Costly Incentives

A comment in the Incentive post caught my eye ..

Anonymous said...

I know we are not a union signatory but we over here at Imageworks were told last week that they are relocating animation to the Van-f'ing-couver office. The Union artists at Sony Pictures Animation will stay in Culver City but we animators are out. I'm not going to get all political here but something has to be done to stop the studios from just pulling up stakes and leaving town.

Sony Pictures Imageworks isn't union signatory, but as all are aware, Sony Pictures Animation is. So, fact checking that statement wouldn't be a terribly difficult task. Let's assume its correct and Imageworks is shipping work up to Canada to take advantage of the tax incentive opportunities. And why not? Imageworks is in a unique position to really cash in since not only are they the vfx studio, but the producing entity who will directly reap those tasty benefits.

So, it goes to the original point nicely, right? Sure, except history has shown us that sending work out for the paycheck may be more penny wise and pound foolish.

History has also taught us that setting up shop in far-away lands in order to try to make a few bucks can end up costing more than you make. All the planning in the world doesn't hide the fact that these satellite branches don't always return the best product. Then, as opening day gets closer, the work finds its way back home to Supes telling their troops:

Guys, they couldn't hack it so we have to fix it

Who knows how much extra it cost to repair what could have been done right on the first pass? Just salaries alone would be a staggering number, but add operational and logistics on top of that and it gets even worse. Its an easy argument to build that the cost of repairing could easily overtake the Loonies that were taken from hard-working native Vancouver-ites and deposited in the accounts of conglomerate coffers.

The above commenter also insinuated that had the artists of Imageworks voted for union representation some four years ago, he/she wouldn't be facing the loss of a job. While my heart goes out for their plight, I have to disagree with that statement.

As we've learned, language like that is difficult to keep in a contract and costly when forced out. Union studios have satellite locations around the world where artists are furiously working on projects without the benefits of union standards and minimums.

As for Imageworks, we've been told that artists at the time figured they had it good. Management was providing all kind of incentives for them to be happy. Not many wanted to consider the benefits of acting in solidarity to secure a contract that guarantees those benefits in a vehicle they could enforce. The artists voted and the IATSE was not appointed as their bargaining representative. And the lovely benefits and management that promised their longevity went away. And .. we're still here.

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"Rhapsody"

The Brew highlights a Warner Bros. press release:

... [The animated short] "Daffy's Rhapsody" makes its theatrical debut in tandem with "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" opening nationwide Friday, February 10th. ... Featuring an original story and all-new animation, the short stars the voice of the late, legendary Mel Blanc in Daffy’s song ...

Dwayne Johnson and Daffy Duck, a marriage made in heaven ...

Matt O'Callaghan showed me this short a few months back, and I found it damn funny. Matt did a whole string of new shorts for WBA over two years. Directed and boarded in Burbank. Animated by Reel Effects in Texas.

(O'Callaghan pushed hard to keep the characters true to their classic looks, even though the new shorts were CGI and 3-D. He did a solid job in all departments.)

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Around Disney Toon Studios

I spent part of the afternoon in Glendale, next door to Disney Television Animation (Sonora Ave.) at DisneyToon Studios (Sonora Ave.) ...

One staffer, working on one of the Tinkerbell features, said:

"We've been working on Tinkerbell #4, and we're going to be making Tinkerbell #5. Words out there that will be a #6.

"I'm happy with that. I'd be happy if they do a Tinkerbell #21. It's good to have steady work." ..."

I can remember when word was out and about that eight or nine Tinkerbells were planned. The first feature sold 3.3 million copies, and the second did almost as well.

But at some point the idea of doing ten or twelve Tinkerbell features fell on hard times. I was informed that Rich Ross had gone through DisneyToons and the edict was passed down:

"We're making fewer of these."

Guess now they're maybe making more. (Or maybe the exact number was always hazy.)

I had an interesting with conversation with some other staffers about Mr. Lasseter and his management techniques:

"John was a breath of fresh air coming in here. He's an artist. He's a director. He knows the process, and how it works. When he looks at our early development boards, he gives simple, broad notes about possibilities for the story, things that could make it better. He doesn't get into nuance and detail because he knows we're not there yet."

"He doesn't get ahead of where you are in story development, and he makes positive suggestions. He doesn't hem you in. He doesn't insist that you follow everything in the notes he gives."

"This is a lot different than other executives we've worked with at Disney."

I asked if this was a reference to Mr. Lasseter's predecessors at Toons and Features.

Smiles all around. And no answers.

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Rango's Creation

Gore Verbinski made a discovery while doing Paramount's first animated feature since Mr. Bug Goes to Town:

... "It's not easy at all! We wrote the first scene with Rango in the terrarium 30 times," he says. For inspiration, the team watched a constant loop of John Ford, Sam Peckinpah and Japanese film Howl's Moving Castle. For reference (and later homage material), the writers took their guidance from Bob Hope's Son of Paleface, Don Knotts' The Shakiest Gun in the West and Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood. ...

I think it's admirable that Mr. Verbinski devoted his full attention to Rango and didn't go off and direct a live-action feature while his animated baby was in production. Because animated features deserve to be treated as full-time jobs.

And I think it's telling that the original team won't be making a sequel to the picture. Back to live action!

Rango has already won two "Best" awards, been nominated for others, and has to be considered a top contender for "Best Animated Feature" from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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Entertainment Tax Incentives: States Begin to Suffer

The Reporter writes about the lucrative year "Hollywood North" had in entertainment production:

Canadian film and TV production volume hit a record high last year, thanks to Hollywood. In all, [their] industry saw overall production levels rise 8.9% to a new record of $5.49 billion last year.

