original pitch deck

White Tiger Proposal
An Animated Kung-Fu Feature Film
PRESENTED 09 FEBRUARY 2007
© Meticulous 2007
WGA Registered Script
Meticulous | White Tiger Proposal | 1
Treatment
The film follows the path of Zi — a young Shaolin monk. When Zi’s home is destroyed by fire, he is forced to undertake a great quest—the quest to find “the
answer to all things.” On his journey he meets new friends, faces five grueling
tests—courage, skill, fear of death, deception, and test of self—and transforms
himself from a young monk into a martial arts master. It is a heartfelt journey
with many smiles, tears and unexpected twists. Ultimately Zi finds a new
home, reunites with old friends and discovers “the answer to all things.”
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Concept: Small, Fast, Elite
Ten years ago, the “Sundance Revolution” changed the film industry. Today,
the same shift is occurring in animation. What was once the domain of large
facilities with hundreds of animators and 200 million dollar budgets is now attainable by small teams. The accessibility of technology has leveled the playing field. Small budget films such as Hoodwinked, Doogal and Pooh’s Heffalump Movie are creating both a stir and large enough returns to cause any
company putting out any $100 million + animated film to take notice.
By combining tried and tested techniques with timing and opportunity, we will
open a small American animation studio and deliver world class stories to the
world.
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How We Do It
Environments
The Matrix employed a new concept for visual effects: Digital Cinematography.
This is the idea of digitizing the real world and bringing it into the computer
instead of creating it from scratch. This simple idea won the team an Oscar for
Visual Effects.
These cutting edge effects, when applied to photo-real major motion pictures,
require a multimillion dollar visual effects budget. However, if these same
techniques are used for stylized (non-photo-real) purposes, such as animation,
a new world of possibilities is revealed.
We do not need to build our entire world. We drive over, take a picture, process it, and do lunch.
With a still camera, extensive storyboards and pre-developed scene concepts
for shot reference, and a fisheye lens, one person or a small team can capture
all the information needed to generate base backgrounds for our film. The
photographs are then processed using Meticulous’ proprietary algorithm to
look painterly. With a small travel budget, some early morning natural lighting,
we can reduce costs and staff required. The remainder of backgrounds can be
achieved through matte painting and minor 3d work.
On the left: Image Analysis, on the right, the stylized background.
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Characters
As with most modern animation, our characters will be modeled and textured
digitally. Using motion capture systems for physical motion, we can efficiently
work through the larger parts of animation and blocking in what feels like
more traditional stage acting, while allowing the CG animators to focus on facial and detail work. The characters will then be integrated into the environment.
Integration
Traditionally it has taken several lighting artists and large render farms costing
hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce an animated film. This is a big
bottleneck. Using the fisheye lense photography from our environments, the
computer can extrapolate the lighting into a format referred to as HDRI (or
high dynamic range imaging). With this format, we can utilize software to let
the computer actually light the scene for most daytime shots. This saves iterations, therefore reducing man-hours and time, and ultimately saving on cost.
The spherically wrapped location photo is the lighting, and the characters sit
right inside it.
The photo to the right is a computer
rendering—a fake sphere that is reflecting a fisheye photograph taken
on a beach during production for
The Sandbox. Imagine the sphere being the character walking on the
sand.
We plan to render the film elements
using the ResPower online render
farm. Using this system gives us access to a 700 computer render farm
for $2000 a month. This would easily
cost us over 3 million for us to create
a similar farm on our own, not to
mention electrical, cooling, and
space costs.
Finally, with the characters rendered
and the backgrounds chosen, the compositing team can make any final adjustments in 2d. Subtle animation of water, dressing of fire elements throughout the scene and more can be done quickly and efficiently in 2d and bring
the final cell to life.
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Delivery
Our final output resolution will be at approximately 2k plates. We can blow
this up to 4k plates during the negative printing process with Pacific Title. Depending on distribution intentions, we could render at an even lower resolution (1080i for example) and blow it up for limited festival screenings. Reducing the actual output size saves render times, man hours, and printing costs.
Marketing
There are several films in this genre about to hit in the next few years. In addition to the Beijing Olympics and a general buzz about all things Chinese that
will be in the media in 2008, there are a variety of other projects coming to
market. Dreamworks is planning to release Kung-Fu Panda. Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles are making an CG animated comeback. The Weinstein Company
is bringing several live action titles to the US, including Snow White and the
Seven (a kung fu version of the Disney classic).
