The Silly Bandz Movie? (@RebelTaxi)

Silly Bandz on the run
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Obviously, it goes without saying, “Bands on the Run” is a terrible movie. The colors are muddy, the animation is stilted and zombie-like, the lip sync is breathtakingly off… I could go on (as I’m sure your video will).
That said, this wasn’t an Ed Wood or Tommy Wiseau situation (where the creators genuinely believe they’re making a great film and are tragically mistaken). Instead, our fatal flaw was outsourcing almost all the CG work (the background modeling, character modeling, rigging, lighting, and animation) to, quite possibly, the cheapest, shoddiest, most fly-by-night animation studio in China.
Our tiny LA team (this was my first job out of college, and I was the entire art department) designed the 2d characters, storyboarded the film and pulled together a decent animatic in two months. We sent it off to be animated, and a few months later, we began receiving “finished” shots, which were - if you can imagine - 10x worse than what you see in the final film. Horrifying stuff. Characters and animation so mangled that we were forced to scrap dozens of shots. Our director pushed back for revisions, but the overseas animators had clearly over-promised and could barely deliver first passes - let alone polished work.
The LA team had a minuscule budget and a pre-signed distribution deal, with a hard deadline in 4 months (the entire production was 8 months), so we scrambled to salvage the movie: building a DIY render farm, teaching ourselves 3DS Max and Maya, pulling all-nighters for weeks straight, and cleaning up shots as best we could. In the end, we made the movie 10x better, but, of course, it needed to be 100x better to be at all watchable.
And... that’s the basic rundown. No one involved in the production ever thought ‘Bands’ was going to be a great movie (especially once we saw the outsourced CG), but we all loved animation and (despite our lack of experience) happily leapt at the chance to work on our first animated feature - no matter how terrible it ended up. Wouldn’t you do the same?
Again, thanks for reaching out. Feel free to send along any specific questions and I’ll be happy to answer them.
Best,
- Jared