Our northern neighbor is all the rage with film makers these days thanks to the Canadian Film Production Tax Credit. Entertainment tax incentives have become such a primary consideration, that each state in our country now offers their own tax carrot in the attempt to lure productions to their soil.

A few months back, we discussed the inner workings of these incentives and why not participating is the smartest move. Now it appears that message is becoming all too clear.

In our previous post, we highlighted who ultimately funds those incentives and why backing them could be detrimental for all locales. A tragic example of this was brought to light recently in the great state of Michigan:

Raleigh’s Pontiac Studios, the flagship state-of-the-art $80 million studio complex is reportedly going to default on a bond payment next month and, tragically, the state’s pension funds are on the hook for over $600,000.

Raleigh is not the first movie studio to have financial issues that not only effect the studio, but also end up costing the Michigan taxpayers. The people in Allen Park, Michigan, got burned when a planned studio project blew up in their face, leaving the city unable to pay for things like their fire department (which they had to close).

Blog author Adrian McDonald writes the following which encapsulates the matter:

What film backers in these incentive states (and many others) need to start realizing is that no matter how much film industry infrastructure these places build, the key to their ultimate survival is a steady flow of productions. The infrastructure is not, and never will be, the key to drawing that steady stream. The only draw that has ever mattered is the money they (the filmmakers) get from ridiculously massive film incentives. No incentives means no Hollywood. It is literally that simple.

It is apparent that the precarious incentives are starting to show their weakness as states are now realizing that simply offering the money will not ensure the beginnings of their own production industry. Its unfortunate that the public are the ones being made to suffer.

What's also apparent is the fact that the studios will continue to seek them out until such time as they are completely eliminated. Hopefully now people will realize the best move is to withdraw their incentives and wait for the whole scheme to come crashing down. Until that time, the conglomerates will continue to feed off the free money being thrown their way.

Artwork by Steven E Gordon.

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Watch the Annie Awards on the Guild Website

The Guild is hosting a live-stream of the 2012 ASIFA Annie Awards. If you haven't already made plans to attend the event this Saturday, you can watch the live-feed at this page on our site:

http://animationguild.org/2012-annie-awards/

The awards ceremony will be held at UCLA's Royce Hall this Saturday beginning at 7:00pm.

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Animation and Motion Capture

Jason Reisig, Jeff Light and Nathan Loofbourrow.

Do the two forms work in harmony together? Or are they at loggerheads now and forever? And is mocap really "Satan's rotoscope" by another name? ...

On Tuesday night at the Animation Guild, TAG Vice-President Nathan Loofbourrow, Jason Reisig (Head of Animation and global animation lead -- DWA) and Jeff Light (Character Technical Director Supervisor) led a lively discussion on the subject.

"How does motion capture fit into current DreamWorks Animation production?"

TAG Panel Discussion - Motion Capture

Find this and all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

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The General Membership Meeting

A lively meeting this evening.

I reported that overall employment is fairly robust, and divided equally between feature and television work. Out of 2550 in active membership, approximately 76% are working in staff or freelance jobs. ...

A member asked about tests, and I went into a long dissertation about testing in various studios (much as I did here) and how I believe long tests are A) unnecessary, and B) borderline abusive, because more often that not they don't land candidates the job they're testing for, and a one page test is more than enough to see if an artist can do the work.

There were questions about possible remedies, and I said that we'll have proposals regarding overlong tests on the table in the Spring negotiations. I asked for active members to consider volunteering for service on the negotiation committee, stating that it's good for us to have as much input.

The meeting concluded with a discussion about uncompensated overtime. Members agreed that artists in the studios need to build awareness of the problem and a culture that nips it in the bud. I said that some departments at some studios have cohesiveness and make sure nobody works unpaid overtime, while other departments have an "every artist for him/her self" attitude. I pointed out that this is (in general) a problem more prevalent in tv work, but I had reports of uncomped o.t. going on during some recent Disney features.

The meeting adjourned at 8:30. A panel discussion about Motion Capture and Animation followed.

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At Disney Sonora

Not a studio of the Mouse that resides in Mexico, but a two-story building in Glendale California. ...

I went through the place this morning, and Gravity Falls (a series in development) moves briskly along, most of the Phineas and Ferb crew is on hiatus for a month (or soon to go there) and awaiting the new season, and Kick buttowski is winding to a close.

Meantime, Diz Co. has made moves to create a bigger footprint in India.

US media giant Disney announced on Tuesday it will take a controlling interest in India's leading television producer, UTV, and delist the Indian media and entertainment group.

"Increasing our brand presence and reach in key international markets is a cornerstone of our growth strategy," Disney International chairman Andy Bird said in a statement.

"This acquisition expands our footprint significantly and allows us to more effectively build, monetize and brand multi-platform franchises, and deliver a rich library of content to the world's second largest population," he added.

UTV, which has interests from film and television to gaming and animation, has already acquired public shareholders' approval to delist the company's shares from Indian stock exchanges, after buying out the respective stakes. ...

Walt's Place. Forever on the march.

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Shadow

One of our fine trade papers reports:

The Book of Mormon star Josh Gad, Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader and Kate Hudson have signed to star as the voice cast of Me & My Shadow, the animated fantasy from DreamWorks Animation.

