Nonetheless, to the envy of its competitors, Illumination’s movies have cost about half of what is lavished on Pixar and DWA projects. It was that talent, not the prospect of lower salaries, that led Illumination to France, says Meledandri, noting that the fringe benefits employers pay in France are much higher than those in the U.S., currency issues come into play, and travel budgets also can affect costs. (Universal bought Mac Guff’s animation studio in 2011, rechristening it Illumination Mac Guff.) “France,” says Meledandri, “has a wonderful tradition of animation with some excellent animation schools.” and France, where there was a ready pool of CG animators, eventually striking a partnership with the existing Paris-based animation and visual effects house Mac Guff Ligne to make Despicable Me. And when he began setting up an animation facility - deciding that the competition for digital artists in the States simply was too great - he turned to the U.K. True to his global perspective, when Illumination opened its doors, Meledandri’s spent his first week in Tokyo meeting with directors and studios. ![]() Quick update: Right now, Meledandri says, “my role is to help Universal and DreamWorks chart the way forward in every way that I can” but his main focus, he insists, remains on Illumination: “I’m trying not to fall into any of the pitfalls out there that could disrupt what has been a very organic evolution for this company.” Meledandri’s own stock has risen so high that Comcast’s $3.8 billion acquisition of DreamWorks Animation immediately triggered speculation that Universal would ask Meledandri to oversee DWA in addition to Illumination. For this run of success, he is THR‘s Animation Producer of the Year. Just nine years later, Illumination - the brand is co-owned by Meledandri and Universal, which fully finances and owns the films - has released six movies that have grossed nearly $4.1 billion worldwide it has created a franchise in Despicable Me, which in turn spawned the company’s mascots, the jabbering yellow, pill-shaped Minions and it opens its latest film, Sing, packed with 65 nonstop pop songs (accounting for 15 percent of the film’s $75 million budget), on Dec. And I also began to realize the value of having senior leadership on a film that is made up of people from different cultures, not simply to have those cultures represented but to keep pushing the visual storytelling into the mix so as you work your way through the journey of a film, the process is balanced between words and images.” So I began to think about the fact that animation is primarily a visual medium, and while story and dialogue are essential to the success of a film, the visual component is equally vital. And as I reflected on the creative process involved and the never-ending series of challenges, I realized the tendency is to use words first as the means of solving a creative problem, but Carlos would always resort to images, and that was clearly the language that he was most confident with. He was fluent in English, but Portuguese was his first language. “Carlos Saldanha, our director on that film, was Brazilian. ![]() “I was trying to figure out why it overperformed internationally,” he recalls.
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