DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

How To Train Your Dragon (2010), artist Pierre-Olivier Vincent (c) Dreamworks Animation. All rights reserved. Pic Andrew Morley
How To Train Your Dragon (2010), artist Pierre-Olivier Vincent (c) Dreamworks Animation. All rights reserved. Pic Andrew Morley

What does a grumpy ogre, a smart talking bee and a kung fu panda have in common? An exhibition. This week, as part of its 2014 Winter Masterpieces series, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) at Federation Square will open its largest exhibit, DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition — Journey From Sketch to Screen.

The studio co-founded as the animation division of DreamWorks in October 1994 as an ambitious attempt by Steven Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenberg and David Geffen, now celebrating and showcasing 20 years of diversity of its films ranging from traditional hand drawn features like The Prince of Egypt, to anthropomorphic 3D blockbuster comedies like Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda and the movie that put them on the map: Shrek.

Whether you’re an animation fan or not, this exhibition, which features over 400 items including original artwork, storyboards, character design, interaction games and a 180 degree dioramic screen that give viewers the sensation of riding on Toothless, the flying dragon from 2010’s How To Train Your Dragon.

Visitors will be able to explore the studio’s journey, not only on how a movie is made, but how a small art house evolved into one of the largest and most successful animation studios in the world. DreamWorks has come a long way and since expanded to producing TV shows, book publishing, online streaming, video games, theme parks, live entertainment and extended operations in China and India.

Over the years, ACMI has hosted many popular film exhibitions such as by DreamWorks direct rivals, Disney and Pixar and the works of film directors Stanley Kubrick and Tim Burton. Burton’s exhibition was the most successful expo at ACMI, attracting 276,000 visitors during its run.

Established in 2004 The Melbourne Winter Masterpiece series is an annual series of major exhibitions held at the Melbourne Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and ACMI attracts tourism and international visitors to Melbourne.

DreamWorks’ CEO and co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg praised ACMI for providing the space to showcase the studio’s work and with chief creative officer Bill Damaschke, is hoping the exhibition will have a global tour after its Melbourne run. Interestingly, despite being the entertainment capital of the world and apart from Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hollywood doesn’t have its own dedicated space for film exhibitions such as this.

Katzenberg said the exhibition was “The best anniversary present I could possibly imagine. We are thrilled to be able to provide this exhibition and show two decades worth of high quality movies and,” he told the media crowd at the launch, “this is a wonderful tribute to the many talented people who work at our studio. Our animated films take four to five years to make and involve between 400 and 500 artists. On average, our movies have 130,000 frames a piece. Each frame has to go through 12 different stages of production in the course of making the movie, and, in each stage, each frame goes through anywhere from 10 to 100 revisions. If you do the maths, that’s about half a billion frames for making each one of our movies. We do it for the story.”

The concept to hold such an event dates back to 2012 when Damaschke visited ACMI’s Game Masters exhibition and was intrigued by the display and interest it attracted.

‘It’s a big undertaking. They are the curators of this and it’s a big job, a really big job,” he commented.

“We’ve been working on this project for over a year,” production designer Kendal Cronkhite tells the Sydney Arts Guide, “We’ve visited the centre in August to see the space and had video conferences with the ACMI people, envisioning the show and how we were going to do it and it’s pretty amazing to come see it all complete.”

“I’ve been with the company since 1996 and it’s just great to sit back and appreciate the body of work, the whole filmmaking process, incredible movies, characters and stories.”

Christopher Lautrette, another production designer, was also excited about the event.

“The studio has come a long way, originally doing one traditional animated film and one CG (computer generated) film every two years. Now, its two films released in a year in 3D and even in 2010 DreamWorks became the first studio that released three feature-length CG-animated films in a year. We’ve expanded our studios all over the world. It’s been great.

During a Q&A session held with brand and marketing entrepreneur Russel Howcroft Jeffery spoke candidly about his long career, working in politics, then in film production at Paramount studios, and then restoring Disney brand before leaving to form one of the biggest independent studios.

“It was incredible ambition we had to have our own studio and for me to make film these wonderful films for kids and adults to enjoy for generations to come. And to share that with an audience who can come through and see the creative process, is pretty unbelievable.”

DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition is now open at ACMI in Melbourne and runs daily until October 5.

One comment

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