Alessandro Carloni, who served as head of story on DWA’s Oscar nominated How to Train Your Dragon, will make his directorial debut on the movie, which is being produced by Melissa Cobb (Kung Fu Panda 2). ...

For those keeping charts at home, Shadow was earlier being developed by Mark Dindal, who (I'm told) ramped it up from a concept by Jeffrey K.

(When I interviewed Mark last June, he was deep into the project. He left it only recently.)

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Leverage!

A week (and change) ago we noted:

... Royal Bank of Scotland prepares to offer a bonus of more than £1m to its chief executive, even though the state-controlled bank’s share price has almost halved in a year.

Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of RBS, and the bank’s board are determined to face down political pressure and will press ahead with a bonus payment to Stephen Hester likely to be in the range of £1.3m-£1.5m on top of a salary of £1.2m. Final figures will be settled next month. ..

Welll, despite Sir Philip and his board's chesty determination, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the British Guvmint due to recent louse ups among the swifties in charge of banking, caved:

Stephen Hester, head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, gave way to heavy political pressure last night to forego his £963,000 bonus.

The final straw for the RBS chief executive appears to have been the looming threat of a vote in the House of Commons condemning the Government for failing to block the payment.

He is reported to have feared becoming "a pariah" over the controversy. ...

There's no "right" here. No "justice." There are people who think that Mr. Hester has done a fabulous job and deserves every penny of his bonus, that a contract's a contract, that RBS has to uphold its end of the deal and cough up the dough.

Etcetera.

But guess what? It's all about the leverage. The Cameron government can see they're not holding winning cards here. They can't on the one hand bellow about "sacrifice" and "austerity," then turn around and give Stevie Hester his money.

They get killed politically.

So Steve H. now does the patriotic thing and doesn't take the moolah, and a little time will pass ... and then (very quietly) the Royal Bank of Scotland will find some other way to slip Steve a few tokens to show its appreciation and gratitude for services rendered.

They'll just be sure that the tv cameras and reporters are looking the other way.

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In the January Hat

Spent the morning and early afternoon at Diz Co.'s Hat building on Riverside Drive. Got to see some clips from an upcoming short that's going to be kind of ground-breaking. It's just now wrapping up, and nobody could tell me if it's going to be attached to an oncoming feature or hit the festival circuit as a stand-alone.

In the meantime ...

Staff informs me that the pace at Walt Disney Animation Studios is picking up:

"A bunch more tech directors will be coming onto Wreck-It Ralph pretty soon. We have to get the picture done for a November release, and the pace is picking up. We have a lot of sequences to do and not a lot of time to get them done. ..."

Word is that Frozen, the feature following Wreck-It Ralph, will pick up most crew members as they come off Ralph. Here's hoping.

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On the SAG-AFTRA Merger

The boys and girls in the acting community are finally doing what they should have done a long time ago:

The AFTRA board of directors Saturday approved a proposed merger with SAG, triggering a membership vote that could unite the unions by the end of March into a single union, to be called SAG-AFTRA. The move was expected and came a day after SAG’s board passed a similar motion.

The proposal, which includes a Merger Agreement and Constitution, was approved 94% to 6%. ...

[T]he proposal will be sent to the two unions’ membership for a vote on or about February 27, with a ballot return and tabulation deadline of March 3 ...

SAG and AFTRA came close to merger in 2003, but SAG couldn't close the deal because it fell 2% short of getting the required 60% approval. (A few old SAG officers were in the forefront against merger, and carried the day.) At the time, an IA officer said:

"I don't know what these people are thinking. SAG is losing the work, shooting on film is going away, and AFTRA is eating the Screen Actors Guild lunch. Funny thing, but actors -- like everybody else -- follow the work, not the union. This is not a good move."

Apparently, nine years later, SAG agrees and is changing course. And many of the dinosaurs who opposed a merger back in 2003 are now out of power, retired, or no longer among the living. So this time, a merger will likely go through. (It certainly seems the right move, but I guess we'll see.)

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Tomorrow's membership meeting ...

... will feature a panel on a controversial and important topic, hosted by TAG vice-president NATHAN LOOFBOURROW.

Motion capture, known to some as “The Devil's Rotoscope”, is here to stay, but handmade keyframe animation is still alive and well! When used as a tool in the animator's arsenal, how can motion capture help us produce better performances? Head of Character Animation and Department Chair JASON REISIG and Character TD Supervisor JEFF LIGHT, both currently at DreamWorks Animation, discuss how access to a motion capture studio can benefit the animator, even when committed to producing animation by hand.

GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING

Tuesday, January 31

Pizza & refreshments, 6:30 pm * Meeting, 7 pm

1105 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank

Between Chandler and Magnolia

Link to map

AGENDA:

Excessive work hours and overtime: An ongoing discussion

Discussion of upcoming contract negotiations

Panel discussion: Motion capture for real animators

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Nast Spurned

T. Nast; one of the great 19th century talents.

He was a hell of a cartoonist, but also something of a ... you know ... bigot.

The controversy swirling around 19th-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who died more than 100 years ago, and his entry into the New Jersey Hall of Fame can be put on hold for at least a year.

... Nast — whose nomination stirred outrage among some politicians and the Ancient Order of the Hibernians because of his anti-Irish and anti-Catholic cartoons — failed to make the cut for induction this year. ...

I stumbled on Nast while in knee socks. He's famous for cartoons like this:

And in 2012 a wee bit infamous for the virulent anti-Catholicism:

In any event, Tommy will have to wait until next year to get into the N.J. Hal of Fame. So ... good luck in 2013!

