Why Double Rainboom offends me · 4:07am Jun 15th, 2013
Before I spoil the mood by getting snarky, I’d like to give a big thanks to Wanderer D, who moved my first story on fimfiction, “Friends, With Occasional Magic”, to my Bad Horse account. And thanks to Boss Pony, my 600th watcher. He’s not even one of my sock puppets!
Have you ever wondered how I produce these beautifully-formatted blog posts?
No?
I'll tell you my secret anyway. Create a story, "Blog posts". Write your posts in Google docs. When done, create a new story chapter & upload the blog to it using the "Import from Google Docs" green up-arrow. Then Edit, ctrl-a (Select All), Copy, Blogs, Add new blog post, and Paste. You can do all the formatting in Google Docs instead of typing bbcode.
Now, the promised snark.
I’m really impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of all those folks from the Savannah College of Art & Design who got together and made Double Rainboom. Putting a crew of artists together and keeping it together for an entire year is probably the hardest job in any art. I enjoyed it; I am grateful to them for providing me with 30 more minutes of colorful ponies. And I certainly don’t hold a grudge against them at all for premiering it during my panel at Cloudsdale Congress. Not a bit. And I’m grateful to Hasbro for letting them do it.
(Right in the middle of my panel. Just across the hall.)
But as a writer, it’s a bit of a slap in the face when a director gathers 40 animators, 34 artists, 10 special-effects experts, 10 voice actors, 5 puppeteers, 4 sound artists, and zero writers. Because writing is just, you know, writing words, and anybody can do that.
Kind of like when you go to a brony convention and the schedule has 4 pages listing the bios of musicians and artists, and one sentence saying there will be some writers. Or like when a big brony convention in England has one panel on writing... and staffs it with musicians who write a little. Or like when you watch most movies from big Hollywood studios. Or like one of my first jobs out of college, with a computer game company whose president, a computer scientist, hired a scriptwriter, then told him what to write. You haven’t heard of this computer game company. Guess why.
Maybe writing really isn’t as hard as animating or composing. People have written excellent stories very very soon after they started writing, like S.E. Hinton, Carson McCullers, AbsoluteAnonymous, and Quixotic Mage. (The bastards.) But it ain’t nothing.
I doubt the Double Rainboom crew was aware that they spent an entire year slaving over the graphical details of a story that was the literary equivalent of a stick-figure drawing in crayon. Animators are great at understanding character and emotion, at devising little bits of business that show you economically what a character is feeling and thinking. They focus on that, just like a composer friend of mine reviews movies by talking about the score. And there’s a long tradition in the animation business of mostly story-free animation, just one-dimensional characters in one silly scene after another (ACME rocket rollerskates, anyone?)
But what were they thinking? That studios are just stupid for wasting money on writers? It reminds me of rock bands made entirely of guitarists, who assign vocals and drums to the worst guitarists. (You’ve never heard of them, either.)
I agree with everything here (except one point). It could have been a fantastic fan production, but the lack of writers killed it for me. I applaud them for their effort, but that's all I can bring myself to do.
As for "Maybe writing really isn’t as hard as animating or composing.", it is just as hard. People do happen to have natural talent at things such as writing, or composing. I find it much harder to write a good piece of prose than I do to compose a good song, but that only applies to me. For others, the opposite is true. There really isn't an excuse for not getting at least one writer on board with this project.
Yep.
This
Wait, hold on a minute, there are writers at conventions?
How quaint! What on earth would they talk about, I wonder?
Anyway, in reference to Double Rainboom: yes, yes, yes and yes. They seem to have forgotten that you can make a classic cartoon with an engaging story and horrible animation, but that even silent shorts have to tell an engaging story of some kind to be remembered, no matter how well animated.
>Have you ever wondered how I produce these beautifully-formatted blog posts?
Nope, cuz I do not see anything special about them
I agree, a lot, but I also wonder something else.
When I watched Double Rainboom—and while I have a copy stashed on my hard drive, I've still only watched it the once—the thing that struck me right out of the gate was Jar-Jar Binks Syndrome / bad CGI syndrome. It wasn't like watching good animation, it was like watching someone prove they could make good animation. It left me with a profound distaste, less than a minute in.
Much like a bad hook can ruin my ability to engage with an otherwise good story.
It's such a simple thing, and so structurally obvious. You don't make your characters into self-parodies. And it seems like exactly the sort of problem they could have avoided by having someone, anyone, with a decent understanding of characterization and structure on board.
