Indifference to animation is the result of celebrity-oriented Iranian cinema

Charso Press: The movie “Dolphin Boy”, which is considered one of the successful animations of Iranian cinema, was released in the cinemas of the country in the beginning of September of this year, and at the beginning of the journey, it was able to have a significant sale, but with the sudden stagnation of cinema, the sales of this movie also decreased significantly. This incident made the predictions about the success of “Dolphin Boy” not come true.

“Dolphin Boy” directed and produced by Mohammad Khairandish Mohammad Amin Hamdani It is one of the few animated films of Iranian cinema that was able to have a successful release abroad. “Dolphin Boy” is a product of Oj Media Art Organization and unlike most animation works of recent years, it tells a modern story.

In a conversation with the producer of this work, we had a conversation about the factors of its success and the conditions of Iranian animation cinema, which you can read below:

“Dolphin Boy” was released in cinemas in the beginning of September, and some believed that this film could become one of the best-selling works of Iranian cinema, but this did not happen due to the sudden stagnation of cinema. What are your plans to sell more of this movie?

The release of the film “Dolphin Boy” continues until the end of the year and will be released online early next year because many people will see the film due to the prevailing conditions in the society. Our main goal is that children can see this Iranian animation, enjoy watching it and get the message of the film.

The foreign screenings of the movie “Dolphin Boy” are still continuing, the screening in Turkey has just started, it is predicted that it will have an audience of at least 300,000 people in this country, but we hope that the audience will reach more than 500,000 people.

One of the points raised about “Dolphin Boy” is that by watching this animation, you can understand the development of technique in Iranian animation cinema. How did you reach this level of quality in the production of an animation work?

About “Dolphin Boy”, if we want to have a realistic view, we must accept that this animation is not at the level of a world cinema, but on the other hand, we must know that not all countries in the world make cinematic animations and there are a few countries that make cinematic animations because this kind of cinema It needs different parameters that must be justified. Among these, we can mention the need for infrastructure, sufficient human resources, by-products, distribution process, etc.

We are taking important steps for Iranian animation, and I think that sometimes the unkindness shown to this cinema has caused animation to try to open its way in another direction; The path in which the audience’s judgment is supposed to measure the quality of a work, and in this path, it has given up various support and the company of celebrities. Iranian cinema is largely involved with celebrities, and for this reason, animation has always been abandoned in it, but since animation knows no borders, it can open its way in the world with a good localization and be shown in other countries, so that the audience of every have a sense of belonging to the country.

What issues do you mean by disloyalty to animation cinema?

If animation is supposed to be present in the Fajr festival along with movies, naturally this festival will not show much interest in animation, because there is not going to be a special celebrity on the red carpet of the festival. Animation celebrity is its child audience, which is usually invisible and not attractive to policymakers because it does not create propaganda. For this reason, whenever animation makes its way to Fajr Festival or any other event, even though it has a successful presence and even a bestseller, it is approached with hesitation in policy making, while animation adds a new audience to cinema and as a result It is useful for the whole cinema. The power of face and celebrities is usually a safer route for investment and politics, and as a result, works with the presence of celebrities are given importance. Basically, one of the main factors that animated cinema has been neglected is the celebrity-oriented nature of our cinematic streams.

Considering that you don’t consider “Dolphin Boy” and Iranian animation cinema as a whole at the level of an animation in the world. Is the existing weakness related to the script or do we have a weakness in the technique?

In all the components, we are weak compared to the animation cinema of the world. If we want this kind of cinema to reach the level of a world, we should compare with countries whose animation cinema has been around for almost 70 years. If we consider the movie “Snow White”, it shows that advanced countries in this field have had animation cinema for decades, while in our country it is not very old.

We have a long way to go with the limited number of animations we produce, and the difference in our budget is almost a thousand times without exaggeration. This difference in budget and the large amount of production of animation works in advanced countries definitely creates a significant difference in quality, and we cannot compete with them.

A media product doesn’t just end with a video, an animation to be created along with physical products to be released all define a product well. We do not have the necessary infrastructure, our related industries are not properly formed, and we cannot expect similar investments to occur in Iran.

Previously, we saw in the animation works that the creators of the works took ideas directly from Iranian and Islamic archetypes and narrated their stories. This direct payment definitely has limitations that may have been effective in reducing the quality level of the scripts, but in new works like “Dolphin Boy” we see that they narrate modern stories without wanting to have a direct payment from these archetypes, and in other layers of the story the concepts considered bring up Do you consider this new approach to be influential in the success of works like “Dolphin Boy”?

The new generation, which has been assigned the title of Generation Z, is a generation that splits all bodies, that is, if you want to talk to him about tradition, background and culture, you cannot define this in the past body and say that you have to deal with it, because this approach does not accept it because it grows due to the presence of borderless media, and this can be both an opportunity for authentic cultures and a threat.

What we can do in the media is to approach this subject with the priority of entertainment which is the very nature of the media. If we rely on the originality of a story, we are doomed to failure, we must rely on entertainment to create a dramatic work.

If we go with the entertainment format, we can convey a message to our audience according to that format, but this adaptation must happen. For example, in “Dolphin Boy”, we have taken into account our cultural relations and are paying attention to its transmission, even this work is being screened in Russia and we have witnessed good reactions, while it has little connection with the culture of this country and even its female characters in places The public wear hijab. This success shows that in this case our culture has been well transferred and exported.

If you adjust the content in the right format in the right way and according to the tastes of the new generation, you can get your message to this generation and not necessarily rely on the old formats because we have a historical background and want it with that format in the new media. To present, despite its values, it will definitely not be successful and the new generation will not connect with it.

Considering that the release of “Dolphin Boy” continues until the end of this year, do you have any plans for advertising to achieve the previously predicted sales?

According to the distributor, “Dolphin Boy” could have been successful at the box office twice as much as it is today, but due to the events that happened in our country and the unfavorable atmosphere, we stopped our advertising.

If the conditions are right, we should pay special attention to children, children need content outside of political events and conflicts of adults, and our passivity not only does not solve anything, but increases problems. As a result, paying attention to the content of the child, such as eating, which does not stop under any circumstances, should always be a priority and flow.

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