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Stereogranimators!

And what the hell is a "stereogranimator?"

It's a stereoptican photograph ("stereograph") transferred to the internet. Like for instance the one below.

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

The 3-D photo above is Louisa May Alcott's dear old mum, at home in Concord, Mass. ...

As TPM reports:

A library may not be the first place you would associate with digital innovation, but some interesting things are happening at the New York Public LIbrary.

This week, NYPL Labs launched Stereogranimator, a project that draws on the library’s massive archive of stereographs, a classic 19th century form where two nearly identical images are viewed side-by-side through a stereoscope to create the illusion of depth.

The Labs project uses the very old form and allows users to turn images into animated GIFs, a classic internet form. The rapid animation creates that same illusion of depth. The Labs unit itself is also a sort of collision between classic library archives and digital tools.

“We think this is a really fun and unique opportunity to play with the conventions of what was 3D then and what is 3D now,” NYPL Labs Product Manager David Riordan told TPM. ...

The New York Public Library has several truckloads of these photographs, and they offer a sampling here, for your perusal and amusement.

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

This shot is of the daredevil wire walker Dixon, crossing Niagra below the Great Cantilver Bridge, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.

Good thing we have Retinal After-images. Otherwise, no stereo vision on the intertubes.

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Your Foreign Box Office

Animation in foreign lands:

Puss In Boots grossed $7.1 million on the weekend from 3,967 sites in 59 territories. Foreign cume for the animation title is $358.7 million. ...

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked hoisted its foreign gross total to $182.7 million (with $20.9 million of that coming from Brazil) thanks to a $6.8 million weekend ... Other international cumes: The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, $286.3 million*; Disney’s Beauty and the Beast 3D, $4.7 million ...

And Brad Bird's Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol has now become the highest grossing installment of the MI series, with $571.6 million and counting.

A few worldwide totals:

Puss in Boots -- $506.8 million

Beauty and the Beast 3D -- $45.8 million

Alvin and the Chipmunks -- $308.2 million

The Adventures of Tintin -- $360.6 million

* Our friends at The Hollywood Reporter have an incorrect foreign gross for "Tintin." We've used the Box Office Mojo numbers.

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Clampett's Carter

Until I stumbled across today's Geeks of Doom, I had no idea another animation director had aspirations to make a feature-length John Carter of Mars. ...

In 1931, ... author [Edgar Rice] Burroughs approached Bob Clampett about possibly making a full-length animated John Carter feature. Working with Burroughs’ son John Coleman, Clampett spent a year beginning in 1935 producing a reel of test footage ...

The test was impressive enough for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to acquire the rights to Burroughs’ John Carter novels but when the reel was screened for theatrical exhibitors across the country it was greeted with cold indifference, particularly from those who felt the elaborate sci-fi fantasies wouldn’t play well with audiences in the Midwest. MGM canceled development on the film and the next year Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the first full-length animated feature ...

And three-quarters of a century later, Andrew Stanton makes Carter. Sometimes in Hollywood, ideas have to percolate a little while before coming to full boil.

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The Weekend Race

Now with Add On!

Animation is quiet in the Top Ten (but not totally absent) ...

1) THE GREY -- $6,500,000 -- wk 1

2) ONE FOR THE MONEY -- $4,100,000 -- wk 1

3) UNDERWORLD AWAKENING -- $3,425,000 -- $36,051,000

4) RED TAILS -- $2,800,000 -- $26,180,000

5) MAN ON A LEDGE -- $2,500,000 -- wk 1

6) EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE -- $2,000,000 -- $15,961,000

7) CONTRABAND -- $1,900,000 -- $51,770,000

8) THE DESCENDANTS -- $1,735,000 -- $54,033,000

9) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (3D) -- $1,227,000 -- $37,029,000

10) HAYWIRE -- $1,170,000 -- $12,449,000 ...

At #11, Brad Bird's Mission Impossible opus has ascended past the $200 million marker, and Alvin and the Chipmunks is at $125.6 million.

Add On: And in the finals, we've got:

Beauty and the Beast declining a respectable 39.5% to earn $5.3 million for a total of $41.1 million.

The Adventures of Tintin collects $1.3 million for a total of 74.3 million as Alvin and the Chipmunks makes off with $1.7 million and a grand total of $127 million.

Lastly. Puss in Boots, still in a few theaters, has made $148.1 million domestically. Click here to read entire post

Viacom Compensation

The movie business has been very good to Uncle Sumner and a chosen few.

Billionaire Sumner Redstone got a 39% boost in compensation last year in his role as executive chairman of Viacom Inc. The 88-year-old media mogul and his top two lieutenants together collected compensation packages in 2011 totaling nearly $100 million.

Of course Sumner got a 39% bump in pay. Viacom stock went up close to 9%; we can never do enough for the Job Creators.

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Ian Abercrombie, RIP

The British actor was 77. ...

... Abercrombie ... had a recurring role as Palpatine/Darth Sidious on George Lucas’ animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, did voice work on animation hit Rango this year and, just before his death, completed his work on the latest episode of the Green Lantern animated series for Cartoon Network. ....

A busy man, Mr. Abercrombie.

("Rango" is always an "animated hit." And the current DreamWorks Animation releases are always "disappointments," no matter what sort of money they pull in. ...)

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The Deserving Rich

Face it. The Top Dogs are better and more entitled than you are ...