Now, I don't find that bit offensive, not in the same way. I just find it stupid, and curious.
The only thing I find truly, deeply offensive is the bit you highlighted up top.
No, wait, I take that back. I know what a writer is worth.
I don't find that offensive. I just find that pathetic.
My favorite line:
About writers in Hollywood comes from the film Sunset Boulevard: "Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along."
Mike
Double Rainboom. I watched. Laughed at the jokes. And that was it. Fact is, it wasn't particularly memorable, aside from the animation. Sort of like watching a series of newgrounds[1] cartoons. I enjoyed while I was watching, but I wouldn't deliberately go back and watch it again.
[1] Excepting the Mario sprite animations by Bigfoot3290. Mario's Castle Calamity very nearly killed my via asphyxiation, and I watch it, and the others this guy did, every so often.
1145510
That's why tabloids talk about the personal lives of actors, but not writers, directors, or producers. Stupid people don't know or care about the people behind the camera.
On topic: Writing is easy, but writing well is hard. The two recent fan episodes were both criticized for their writing, so maybe the next group that decides to make one will recruit one of the fandom's better writers. (Not me, of course, unless it's a Nightmare Night episode.)
Wait, they didn't have any writers? that... explains so much.
1145564 You say this without a link!?
Now I'm going to have to look for it myself.
<grumble grumble>
It's good to see at least one (pony) con so visibly break the trend, and I'm pleased to be a part of that.
Of course, if you really want to hit a con where writers are superstars, check out an oldschool sci-fi con like Westercon or Worldcon sometime. They have writer Guests of Honor, not just high-profile panelists.
1145503
> It wasn't like watching good animation, it was like watching someone prove they could make good animation.
A thousand times this.
1145628 Oh, y'know, it occurs to me that I didn't actually explain what I'd meant. I thought I had, but... well, that's what happens when you listen to hypergraphic people write stream of consciousness.
What I mean when I say "Jar-Jar Binks syndrome", for anyone wondering, is the tendency for animators to want to show off their skill by over-animating. Instead of shooting for realism, they shoot for something closer to silent-movie acting, or the type of acting you need to do under heavy creature makeup to get your expressions to show through. The first segment of the piece, with Twilight mixing her potion, has her flipping between ecstatic joy, mortal terror, and deep concentration at lightning speed. Character movements look over-caffeinated and jittery, not at all natural. I find it incredibly grating to watch, and it's one of the surest signs of amateurism in animation to me.
And it's the sort of thing that ought to be easily corrected by having just one person high up in the production process who understands storybuilding.
It's easy as a writer to be cynical when the people in the limelight get all the attention. What's worth remembering is that this adoration is mostly skin-deep.
Writers connect with their readers on such a more profound level that the attention they receive is, while smaller in magnitude, greater in substance.
Compare the reception that Stephen King receives compared to, for example, Joseph Gordon Levitt. When someone goes to see Stephen King, they're there to hear about his ideas. When someone goes to see Joseph Gordon Levitt, they just want to hear him sing or see him act, sort of like a trained monkey. I imagine that for an artist with something to say, the latter circumstance is much more dreadful.
Have a look at the kinds of questions that voice actors get at the average Q&A panel ("Can you read this in Bender's voice? It'll be soooo funny!"), and ask yourself if you're really missing out on anything.
John Williams is probably the most high-profile and well-respected composer in the entire industry. I don't think "respect" is the right word to use here, because I don't think many people "respect" actors either. They just like seeing them dance.
I think a lot of the lack of praise for writers stems from a general inability to pin down a single person as being responsible for a certain element in a work. T.V. shows (American ones in particular) and films often have numerous writers, but one director. The director is the only one who receives credit because the assumption is that all of the big ideas were his/hers. Every actor's performance is very identifiably theirs. Only in cases like Archer (Adam Reed) or A Game of Thrones (George Martin) can you point to one guy and say, "He's the guy who did it." Sort of like inventions, I guess. The reality that eletricity came about from a number of gradual, novel advancements in understanding by a wide variety of people isn't as satisfying as the narrative that Thomas Edison invented it.
Anyway, to your point, Double Rainboom isn't offensive. It was one guy's vanity project for a school assignment, so it's understandable that he'd want full creative control over the story. He wrote a PPG crossover with stilted dialog because that's what everyone's first fanfiction looks like. All the other people involved were simply recruited to help his story come to fruition. I can't really describe any of it as "offensive", though maybe "unfortunate"---unfortunate that it got so much hype.
