Talk:Rock & Rule

Mok Swagger

Legal trouble with Mick Jagger over the Mok Swagger character is cited in the included booklet in the Rock & Rule Collector's edition dvd release by Unearthed Films. Its talked about in an interview with Nelvana staffers that worked on the film. No idea if that's enough to meet wikipedia standards but that is where its mentioned. --71.114.168.163 03:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Production and Release

I worked on the film from 1980 to 1982 and have first-hand knowledge of what went on but do not have anyway to make citations compliant with Wikipedia policies. I am adding my thoughts here in the hopes that others can guide them being incorporated in the article properly. The Production and Release section currently reads:

Rock & Rule was Nelvana's first animated feature film, as well as the first of its kind to be produced entirely in Canada. The film spent several years in production and underwent many changes from the original concept, which was titled Drats! and aimed for children. The cost of production, $8 million in studio resources, nearly put Nelvana out of business.

Surprisingly, the animation was of high quality for the era (it began production in 1978), and the special effects were mostly inventive photographic techniques, as computer graphics were in their infancy. Computers were used to generate only a few images in the film.

There are a number of factual errors in this text. The primary "problem" as specified in the sentence "The film spent several years in production and underwent many changes from the original concept, which was titled Drats! and aimed for children." fails to capture what was going on during production. The film was being written and re-written constantly while the production was fully staffed with a crew around 350. This was the primary cause of the cost overruns and release delays.

As far as the second paragraph is concerned, the quality of the animation was not at all surprising given the talent of the crew. By the late 1970's, animation had become a mature field with many skilled craftspeople. The production benefited from the fact that Frank and Ollie [two of Disney's 'wise-men'] were acting as guides and tutors.

The bar for state-of-the-art special effects at the time of production was set by George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic [ILM] who did the ground-breaking work on Star Wars. While I am working from memory here, and this would have to be verified by checking the films credit roll, Rock and Rule was the first outside contract undertaken by ILM and the high quality of the effects are the result. The limited computer-animation as seen in the on-screen characters in Mok's car, were, if not the first, one of the first usages of computer animation in a project of this kind - a fact that should be credited as highly "notable." What we were doing was completely new and ground-breaking for the time. Verne Andru 19:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Aftermath

I removed the following and bring it here for discussion:

The film's lack of release nearly bankrupted Nelvana and it sold half its interest in NAC (Nelvanas Animated Commercials) to keep from total bankruptcy. Many of the major animators who worked on it never again came back to the studio. Some would remain for a few more years but most went on to become well known animators at Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Bros and well known studios around the world. To recover, the company turned to more commercial fare. Strawberry Shortcake's House Warming Surprise, Herself the Elf, The Get-Along Gang (the half hour special, not the series which was produced by DIC), Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Berrykins were half hour service jobs that were used to fill the gap giving animation staff 2 months on each to keep financially alive. Finally Nelvana was saved from bankruptcy by the successful film, The Care Bears Movie. A senior animator from Rock and Rule was brought in to do a 1 minute Care Bear promo that was sold as a test for American Greetings Cards (the same animator who animated the now famous Nelvana polar bear logo which is now seen at the end of every Nelvana production), it was shown at an AGC meeting and that sold the movie. To the shock of the Canadian film community the film went on to become Canada's highest grossing film that year and taking the coveted "Golden Reel" award at the Canadian Genie Awards (It also was nominated for best original song). This spawned the Nelvana Care Bears franchise with television series on the ABC network and two more Care Bear features were to follow.
Successful children's series My Pet Monster, Beetlejuice, Mr. Microchip, Babar and DiC's Inspector Gadget, as well as Droids and Ewoks (based on the Star Wars franchise) were to follow. Thus, Nelvana was on its way to becoming one of the most prolific and well-known animation companies in the world.

Most of this is relevant to the production company, not to this film. A very short paragraph about the film's lack of a wide release, and the effect that had, should be in the production section. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 17:26, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Peter_Hudecki_(2nd_nomination)

FYI. "Hudecki was originally an animator at Nelvana starting from A Cosmic Christmas in 1977 through Rock & Rule in 1983." Ikip 16:29, 3 January 2010 (UTC)