Nick ... Nick ... Nick

...Elodeon.

End of the week found me wandering around Nick's Burbank cartoon studio. The crew for The Mighty B is coming to the end of the initial order of episodes, but an artist showed me the ratings for the show, pinned to a wall, and they were up there.

"For most of us, we're on hiatus in the next week or two, but hopefully the next batch of episodes gets greenlit quick and our time off won't be long"...

(A sentiment often expressed.)

The solid ratings are good news for the animation artists, since Nick, like every other kids cable network, eyes the Disney Channel's success with live action and thinks "why not us?"

Nickelodeon is approaching a 50-50 mix of live action and animation, says Marjorie Cohn, the executive VP of development and original programming at Nickelodeon Networks. “Live action has emerged as being just as strong as animation, which had been dominating the kids’ business for a very long time,” she says. “The immediacy of live action is really important to kids right now. The social currency, the feeling that it’s happening in real time in their lives, is exciting for them. These shows tap into a lot of the things that kids are feeling.”

Who cares that they often aren't cheap to produce? (Nobody, as long as the ratings are good. But that's often easier said than done.)

Nick right now has a bunch of animated shows percolating along. There's new episodes of SpongeBob and Fairly Odd Parents, there's the three pre-school cartoon shows headed up by animation vet Jeff DeGrandis. Then there's the CGI shows Nick is doing with DreamWorks (Madagascar Penguins high on the list.)

Happily, even with the recent burgeoning of live action projects, animation still thrives at most studios.

# # # # # # #

One quick thank you is in order. TAG Blog hit an alltime high in eyeballs this month ... 30,892 (give or take). Not particularly big as blogs go, but not itty bitty, either.

Kevin Koch and I thank you from the tops of our heads to the tips of our keyboarding fingers.

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The Nation's B.O.

... is summertime tangy.

Sex and the City rides in at the top of the weekend list, hauling in $26.1 million on Friday as it overcomes so-so reviews ...

Indy and Co. take $12,250,000 for the second spot and a total of $183.1 million.

Fright flick The Strangers (#3) has the second-best pre-screen average as it collects $7.5 million, while fourth-position Iron Man has $266,350,000 in its hopper.

And Prince Caspian is into triple digits ($106,0008,000) as Robert Iger asks: "Why oh why didn't we release this baby at Christmas like the first one?"

Your Sunday Update: For the weekend, the smallest drop in the Top Ten turns out to be fourth place Iron Man, with a 31.5% decline, a take of $14 million, and a grand total of $276,625,000.

Sex and the City bows at #1 with $52,740,000 while Indiana Jones drops 54.1%, collecting $46,000,000 on its way to $216,881,000.

The Strangers (#3), collects $20.7 million, while Chronicles of Narnia manages $13 million and a total of $115,625,000.

And way down at #13, in 433 theatres, the animated Horton tops out at $152.6 million.

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Newton's Third: Part Deux

And Kevin follows up with:

One of my AM students pointed out that San Jose State University is going to be offering a class in Physics for Animators. In a bit of serendipity, the professor of that class commented on my last post, of Hancock violating Newton’s Third Law of Motion, and provided a link to the program’s website.

This is a great idea, and I heartily support it. I’ve taken a look at the most recent tutorial (”The Physics of Timing”), and I have a few suggestions, mostly related to terms animators use. In this case, when we talk about “timing,” we’re generally talking about when key actions in our animation occur, or how long those actions take. The Physics of Timing Tutorial is mostly about the displacement, from moment to moment, of objects in a gravitational field. That’s very different from the issue of timing. So, in animation terms, what is this really tutorial about? Spacing!

This excellent tutorial is about the spacing of a falling (or sliding, or rising) objects. While a physicist may talk about displacement, we talk about spacing instead, because we’re concerned with the movement of things within screenspace, so we’re looking at the relative spacing from one frame to another, not actual distances.

Substituting ‘Spacing’ for ‘Timing’ may seem a subtle point, but there’s already way too much confusion regarding timing and spacing, which I referred to here and here.

Also, the tutorial repeats the hated “animations” language. Ugh, ugh, and double ugh. I know it’s common for students and people who have worked outside the mainstream of traditional animation to talk about “animations,” but it still sounds as wrong as talking about composing “musics.”

Finally, in the last image of the tutorial, this beautiful stroboscopic shot of a bouncing ball is reproduced. [see the original post at the link for the illustration. -- Hulett]

What’s wrong with this picture? The path of action is off. The arc that the ball traces in space isn’t smooth after each bounce. Now, this is a real photograph, so what gives? I’ll reprint the Widimedia explanation:

Note that the ball becomes significantly non-spherical after each bounce, especially after the first. That, along with spin and air-resistance, causes the curve swept out to deviate slightly from the expected perfect parabola. Spin also causes the angle of first bounce to be shallower than expected.

It’s important to note these discrepancies for students, especially when otherwise showing “idealized” examples (for example, air resistance in the rest of the tutorial is explicitly ignored). If a student copied these arcs exactly, I’d correct them. And they’d be confused, because they were perfectly copying a real example. The problem is, they’d be copying something they didn’t fully understand, and so we need to keep things as simple and clear (and exclude spin and air resistance) in these examples.

Those are quibbles, and meant as constructive criticism and clarification. This is a wonderful idea, and I highly recommend it! I look forward to what Professor Garcia et al. come up with.

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Chewable Links

Now with Add ons!

Joseph Gilland opines about animation peaks and valleys:

In the late '80s, after a string of relatively dismal feature films, Disney pulled its head out of its rear and in 1991 released Beauty and the Beast, the first animated feature ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. With the hugely successful Aladdin being released a year later, and Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving Disney to form DreamWorks Animation just as The Lion King became the highest-grossing classically animated film in history, the animation renaissance of the early '90s was on ...

... while the Shrek films continue to pull in incredible (sick) amounts of money at the box office thanks entirely to clever writing and highbrow poo-poo humor, and Pixar's offerings are still looking pretty strong, we have watched the market once again become saturated with mediocre content, and animation consumers and critics have grown sick and tired of the same old films, rehashed over and over.

Obvious point drawn here: in the movie and teevee biz, imitation is de rigeur. Always. (There were twenty-something television westerns on the tube when I was a kid. Westerns sold.)

And Ron Musker is directing Princess and the Frog. Good to know.

Let the franchise building begin! Tink comes to a DVD display case near you in just a few short months (and John Lasseter rolls out the first installment here):

The computer-animated Tinker Bell, out Oct. 28 on DVD and Blu-ray ($30 and $35), is the first of four fairy films in the works, a new one launching each year.

The movie represents something bigger, too: a refocusing of Disney's straight-to-DVD strategy. The studio will stop releasing sequels of classics such as Bambi, Lady and the Tramp and Cinderella, which have been a rich source of revenue. (Last year's Cinderella III, for instance, took in more than $80 million, estimates the Redhill Group tracking firm.) Instead, they'll go for "more original work, original stories," says John Lasseter ...

"We're creating a whole new mythology," says Lasseter, who oversees the Disney/Pixar home-video originals as well as theatrical releases ...

TAG President Emeritus Tom Sito profiles animation instructor/guru Dave Masters:

For over 30 years, Dave Master has been in the business of educating people, bringing the collective wisdom of animation professionals to a broad cross-section of young artists. Whether at a low-income high school on the outskirts of Los Angeles, as manager of a Warner Bros. training program, or as an Internet pioneer, Dave has made it his mission to give everyone a shot at becoming an animator.

How did a bearded hippie radical hospital workers union organizer become one of the foremost animation educators in the USA? ...

And of course there are hand-drawn animated features being done at places besides Disney. Here is one ...

...[I]t is the turn of an animated mythological "Dashavatar", about Lord Vishnu's 10 incarnations, to entertain the audiences ...

[T]he 115 minute 2D animated feature weaves together the fascinating stories of Lord Rama and Krishna, Parashuram, Vaman, Narasimha and Buddha, and how they descended on earth to rid the world of evil and save mankind ...

"The music actually forms the narrative part of the story. There is a fun number, when Mohini distributes the nectar as the Asuras watch. Another is a children's song with lots of fantasy," said Thakore.

Princess and the Frog, move over.

We wouldn't be doing justice to this festival of links or ... hell ... life itself if we didn't include another Andrew Stanton interview:

I knew that I had to tell the story with the Earth. I had to tell a lot of history. I had to tell what's happened over 1,000 years. That almost dictated what everything was. You wanted a city that felt sort like, sort of what Shanghai's starting to feel like now. Or Dubai. And then you had to have trash towers that were amongst that because you're telling a history that you haven't seen yet. And now you're also telling the demise of that history, and then the way to try to solve the problem of that past history, and now the sort of dystopian result of that... it's so layered. It was a real brain-tease. Every shot counted. It was thrilling to solve it because every part of the buffalo is used on that. But that's really what drove everything. Just telling the story of that. But then we knew again we wanted the future to be cool.

Wall-E comes out June 27th, so the interviews will go on ...

Indy.com review Jeny Elig looks favorably on 2008 Animation Show #4:

Curated by ... Mike Judge, the 2008 Animation Show #4 brings together the works of animators for an eye-popping program that extends far beyond your expectations for a cartoon.

Or, as Hank Hill would say, "What the hell?"

Toon Zone offers a lengthy interview of voice actor Bob Bergen, who broke into the cartoon voice biz after inspiration from Mel Blanc:

I just knew I wanted to be Porky Pig, so I figure, "I'll just call Mel Blanc and say, 'Listen, I know you're of retirement age, and I'd be happy to help out.'" So, I started looking in the phone book under "Mel Blanc," and I couldn't find him because he wasn't listed in the phone book under "Mel Blanc," but I did find his number under his wife's first initial, "E. Blanc" in Pacific Palisades. So I called and I bugged the conversation. I have it on tape.

Throughout that conversation, I realized, "OK, this is an industry, this is something that you have to pursue as a whole, you can't just go after a character." And the odds were against me to go after one character, but my goal was to go after one character. So I wanted to get into the business ...

Add on: Nothing in the internet age is ever lost. Via the Creative Talent Network, a Disney volleyball game circa 1980 narrated live by John Little Mermad, Alladin, Hercules Musker. Among the players: Tim Burton (who went on to direct a few live-action hits, I'm told), and the chairman of WDP Ron Miller.

Add on #2: Dustin Hoffman reflects on his first animation role in Kung Fu Panda:

I was afraid master Shifu was going to be one- or two-dimensional. I felt maybe we could add that he finds out he's wrong about something. That would come from a certain insight, which by definition could be a third dimension. If you look at people who are never wrong, they seem to be two-dimensional, much like our current administration.

Add on #3: Sleeping Beauty comes to Blu Ray!

The Walt Disney Co. is set to rerelease the 1959 animated feature "Sleeping Beauty" in October in Blu-ray with chat, trivia and video-messaging functions, just as its rerelease of "Snow White" on DVD in 2000 introduced a then-revolutionary animated menu.

"'Snow White' made the mass market wake up to the potential of DVD and helped demystify the technology," said Bob Chapek, president of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Worldwide. "'Sleeping Beauty' on Blu-ray a decade later represents much the same thing."

Game changer? Uuuh. I guess we'll see.

Have a scintillating weekend.

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Meal Time!

What's always amazing doing this job is how you discover ... from time to time ... that different studios just fall into ignoring pesky laws and regulations.

Like for instance, seventeen years ago Klasky-Csupo just couldn't be bothered paying overtime to anybody. Like, if you were clearly "non-exempt" from overtime laws, you still didn't get any, even if you worked at the fun factory fifteen freaking hours per day. Their thing, I guess.

Fast forward to now. In the past few weeks, the issue du-jour at one of the larger studios is ... "working lunches" ...

The way it shakes out is, there's a project with an insane amount of production work occupying a short amount of production time. And everybody has their noses to the computer soft and hardware, getting shots done. The crew is working extra hours, but there's no problem in that regard because the hours are being paid. Time-and-a-half, double-time, whatever.

