothing. Your ideas don't matter if people can't see and understand them.
moozooh said:
I mean, I spent months on ADoM, a free ASCII roguelike. No presentation, no budget, but months of pure and honest enjoyment. What does that say about quality, or effort, or anything?
That's great but did you ever stop to think about what exactly was expressed? I'm not familiar with ADoM but I have a rough idea about the situation you're describing. You're talking about appropriateness. With the situation you were dealing with, the content was appropriately represented. If it was something upscale, it would lose the charm that comes with being a roguelike.
I played DnD and ADnD when I was young. We've seen the countless videogame spin-offs that have emerged from the D20 system and yet the reality of the situation is that they never had the allure or thrill of holding actual dice in your hands and throwing them out. None of those games could capture the freedom and flexibility of DnD. For the content, paper and pencil was the appropriate medium and gaming technology at that point simply wasn't good enough to represent it appropriately (and it still isn't even now).
So, when looking at anime, sometimes the content dictates exactly what quality of animation there needs to be. If it's something very informal (like Chibi Maruko-chan or Crayon Shin-chan) then a looser, more childish form of animation is definitely acceptable. But, if we're dealing with something like CG, Ghost in the Shell or Evangelion, you're going to need the presentation power to get your points across. Countless series have been butchered by bad animation. Great manga originals have been totally dismantled when adapted into anime.
So no, you don't need something to compare it to. Quality is quality. Just because you can get away with a lower standard of work because of appropriateness doesn't mean quality isn't quality. And my point was that with relevant work (and the work I originally referenced was TTGL and CG) you need that quality for the content to be properly communicated. It was given in both cases so I'll respect that very basic effort and give them the pat on their backs they deserve.
moozooh said:
Ignoring the directors that make their own movies, a director is seen as an investment that will supposedly increase the revenue through their superior direction, or just their name. "Guaranteed quality" is a myth; sucky movies happen all the time, if not most of the time, not matter how much does the director want for his job.
See also: team sports. You can invest a hundred millions in a player that has an impressive list of achievements, but there's a good chance they'll doesn't change anything for your team, or even make it worse due to the lack of proper team play from their side.
Guaranteed quality is not a myth and I don't see how you could possibly say that. If you're dealing with a rookie director fresh out of film school compared to someone like Steven Spielberg, there is going to be a huge and noticeable gap in vision and intelligence. Sure, Steven Spielberg has had his fair share of bad or mediocre films but the truth of the situation is that his batting average is pretty good compared to some other directors. Coincidence? No. It's the professionalism he brings to the work.
And team sports? Why are you comparing the director to a mere player? If we're dealing with the director, it's more proper to compare it to the coach or manager of the team. As for that aspect, we've seen what a good coach can do for a team. Referencing basketball, sure, Phil Jackson is probably overrated and was out-coached by Doc Rivers this year but no one is going to deny that he has done a fabulous job managing his players and maximizing their production in the past. Red Auerbach? He shaped those Boston teams in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. You think people like them don't guarantee anything?
That's excellent, did you use this line of reasoning in the pre-teen age, too? Even with the first cartoons/movies/books/whatever you've been exposed to? Otherwise you did have something to refer to prior to the appraisement, and believe it or not, every bit matters.
Yep, I did and if you think about it, it was something innate to life. What happens when you're a small child and pick up your first comic? If it is black and white, bland, has bad drawings and massive amounts of text that make little sense and are weakly tied to visual content, your interest in it isn't going to outlast your curiosity and you're going to get bored and scuttle off to do something that's more entertaining.
Now, if it has a captivating story, beautiful drawings and amazing colors, interesting page formatting and charismatic characters, then it's a different story. Like what I've been saying with quality in anime, if the quality and effort is there, it's naturally easier to accept and thus I respect that basic effort.
Moozooh said:
What if that was the author's intent?
That's fine. If his goal is to create something that has unbearably bad production quality and he succeeds, then fine. That doesn't change the fact that it has unbearably bad production quality. It also doesn't mean I should magically respect or honor his work in any way.
Moozooh said:
It's just me, but I'm of the opinion that things like that, once detected and believed in, can't be hindered by a lacking presentation, unless it's presentation you want to see and not the story behind it. Because your words made it sound as if all the pioneering endeavours in the field of arts, be it literature, cinematography, drawn arts, performed arts, etc., were all failures from the start back when no sufficient production quality you're talking of was even technically achievable.
Unless it's the presentation we want to see and not the story behind it? I've said it once and I'll say it again. the presentation and exactly what we read as the story are intrinsically linked. Referencing what you said before...
moozooh said:
What if that was the author's intent? Or what if the "deep, touching, and great story" never existed in the first place, being just an illusion fueled by your frustration?
...if the presentation isn't there, even if there was a beautiful story behind it, it might just end as an illusion fueled by frustration.
And as for your reference of early, "primative" work, you realize that when looking at old works, we try to understand context and judge by a set of criteria reserved for that context? They weren't "failures from the start" because when they were originally created, they were working with the standards of days long past. Looking at Disney's early work, the way it used multiplane technicolor was at the forefront of production quality at that time. What was the result? It took the representation of an idea and a story to a different level. When sound was first introduced to film works, it added a totally different dimension to the representation of a story.
moozooh said:
The first cartoons were even worse than what you've just described, and believe me, no-one at the time complained about presentation. The fact that now the audience would likely endlessly complain about having an all-around great story encased in a presentation from the "before-technology" era just tells how spoiled it has become. Because when art turns into an industry, form prevails over matter, because it's easier to relate to by the audience, and thus easier to make profit off.
Of course no one at the time complained about the production. At the time, they lived by a different set of standards. If you were to present an audience today with a film animation from the 30s, and told the audience to judge it by today's standards without any biases or preconceived notions, it would be horribly received because it would be so far under status quo that its great story would not be fully absorbed by the audience. How does that mean we're spoiled? If everyone was just satisfied with the same old thing decade after decade, we'd be going no where fast. Why doesn't the entire human civilization go back to living in caves, farming, and catching wildlife? Damn, I guess we're all just a bunch of spoiled brats.
Technology develops. Film and animation develop with it. Computers have made things possible that no one could ever imagine 200 years ago and with new dreams comes new standards. You're saying that when art turns into an industry (and it is called the film industry), form prevails over matter. I'll just say that the arts have always been about either form follows function or function follows form and in the entirety of its existence, that has never changed.
If the function of something is to entertain, then the form will constantly and endlessly progress in an effort to pursue that function. If something's form was its utmost priority from the get-go, then even that will constantly develop and change as its creator evolves. |