And if you don't like it, you're a whiner.

... [T]he World Economic Forum, in a recent report, named the growing income divide as one of the biggest risks facing the world in the years to come.

“In developed economies, such as those of Western Europe, North America and Japan, the social contract that has in recent decades been taken for granted is in danger of being destroyed,” the report said, warning of the threat of a “dystopian future for much of humanity.” ...

We are a labor blog, after all. We do occasionally have to point these things out. (Let the Bush and Obama bashing begin.)

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Del Toro on the Animated Oscar Nominees

Guillermo del Toro reflects on DreamWorks Animation's two Oscar nominations.

... On “Puss in Boots,” I felt like one of the many parents that the movie has. Every experience I’ve had at DreamWorks has been really rewarding in terms of how they connect with the audience. Following “Kung Fu Panda 2,” all of the audience test screenings and seeing it get a really strong foothold and then “Puss” also getting the CinemaScore that it got and getting the critical consensus that it got — all of that is hugely satisfying ...

I'm guessing that the folks at Pixar ... and Mr. Spielberg ... are a wee bit unhappy they didn't make the cut. But then, nobody hits it out of the park every time at bat. Sometimes even champion players whiff.

I just hope Disney doesn't boycott next year's Oscars.

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A Day at Fox Animation

Although traffic was awful, I made it to Fox Animation early enough to hit all three Fox shows: American Dad, The Cleveland Show and Family Guy ...

Things are steady as they go on FG and TCS, but the equilibrium is a bit different on American Dad:

... We haven't been picked up for another season, and artists are getting laid off one by one. We're pretty much in limbo ...

I've got a couple of weeks left, and then I'm out of here. There hasn't been any big farewells, it's just ... people disappear and nothing is said. Nobody knows if we're coming back or not. It's kind of weird. ...

As of early January, American Dad is performing much like its Animation Domination counterparts (Family Guy -- 6 million viewers; The Simpsons -- 5.11 million viewers; American Dad -- 4.5 million viewers; The Cleveland Show -- 4.3 million viewers.)

Whether the series gets picked up for another year, I donno. But an American Dad board artist related that it didn't feel like cancellation is imminent.

... Nobody I talk to is uptight about the show going away. Other years artists have been more depressed and fatalistic about American Dad getting cancelled. But this year? Not nearly as much ...

Which may or may not be a good sign. It was explained to me that part of the problem is the show is preempted a lot, so there is a stock pile of episodes.

Me, I hope AD goes on, because I find it the most amusing of the Seth shows, even though it runs behind Family Guy in popularity.

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Syd Mead show, opens tonight

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Foreign Releases, Foreign Moolah

Seeking Alpha gives an astute answer to a semi-dumb question:

2. Why are a bunch of zoo animals going to Europe? Don't they know there's a major financial crisis there?

If we look at the foreign numbers for the last Madagascar movie, we can see that the film did quite well in many European countries, grossing in excess of $40 million in both France, and Germany; about $35 million in Italy, and the U.K.; $20 million in Spain, and depending on whether your grade school geography teacher taught you Russia was part of Europe or Asia, over $40 million in that country, too. So it's not surprising that the Madagascar crew have wound their way into a European traveling circus, likely to visit popular European destinations, as can be seen in the trailer for Madagascar 3. ...

I don't think it's lost on DWA (or other cartoon studios) that animated features without U.S. environments in them do better overseas than movies with.

Monsters Vs. Aliens and MegaMind, both solid performers in the U.S. of A., did less well in foreign venues. Both of DreamWorks Animation's 2011 releases, by contrast, made lots of money in overseas markets.

I think the fact they're not American-themed had a lot to do with it. When I mentioned this to a DWA director, he allowed as how it's likely the case. (Can we prove this with certainty? Nope. But it's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.)

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Board Tests

The testing issue just never goes away.

A month ago, a board artist at one of our fine entertainment conglomerates, who was working on a show that was wrapping up, said to me:

"We're all done with this series in a few weeks. And we're all taking tests to get on the next one. The tests they're asking the crew to cover three and a half pages of script ..."

Three or three and a half typed pages pencil out to a week's worth of work, give or take. When I heard about this, I went to H.R. and ranted about the abuse being visited on production staffers.

I pointed out:

1) Artists have to pour their hearts and souls into work that may or may not result in a job, and do it gratis. For a week.

2) Studios already employing board artists shouldn't require those board artists to take a week-long test to get another job on another show. They already know the artists' capabilities.

3) If an actor or writer or (God help us) production manager was up for a job, it's doubtful the prospective employer would ask the candidate to come in for a week and work free-of-charge to show "how he handled the assignment."

This has been an issue for a decade or more, but (amazingly enough) back when I started as business rep, tests were minimal. Portfolios and maybe a short drawing test were considered sufficient to secure work.

More innocent times, I guess.

Long tests became the norm back in the nineties, and TAG (naturally enough) started complaining about it. Each time we complained, studio reps listened, nodded their heads in agreement, and said that "something had to be done."

And something was done. For a few months. Then new show-runners would wheel into town and initiate new week-long tests. No studio administrators would say boo about it. Then we would start complaining again.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

This time around, the studio in question has agreed to reduce board tests by 40%. We'll see how long the reduction lasts.

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Motion Picture and Television Fund's Long Term Care

The MPTF Motion Picture Retirement Home in Woodland Hills was on the brink of closing its long-term care unit two short years ago. Lack of money was the reason, and there was major push back against the unit being shuttered. In the end, l.t.c. stayed open.

