I know I don't often write journals on this site as I typically blog over on my FIMFiction account, but this is something I've been meaning to bring up for a while.

Now, I'm interested in film and visual media- especially the writing aspect of it (screenplays, etc.). And for the longest time I've noticed that one genre of film (or sub-genre, as it's pretty small) has been severely underutilized. This genre is known as the live-action/animation genre. Now I'm not talking about movies like Avatar with CGI characters ands landscapes that are computer generated with the sole purpose of looking realistic, I'm talking about CARTOON animation and live action mixing. The most well-known example of this is probably "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", which brilliantly pulled off the visual and story aspect of it. It was a great, fun movie that I would highly recommend watching.

But with the exception of this, most live-action/animated films seem to be generated for the sole purpose of making money rather than telling a story. There are very few of these movies, and most of them have been panned by critics and audiences alike. After all, most of them turn out to be nothing more than a shallow cash grab-taking advantage of the familiarity of the characters to draw a crowd.

While I don't have a problem with using well-known characters to get people out to see a movie, I have a problem when that's ALL there is to the movie.

My proposal, and eventual goal if I get into the film industry as a writer, is to make a drama film centered on this concept of cartoon characters entering our own world.

Now I know that sounds bizarre, but it's also mostly original. Also, there is such great opportunity to show reality and fiction side-by-side through the story-lines- by showing the corruption of our own reality and contrasting the innocence of many cartoon realities. I mean, isn't that the point of animated movies? To help us escape the harsh reality that is our own? With the exceptions of some movies like "The Lion King" and "How to Train Your Dragon" (my two favorite animated films) that throw you a curve ball of darkness and tragedy, most animated films have endings where everything works out. In our world, that isn't the case. Not everyone gets off Scot free, and when you put characters from worlds that are "child friendly" and are filled with happy endings into our own, I'd imagine they could only take so much.

This is a theme I love covering when I write fanfics involving fans of shows/movies having their favorite characters enter our world (and I mean OUR ACTUAL world. Not the G or PG-Rated versions shown in movies where no one swears and there is no violence). If any of you have read my "How to Train Your Dragon" fanfiction entitled "Collision" (which is one of my early works so, grammatically, it might not be the best) or my "My Little Pony" fanfic entitled "Wilmont: The Human Elements of Harmony", you most likely caught this theme. It is so fun to write these kinds of stories mainly because I love contrasting fiction and reality, and this genre would allow me to do that with ease.

Just for the record, if the skies and stars and planets above aligned and I was allowed to, I would make those stories into movies (as well as "His Own Personal Heaven")

And I bet they would be more popular than Hollywood thinks. Just look at the fanfic "My Little Dashie" by ROBCakeran. I guarantee if that was made into a movie, it would generate a LOT of money and be the talk of the town, so long as it was directed and filmed well. In fact, it is Fan Fictions in general that sparked my interest in this subject. There are so many fanfics based on this idea (some being really good), I couldn't help but wonder if it would be possible to pull off something like this.

So yeah, I sort of felt that this point needed to be made. Do you agree with this statement? Is my entire journal entry wrong and have there actually been films besides "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" that managed to pull this off? Let me know in the comments below.

But yeah, like I said, if I ever do happen to get into screenwriting, I can only hope to be given the opportunity to make a more dramatic/dark (without being morbid, just more realistic) movie centered on cartoon characters in this reality.