I, for one, am a horrible writer. I cannot write an English paper to save my life. I look at the world, and find my world view fractured and blurred, so I turn away and ignore what isn't happening around me. I curl up on my bed and immerse myself into fantasy and science fiction, losing myself to worlds where the strife and hope and hatred and happiness and danger and love are all so real, so... tangible, that I cried when Dumbledore dies in the 6th book. I cried when Chewbacca died saving Han and Leia's twins. I cried when Gregor and Luxa realized that they would likely never be able to fully realize the love they share. I felt the love, hate, anger, joy, and everything in between from these books that I've read. Transformers bored me. Hunger Games piqued my interest, but it didn't satiate my thirst. Hollywood in general has become a desert dry of inspiration and true storytelling. I just keep looking, hoping for the fabled oasis to loom forth past the next dune.
This reminds me of how shocked I was when I realized why the original Half-Life actually worked for me. I'd played plenty of video games where "story" was a jar the game sat in; it encapsulated it, and kind of determined the art style, and kind of determined the sorts of things you'd shoot or stab, but that was it.
Then I played Half-Life, and I found the story compelling. I found out later that a writer actually worked on the damn thing. I hadn't seen that before, from what I remembered. But yeah, Valve hired an Actual Published Writer Person (Marc Laidlaw) to, y'know, write the story, and even help with level design.
I think sometimes that the reason a lot of fan projects don't include writers is because those putting it together are married to their notion of the things they want to do in the project. They are unwilling, as it has been put about art in general, to "murder their darlings". They're terrified the writer will say We Have No Reason To Animate/Voice/Draw That Particular Awesome Thing, so they won't get to put it in.
I can only say so much about that; I've never been able to collaborate on a goddamned thing with anyone, not in terms of the nuts-and-bolts part. I mean, I can talk shop with people about their plots or my plots (get your mind out of the gutter) and spitball ideas back and forth, but when it comes to the damn narrative, nope. No idea how that works.
Things with writers are better than things without writers. Otherwise, you're building an accidental narrative, and accidental narratives are rarely compelling.
Maybe I'm rambling.
1145611
AH! Oops, I didn't even think of it.
Mario's Castle Calamity
There we go. Be warned, for something that is basically a string of sight gags, it is dangerously funny. So is the sequel. And Marios' Cannon Calamity. Oh, and his Mario Land sprite cartoons are pretty good too.
Note: Newgrounds is being kind of an ass for me. If it won't load, I know the Castle Calamity cartoons are on Youtube, though the quality is lower.
They also could have used a more incisive director. You could drive a truck through the dialogue holes. That said, eh, it is an art and design showcase video. For all the hoopla, it had to look good first. It just would have been nice to have both.
1145656 I don't think "respect" is the right word to use here, because I don't think many people "respect" actors either. They just like seeing them dance.
Interesting point. I think we can all agree that what matters in the end is how many people want to sleep with you.
1145729 I, for one, am a horrible writer... <writing>
Liar.
Agreed!! I'm glad the video game industry is slowly coming around to all this, indie's especially. We're slowly seeing more games that try to focus on characters and plot. The Walking Dead is probably the best example of this.
I'm vividly reminded of an artist friend of mine who used to read French comics. Well I say 'read' but what I actually mean is 'look at' because he spoke not a whit of French. This astounded me. Still does.
I have nothing but respect for someone's ability to draw evocative pictures[1], or act, or what-have-you. But none of those things make you good at telling stories which, theoretically, is what a movie/game/animation is meant to be doing. I certainly don't think that being a writer[2] qualifies me to draw (or direct, or...). Why should it be the other way 'round?
Video games have this bad, as someone noted. I'm not saying that artists or programmers[3] can't write, but the writing duties must be handled by someone competent and the writing must lead the way, not the other way 'round. Because if you let artists lead the way you get Final Fantasy XIII.
[1] To me it might as well be sorcery.
[2] Of a sort. Humor me here.
[3] Why, just look at m--no, actually bad idea. Don't look at me.
Bad Horse, you are a hip, jip and happening cat who speaks the words on current events we all need to hear. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
That being said, I'd forgotten about Double Rainboom being a thing that existed up until just now.
I think I'll have to call up a lack of distinction in your post between writers and storytellers before I bugger off out of here: Double Rainboom didn't particularly need any writers because, dialogue aside, it wasn't set in a medium reliant upon language to convey its message. What it was in dire need of was someone to construct a cohesive and entertaining story for it.