Happily, there is now this: ...

The Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF) announced today that it will immediately begin admitting additional industry members to the long term care unit on its Wasserman campus in Woodland Hills. First priority for admission will be given to former MPTF long-term care residents who moved off campus at the time of the announcement of the proposed closure of the unit in 2009. MPTF’s long-term care unit, when fully occupied, will allow for 40 residents.

“We are excited to finally be able to bring more residents into long-term care,” said Bob Beitcher, president and CEO of MPTF. “This will be a pivotal moment for current long-term care residents and their families, other campus residents, and staff. It will restore the continuum of care on campus everyone has been hoping for,”

Getting l.t.c. on a firm footing has been something of an ongoing toothache for the Fund, so it's good to see that the long term care facility is not just holding steady in terms of the number of occupants, but is poised to grow numbers again.

Good news.

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Chouinard: An Overture

* Nelbert Murphy Chouinard pictured above

On Wednesday, February 8 at 8:30 pm the REDCAT Theater in downtown Los Angeles will present Chouinard: An Overture, an evening devoted to a discussion of the Chouinard Institute, its history and its influence. Tickets can be purchased from the REDCAT website:

http://www.redcat.org/event/chouinard-overture.

Founded in 1921 by Nelbert M. Chouinard (approximately pronounced "shuh - nard"), Chouinard Art Institute remains one of the most influential art schools ever to have existed in this country. The impressive faculty and alumni attests to the school's rightful place on the short list of great art schools of 20th Century America. Giants of the art world studied and taught there and many went on to fame, fortune and great respect in the categories of animation, film, fine art, architecture, ceramics, costume design, illustration and photography.

Students and faculty included such luminaries as Mary Blair, Preston Blair, Millard Sheets, Pruett Carter, Corny Cole, Phil Dike, Phil Paradise, Emerson Woelffer, David Siqueiros, Edith Head, Theadora Van Runkle, John Altoon, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Otto Heino, Terry Gilliam, John Van Hamersveld, Rick Griffin, Bob Foster, Terry Allen, Chuck Jones, Bob Kurtz, Pete Alvarado, Dave Brain, Joe Goode, Hardie Gramatky, Karl Hubenthal, John Hench, Robert Irwin, Ollie Johnston, Bob Mackie, Bill Melendez, Jimmy Murakami, Maurice Noble, Virgil Partch, Woolie Reitherman, Dan Spieigle, William Stout, Frank Thomas and Alan Zaslove, to name a few. Chouinard graduates were readily employed by many of the major animation studios in the greater Los Angeles area and to this day many of those graduates are still working in the industry.

In 1969 Chouinard Art Institute merged with the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to form The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) with its campus in Valencia, CA.

The number of artists employed in the animation business who attended Chouinard and, in more recent years, CalArts, is staggering. The Animation Guild is proud to represent almost all of those highly skilled artists who work in the animation business.

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The 2012 Oscar Nominations

The big moment has arrived for 2012 as the nominations for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar Awards was released this morning.

While we congratulate all who were given the prestigious honor of being nominated for their work, we list below the break the nominations pertinent to our corner of the entertainment world.

And the Nominees are ...

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

• "A Cat in Paris," Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli
• "Chico & Rita," Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal
• "Kung Fu Panda 2," Jennifer Yuh Nelson
• "Puss in Boots," Chris Miller
• "Rango," Gore Verbinski

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

• "Dimanche/Sunday," Patrick Doyon
• "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
• "La Luna," Enrico Casarosa
• "A Morning Stroll," Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
• "Wild Life," Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby

VISUAL EFFECTS

• "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler and John Richardson
• "Hugo," Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning
• "Real Steel," Erik Nash, John Rosengrant, Dan Taylor and Swen Gillberg
• "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett
• "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler and John Frazier

Add On: Rio from Blue Sky didn't get a "Best Animated Feature" nod, but it picked up a "Best Song" nomination.

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The Jennifer Yuh Nelson Interview -- Part II

Early sketch of the villain from "KFP2"

Jennifer Yuh Nelson spent a long time working on the first Kung Fu Panda. She describes the first picture's development as the more difficult of the two KFP features because they were developing the characters from the ground up, getting to know each one ...

TAG Interview with Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

With Kung Fu Panda 2, most of the major players were in place. But there was still a new villain, about which Jennifer relates this:

... Lord Shen was one of the first things we thought about when we began work [on KFP2 three years ago. A small group of us gets together. We get a lot of snacks, and we get in a room and start spitballing ideas. In the first movie, we had Tai Lung—a guy who could walk into a room and punch someone in the face. We thought, Why don’t we go in the opposite direction—somebody who is devious, sharp, and dangerous in a different way? We made him into a peacock, a character with speed and flash. ...

She is now at work on a new project, about which she is (understandably) mum.

The interview with JYN took place in her office on the DreamWorks Animation campus. So ... audio only. The video interview above? It's a different one. (Like you couldn't tell.)

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Oscar Watch

Here's an animated short in the race for the Little Gold Man that seems to have some oomph behind it:

... [Morris Lessmore], with a hybrid animation style, us[es] stop motion with miniatures, computer animation and traditional hand-drawn techniques. The Morris Lessmore that made it into the film is completely computer animated, but the crew created a miniature version of him too, which it placed inside the miniature sets as a guide for lighting for the animators.