The difficulty is with the non-lunch lunches. Here's what I mean:

Noon comes. A meeting is called for 12:30 in the main conference room. And the supervisor says: "We'll be supplying lunch." And everybody troops dutifully to the meet, eats the sandwich, drinks the bottled water and/or Coke, listens to the spiel. And then everybody goes back to the soft and hardware in their rooms and cubicles to continue doing shots.

Great, but this is not "lunch."

See, there's this Notice of Wages, Hours and Working Conditions in the Motion Picture Industry? Put out by the Industrial Welfare Commission? And on page 9 of that notice, in Section 11, it says:

A) No employer shall employ any person for a work period of more than six (6) hours without a meal period of not less than 30 minutes, nor more than one (1) hour...

B) Unless the employee is relieved of all duty during a 30-minute meal period, the meal period shall be considered an "on duty" meal period and counted as time worked ...

Etcetera, etcetera. So over the last few weeks I've gotten calls about this, and yesterday I run over hard copies of the regulations so people who complained to me, so they know what their rights are. And when I'm strolling down the hall, a staffer I haven't talked to before eyeballs me in a way that says Talk to you a minute?" So of course I say "What's up?" and he says: "Can I ask you about ... meal breaks?"

This is a hint to me that this issue is preying on more than a few people's minds, because I get asked about it by people as I'm delivering copies of the regulations to other people.

To cut to the end credits, here's the nub of what I told the various folks who were miffed that they worked a long day without any real meal breaks:

"You don't want to make a Federal case of this, I totally understand. But you need to know what your rights are, and you need to take a meal break. So my suggestion is, after the "working lunch" where you scarfed down food while looking at the latest power point presentation, take thirty minutes away from your room and decompress. Go for a walk. Sit outside in the sunshine.

"Then when the production assistant comes around with the time cards and tells you to "put in a meal break," you can honestly put down a meal break and not have to, you know, falsify a legal document."

We'll see how it works out.

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It's not too late to play

This year's Screen Cartoonists Golf Tournament is coming up on June 21, and Monday, June 2 is the payment deadline. So, if you want to participate, contact Lyn Mantta asap by e-mail or by phone at (818) 766-7151 ext. 103.

Details below the fold.

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Newton's Third: it's the law

Kevin Koch posts from his blog:

Being a former physics major has certain drawbacks. Oh, it’s a tremendous advantage in understanding how and why things move the way the do when I’m animating. But it makes it hard to enjoy some animation, when the most basic principles of physics are grotesquely violated. For example, why does the above look so wrong?

We intuitively know it’s wrong, and telling ourselves that Hancock is a super-powered dude doesn’t help much. Because even super heroes have to answer to Isaac Newton. Newton blew a lot of people’s minds by summing up much of the hows and whys of motion in three simple laws. And here’s his third law:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Simple, huh? If I’m standing on the edge of a boat, and step towards the dock, the boat will go away from me as much as I go towards the dock. And if I’m not aware of this law, I end up all wet. If you’re sitting in a swivel chair, take that coffee mug off your desk, lift your feet off the ground, and throw the mug as hard as you can. Notice how you spin in the opposite direction from the throw? That’s Newton’s Third Law in action. Oh, and I hope you didn’t aim the mug at your officemate.

In the above clip, the law says that the force being generated at Hancock’s hands, which serves to propel an 80,000-pound whale around 600 feet in a split second, would have an equal and opposite effect at his feet. That’s assuming Hancock’s body, being super and all, is rigid and strong enough not to tear itself apart.* I’m not sure how deeply Hancock would end up burying himself in the sand, but it would be pretty deep. The whale actually wouldn’t end up going much of anywhere. Hancock would just corkscrew himself deep into the sand.

Here’s an experiment: go to an ice rink. Wear some slippery-bottomed dress shoes, pick up a very heavy object, go out on the ice, and see how far you can hurl said object. Just don’t blame me when you end up breaking your tail bone or your nose.

Of course, we’re assuming the whale above is pretty much petrified. Because if it isn’t, Hancock would simply pull two fist-fulls of flesh from the poor creature’s tail before that 40-ton mammal would budge more than a few feet. Try grabbing a big fat regular fish by the tail with a pair of pliers, and jerking it as far and as fast as you can. Yep, the fish won’t move much, but you will tear a little piece of tail away.

I know I’m being Johnny Buzzkill here, and that the filmmakers knew this was ridiculous, and that the animator was just doing what they were told, and it’s played for laughs, and all that jazz. My point is that, if you want the audience to enjoy the marvel of seeing a regular-looking dude doing something physically extraordinary, then the biomechanics and physics can’t be as trivial looking as an actor tossing a 30-pound prop, like this:

Otherwise, why bother to have the pavement exploding when Hancock lands after a huge jump? It’s kind of like watching bad Japanese monster movies, where some 120-pound guy in a suit jumps around and pretends to weigh 100 tons, but they still move like a gymnast in a rubber costume. It just looks dopey, even when the miniatures of the city being stomped to pieces look pretty good. Call me a curmudgeon, but a cursory nod to physics, even extremely exaggerated physics, make these kinds of scenes a lot more fun for me.

*Which is what would have happened to good ol’ Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man, when he tried some crap like tossing a boulder with his bionic arm. The force generated at his hand would have an equal and opposite effect at the junction of his bionic arm and his human shoulder, resulting is said arm ripping loose, and much messiness from all the torn vessels and sinews and such. Not pretty, even if the sound cues were classic.

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Of Agreements and Potential Strikes

Here's a non-surprise, as reported in today's papers:

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists early this morning reached a new contract with Hollywood studios, increasing pressure on the larger Screen Actors Guild to secure its own agreement as negotiations resume today.

The tentative accord, coming after nearly three weeks of negotiations, was modeled on a pact that ended the 100-day writers strike in February. If the contract is ratified, AFTRA would become the third Hollywood union to accept a deal based on the contract negotiated by directors last year, making it tougher for SAG to argue that its members deserve significantly better terms.

You think the pressure on SAG not to strike and deal along the same lines as every other union and guild just went up by several notches? (Don't everybody raise their hands at once ....)

As much as some of the SAG leadership probably wants members to hit the bricks, thanks to AFTRA (you know, that actors union with which its larger cousin didn't want to merge?) the Screen Actors Guild now has considerably less leverage to pull off a job action.

Nikki Finke thinks AFTRA caved in a major way:

Just look at what AFTRA failed to wrought re clips in New Media. First, all AFTRA members must now "bargain for consent for the right to use non-promotional excerpts of traditional TV shows in New Media at the time of original employment" with the Hollywood studios and networks for programs produced made after July 1, 2008, which basically leaves AFTRA members powerless and unprotected.

Reading this, I take the language Nikki quotes to mean that actors hired onto a show will have to give their "consent" up front ... as a condition of employment. Bad news for any actors without the leverage of the select few (like, you know, stars the studios have to sign to the project.)

If SAG hates this outcome (and possibly the guild does), then it's a damn shame it didn't gather AFTRA under its protective wing when it had the chance (twice).

Folks who don't think strategically ... and long-term, sometimes suffer bad consequences.

On a related front, the artist staffers at Film Roman tell me that The Simpsons voice actors still have not reached a deal with Fox:

"Every week they tell us the agreement with the cast will be done this week or next. They've been saying this for a month ..."

Here's hoping (yet again) that the issues are resolved, the actors return to the recording studio, and the artist-hostages can return to work.

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Remembering June Nam

Kevin writes:

Yesterday we memorialized those who died during war, and today I want to memorialize one of the many unsung animation artists who make up our industry. I got the sad news a couple of months ago that June Nam (born Myung Nam Park) died on Feb. 24. It’s taken me a while to gather together some images, and to process the unexpected loss of someone so young, so pardon me for being late with this.

June was my lead key on my first professional animation job, working on Quest for Camelot. I came onto Quest after that film had gone through a protracted, messy development and early production, and there were a fair number of bitter and disgruntled people at WBFA at the time. But not on Team Ayden. Lead animator Mike Nguyen and lead key June Nam were two of the nicest and most generous animators I’ve ever worked with.

Quest was my first film, and I wanted to work on one of the main characters. In those days animation productions were oriented by character, and I got the cold should from a couple of the leads on the main characters. I was eventually shuffled off to the Ayden/Merlin team, and it couldn’t have been luckier for me. As green as I was, June treated me with respect and patience, and in short order was giving me work a couple of grades above my inbetweener status.

I confess I was so raw that sometimes unable to grasp her corrections to my work, but she was always happy to accent the positive and encourage me. I look now at photocopies of Ayden ruffs and my clean-up drawings, and I cringe at what she had to put up with, but at the time she made me feel like I was a ‘natural.’

Not long before I came on board she’d been in a terrible car accident, which often caused her severe pain, but she’d never mention it. A couple of times I came barging into her cubicle to find her stretched out flat on the floor, trying to find some reasonably comfortable position. Somehow even in that state she exuded grace and dignity.

We had a happy, tight team amidst a lot of discord, and I’m still proud of the work we did on that falcon. Last year at Rainplace.net Mike Nguyen wrote a heart-felt piece on animating the falcon, and working together, on Quest (which is where I borrowed the signed Ayden ruff above). He beautifully captured the way we as animators and artists can find beauty and art admid even the most screwed up big-studio production. I’ll always be grateful to June and Mike for carving out that creative space in the middle of so much chaos.

My path crossed June’s again a few years later at DreamWorks, when she came to work on Spirit and Sinbad. I’d moved into the animation department by then, so we didn’t work together, but I always enjoyed hanging out and chatting with her, and it gave me a chance to thank her for mentoring me at the beginning of my career ....

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The TAG Financial Forum

For those of you who missed it, here's a summarized, paraphrased representation of last night's forum:

What's the biggest mistake people make in saving for retirement?

Janet Gibson: Carrying too much debt. You can't build wealth when you're spending your money paying off credit cards. Revolving debt (credit cards) is the worst, because cards have high interest and they carry forward month after month. You need to have strategies to pay off debt. The money you have needs to be working for you.

Ralph Bovitz: It's a good idea to never let small items that you buy stay on revolving credit (credit card) longer than its "natural life." Pay them off as quickly as possible. And pay down bigger items.

Ralph Bovitz: Another mistake is being unwilling ... or maybe not having the ability ... to put money into 401(k) Plans and IRAs. People should try and put 10% of income into investments or a 401(k). They need to look out for themselves first so they're not a burden on their children.

How should people go about investing?

Janet Gibson: It's a good idea to have 3-6 months of income ... or the money you need to survive the next six months ... in an emergency fund. The money should be easy to get to, in a money market or savings account.

Ralph Bovitz: People should get educated about their finances. They should know how mortgages work, how credit cards work. A good resource is aicpa.org ... On that website there's a pig character called Benjamin Banks who headlines a program about financial literacy. It's designed for kids and teenagers, but it's good for anyone.

What should people invest in for retirement? How much should they save for retirement?

Janet Gibson: Planning for retirement, you have to figure out what your baseline needs are: Will you need $40,000? $60,000? More? Figure out where your money is going to come from. You'll probably get some from Social Security, some from Pension Plans, some from your 401(k). I think that most retirement money you save in 401(k)s and IRAs should be in mutual funds, in places where the money won't go away and there won't be big losses.

Ralph Bovitz: Janet likes actively managed funds. I think index funds work best. Modern Portfolio Theory says that having assets allocated over different types of investments (asset classes) works best. It's as much art as science. You can keep your money in ultra-safe bank Certificates of Deposit, but for growth you'll need stocks. Your purchasing power declines over time if you just keep money in lower-yielding bank deposits. It's good to remember that stocks go up and down. Often it's one step forward and one step back, even though assets grow in the long term.

Janet Gibson: Dollar cost averaging is a good way for people to go. It's what everyone does in a 401(k), put money into different mutual funds on a week-to-week schedule. I think, outside of 401(k)s, people should add to investment accounts on a monthly basis. Monthly works well for my clients. David Bach talks about putting your investing on auto-pilot in Automatic Millionaire.