And that's the main distinction, I think, which separates writing from most other mediums: we're so pathologically obsessed with storytelling that we make our moniker synonymous with it. I'd wager the split between learning to use the medium and constructing the story in writing is around 20:80 balanced in storytelling's favour. For animation, particularly short, I wouldn't be surprised if that's reversed. Same for film. It's perhaps even more dismal in gaming.
Roughly, the harder it is to construct a story in a medium, the less emphasis gets placed on learning how to be interesting with what you say through that medium.
In other words, the problem isn't so much a lack of respect for writers so much as its a problem of the basic mechanics of storytelling not having much respect. It follows that the solution isn't to up the importance of writers so much as it's to up the importance of storytelling: after all, that character focus you mentioned for animation might be lost to someone constructing the story solely through the written word. Cutting and pasting from one medium to another is going to leave something behind.
And yes, I am using "Because writing is just, you know, writing words, and anybody can do that" as the justification for your muddled meanings leading to my little rant.
Ciao~
1145897 [3] Why, just look at m--no, actually bad idea
What's that you say, Ghost? Just look at mass effect 3?
1145935
Everything you say is right. At least the part about me being a hip, jip and happening cat. (Except maybe jip. I'm not sure about that.) And I'd say you've mastered the medium of writing, so you have the authority to diss it.
Not only is writing not the same as storytelling, it isn't the same as writing. We say that a novelist writes, and that a screenwriter writes, yet asking a novelist to write the script for Double Rainboom might have led to a different kind of mediocrity.
INT. CUTTING ROOM
A small dark room, one desk against the wall with a large flat-screen monitor. On it, we see a still image of Rainbow Dash and Buttercup facing each other. ZACH RICH and CARA MURRAY lean toward the picture.
ZACH
Is this supposed to be a reaction shot?
The image remains still.
ZACH
Did it freeze up? I told you get a Mac.
CARA
It's in the script. Look. (hands script to Zach)
CLOSE-UP ON SCRIPT
It reads: "Rainbow stared into her enemy's steely gaze. They were cold and deep, and harbored a grim look of determination that Rainbow should have felt intimidating. But somehow, instead, she felt slightly aroused. Rainbow was suddenly aware something was missing in her life. Not a lover, not a friend--someone who could stare back and challenge her with eyes like that. Eyes that understood winning and losing. Eyes you could throw yourself against with everything you had without guilt. Eyes that maybe, just maybe, might beat you."
CARA
That's writing, Zach.
ZACH
Oh. All right, then. Carry on.
1145946
Well, clearly I haven't mastered writing: I thought "jip" was part of the idiom and a suitable adjective for a cat. Google seems unconvinced if I'm accusing you of being a sheep or a gypsy, however, so apologies for that.
And of course that translates badly! It's all telling/subjective narration, and thus performs badly in the objective setting of animation or film.
I'm partially convinced that this is the main reason telling is listed as bad in our current era of TV when no-one seemed to give a particular rat's arse before.
1145946
How could anyone possibly do that? No such game. Nuh-uh. Never got made.
I meant look at me as a programer-also-writer example until I realized I was sort of undermining my point.
Regarding your main point:
There does seem to be a lot of tradecraft in making a screenplay that works, just as there is a lot of tradecraft in making a comic script that works -- adapting words to a peculiar medium is a difficult skill. That said, I am not certain that a novelist would be worse at crafting a story for, say, an animation than an artist. Certainly worse than a screenwriter, but one would assume that there would be at least some transfer between skillsets.
1145980
Oooh. You know your spoilered revelation is very interesting. It would explain why that of all things has become the one-size-fits-all writing advice. A lot of writing advice certainly seems to revolve around screenwriting, I will say that. The three act structure certainly does seem to be applied to a lot of things it probably shouldn't be applied to.
I just googled and looked at like 4 seconds of it and the animation looked like it was done in real-time by a seventy-year-old man with Parkinsons, so I'm not bitter at all.
I mean, who the hell would want their names attached to that?
I think that Double Rainboom could have worked well if it had what all the best gag-oriented cartoons have: Lightning pacing. Just watch any old Looney Tunes shorts and you'll see that they are short on story and crammed with action and gags, with very little slack time in between.
Not that Double Rainboom's glacial pace would have done a well-written script any favors, but it could have been much more engaging.
As for decent writing in video games, I can refer you to Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - Defiance. Crystal Dynamics hired an award-winning playwright to do the script. I wish I had copies of some of the comments on various game forums. It takes a lot to get a teenage boy to admit that a video game made him cry.