Moonbot Studios is based in Shreveport Louisiana far out of TAG's jurisdiction, yet I know Animation Guild members who've worked there. Whether Moonbot can survive and thrive down on the Mississippi is an open question. But the sample here looks good.

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The Jennifer Yuh Nelson Interview -- Part I

Jennifer Yuh Nelson arrived at DreamWorks Animation after working in television for a half-dozen years as board artist, designer, and director. Her first boarding assignment at DWA was the hand-drawn feature Spirit. ...

TAG Interview with Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

(Jennifer says that her love of drawing horses has declined a wee bit after two-plus years of labor on that particular picture. Ah well ...)

After that came work on Sinbad, then Madagascar. When those finished, she heard about an embryonic project entitled Kung Fu Panda.

"I didn't know anything about it except the title. But I've loved martial arts movies since I was young, and knew I wanted to work on it. Had to work on it. ..."

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Tax Breaks Forevah!

Screams of anguish from Brit animation companies:

The UK's animation industry is "scrabbling for crumbs, selling up and shipping off" because production companies cannot compete against tax breaks offered overseas, the companies behind Wallace & Gromit, Peppa Pig and In The Night Garden have warned.

Animation UK, which represents producers including Aardman Animations and Astley Baker Davies, has written to George Osborne, Chancellor, warning him that Britain is losing its best animation talent, and calling for tax breaks before the industry is wiped out altogether.

The sector is "not seeking handouts to get a competitive advantage", but needs to be able to compete with animators overseas, particularly Ireland and Canada, where tax breaks and funding supply up to 50pc of budgets and create "a distorted market place we cannot survive in", it said in a letter to be delivered to the Treasury today. ...

Let us face facts. Tax breaks for motion picture production are rampant around the globe.

Yesterday, a union rep for an IA live-action local said to me that television and movie productions have galloped away from L.A. in droves, going to where tax and other cost breaks are large and plentiful:

"Lots of shoots are now happening on the east coast. Atlanta has a lot of movie work going on. The place is hopping. " ...

And so it goes. The Los Angeles animation scene has been (somewhat) shielded from poaching and job shifting because Southern California is where a concentration of animation talent resides, and critical mass results in gravitational pull.

But this happy phenomenon will not necessarily last forever. Once upon a time, cities in Canada and other parts of the United States had a tough time fielding professional, competent movie crews, so work remained in L.A. That stopped being the case a long while ago.

When the cost differences and tax breaks get big enough, even established California animation studios could start saying ...

"Heeey now!"

Animators and tech directors are not all that different from their live-action brethren. They are just as likely to pull up stakes and "go where the work is" in order to survive, if and when that work travels elsewhere.

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Overseas Winter Box Office

The numbers we care about:

... No. 5, Fox’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ... Foreign gross total comes to $170 million.

DreamWorks Animation/Paramount’s Puss In Boots upgraded it overseas cume to $345 million thanks to a $8.7-million stanza at 4,503 playdates in 58 territories. ...

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn drew $4.48 million on the weekend ... Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, $330,000 in three markets ...

Worldwide totals for the above:

Alvin and the Chipmunks -- $294,171,000

Puss In Boots -- $492,724,000

The Adventures of Tintin -- $351,062,000

Beauty and the Beast -- $33,694,000

That last counts B & B's bounty in its 3-D incarnation.

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DWA's Fortune Ranking

I saw this last week, but since one of our fine trade paper mentions it ...

DreamWorks Animation is the only entertainment industry company on this year's annual Fortune list of 100 Best Companies to Work for, ranking 14th after taking the 10th spot a year earlier. ...

"What animates the animators here is the accessibility of CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who welcomes new hires and sends a daily update to the staff," Fortune said. "He makes it feel like 200 people work here, not 2,000," the magazine quoted one staffer as saying. ...

I'm in and out of DreamWorks Animation's campus all the time, and the morale is better than at other cartoon studios I visit. (Which isn't to say it's "ideal." There have been layoffs over the past year and a half, and some rehires. And of course Wall Street has its issues with the company's cash flow and stock performance.)

Still in all, as I ramble cubicle to cubicle and office to office, I find people relatively buoyant about their work situations.

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Elton!

Elton John has had a pretty good record with animated features: Lion King. Gnomeo and Juliet And now there is this ...

Elton John’s Rocket Pictures has acquired film rights to Michael Buckley’s bestselling series Nerds, and will develop them as an animated family feature that Buckley will script. ...

The question I have is, what production entity will create Elton's new feature? And what director/board crew will be hired to lead development?

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The Usual Stacked Deck

Here's a big surprise:

Lori McAdams of Pixar, which also had a "no-poach" agreement with Lucasfilm, sent an internal email saying that "effective now, we'll follow a gentleman's agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement."

Gee. A big company. Colluding with other big companies to hold down wages. Who'd have thought?

Must be a treat for the congloms to have these come out now. I feel so bad for them.

As the Register says:

The emails are part of the Justice Department's evidence in its class action suit that accuses the tech firms of agreeing not to steal each other's staff so that they could artificially lower employees' wages by killing competition.

The only time it wasn't this way was when Disney and DreamWorks CEOs hated each other and the two companies were outbidding each other for talent. This was the middle nineties.

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The State of the Box Office

Beauty and the Beast, they still remain in the Top Ten but decline 61%. The Mouse will make some nice coin, but the returns are not nearly as robust as The Lion King's ...