Ralph Bovitz: The newer investment literature I've read says that portfoilo performance is determined by asset mix and the design of portfolios. The latest thinking in portfolio design is to have more diversified equities and less cash (for better longer term performance). An investor can always move some investments into cash as needed.

What about opening ROTH IRAs for kids?

Ralph Bovitz: Your son and daughter has to be earning money to have money put into a ROTH IRA. Only earned money can go into a ROTH.

What does somebody do in times like these, when jobs are tight and markets are going up and down, but mostly down?

Janet Gibson: If you're in your twenties or thirties, in the front part of your career, a bad market is a great time to be investing because you're buying stocks or mutual funds at a discount, and that's good. You guys are artists, and you've got skills you can use to start your own businesses. You need to develop multiple streams of income in your life, and I think a good allocation of assets would be:

25% real estate

25% stocks

25% cash

25% in your own business

What about paying off a house when you have a lot of equity in it? Wouldn't it be better to use the home equity elsewhere? For something else?

Janet Gibson: There's freedom in paying off a house, but I don't have strong feelings about paying it off or not paying it off. Sometimes its good to use home equity for other things. But I have clients who bought houses durin the UP market, and they don't have a lot of equity.

Ralph Bovitz: I think it's a personal choice, and depends on an indvidual's circumstances.

Hulett: That covers most of the major items discussed. There was lively back and forth about the kinds of investments people should get into. Ralph Bovitz favored diversified index funds, Janet Gibson liked managed funds. (I fall in the middle and said so, noting that index funds usually outperform managed funds during bull (UP) markets, but under-perform managed funds in bear (DOWN) markets.)

There was general agreement that people need to devise investment plans and have the discipline and focus to stick to them. Doing nothing is really not an option.

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Different Takes on The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Short Films, 1907-1954

Song of the South is one thing, and cartoon shorts are another.

Christopher P. Lehman, a black associate professor in Minnesota, explores the depiction of blacks in animation in his book, The Colored Cartoon: Representation in American Short Films, 1907-1954.

Various reviewers have had different takes on the work. Michael Barrier, who knows animation and its history as well as almost anybody, defends a couple of the cartoons with which Dr. Lehman has problems, but goes on to write:

... the people who wrote and drew many of the most offensive cartoons weren't making conscious choices that blacks should be depicted in degraded and insulting terms; they were just stuffing into drawings the ignorant assumptions that they shared with a great many other whites. How galling it must have been — how galling it must be — to suffer insult and humiliation at the hands of people who actually aren't paying much attention to you.

It's often true that overlords pay little attention to those in stations beneath them. No doubt the slave-class in ancient Rome was pretty much invisible to Roman citizens. Enslaved workers hauled in from the Middle east or the forests of Germany were fixtures who were simply there, a part of everyday existence like chariots or Roman baths. What was the big deal, anyway? If Romans made fun of "stupid, slothful" slaves from Mesopatamia, well they were Mesopatamians, for God's sake! That's the way those people are!

When I was at Disney, one of the older storymen created black, jive-talking crows (along the lines of those in Dumbo) in the early development of The Fox and the Hound. He didn't see anything wrong with the characters, thought they were funny. (They were also pretty ... ah ... derivative, but that's another story ...)

Studio topkick Ron Miller told him to take them out; he kept resisting until Miller finally said in a meeting: "We're still getting letters about Dumbo! These character have to go!"

And ultimately they did, replaced by a woodpecker and sparrow who talked with a Brooklyn accent. (Another stereotype?)

By the 1970s, you see, the overlords had gotten a clue that the caricatures that had flourished in the 'thirties and 'forties were no longer okay. No longer could they use "What's the big deal?" and have people buy into it.

Emru Townsend at Frames Per Second has a level-headed take on The Colored Cartoon:

Lehman recounts a chronological history of film animation from its beginnings at the hands of J. Stuart Blackton through most of the Golden Age of animation, weaving in descriptions and explanations of the types of racist images used. This really does put things in context, as for the first time we get to see how the evolution of these images and the gags behind them corresponds to the evolution of animation, movies, pop culture and society at large.

After I finished the book—at 137 pages it's a quick read—it occurred to me that The Colored Cartoon is, in itself, an answer to many of the questions and misconceptions that have swirled around this debate for at least as long as I've observed it. Why is it okay to make fun of Elmer Fudd, who is white, but not black characters who chase Bugs Bunny? The seemingly obvious answer is that Elmer Fudd's skin colour isn't the source of the humour, his ineptitude is. For those that argue that a black character's ineptitude isn't necessarily racist, Lehman's long-range view breaks down the different types of stereotypes and why even the most innocuous-looking depictions were part of a larger trend.

I haven't read the book, but only summaries and reviews. But I think I know what Dr. Lehman is getting at. The sharp daggers of ignorance are still daggers, and they still cut.

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Maytime Studio Roundabout

After the long holiday weekend, I was back into the studio routine, room to room and cubicle to cubicle in the regular way.

DreamWorks is busy with its big slate of films. Monster and Aliens, which I think is its first stereoptican production, is well into work. A staffer clued me that two sequences are animated and everybody is turning and burning on a bunch of others, looking toward an end-of-year completion.

At the House of Mouse, various and sundry employees were bopping off to a meeting down Riverside Drive brainstorming ways to rehabilitate the corporate symbol (Mr. Mouse) back into a big-time movie star. (The 1930s, Mr. Mouse's last heyday, were a long time ago).

As I stumbled through the Hat Building's hallways, some of the suggestions I heard were:

"Stop making Mickey as a c.g.i. character."

"Put Mickey in some featurettes and like, short features."

My vote would be to team Mr. Mouse with his two long-time amigos, Mr. Duck and the Goof I'm quite good with doing the obvious.

And I'm told that there's animation going on in three different sequences of Princess and the Frog. And Bolt continues to move briskly along, with overtime aplenty.

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The Jump Starting of Modern Animation -- 75 Years Ago TODAY

On May 27, 1933, a bright Technicolor line was drawn across the long history of animation.

Walt Disney released Three Little Pigs, and nothing in animation was ever the same again. Animator-director Ward Kimball related three decades ago:

[Three Little Pigs] was wonderful for the time. It made everything that came before look very crude, and it gave the studio the shot in the arm that Walt thought was wonderful.

And as Adrian Danks, president of the Melbourne cinemateque writes:

Three Little Pigs is generally regarded as the most successful short animation of all time. Many analyses of the film concentrate upon anecdotal accounts of wildly positive audience responses to the film, its extensive run in the cinemas, its promotion often above the feature film of the day, its widespread cross-promotional success (sheet music sales, dolls of the pigs and wolf, etc), and its extensive international distribution ...

By most accounts, it was the right film in the right place in the right year -- the dank, dark bottom of the Depression -- and it catapulted Disney far ahead of the competition.

Back behind Pigs' release lay the black-and-white, rubber-hose animation that had flourished from the 1920s onward. Ahead of it lay the rapidly evolving sophistication of Disney features (along with the work of Warners/Schlesinger and Fleischer studios).

"Personality animation," as we now understand it, was really jump-started with Three Little Pigs, driving the final nail into the coffin of the 'rubber hose' school of cartoons. Fred Moore, then in his early twenties, gave the piggies dimension, roundness and personality. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston write that "no other animator could portray chubby little pigs with [Moore's] solidity ..."

Other elements -- story, music, color -- came together to connect with audiences like cartoons had seldom connected before.

Three-quarters of a century on, it's a little tough to see what all the hoopla was about, for it's difficult to transport popular art out of the context of its time and have it retain anywhere near the original force and impact.

But if you squint your eyes and know a few of the cartoon shorts that preceded it, you can detect and understand at least some of the magic. (And happily, the Wolf as a Jewish peddler -- one of the ethnic slurs that was par for comedy in that long ago age -- has long since been expunged from the release print.)

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Last Call for TAG's Financial Forum

Tomorrow night (Tuesday), TAG will present an encore of last year's Financial Forum. To reiterate:

The meeting will be open to active and inactive TAG members*; pizza and refreshments await at 6:30 pm, and the festivities will start at 7 pm at the IA Local 44 meeting hall, 12021 Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. (The cross street is Agnes, 1 block east of Laurel Canyon. Parking is behind the Local 44 building or across the street behind the mini-mall off Agnes.) ...

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CN Reinvents Itself

Or at least gives it the old college try:

They're hoping to stanch the flow of young viewers leaving the network for Disney and Nick, but they're also trying to rebuild the net as "the home for boys," in Snyder's words (though he quickly adds that he hopes the female aud sticks around for shows like Cartoon's new comedy "Chowder").

"I think in general the network has a strength in fantasy and adventure, and it has a strength with boys," says Sorcher. "You'll see us capitalizing on that -- (upcoming show) 'Star Wars' is a great indicator of where all this is going." ...

It's no secret that Cartoon Network has issues. Its market share has been declining for a couple of years, and as Variety notes: "In April, total-day ratings were down by double-digit percentages in the key demos of kids 2-11, kids 6-11 and kids 9-14."

To date, CN's counter-moves to its rivals have fallen flat. (The manuevers it made going after Disney Channels live-action audience with live product of its own went mostly nowhere. I don't understand live-action on a cabler called "Cartoon Network" anyway, but it's probably me being behind the times.)

It's painful to watch a high-flying outfit slide back toward terra firma, but it happens to every animation studio at one time or another ( just look at Disney's up and downs over eighty years; it's been on the verge of bankruptcy a couple of times).

Part of the Cartoon Net's trouble is the nature of television itself: For thirty-five years the territory was divided up into three, then four networks that commanded huge audiences, and those large tracts of broadcast real estate made good money. But home entertainment now evolves at warp speed, with hundreds of cable channels and an infinite number of internet sites on the ubiquitous web. And all this subdividing insures that the properties get slice and diced into tiny, ferociously competitive lots.

All the more reason to have a robust development department to fuel future growth. Maybe CN's oncoming shorts program will fill all or part of that bill ...

(Toon Zone's Cartoon Network forum kicks around the ramifications of the Variety article here.)

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Sydney Pollack, RIP

Pollack's passing has nothing much to do with animation, but I enjoyed hell out of his films.

Sydney Pollack, the Academy Award-winning director of "Out of Africa" who achieved acclaim making popular, mainstream movies with A-list stars, including "The Way We Were" and "Tootsie," died Monday. He was 73. Pollack, who also was a producer and actor, died of cancer at his home in Pacific Palisades, according to Leslee Dart, his publicist and friend ...

"Sydney Pollack has made some of the most influential and best-remembered films of the last three decades," film scholar Jeanine Basinger told The Times recently.

In looking at Pollack's films, she said, "what you see is how he kept in step with the times. He doesn't get locked into one decade and left there. He had a very sharp political sensibility and a keen sense of what the issues of his world were, and he advanced and changed as the times advanced and changed ..."

I liked his work as an actor, too. His turn last year as a senior law partner in Michael Clayton was choice.

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Actors Strike Over Clips?

The question I get with regularity is: "So are the actors going on strike?"

Like I know. But a weekend ago, another union rep and I fell into conversation about it (we were hiking up the side of a mountain, so the talk occurred between huffing and puffing). He told me what he knew about the AFTRA talks that are going on:

"The big issue now for SAG and AFTRA are clip usage. The studio have had to get clearance from actors before using clips for half a century. Now the studios want automatic permission, and they say they'll pay for usage.

But AFTRA is saying what SAG did: 'Hell, no!' The congloms have got to get consent from the actors. The studios don't want to have to keep doing that, and AFTRA isn't budging on the point anymore than SAG. There's a lot of pressure on AFTRA not to cave in and look weak."

The same point was made day before yesterday in VARIETY:

Both unions have told the companies in no uncertain terms that actors must still be asked for their consent for clips of their work to be used online, as has been required of clip use since the 1950s. At a May 19 SAG townhall meeting, the clips issue generated by far the most emotional reaction, even though other unresolved issues -- DVD residuals, product placement, force majeure -- carry far more financial heft.

Studios and broadcast networks raised the clips issue as a win-win: Actors could make more money if the companies develop a market for clips to compete with the massive amounts of pirated footage on the Web, but only if the consent requirement is dropped.