This combined with the recent live-action features from the Chinese market
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero) will help us ride the wave in 2008.
In addition to domestic box office and/or DVD sales, this could be dubbed in
Chinese and released in Mainland China and Taiwan and probably do a decent
box office.
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Key Staff
Kory Juul, Director/Writer
Kory has been making movies since he was eleven years old. By age fifteen, he
had won a “Young Spielberg” award for his first computer animated short
(1994). At 25, he had worked on several of the largest Hollywood effects films:
The Matrix Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, The Starwars Prequels Trilogy, I Robot, King Kong, and more. Kory took some time away from the system and directed his first short film (as well as Meticulous’ first short) — The Sandbox.
Completed on two laptops for $10,000, it has shown at festivals around the
world since debuting in September of 2005 in Los Angeles. It’s appeared in
Austria, Portugal, Brazil and even had a screening at Pixar’s Emeryville facility.
Angelo Reyes, Writer/Co-Producer
As Assistant Chief of the West Wind Martial Arts Schools, Angelo has overseen the growth of a million dollar a year system for the past 28 years. Angelo
brings years of business management, a loyal team of martial artists, and extensive knowledge of fight choreography. The script is based on his personal
experience and years of teaching.
John Athayde, Producer
Prior to Meticulous, John ran the DC wing of RTKL's Liquid Media team - the
group responsible for 3d visualization and new media in the then fifth largest
Architecture/Engineering firm in the world. He has also managed rapidly
growing creative teams in high stress, fast turnaround environments with
multi-million dollar budgets. Recently he’s been digging into e-commerce and
visual effects production pipelines. He spends more time with his laptop than
is probably good for his health. He holds a Master's degree in Architecture
from the Catholic University of America.
Angie Athayde-Stevens, Producer
Angie has worked in the film industry for 8 years as a casting director, production assistant, producer's assistant, assistant director and most recently, producer. She has worked on over 35 feature films including What Women Want,
Somethings Gotta Give, Terminator 3, Charlie's Angels 2 and Seabiscuit. She
has a special place in her heart for Seabiscuit, where she met and married
Gary Stevens. She continues to work in the industry and resides in Los Angeles with her husband and 2 dogs.
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Industry Benchmarks
White Tiger is budgeted at approximately 15 million as a union compliant picture with a two year production cycle. Here are some industry bench marks to
show other budgets and how the films fared (numbers from Fall 2006). Specific figures for TV movie deals, on-demand and merchandising were unavailable and are therefore not included.
High Budget (Studio Blockbusters)
Chicken Little
Budget: $150 Million
Box Office: $315 Million
DVD Sales: $17.8 Million
Over the Hedge
Budget: $80 Million
Box Office: $322 Million
DVD Sales: $13 Million
Medium Budget (Fall/Spring releases)
Curious George
Budget: $50 Million
Box Office: $69 Million
DVD Sales: $7 Million (first month of release)
Barnyard: Original Party Animals
Budget: $51 Million
Box Office: $88 Million
DVD Sales: TBD
Indie Animation (Limited Release, DVD Sales)
Doogal
Budget: $20 Million
Box Office: $26 Million
DVD Sales: $3 Million
Jonah: Veggietales
Budget: $14 Million
Box Office: $25 Million
DVD Sales: TBD
Hoodwinked
Budget: $15 Million
Box Office: $100 Million
DVD Sales: $22 Million
Pooh’s Heffalump
Budget: $20 Million
Box Office: $52 Million
DVD Sales: TBD
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Hu
Zi
Older (left) and flash back (right)
© 2006 Meticulous
The
Crane Lady
With and without hat
© 2006 Meticulous
Bok
Choi
The Grasshopper Sidekick
© 2006 Meticulous
Death/The Panther
© 2006 Meticulous
The
Monkey Master
With the medalions
© 2006 Meticulous
Old
Wise Man
Who turns into a snake
© 2006 Meticulous
Hu
Yuan
The Older Brother/White TIger
© 2006 Meticulous
The
Red Dragon
Profile, and Horseback (hooded and revealed)
© 2006 Meticulous
The
Bamboo Forest
Where they find Bok Choi
© 2006 Meticulous
The
River
Where they find the Crane Lady
© 2006 Meticulous
The
Shaolin Grounds
Before the tournament
© 2006 Meticulous