1. Underworld Awakening (Sony Pictures) NEW [3,078 Theaters] Estimated Friday $9.8M, Estimated Weekend $23.4M

2. Red Tails (LucasFilm/Fox) NEW [2,512 Theaters] Estimated Friday $6.2M, Estimated Weekend $17M

3. Contraband (Universal) Week 2 [2,870 Theaters] Estimated Friday $3.7M, Estimated Weekend $12.5M, Estimated Cume $46.2M

4. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Warner Bros) Week 5 [2,630 Theaters] Estimated Friday $3.2M, Estimated Weekend $9.5M, Estimated Cume $10M

5. Haywire (Relativity) NEW [2,439 Theaters] Estimated Friday $3M, Estimated Weekend $8.6M

6. Beauty And The Beast 3D (Disney) Week 2 [2,625 Theaters] Estimated Friday $2.1M (-61%), Estimated Weekend $8.5M, Estimated Cume $33.2M

7. Joyful Noise (Warner Bros) Week 2 [2,735 Theaters] Estimated Friday $1.7M (-49%), Estimated Weekend $6M, Estimated Cume $21.8M

8. Mission: Impossible 4 (Paramount) Week 6 [2,519 Theaters] Estimated Friday $1.6M, Estimated Weekend $5.5M, Estimated Cume $197.3M

9. Sherlock Holmes 2 (Warner Bros) Week 6 [2,485 Theaters] Estimated Friday $1.2M, Estimated Weekend $4M, Estimated Cume $177.8M

10. The Iron Lady (The Weinstein Co) Week 4 [1,076 Theaters] Estimated Friday $1M, Estimated Weekend $3.4M, Estimated Cume $12.4M

And Brad Bird's picture is about to cross the $200 million threshhold. Congrats, Brad!

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Wage Increase

Now with scrumptious Add On.

The Mouse has reviewed Robert Iger's performance, and found it good.

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger received nearly $31.4 million in total compensation last year, an 11.9% increase from 2010, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ...

It's good to see Mr. Iger is running ahead of inflation with his salary increases. By contrast, the Hollywood labor organizations get 2% annual wage bump-ups in their collective bargaining agreements.

Add On: Here's a banker of a British state-owned bank, presiding over a stock price that has dropped by half, who's in line for a nice bonus:

... Royal Bank of Scotland prepares to offer a bonus of more than £1m to its chief executive, even though the state-controlled bank’s share price has almost halved in a year.

Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of RBS, and the bank’s board are determined to face down political pressure and will press ahead with a bonus payment to Stephen Hester likely to be in the range of £1.3m-£1.5m on top of a salary of £1.2m. Final figures will be settled next month. ..

The top dogs -- on both sides of the pond -- really do take care of their own. Regardless of results.

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Retreat, Regroup

It sounds like it's over ... all except for the semi-orderly withdrawal.

After a week in which their anti-piracy legislation got derailed by the full force of the Internet lobby, the mood in Hollywood was one of anger, frustration and a growing resignation that the entertainment industry will be forced to accept a much weaker law than originally envisioned.

A full-on counterattack by a tech industry opposed to the toughest elements in the congressional bills, including a well-publicized Wednesday shutdown by key Internet sites, halted the legislation.

With supporters defecting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Friday postponed a key procedural vote. The lead sponsor of the companion bill in the House said he would redraft the proposed law in search of consensus. ...

Nothing like a gazillion petitions, e-mails and letters to focus a congress person's attention ...

I got a call today from one of the people from "Creative America" one of the groups helping the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the IATSE shepherd the anti-piracy bills through congress. He made reference to the unfairness of the tech industry's attack. I replied with my usual mantra:

"There is no fair. There's only what one side or the other has the leverage to get."

And we got into a back-and-forth about the merits of the bills, the threats of piracy on movie workers' livelihoods, also the unwillingness of the tech and internet industries to bend a little. I replied that it didn't look like those folks had to bend, given their muscle with congress.

He had no response to that.

This is a tough time for content conglomerates and movie unions. The digital age and the internet have upended almost every status quo: television viewing; movie attendance; dvd purchases. Long-time business models are, to put it mildly, in flux.

Major parties in the entertainment industry should have seen this coming, what with those coal-mine canaries called record companies. Capitol/EMI, Warner Records and the rest battled collapsing revenues by suing their customer base (always a great idea) twelve years ago, when college kids started downloading songs off the internet. Apple and iTunes saved some of the industry's bacon when they invented a new business model to which the public flocked, but the cake had already been baked. The era of selling little silver disks out of brick and mortar stores was O-ver.

So now movie studios are in the pressure cooker, fighting the wars the old-line record companies lost a decade ago. They'll have to change to survive and prosper, and it won't be easy. But few things are when you're in the throes of radical transformation.

The Animation Guild, like other Hollywood unions, has long supported the battle against internet piracy. The health of industry pension plans depend on it. As unions and guilds said today:

"We fought for this legislation because illegal Internet businesses that locate offshore expressly to elude U.S. laws should not escape the very same rules of law that currently apply to illegal U.S. websites," ...

For the moment, it seems the fight will be waged under current laws and regulations because the fight to push through SOPA and PIPA is at a standstill. But the problem of big-time internet theft is still out there, and it would be useful to have some sharp-edged weapon to combat it.

A representative from the DGA-SAG-AFTRA-IATSE Internet Piracy Group ("Creative America") will be at the next TAG General Membership meeting on Tuesday, January 31st to talk about the battle and legislation against internet piracy. If you have questions or issues, we suggest you BE there to voice them.

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Chroniques des studios sardoniques, by Bob Foster

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