The majors assert that tracking down all the thesps in a scene would be such a headache that the business would be unfeasible.

"The 50-year-old union rules at issue were intended for the few cases where a producer needed to license a film or TV clip for use in another program," the AMPTP said the next day. "No one envisioned that the Internet would come along and allow public usage of clips before either the producers or performers would create a market."

This is where things could get sticky. The unions have the weight of longtime practice on their side, and the studios want to change the practice. Changing something that old and established is hard to do, especially when the membership feels passionately about it. And if the studios don't blink, there's more than a small chance they'll strike over it.

Studios arguing that it's "too difficult" to track down actors to get consent is laughable. The real issue, as I look at it, is the majors don't want to leave the power to say "no" in the hands of actors. They want to be able to run clips without anybody having a veto.

This could be a toughie if the studios don't change their position because it's always hard to sell a major movement of the goal posts ni the best of times. And this is definitely not the best of times.

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Racism, Commercialism, and Song of the South

A couple years ago, I sat up in the nosebleed seats of the Anaheim Convention Center during the Disney shareholder meeting and heard Disney CEO Robert Iger answer a question about when Song of the South might be coming back.

Mr. Iger said that he had looked at the film, and the company had looked at the idea of re-releasing the SOTS, but after due consideration the answer was "sorry, no." The picture wouldn't be coming out anytime soon on DVD or any other format. It was just too sensitive.

I sat there and thought, "Okay, I can understand that. The picture isn't nearly as racist as Gone With the Wind, but this is Disney, after all. What family-type conglomerate wants grief releasing old product that rubs some people the wrong way, that opens old sores? Probably a safe decision."

That was in 2006. Then we moved on to other stockholder meetings ...

And Mr. Iger's thinking changed somewhat:

... At the annual shareholders meeting in March 2007, Iger announced that the company was reconsidering the decision, and had decided to look into the possibility of releasing the film ...

But that stockholder announcement quickly got reversed:

In May 2007, it was again reported that the Disney company had chosen not to release the film...

So here we are in 2008, and the Mouse House has reverted to the more cautious status quo:

..."[I]n Albuquerque today, March 6, 2008. A shareholder got up during the Question and Answer segment to ask Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney, 'Before the end of my lifetime will I ever see 'Song of the South' released to home video?' To which Mr. Iger replied the now 'standard' reply: They discuss the possibility regularly, there are certain issues of 'sensitivity' surround this movie and the long ago past era it was made in, times are different now, no immediate plans to release it, but they do regularly revisit it, etc."

Now, I totally get behind Robert Iger's thinking. Disney doesn't need to gin up controversy by putting SOTS out on the market again. Sure, it's got some terrific animation in it, and yes, it's not as over-the-top with its stereotypes as the Selznick-MGM Civil War epic, but there would be incoming flack if the feature was re-marketed, and the cost-benefit for Disney most likely isn't worth it.

All that I totally understand. What I don't understand is this ...

Generous portions of Song of the South are all over YouTube, and being watched. And one thing I know is, if Disney -- the copyright holder -- didn't want them them there, they wouldn't be.

So the only thing I can conclude is, the House of Mouse has mixed emotions about its sixty-two-year-old animation/live-action chestnut. Not ready to embrace it, but not willing to reject it totally, either. (And anyone who wants to own a copy, well ... that can be arranged.)

My take? Some of South is pretty edgy by today's standards (and a lot of blacks had problems with it right from the get-go), but if you want a dose of repugnant, consider what the Warners' animation crew was doing around the same time:

... [Eleven racially offensive Warners Cartoons], known as the “Censored 11,” have been unavailable to the public for 40 years. Postings no longer appear if YouTube is searched for “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs,” a parody of “Snow White” and the most famous of the cartoons. But a search for “Coal Black” does find the cartoon.

These cartoons were controversial when first released; the N.A.A.C.P. unsuccessfully protested “Coal Black” before it was shown in 1943. Richard McIntire, the director of communications for the N.A.A.C.P., wrote in an e-mail message that “the cartoons are despicable. We encourage the films’ owners to maintain them as they are — that is, locked away in their vaults.” ...

The problem for any culture, and especially a diverse civilization like ours, is the standards that one generation finds acceptable is often despised and repudiated (justifiably) in the next. Looking back, I'm amazed that anyone could not have found various stereotypes in silent comedies and animated cartoons offensive.

Yet there they are, on full view on the ubiquitous internet, for everybody to clench their jaws at.

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Spielbergian Box Office

To nobody's surprise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Noggin is the top money spinner on this box office weekend:.

``Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,'' the fourth film about the archaeologist- adventurer from Viacom Inc.'s Paramount, earned $56 million in ticket sales over two days and may be headed for a record ...

Way back down the track we find Chronicles of Narnia (second go-round) and Iron Man clumped in the second and third positions, with box office totals of $74.7 mill and $237.5 million.

Paramount looks to be having a fine Spring, with Indy and Iron Man racking up big numbers. Less fine for Summner Redstone's shop is that Paramount only collects distribution fees on these two flicks, but that will still pile up into a nice, neat tower of change.

Update: Indy wallops the competition with a $101 million weekend ($126 million to date).

And there are now two Top Ten features enjoying triple digit returns.

Meanwhile Narnia: Prince Caspian takes a 58% dive as it ekes out a second weekend, second-place win against muscular Iron Man (37% drop and a $252.3 million total.)

Using the Koch Box Office Calculator (c), Mr. Jones will likely end his run in the $300 million range (3-4 times initial weekend gross.)

(Caveat: the three-day holiday weekend will maybe skew final numbers a bit.)

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In the Public Domain

This piece about a batch of Warner Bros. animated shorts for the war department that would be owned by the Feds if they had only renewed copyright is worth perusing.

... it’s fairly startling that any of the Private Snafu cartoons ever got made. All of the cartoons required War Department approval before they were screened, and no one ever accused the U.S. military of having a sense of humor. But the films place a very heavy emphasis on slapstick knockabout, often using slightly blue jokes, mild cussing (the word “hell” turns up) and vaguely tasteless gags to get their points across. But somehow or other, the cartoons received official approval, resulting in 28 shorts (averaging slightly less than five minutes) that were made between 1943 and 1945.

You can go through the $2 DVD bins at Toys-R-Us and other places and come across Public Domain Fleischers, Warners and Schlesigner cartoons (and a few others) that never got their copyrights renewed. (This never happened to the Disney product, for Uncle Walt wasn't that inattentive.)

It would be pleasant indeed if somebody could pin down negatives and/or first-generation prints for a lot of this material, since a lot of it is worth owning if it's not a dupe of a dupe.

Otherwise, not so much.

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Maytime Links

"Disney Girls" from the ever informative, always entertaining BW.

Another round of cartoon linkage (with add ons and updates below), starting with the Blackwing Diaries, and Jenny L.'s terrific post on unsung Disney employees from seventy years back:

These were taken at the Hyperion studio, circa 1936-37. All this and more were scrapbooked (along with a wealth of discarded drawings, color models, doodles and company memos) by a girl with the unlikely name of Ingeborg Willy-a young woman who obviously loved her animation job inking in the best studio in the United States. By the way-none of the women pictured above is Ms. Willy, I think-she was holding the camera.

These come from the collection of Robert Cowan ... who acquired Ms. Willy's scrapbook in 1998. He made an absolutely lovely job of printing up a facsimile and offering this rare scrapbook at cost, thinking that he'd like to share his find with interested parties. Only a very few were ultimately sent out(Hans Perk writes about it in more detail here), but it may yet be reprinted ...

Looks like one of the leading contenders for the Palme d'Or at Cannes is an animated, feature-length documentary:

An animated documentary about a massacre in the Middle East is the current frontrunner to win the coveted Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Waltz with Bashir uses animation to portray fragmented memories Waltz with Bashir is a daring and provocative attempt by director Ari Folman to bear witness to an atrocity committed during his stint in the Israeli army in 1982.

... "A lot of anti-war movies, if you look at them through the eyes of teenagers, they get it all wrong.

"Yes, they see war is useless. But they think: 'It's terrible but I want to be out there - I want to go through that experience.'

"And I hope that when young people watch this film they will think: 'No, I don't want to be part of this. It has nothing to do with my life.'"

(Sounds more controversial than your garden-variety 'toon, yes?)

Then there's the reality producer who wants to do cartoons.

Top reality producer Mark Burnett is venturing into TV animation ... Mark Burnett Prods. will produce Liquid Generation's first three TV projects, including originals "Witness Protection" and "Rapper in Chief." It also will consult Liquid Generation's efforts to take their existing content from online to television ...

I might be totally wrong on this, but it doesn't sound like Mr. Burnett has mega budgets going for these. No doubt I'm in error ...

This is my favorite headline of the week ... possibly the year:

Animation is the Sudden Cessation of Creativity Stupidity

A pity the accompanying article -- an overview of the growth of the animation business in India -- isn't as compelling.

Animation creator Mike Judge cobbles together his favorite cavalcade of newer cartoon shorts:

Every year, King of the Hill creator Mike Judge hand-picks his favorite cartoon shorts for a national tour of movie theaters that he calls The Animation Show. Now Judge and animator Don Hertzfeldt have compiled shorts from the 2007 road show and assembled their choice picks on DVD.

Set for release June 3, The Animation Show: Volume 3 features quirky experiments in hand-drawn and computer-rendered animation from 16 artists who are working way outside the Pixar/DreamWorks mainstream ...

Animation Magazine informs us that Gabor Csupo has sold a new cartoon series to the old eastern bloc ... as a long-form. (Nice to see a live-action director going back to his roots)

Immigrants, a 2D-animated adult series from Klasky-Csupo co-founder Gabor Csupo, has been sold to Hungary and Russia as an 89-minute feature film scheduled to debut in October. According to Daily Variety, Hungaricom acquired rights for Hungary prior to Cannes and sold it to Moscow's Ruscico for Russia and former Soviet territories during the market ...

Let's end with a clip from the next Big Animated Feature to be released this summer:

It turns out that watching CG-characters perform complex, gravity-defying kung fu moves is truly awesome to watch. If all the sequences in the film are like this DreamWorks has nothing to worry about at the box office ...

I'm keenly interested in its box office future. The bigger the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Add on: The Economist has a good, Economisty review of David Price's new tome about Pixar:

A number of interesting things about Disney emerge in this excellent, readable account of Pixar's early years. David Price claims, for instance, that Disney's chief executive, Michael Eisner, considered shutting down the company's animation unit after he took over as chief executive in 1984, an astonishing fact given the subsequent success of cartoon films such as “The Lion King”. Mr Price also makes clear just how much Pixar owes to Disney: it was the larger company's marketing for “Toy Story”, for instance, that gave Mr Jobs the confidence to launch an initial public offering of shares in Pixar in 2005.

Yep. Rumors were rampant in '84-'85 that disney animation was gonna get outsourced.

Add on Deux: Randy Miller provides us with a brief history of the life, death and rebirth of Futurama:

... the demise of Matt Groening's Futurama proved to be slow and steady. Not in quality, of course: this tale of a man frozen for a millennium only got funnier as the series progressed, though network support dwindled during its four-year lifespan. As the Simpsons machine rolled on, Futurama's timeslot was shuffled around; for a time, the series' broadcast directly followed Groening's most famous creation, but it didn't last long. The series was eventually cancelled in August of 2003 ...

Have a fulfilling end-of-week experience and a thrilling three-day weekend.

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Up At Film Roman, Watching the "Gravy Train"

From comments down below:

... honestly, i don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for the Simpson's crew. they've been on one of the biggest gracvy trains this town has ever seen animation-wise(has any other show had more longevity? any other job had more security?) ...

It's always heart-warming when you read this kind of all-encompassing love for co-workers. Somebody gets a fairly steady job paying okay wages, and they're despised for it.

Good will toward fellow artists, it's a delight to see. But let me say a few things about the "gravy train" ...

