Max Howard weighs in on filmmaking anxieties

'Cinema won't die'

In India, people believe that animation is for children and that’s why it has not evolved in cinema here, says renowned Hollywood producer Max Howard. 

Howard is a Hollywood producer and former studio executive of such studios as Disney, Warner Bros, and DreamWorks. He is in Bengaluru to teach students at R V University. 

He has worked on animated films such as ‘The Lion King’ (1994), ‘Aladdin’ (1992), ‘Pocahontas’ (1995) and ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988). 

In a conversation with Showtime, he spoke about technological advancements, streaming platforms, and AI intervention in cinema.

Excerpts:

How will AI impact the animation industry? 

I think it could impact the world and we need to understand how to use AI as a tool rather than a driving force. There are already several lawsuits like the one by The New York Times, who feel their journalism is being regurgitated by AI. And ChatGPT’s Studio Ghibli feature… No criticism of the people using it because they identify with that style of animation but that’s not fair on Hayao Miyazaki and the filmmakers there. It is their intellectual property. Their innovation has to remain in their control. The next few years are going to be extraordinary in trying to control this. 

I have been talking to the students about how they will be the generation that defines how you use AI. There is nothing wrong with it being used as a tool. However, when it is used to create something like a painting in the style of Leonardo da Vinci or a story in Anton Chekhov’s style, theoretically it will do it but that is a shame. That is a tragedy. We are proving to AI technology that the human race has no value. That is where we are headed.

AI has instilled fear among artists and writers.

We have had synthetic music for years. Many cinema scores are composed synthetically without using musicians, you’re using a synthesiser to do it. A very fine British composer said, ‘We have a full orchestra and we’re going to do it properly’. And I said to him, have you ever thought of what the first syllable of synthetic was? And he said, ‘Yes, it is sin and it is a sin.’ So we have had these things around us before. It is just that AI is so invasive and it is learning exponentially, at a speed that we can’t even comprehend. 

From Lion King (1994) to Mufasa, the animation industry has gone through a transformation.

The human race is about innovation. And animation went through exactly that. Back then, Pixar was making short films with unbelievably expensive computers with software that was proprietary. They had to create and invent it. Films were wickedly expensive and very hard to do. Getting rid of film or being able to shoot films digitally has generated a lot more great films. Just the barrier to entry was too expensive. So the innovation was great.

‘The Lion King’ is a hand-drawn film. I love 2D animation. I love the imperfections that you see on the screen. You can see it in stop motion as well — sometimes a fingerprint can be seen. The artist’s hand is directly connected to what you’re seeing, and that doesn’t exist in CGI. In CGI you may get great innovation and moving cameras, but as my wife says, ‘What I love about hand-drawn animation is the imperfection. I can feel the artists on the screen.’

What is lovely about animation is that we have all these different facets and styles — stop motion which is puppets, CG, and we have hand-drawn. I long for them to all co-exist and for a filmmaker to be able to say, ‘This film needs to be told in this particular way’.

The 2D animated version of Lion King feels more real than the photorealistically animated Lion King.

I don’t like the live action (photorealistically animated) because I love the original one so much. At the beginning of ‘The Lion King’ (2D), where young Simba is introduced by Rafiki, all the animals bow down. Not for one moment do you think that they’re the food that’s going to be served at the banquet following the introduction of the new king.

But in the live-action one, this is how it came to me. Rafiki, after introducing the new king, picks a couple of animals for the dinner menu. The reality of the Savannah, of these animals, was in the forefront, whereas the original Lion King is a fantasy.

What do you think about streaming platforms?

I love streaming platforms. With a downturn in the economy, families must look at their budgets and how many subscription services they can have. Going forward, we will have fewer subscription platforms. They are all going to amalgamate. 

Creatively, it is wonderful, because in television everything was geared towards having to fit a particular slot, especially with advertising involved. There was enormous pressure on the director. I think now some of the most creative work is going on in the streaming platform industry. 

But it is affecting cinema-going. Audiences are down in the States by 11% this year in the first quarter already. We should look at the 1950s. There is a lot to be learned from the ’50s and the advent of television particularly in the US. People feared that it would kill vaudeville — comedians, jugglers, dancers doing a show. It did and it moved to television. 

But cinema’s reaction was to create technologies that you could only experience if you went to the cinema — wide screen, cinemascope, technicolour…. They also invented 3D in that period. And there was also something which failed wonderfully well and it is just hilariously funny called Smell Vision. They pumped the smell of what was seen on the screen for a full cinematic experience. The problem was when they went to the next scene when they pumped another odour, it became stinky because they couldn’t get the other smell out. All this was a reaction to the advent of television. Now we’ve got seats that shake in the theatre. This is a reaction to streaming platforms.

We are social creatures. There’s nothing better than having a social experience of watching a movie with other people. We still have ballet, we still have opera, they haven’t died. They manifest themselves in a different way but they will not die. Cinema will not die. 

Technicolor shut down recently.

Technicolor was a company that developed film. That’s what it was famous for. That was its core business which changed because people don’t develop film anymore. So for the last 20-25 years it tried to reinvent itself as a production studio. That transition was too much for them. 

The writers strike… created enormous problems because if writers aren’t writing, the actors aren’t acting, the technicians aren’t working, it has this knock-on effect on the whole industry and it downsizes it, creating massive holes. 

When I first went to the Academy Awards at the new theatre in Los Angeles, it was called the Kodak Theatre. Nobody knows what Kodak is anymore. Why couldn’t Kodak reinvent themselves? Because they lost their core business which is film, again Technicolor, film. 

What do you think about the Indian animation scene?

A majority of Indian audiences still believe animation is for children. We have to educate them and that is going to take time.

One way to do that is for films to show Indian heritage and culture told in a Western story structure. Within the mythology of India, there are great stories to tell. You find a theme that can travel around the world. In China, there’s a Romeo and Juliet story called ‘Butterfly Lovers’. They all die at the end of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, but in the Chinese, they metamorphose into butterflies and fly away. Picking stories like this from Indian mythology that has a global theme will wow the rest of the world, which in turn will wow India. That is how it will work.