I was up at Film Roman this morning. There's like maybe a dozen artists working in the Simpsons unit. One of the surviving layout artists said to me:

"I've been off for ten weeks. We just came back two weeks ago, and on Friday we're through with everything and back on layoff ..."

He wasn't complaining, just giving me the cold reality when I asked how things were. And I'll tell you something about the Simpsons layout artists. They work incredibly hard, and for years they worked at below-scale rates: a grand a week or less when contract studios were paying twenty and fifty percent more. A thousand dollars sounds like a lot, but there were seasonal breaks and L.A. rents to pay, so maybe not so much.

And the last time the voice actors went to the mat with Fox, the artists had a real long layoff.

So yeah, the Simpsons crew has had a long gig, but the pay for many hasn't been, like, overwhelming. And the artists have sort of had something to do with making the long employment happen, haven't they?

One other thing. Long employment isn't always the end-all and be-all, and it doesn't necessarily make you even semi-wealthy. I knew plenty of Disney long-termers back in the seventies, guys that had been around twenty or thirty years. One grizzled board artists told me:

"I got to Disney in '55. I was managing a gas station before I was hired, and they paid me so little that I had to go on managing the gas station at night to make ends meet. That went on for three or four years ..."

My old man made $15 a week when he began his thirty-five-year Disney career; he was making $60/week when I was born. He ended up comfortably middle-class not from his Disney salary, but from all his non-Disney art jobs.

The first half-century of animation in Southern California, few got rich from animating or designing or drawing storyboards. Woolie Reitherman confided: "I got rich from Disney stock options, not from the pay."

Most, of course, didn't have Disney stock options. At a TAG Golden Awards banquet celebrating fifty-year animation employees, Disney veteran Joe Hale chortled: "Half a century? Hell, this is a business where you have to work that long to survive."

He wasn't joking.

So if you want to ride the bitter train because somebody has managed to work steadily in cartoonland, you'll have to ride without me. Because I know how hard it's been for even those who've had long-term jobs, and I ain't climbing on board.

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The Road to Riches ... next Tuesday

I spent a good part of my life being an idiot about money. (Hold your applause, please).

When I think of the moolah that has flowed through my fingers like water, the dollars I have pissed away, I cringe. I've been trying to catch up ever since.

In that regard, the Animation Guild is holding a financial seminar for its members next Tuesday night ...

It's called "The Road to Riches And a Happy, Successful Retirement." (catchy title, yes?)

I'll be hosting a panel of ace financial advisors: Ralph Bovitz (CPA and Financial Specialist), Janet Gibson (of Primerica), and Shawn Loddy (of Regal Securities.)

They and I will be kicking around strategies for building a financial wall of security around your life, also better strategies for weathering our current financial storms. (To be clear, the experts will be doing most of the talking, not me.)

The meeting will be open to active and inactive TAG members*; pizza and refreshments await at 6:30 pm, and the festivities will start at 7 pm at the IA Local 44 meeting hall, 12021 Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. (The cross street is Agnes, 1 block east of Laurel Canyon. Parking is behind the Local 44 building or across the street behind the mini-mall off Agnes.)

Be there.

*Inactive members (withdrawn or suspended) are welcome; they have "voice but no vote" at the meeting, but they can always ask questions.

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Simpsons Interruptus

As a commenter below commented, there's trouble in Homerland:

Last week, Fox announced a fall schedule that included animated staple "The Simpsons" in its normal Sunday timeslot. The hitch? There's still no deal with the voice talent behind "The Simpsons." And without one, the 20th season of the series could be in jeopardy.

While sources close to both the voice actors and 20th Century Fox TV are optimistic that they're on the road to a new deal, production on the show's 20th season has been on hold for months -- meaning the studio will probably produce just 20, rather than 22, segs next season ...

I'm a longtime believer in leverage, and the voice actors of The Simpsons obviously have some. (Call me naive if you like , but I don't think the company will replace the actors with cheaper imitations.) Howsoever ...

... my stomach churns when I think of the handful of artists hanging by a thread at Film Roman, also all the laid off artists who are now the collateral damage caused by the stalled voice-actors' negotiations.

I'm pretty much of the opinion (stated here previously) that the actors are piggy-backing on the (possible) SAG and AFTRA strike that could happen anytime after July 1, the better to juice their own negotiations with Rupert's boys and girls.

I'm told there are several scripts ready for recording, but if contracts aren't finalized, then ... no voice tracks, and no shows. And if a general actors strike goes on for months (certainly a possibility), then there will most likely be fewer Simpson episodes inside a shorter 20th season.

I gotta believe that the parties will reach a deal and hustle the scripts on hand into the recording studio. If they don't, a lot of Simpsons artists, all of whom deserve better, could have a long, miserable summer. Many have already had a really crappy Spring ...

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Studios and MisInformation

Yesterday, I hit two different cartoon factories. In the course of my rounds, some new hires asked me questions, a few of which made me gnaw on the inside of my wizened cheeks. I've hit on this topic before, but in the interest of continuing education, I address the questions yet again:

"The studio told me the union contract only allows them to give me two weeks vacation per year ..."

The fabled union contract says this: "All weekly employees ...who have had one year of continuous employment ... shall be entitled to two (2) weeks paid vacation." (Article 8).

But wait! There's more! The contract also says:"Nothing in this Agreement shall prevent any individual from negotiating and obtaining from the Producer better conditions and terms of employment than those herein provided ..." (Article 4.C.)

So guess what? Employees are free to negotiate more vacation, higher wages, and extra benefits. (Stock options? Abso-freaking-lutely). All it takes is juice and leverage.

Some people have those things, others don't. For instance, a dozen years ago, animation employees regularly negotiated for wages that were double minimum scale. Many negotiated four ... or five ... or six weeks of yearly vacation. Nobody in management said back then: "Oh, sorry. The union contract precludes us from giving you more vacation."

"Nobody at the studio told me anything about initiation fees or dues when they recruited me. All they said was they were a 'union shop.' Then they said they were 'legally prohibited' from telling me any details ..."

Actually, no. There's this "freedom of speech" thing. It's in the Constitution. And the studio folks can tell you as much or as little as they desire. Nothing at all wrong with saying little, and if they want to say, "Gee, there are initiation fees and dues, but we don't want to give you wrong info, so here's the number of the Animation Guild (818-766-7151), call them," that's completely okay by us.

But "We're legally prohibited"? Uh, no. Because the studio isn't.

"They also said, when we finished negotiating my deal, that they'd 'prefer it if I don't tell anybody what I was making.'"

Of course they'd prefer it. Because it really simplifies their task of negotiating with others if the others have no effing idea what their fellow employees are making. But as we've said 437 times before, Section 232 California labor code states:

No employer may do any of the following:

a. Require, as a condition of employment, than an employee refrain from disclosing the amount of his or her wages

b. Require an employee to sign a waiver or other document that purports to deny the employee the right to disclose the amount of his or her wages.

c. Discharge, formally discipline, or otherwise discriminate against an employee who discloses the amount of his or her wages.

I raise all these points yet again because if I don't repeat them over and over, people forget the law and their rights when they're in a manager's office being gently intimidated.

After all. If you don't push back here and there, pretty soon you're shoved right on over the cliff.

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Mr. K.'s Baptism

One of the refreshing things about Jeffrey Katzenberg is he's honest about his beginnings in 'toon land:

"I knew nothing about animation. Nothing whatsoever," Katzenberg told The Associated Press at the Cannes Film Festival ...

Katzenberg said his indoctrination into animation came on his first day at Disney, which he joined in 1984 as head of the film division after his boss at Paramount Pictures, Michael Eisner, became Disney chief executive. In preparation for a meeting with Eisner, Katzenberg made a list of 10 critical things he needed to do at their new outfit.

"Nowhere on that list was there any mention of animation," Katzenberg said. "When the meeting was about to come to an end, Michael stopped and he said, 'Oh, by the way, do you see that building over there?' And he pointed out the window of his office ... 'That's where they make animated films.'"

"I went, 'Oh, really?' He said, 'Yes, and it's your problem.'

Happily, Jeffrey turned his 1984 "problem" into a very lucrative franchise and living, and the world's the richer for it.

But he's right, he was kind of ignorant about animation in the beginning. Back then, he went through the whole department, looking at projects, deciding what stayed on track and what would be jettisoned.

And he quickly realized that The Black Cauldron, then 80% complete, had ... ah ... issues. Jeffrey, naturally enough, looked around for ways to improve those issues. Coming from a live-action background, he asked to look at "all the outtakes."

He was told: "We don't have any. There aren't any outtakes in animation."

This was one of Mr. Katzenberg's early lessons in cartoon making. But Mr. Katzenberg was a quick study, and didn't have to be taught twice. Which is why he's running a successful animation studio today.

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Battle of C.G.I. Effects on Foreign Shores

... and day-glo "cartoony" viz effex lose out to the photo-realistic type:

Summer tentpole season hit a speed bump overseas, as the opening of “Speed Racer” met a wall of audience indifference ... “Speed” hit the $1 million mark in only three of its 30 markets — $2.5 million in South Korea, where it was a distant second to the second frame of “Iron Man”; $2 million in Mexico; and $1.3 million in Brazil.

The European markets were far less interested. Spain led the way with $891,000, followed by $714,000 in the U.K., $411,000 in Italy and an especially dismal $146,908 at 590 in Germany, where it finished eighth ...

The problem seems to be that nobody is overly enthralled with the flick. For example:

“Speed Racer” had received plenty of Teutonic press, since it was entirely shot at Studio Babelsberg outside Berlin and partially financed by federal and regional film grants. One exhib blames the pic’s failure not only on negative reviews and a lack of familiarity among Germans with the 1960s toon series upon which it’s based, but also on a possible aversion to its hyperkinetic graphics.

“I think people saw this computer game world and were not impressed,” he notes. “It was not something they wanted to immerse themselves in for two hours.”

By contrast, Iron Man colected $38.7 million in its second week. So in this case, photo-realism in the c.g.i. area made the difference. (Couldn't have had anything to do with acting and story, could it?)

And Horton Hears a Who has collected $136+ million in foreign lands, and over $150 mill stateside.

So does it crack the $300 million barrier, or not?

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TAG 401(k) Choices

Back to retirement investments.

Often at the end of my 401(k) enrollment meetings, an artist asks: "Okay, I'm getting into this 401(k) Pension thing. So what do I invest in?"

I usually blather on, listing various options, stressing that I'm not a certified financial advisor. But since this is going to be a semi-succinct post, let me whittle today's advice down to a few points ...

Most 401(K) plans limit a participant's options. They give you three or four bond funds, ten or twenty stock funds (foreign and domestic), a choice of "Retirement Destination" funds which are a collection of investment accounts that put you in a set ratio of stock and bond selections which become more conservative (tilted more to bonds) as you get closer to retirement.

We get gripes from time to time about fund choices, and I sympathize, but few 401(k) plans give sophisticated investors the range of options they like. (A smattering of 401(k) Plans have "brokerage windows" where participants can invest in whatever they desire, but these drive administrative costs way up and few plans have them.)

Most participants, however, aren't sophisticated investors. Most get the information and forms for the TAG Plan and then get their own financial advisor to help them ; others ask me (did I already say this?): "What funds do I get into?"

I always have a short, simple answer. Be broadly diversified, have foreign stock, domestic stocks, and bonds. And patience. Plenty of patience.

I don't believe investing needs to be complicated. In the TAG plan (you can find a list of all the funds on page 9 at the link above), there are a bunch of ways to do that. One way is do a single "Retirement Destination" account. A single click on the fund with your retirement date, and you're done.

But maybe a better way is to go for more quality and use two funds from the Plan. The stock fund would be T. Rowe Price Spectrum Growth, highly rated by Morningstar and a choice that gives you wide stock diversification.

"...Spectrum Growth is a great choice for one-stop exposure ... For investors with long time horizons and a willingness to ride out the inevitable bumps of an all-stock portfilio, this fund holds much appeal ...

Moderate costs are one reason for that ...Extending the [cost] edge is the quality of the fund's underlying holdings. Indeed, a few of them, such as T. Rowe Price Equity Income, are Analyst Picks. Finally the fund benefits from skilled management at the top ...

Morningstar Funds 500

The other fund would be PIMCO Total Return, giving you a big slug of bonds, run by Bill Gross and his merry band of top-flight analysts down in Newport Beach, CA.

PTR in an intermediate bond fund so there will be a little up and down to it, but Gross is one of the savviest bond traders in the business (don't let the beach address fool you).

... Manager Bill Gross and PIMCO are our Fixded Income Fund Managers of the Year for 2007. ...Gross and PIMCO won with style ...[T]hey moved into higher-quality fonds(and away from corporate fare) and took on more interest-rate sensitivity ... Thanks to its bets, the fund has looked like a champ since mid-2007 ... It's more than 9% total return (2007) ranks in the intermediate bond category top 1% ...

-- Morningstar Funds 500

The only other question is: how much of your hard-earned money should you put in one account, and how much in another? That, of course, depends on your tolerance for risk, but my non-certified advice ...

In your twenties and thirties, plunk down 70% in stocks and 30% in bonds.

In your forties and fifties, try a mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds.

And when you reach geezerhood, focus on a mix of 50/50 or maybe even 60-70% bonds and 30-40% stocks. (Your bond/stock ratio will depend on your tolerance for the roller-coaster ride that stocks give you.)

Final thought: TAG is having an investment seminar for members at its Tuesday, May 27th membership meeting. We'll have three financial advisors there to answer any and all questions, so you might want to mark your calendar.

(More about this later.)

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Springtime Box Office

(Maybe it would be useful if I put up the right g.d. graphic.)

With early Friday returns in, Chronicles of Narnia, The Sequel collects over $19 million, bumping Stan Lee's creation down to second place (where it will have to console itself with a $200 million domestic box office in its 16th day or release -- today) ...

Speed Racer decelerates, collecting two million dollars in fourth position. Outside of Iron Man, there is only one film in the Top Ten that's grossed over $50 million (Sarah Marshall). Obviously that will change by the end of the weekend ...

Update: Chronicles of Narnia, Part Deux comes in at #1, but $9 million under the first edition ... or as Ms. Finke puts it:

FRIENDLY KIDS FRANCHISE TURNS TOO FIERCE: Darker 'Narnia 2' Falls $ Short of Original

Meanwhile, Speed Racer is dying a quick and ignoble death, dropping 58.8% in the second lap, collecting $24,367,000 after two weeks. (This is one Joel Silver production that won't --- I'm going out on a flimsy limb here -- make its money back.) Or as Nikki says:

Warner Bros' anime actioner Speed Racer continues as a major bomb, ending Friday No. 4 with only $7.7M (-59%). The $160M movie's cume is just $29.8M -- which means it won't get beyond $50M in total domestic box office.

(Why N.F.'s totals are different than BO Mojo's, I have no idea.)

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Mid-May Linkorama

Another round of animation tidbits ...

Time Magazine hossanahs the new DreamWorks opus Kung Fu Panda:

KFP, from a clever screenplay by ex-King of the Hill writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, is a tribute to the literally hundreds of '70s Hong Kong martial arts dramas that flooded Saturday-morning U.S. TV in the wake of Bruce Lee's success with Enter the Dragon. The plot, of a laggard who undergoes rigorous training to become a great fighter, is familiar from many Jackie Chan films, including the one that made him a star, Drunken Master. Fans of Chang Cheh's Five Venoms movies will have no trouble spotting this movie's Furious Five: the Crane (David Cross), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Tigress (Angelina Jolie) and Monkey — voiced by Chan himself, as a way of lending his vocal blessing to the project.

Chan's confidence was well placed. Directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne may have an unhealthy fondness for humiliating physical humor — there are more sight gags of fat creatures hurting themselves than in an entire run of Super Bowl commercials — but they are essentially respectful toward the conventions of martial arts films and the Zen spirituality underlining them.

(The Hollywood Reporter's take on the film is here.)

And we'll touch on a big animation company we don't think much about here, Electronic Arts:

Acquisition charges pushed video game publisher Electronic Arts to a loss for its fiscal fourth quarter, but the company's strong software sales helped the company's revenue blow past analyst expectations.

The company reported a $94 million loss for the quarter, or 34 cents per share, compared to a $25 million loss, or 8 cents per share, a year ago. Net revenue, however, was up 84 percent to $1.13 billion, with titles such as "Rock Band" and "Burnout Paradise" leading the way ...

EA’s optimistic forecast reflects widespread optimism in the video game industry. Year-to-date, game software is on pace for record sales, and EA still has several major titles in the wings.

Leading that pack is "Spore," the long-in-production title from Will Wright, the creator of "The Sims" franchise. Due Sept. 7, the game will let players create unique creatures and guide their evolution from the embryonic stage to the space age. The company is also working on "The Sims 3".

EA Sports will launch "Facebreaker," its first new franchise since 2002. Expansions for the "Battlefield" and "Command & Conquer" franchise are also due soon. And the company will debut more of its fall and winter lineup at the E3 Media Summit in July. All totaled, the company has more than 15 games scheduled for release this year—and expects to make between 63 and 68 percent of its revenue in the second half of the year.

"I believe it’s the best and most exciting lineup in EA’s history," said Riccitiello.

It appears that EA and the industry have not yet crash and burned because of on-line gaming ...

The Wall Street Journal reviews "The Pixar Touch" (a tome we touched on here earlier):

The conventional wisdom – not discouraged by the company itself – is that Pixar's genius flows from Steve Jobs, who started the studio from a computer-animation division he bought from Lucasfilm for $10 million after he left Apple Computer Inc. in 1985. The truth is much more complex and far more interesting, as David A. Price reports in "The Pixar Touch." Mr. Price, in addition to offering unprecedented detail about the notoriously press-shy company's workings, tells a story that abounds with lessons for business people and creative artists alike. Chief among the lessons is that no one invents anything in isolation and that getting fired can turn out to be a promotion.

The Pixar story begins at a time and place that few of the company's many admirers would guess: the University of Utah in the 1960s. The school's computer-science department, founded by a Mormon elder, attracted some of the era's brightest minds – students included software-programming guru Alan Kay, John Warnock (who would go on to co-found Adobe Systems Inc.) and Jim Clark (Netscape). Another of the star students, Edwin Catmull, was recruited by the New York Institute of Technology to direct its computer-graphics lab. There he met a collection of like-minded graphics programmers, including a long-haired Californian named Alvy Ray Smith, now revered as a computer-graphics pioneer ...

The Fox Network will be rolling out a couple of new animated series for prime time -- not exactly unknown news, but detailed by the Montreal Gazette here:

Two animated comedies are set for midseason, where they will join Fox's animation duo of The Simpsons and Family Guy.

The Cleveland Show is a spinoff from Family Guy, and focuses on the Griffins' neighbour, Cleveland. And Sit Down, Shut Up, about the faculty at a dysfunctional high school, reunites Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz with Arrested stars Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Henry Winkler. It's based on the live-action comedy Sit Down, Shut Up which originated in Australia.

King of the Hill and American Dad will return in the fall, but will go on hiatus in midseason to make room for Sit Down, Shut Up and The Cleveland Show.

While on the subject of Fox and animated fare, the Rupe conglomerate is keen on developing more 'toon talent:

News Corp. is drawing up big small-screen animation plans. 20th Century Fox TV and Fox Broadcasting Co. have teamed to launch Fox Inkubation, a joint venture designed to discover new animation talent and develop animated projects outside of the traditional model.

Additionally, 20th TV has formed a new animation department focused on more conventional development of cartoon series and has tapped Jennifer Howell, executive vice president of "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Important Films, to run it.

"So much of our success has been driven by animated shows, and we have been contemplating how to step up our efforts in the area," 20th TV chairman Gary Newman said. "We believe it is critical to our future success." ...

This short piece in the NY Times is eleven days old, but it caught my attention: the various possessions and domains of Andrew Stanton:

Favorite item in house: My ergonomic office chair. It is based on the tension you put on it. I swear by it. I love it. It brings down my blood pressure ...

There seems to be new production centers springing up across the globe. India, Shanghai, Taiwan, Korea. Name a location, there seems to be a production house there. But here's one I hadn't seen before (maybe I lead too sheltered a life):

Movie production company Fable Works has unveiled plans to produce Cereal Heroes, an animated 3D feature film that is expected to launch in 2010.

The movie will be produced at Sparx Animation Studios in Paris, France and Ho-chi-min, Vietnam ...

Add on: Andrew (Shrek, Shrek II) Adamson talks about his current live action gig, those Narnia flicks. But now he's taking a break:

"I'm passing the directorial reins on for the next instalment, though I will keep my hand in as a producer. It's been a real labour of love, and I do find it hard to let go. I always worry they'll find out I'm still a 13-year-old at heart."

We wish you a productive and life-enhancing weekend.

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Leverage and LEVERAGE

I beat on this leverage thingamabob, largely because I run into so many different incarnations of it. Here is yet another example.

A few days back, I had a meeting with an employee with one of the major studios, and he was a little miffed that he'd been passed over for some jobs he was clearly qualified for:

"They seemed to ignore me until I complained and said I wanted to leave. Then they came back with an offer. It took me bitching about the way I'd been treated and saying I wanted out to get them to realize I had skills sets they really needed, to get them to finally take me seriously."

An old story, many times told. When I heard his tale of woe, I flashed on this anecdote from Charlton Heston's autobiography:

...One evening after looking at dailies [for 55 Days at Peking I greeted [my driver] Ricardo [and asked how he was doing.]

"Well enough, Senor, except that I have not been paid in five weeks."

"Five weeks?" I said, stunned. "You should have told me sooner!" ...

I went inside to the comptroller's office ... When I told him the story, he was outraged. He pressed the intercom and chewed somebody out in a torrent of profane Spanish too fast for me to follow fully.

"A thousand apologies, my dear Chuck," he said, clasping my had. "Please tell your driver he will be paid tomorrow morning."

... I finally thought some days later to check on Ricardo's situation. "Your back pay all caught up now?" I asked ...

"Oh no, Senor. No one will speak to me about it. It is now more than six weeks." Now I was angry as well as appalled.

"What the hell is doing on here?" I said, striding into the comptroller's office. "You're spending however many million it is by now on this film, and stiffing a poor driver working for forty bucks a week?!"

[The comptroller] leapt to this feet and screamed "Frederico! Venga ... en seguida!" In seconds his head accountant ran in and stood trembling. For fully two minutes [the comptroller] stripped the skin off him, switching to English toward the end to make sure I was following...

...At the end of the day... I remembered to check with Ricardo. No, he had still not been paid. I walked in on [the comptroller] still in my uniform. He stood, amazed. "Chuck!! Please, please do not tell me your poor Ric does not yet have his money!"

"No," I said. "He's been paid. By me. Through this week and one month's advance. Now you don't owe him. You owe ME. I'd like the money right away, please."

[The comptroller] never turned a hair. He pulled open a drawer in his desk crammed full of neat stacks of thousand-peseta notes, peeled off a dozen or so, and passed them over ...

I told the above to the artist who had been crapped on. We both agreed it pretty neatly encapsulated the money, power relationships and bullshit that have always been part of film-making. And most importantly, the leverage it takes to achieve certain ends.

The question that animation artists with at least some clout have asked over the years: "Why do I have to become a jerk before I get a good response from management?"

Simple. It's not that the movie higher-ups are calloused a-holes. It's that they mostly have other fish to fry (like keeping those with Big Leverage happy). And they have little time or energy left over to care about ... or notice ... anything else.

It's probably what Charlton Heston would tell us, if he were still alive. But then, he's already told everybody ... in his book.

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The Disney Experience

Spent part of the afternoon at the Disney hat building beside the famed 134 freeway. For a change I went straight to the story department and kibitzed with designers and story artists ...

Lots of animation has been handed out for first-act sequences for Princess and the Frog. One staffer said: "We're past the experimental phase for animation and into actual production." More artists are steadily coming on board.

A group of Disney story artists have banded together to produce an original comic book. Before it gets published this summer, I'll see if it's okay for me to tout it here.

On my way out, I stopped to watch the animated clips for Bolt now unspooling in the long display case in the entrance hall. They were silent, but highly amusing. The character designs are appealing and the animation crisp. And the gags -- at least the ones I saw -- have a snap and punch to them.

Come November, we'll see if the whole is equal to the entertaining parts displayed in the hall.

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Lyn Kroeger, 1930-2008

Assistant animator Lyn Kroeger passed away March 29 at the age of seventy-seven.

Kroeger started as an inbetweener at Disney in 1954 on Lady and the Tramp. The above John Sparey caricature shows Kroeger as Snow White with (from left to right) Bill Mahood, Osvaldo Franca, Sparey, Gary Mooney, Bob Carr, Dick Hoffman and Wes Herschensohn as the seven dwarves.

Kroeger resigned from Disney after Lady and went on to work at Quartet, Melendez, Murakami/Wolf, Haboush, Levitow-Hansen, Duck Soup and Hanna-Barbera, until she left the industry in 1984.

Below, a Sparey portrait of five women at Disney (from left to right): Nancy Stapp, Ruth Kissane, Janie McIntosh, Kroeger and Eva Schneider.

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12th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation

We're a trifle late posting this, but Kevin writes:

My friend Charles Solomon hosted four panelists: Andreas Deja, Pete Docter, James Baxter, and Eric Goldberg. Each panelist talked a bit about ways they were mentored, especially by some of the Disney greats, and showed a clip from a classic Disney film followed by a clip of some of their own work.

Here are a few scattered thoughts and insights I jotted down from the evening. Andreas went first. He spoke about how, when he was animating Jafar, he drew on Marc Davis’ work on Maleficent. After Andreas saw the work going into the Genie and some of the other characters in Aladdin, he realized he couldn’t compete with that kind of broadness, so he decided to underplay Jafar. Jafar would become the dark cloud that hovered over the bright, energetic proceedings of the film.

He recalled Marc saying a tough thing about animating Maleficent was that “she’s a character who stands there giving speeches.” Anyone who has animated acting and dialog scenes knows how difficult, and boring, that can be. Andreas played a clip from Sleeping Beauty that beautifully illustrated how Marc overcame that difficulty. I don’t have time to find and upload the clip right now, but it’s one that I’ll try to upload soon for a little analysis ...

Pete Docter spoke of being mentored by Joe Grant. Joe liked to ask the question: “What are you giving to the audience to take home?” What he meant was what part of the animation or story will stick with the audience beyond that momentary viewing. Pete recalled being in school and the urge some students had to do such intensely personal films (”like therapy”!) that they were inaccessible to the audience. He always keeps in mind that, no matter how much we put our own tastes into our work, what gets on the screen must be something the audience will connect with and respond to.

He also spoke of Ollie Johnston talking about the surprising power of physical touch, and how moving it is when one character convincingly touches another. Yes, that can be tricky in CG, where characters simply intersect each other, and lots of digital wizardry goes into any physical contact between characters, but the payoff can be huge. Those physical gestures and touches draw on the power of real relationships, and in animating them we need to draw upon our own experiences and relationships.

He showed a clip from The Jungle Book of Mowgli meeting Baloo (another clip worthy of detailed study), and followed it with a clip of Sully and Boo playing and hugging in Monsters, Inc. Between those clips and Pete talking of his feelings towards his own children, there was a lot of misty eyes in the theater!

James Baxter spoke of learning from Milt Kahl by analyzing his work and deeply studying his original scenes in the Disney morgue. Like many animators, James initially used to use a ton of charts in his work, but he kept noticing that Milt virtually always had a single chart. He wasn’t animating with a checklist of the 12 principles, he wasn’t thinking of individual parts — he had it all flowing together. “It was all there.” A key to Milt’s technique was to do lots of partial drawings of hands, etc. on the inbetweens, rather than devising complex charts for his assistant to follow (as I’ve mentioned before, that exactly the way James works, too). Milt couldn’t explain what he did or how he did it (this from Andreas Deja, who had many conversations with Milt), but James was able to draw important lessons by carefully studying the actual work.

James also mentioned the importance of drawing on the story-artist’s work, and how much Milt and the other Disney animators got from Bill Pete and other great story artists, just as James drew on Lorna Cook’s great boards in his work on Rafiki (Lorna boarded virtually all of the Rafiki sequences, just as James animated virtually all of those scenes). James then showed a clip of King Louie (by Milt) from The Jungle Book, followed by Rafiki from The Lion King.

Eric Goldberg talked about Ward Kimball and Freddie Moore in particular. I became so caught up in the clips that I stopped taking notes, so I apologize. Eric showed a great excerpt from The Three Caballeros, followed by the A Friend Like Me song from Aladdin. When Chuck Jones took a tour of Disney during the making of Aladdin and saw that animation by the Goldberg unit, he immediately connected it with the song in Three Caballeros. Later, when Ward Kimball saw it, he commented, “Yeah, like MTV!”

One of the things that this program highlighted, and that I’ve been concerned with for awhile, is the huge difference in mentoring between hand-drawn animation and CG animation. It used to be that animators began as assistants and ruff inbetweeners, and worked their way up the ranks. For a long time the accepted wisdom was that it took about six years of concerted effort to become an animator. There were exceptions, but long periods of training and mentoring were generally part of the process to becoming a competent animator.

In CG, there aren’t any assistant positions. Pete Docter even mentioned that they’d tried to have an assistant for Doug Sweetland (and I assume for other key animators), but that it hadn’t worked. During Shark Tale production DreamWorks also experimented with animation assistants, but gave up on it after that film. In the CG animation world you basically get the best training you can, and hope to get hired right onto a production. Yes, most studios have “mentors” who are assigned to new hires, and there’s usually a ramp-up or training process, but it’s nothing compared to how it used to be.

When I asked about this during the Q&A, it was encouraging to hear from James Baxter that a few studios were seriously looking at that issue, and my guess is that that’s part of the reason he’s gone back to DreamWorks. This very issue is part of the reason I started doing these posts. There’s so much generous teaching and mentoring I’ve gotten that it feels good to pass some of it on. Of course, I still have as much to learn as I have to teach, but that’s the beauty of animation.

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They Know a Vein of Gold When They See It ...

One thing the gang that Rupert built knows better than almost anybody: When you've got yourself a winner, you keep riding it:

Twentieth Century Fox will release sequel "Alvin and the Chipmunks II" on March 19, 2010. A followup had been expected, given the breakaway success of the first pic, which grossed $217.3 domestically and $141.1 million overseas for a worldwide haul of $358.4 million.

Horton Hears a Who has done well, but Alvin (to date) has done better by $75 million worldwide, give or take.

We lo-ove animation to burn up the box office, because then more animation gets made. And that's good for the community. However, there is one small fly in the ointment:

... the film ... has no script yet. Furthermore, executives haven't settled on a concept for the sequel ...

Naive infants that we are, we believe that having solid scripts and concepts in hand are a good thing. And not having them can be ... problematical.

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A job listing from Disney

NOTE: When U.S. studios wish to import a technical director or other worker from overseas under an H1-B immigration visa, they need to post a job notice to insure that there is nobody in the domestic talent pool available.

We have received the following job listing in connection with an H-1B visa application from Walt Disney Pictures.

Operating Company: Walt Disney Pictures

Job Location: Burbank, CA

Job Title: Technical Director, Animation

Job Duties:

• Build, develop and refine computer systems and controls to construct complex organic 3D and articulated sets and prop models, digital implements, vehicles, buildings and implements.
• Use computer animation production applications software including Maya and CGI/traditional artwork to develop character-deformation systems and corresponding controls that will define the layout and movement of characters and other computer generated elements.
• Use polygonal, NURBS, (mathematical-code representation of 3D objects), modeling in Sub D's, and subdivision topologies to create surface models ranging from highly stylized cartoon characters to photo-realistic fantasy creatures.
• Create 3D characters/props and environments from 2D drawings.
• Establish technical requirements and priorities and animation controls and systems based on directions from Leads and Supervisors and feedback from the Director(s).
• Minimum Requirements: Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Design, Fine Arts or related field and 2 years experience in the position offered or as Digital Designer.
• Other requirements include: CGI; Maya; Modeling in Sub D's; NURBS; Creation of 3D characters/props and environments from 2D drawings.

Salary: $107,987 per year.

Interested applicants should submit resume to:

Walt Disney Pictures
attn: Anne Kallstrom
POB 6217
Burbank, CA 91510

Applicants must possess legal authorization to work in the United States.

This notice is being posted in connection with the filing of a permanent alien labor certification application. Any person may provide documentary evidence bearing on the application to:

U.S. Department of Labor
Employment and Training Administration
844 N. Rush Street
12th floor
Chicago, IL 60611

or

U.S. Department of Labor
Employment and Training Administration
Harris Tower
233 Peachtree Street, Suite 410
Atlanta, GA 30303

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Peak Cartoon

Maybe it is like some critics say. Creativity, like national power, hits a peak and then inevitably declines, never to hit the magical summit again. Roger Moore (the movie and book critic, not the former James Bond) maintains that just such a scenario is now happening at Disney's new animation studio:

... Pixar has ramped up production to the point where they're doing the same thing Disney Feature Animation did before the bottom fell out-- a film a year, whether everything is ready (story-wise, casting, etc.) or not. The implication that Pixar is the gold standard and will always be seems short-sighted. They need Wall-E to hit. Not as badly as Dreamworks needs a blockbuster outside of the Shrek franchise, but they do need big Wall-E numbers ...

Uh, it really isn't because you do one movie a year ... or two ... or five. It's how many good movies you make.

See, I was stumbling around Disney's when they were hitting on all cylinders ... and also when the bottom fell out ... and here's at least some of the reasons everything went south (none having to do with numbers of films):

They started making the same feature, over and over. There's only so many times you can make the Animated Broadway musical before the public starts to lose interest, muttering to itself: "Haven't we seen this already?"

(In the teaching business -- which I was in for a time -- wise older teachers told stupid younger teachers: "Sure you've got a great lesson plan. But you can't go on using it forever. Sooner or later the kids get bored with it and tune out." This also happens with Hollywood films.)

They built empires. When I left Disney in 1986, there were three production people serving an animation staff of 160 artists. By the late 1990s, there were almost as many production managers, production coordinators, production assistants and junior and senior vice-presidents as creatives. At one point there were somewhere around 26 animation vice-presidents, and that was about 25 too many. Because what that bureaucracy did was make lots of bureaucratic work for itself, with the nasty side effect of gumming up the works creatively.

(A storyboard artist once told me: I've got to go to the scheduling person to get on the master calendar for a meeting with the director. They send me an e-mail giving me the time and date." My face fell atop the floor.)

Management started second and third-guessing every decision. Disney veeps would greenlight a picture, change their mind, restart a picture. They would hire a director, then fire him. They would hire two directors. Some features were in work six or seven years, reworked dozens of times. (Home on the Range is a vivid example of this "do and redo" mentality.)

I could go on, but you get the idea. When a place becomes top-heavy with paper pushers who don't add any creative oomph to the enterprise, but lots of red tape that slows the business of making pictures to an ineffective crawl, it is well and truly over.

But "doing one picture a year"? That really isn't the issue.

And it isn't for Pixar. The dangers for the boys and girls at the Emeryville studio aren't the numbers of productions, but rather: Can they avoid repeating shtick? Will they wade clear of bureaucratic quicksand? Will the creative juices keep flowing?

Nobody hits a home run everytime they step to the plate, and Pixar won't either. The public is often fickle and always changeable. But accelerating production to one picture a year won't kill the Golden Desk Lamp.

Those other things will.

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Roth 401(k)s!

Back (temporarily) to financial stuff, retirement stuff.

There have been questions about getting a "Roth" option built into the TAG 401(k) Plan, and as requested, I've gone to the Plan advisor and will shortly bring the subject up to Plan trustees. In the meantime, I'm throwing up this post to provide an overview of the subject.

To start, a Roth 401(k) is like a a Roth IRA: You tuck money on which you've already paid income taxes into a pension savings plan, and any earnings on that money will be tax free when you pull the loot out to live on during retirement.

With a traditional 401(k) Plan or traditional IRA, you pay no income taxes on your initial contributions, but pay income taxes on withdrawals when you reach retirement age ...

The thinking is that you will be in a lower tax bracket in retirement than during your peak earning years, when the tax deduction you don't get with a Roth could be really useful.

Obviously, this may or may not be true. Tax brackets can always change. You might have a lot of income during retirement. But here's the thinking of one of the Plan's outside financial advisors (one of the gurus at 401(k) Advisors) that I share with you now:

Vendors now have a bit more experience, systemwise, with the Roth 401(k), and the concept has picked up a bit more traction with some plans. My concerns are the same as initially. This product is often misunderstood. Roth does not present an opportunity for any greater savings by virtue of the Roth, only re characterizing contributions from pre-tax to post-tax.

Any gains ultimately depend on tax bracket increases at retirement. Many people will say...."taxes will go up". While that may be true, most (99%) 401(k) participants will not be retiring at 100% of their pre-retirement income, so tax rates would have to go up sufficiently to exceed the inherent disparity created based on actual retirement income vs. tax rates then in place.

What our advisor is saying here is that the tax break you get up front with a regular 401(k) could well be larger than the one you get on the back end with a Roth 401(k). He continues:

This is often down-played in the press by assuming either a gross up in the contributions or (in many cases) faulty math.

Basically, you would need a crystal ball to know into what tax bracket a 35-year-old will be retiring to know if that 35-year-old would benefit from Roth.

Roth typically makes the most sense for either 1) a very high net-worth person, who can generate a significant Roth account balance or 2) a young worker who is in a low tax bracket now, and who will escalate signficantly in salary over time. (This person would also need to know when his tax bracket will reward him/her for moving back into a traditional 401(k).)

The long and short of it? Sometimes being in a traditional 401(k) is a better move than being in a Roth, and sometimes the reverse is true. According to Mass Mutual, 22% of surveyed plans now offer a Roth option.

What muddies any calculation is that nobody can know what tax rates and brackets will be in the future (Congress is funny that way). As a manager at Mass Mutual said to me last week: "When I got into the business, top tax rates were 70%, and back then I thought those rates would be going up. Shows what I know!" Back to the advisor:

The Roth 401(k) requires separate payroll tracking and the requirement to educate all employees in the Roth option. If these issues are not significant concerns perhaps, Roth should be considered.

A couple of final points: A) TAG's 401(k) Plan administrator has said that individual participants who roll their traditional 401(k) money out of the Plan can convert it into a Roth IRA (obviously, income taxes would have to be paid during the conversion). B) For any 401(k) Plan with a Roth option, participants would have to choose between doing Roth-style contributions (income taxes paid), and a traditional 401(k) (income taxes deferred). They couldn't do both at once.

This will be a topic of conversation with 401(k) Plan trustees going forward. I don't believe the union trustees have any issues with doing a Roth, but I don't know what the company trustees think about it. When I know more, I will tell you.

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Foreign Box Office

To nobody's surprise, Iron Man is as potent overseas as he is on the North American continent:

... In a sign that international moviegoers are hungry for big-budget "event" pics, "Iron Man" nearly became the 11th film to launch at more than $100 million. The record holder is last May's $251 million launch of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"; of the 10 pics to cross the century mark upon opening, only two weren't sequels -- "The Da Vinci Code" and "War of the Worlds."

But what's still of interest to animation fans (of the non special effects variety) is how the Big Elephant is doing:

Family fave "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!" grabbed $3.7 million at 1,776 for a $132 million international cume.

Horton is pretty near the end of his domestic run, slightly north of $150 million. With a little more push on the foreign front, the feature should crack $150 mill and run a $300 million total before it swings into DVD land.

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Homer's Big Ride

Variety notes that The Simpsons once again roams beyond the teevee, this time charging headfirst into their own big amusement park ride:

..."Simpsons'" creators worked closely with Universal Creative to develop the $40 million ride over the past two years.

"They wanted to make sure it was different from the television show and 'The Simpsons Movie,' " says Michael West, director and exec producer at U Creative.

At forty million bucks, this thrill-ride extravaganza, minute for minute is rocketing past feature animation budget territory. A Simpsons Ride staffer said:

"They had a good size crew working on it here at the studio, and we were making lots of changes all the way along. Some Simpson writers worked on it all through the WGA strike, since it wasn't covered work.

"I understand Universal opened the ride a few days later than they wanted in Florida because of extended deadlines, but what the hey. It's a good ride."

In the next few days, we can all run over to Universal Hollywood and see what all the time, effort and money has brought forth. The Simpsons Rid opens on May 19.

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The Links of 'Toon

More animation links .. and a few that are ... uh ... sort of animation.

Jazz.com offers a brief overview of jazz and cartoons:

... [J]azz and cartoons? What could be farther from the spirit of jazz than low-brow animated entertainment for kids. Yet there is a long history of mutual interaction between these two art forms. Raymond Scott’s quirky music served as inspiration both for the soundtracks of countless Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, as well as for serious jazz musicians. Artists as diverse as Don Byron, Bob Moog, the Dave Brubeck Octet and the Kronos Quartet have reveled in its peculiarities.

And Bugs Bunny, don’t forget, was the prototypical hipster back at a time when only Lester Young was doing a better job of defining the cool ethos -- just as Elmer Fudd has long served as the prototype for all "squares," who are sometimes dubbed (in Elmer's honor) as fuddy-duddies. When I write the hidden history of the twentieth century, Bugs and Prez will play leading roles. (Don't laugh, my friends, I'm serious!)

New trailers of Pixar features aren't the only teasers arriving on the internets. This past week, snippets for Kung Fu Panda and Igor came calling:

We have the new trailers for Kung Fu Panda and Igor. Kung Fu Panda hits theaters on June 6 and stars the voice talents of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan and Ian McShane. Igor will be released on September 19 and features the voices of John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Jay Leno, Eddie Izzard, Sean Hayes, John Cleese, Molly Shannon, Jennifer Coolidge and Arsenio Hall.

And Shrek the Musical is set to open this summer. As goes Disney's cross-polination of varying media, so goes DreamWorks Animation:

SHREK THE MUSICAL is DreamWorks Animation's first venture in legitimate theater. The production was initiated when Sam Mendes, a big fan of the first Shrek film, suggested the idea of creating a musical to DreamWorks Animation's Jeffrey Katzenberg around the time the second film was in production. The musical is being produced by DreamWorks Theatricals (Bill Damaschke, President) and Neal Street Productions, Ltd (principals Sam Mendes and Caro Newling).

Wade Sampson at Mouse Planet has a snippet of Disneyland history: How the often parodiced but never topped Small World came to be:

Pepsi executives went to California in February 1963 and met with Disneyland’s construction boss, Admiral Joe “Can Do” Fowler who had to sadly inform the executives that Disney “couldn’t do” the project since it was less than a year before the fair opening and that Disney was experiencing challenges with all the innovative things they were working on for the other three pavilions and needed to focus all their resources on those projects. When Walt found out, he was incensed. According to one Disney executive, Walt said, “I’ll make those decisions. Tell Pepsi I’ll do it!” ...

That famous song that some people find tortuous had an interesting creation. Originally, Walt had wanted the children to sing their national anthems. However, when it was attempted, it was a cacophony that was insufferable. Walt called in songwriters the Sherman Brothers who were hard at work on “Mary Poppins.” He told them he wanted a song like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” that would be melodious and was simple enough that it could be repeated over and over in different languages.

Imagineer Harriet Burns remembered Walt talking to the Sherman Brothers at WED and using the phrase “it’s a small world after all” to describe the feeling he wanted. Walt never meant the phrase to be a title or even a lyric but was just making a casual remark to try and capture the spirit of song that talked about the children of the world.

The brothers quickly came up with the famous song but worried that it came so quickly, so they worked on two more songs trying to top it. However, with time running out, Walt was anxious to hear what they written at that point and they played the simple song first. They never got a chance to share the other two songs when Walt said, “That will work” which most Disney employees knew was high praise from Walt. Those who knew Walt have said that Walt really loved the song...

Hm. There was a push in the Connecticut legislature to get Blue Sky Animation more tax credits than it already had for moving out of New York. But apparently it didn't fly.

Although the General Assembly did not approve financial incentives for Blue Sky Studios Inc. and USA Boxing, the two organizations are still moving to lower Fairfield County in some form, House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, said yesterday.

Amann tried for months to convince colleagues in the General Assembly to offer Blue Sky, a digital animation studio, more film tax credits to move from White Plains, N.Y., to Greenwich. ... A bill passed last year to lure digital animators in general and Blue Sky in particular to the state capped the annual pool of available tax credits at $15 million.

Amann said Blue Sky needed more and wanted the legislation amended to raise the cap to $25 million. Some lawmakers ... questioned the need to provide Blue Sky with more money because the company already had signed a lease for a 106,000-square-foot office off King Street in Greenwich.

For some reason, with the state budget running in the red, and the studio move already an accomplished reality, some politicians questioned the need to give Fox-News Corp. more of a break.

Out on the film-plug tour, Pixar director Andrew Stanton talks about Wall-E and film-making in general:

... [A]sked about where the line is drawn between animated and traditional live-action films, Stanton refuted the existence of such a dividing line. “Ever since particularly ‘Lord of the Rings,’ there [are] not many action films and fantasy films and adventure films that don’t have some mix of using computer graphics and using live action,” Stanton said, going on to describe the limitless possibilities modern CGI technology offers. “If you can think of it and you can imagine it, you can make it. … The tools are all there now to just get whatever kind of look you want.” ...

Speaking of new trailers, Clone Wars has a new one out, both on the internets and in the cluster of trailers now at a theatre near you.

"STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS showcases an entirely new look and feel to the galaxy far, far away – combining the expansive scope of the Star Wars Saga with state-of-the-art computer-generated animation ..."

As a 17-year-old Star Wars freak I know said: "George Lucas is going to milk this thing for everything he can, isn't he?"

To which I replied: "But of course. How do you think George got to be a billionaire?"

Addendum:Variety has reviews for two animated features (once CGI, the other traditional) that likely won't be getting mega-wide releases. In other words, their indies:

... Combining elements of "Planet of the Apes" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Terra" is also part inter-species "Romeo and Juliet" ... "Terra" isn't sugar-coated -- the humans are hardly paragons of virtue, but neither are the Terrareans. And the story's resolution won't make "Terra" the feel-good cartoon of 2008, although it is a work of art.

Then there is the pencil-driven project:

Good battles evil as a gun-running, booze-swilling, cigarette-puffing badass is dragged, kicking and screaming, toward salvation in Bill Plympton's slyly sardonic black comedy, his best animated feature to date. Closer in drawing style and mood to Plympton's award-winning shorts, with all their grungy metamorphic grotesquerie intact, "Idiots and Angels" may attract the larger arthouse auds that have thus far eluded Plympton in his feature forays. Its totally wordless corporeal pantomime is poised to widen his already considerable worldwide fan base.

Make the balance of the weekend joyous and productive.

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The Big B.O.

Iron Man knocks down another $15.3 million on a Friday eve to remain on top of the heap...

And Speed Racer lands with a dull ker-plunk in third place, no doubt a large disappointment to the heirs of all the brothers Warner ... but the audience apparently smells the same stinker the critics do and stays away in droves.

(Once again, Iron Man is the only Top Ten film to break through the 100 million bucks barrier) ...

Update: Rounding out the weekend: Even with a 49% drop, Iron Man collectes $50.5 million to remain king of the money hill, with a $177.1 million domestic total.

Remarkably, there are only two features in the Top Twenty sporting triple digits. There's Numero Uno, and then there is Horton Hears a Who at #14, and pretty near the end of its run. (The Seuss epic now stands at $150,669,000 domestic box office.)

Elsewhere in the derby, Speed Racer and What Happens in Vegas ended in a photo finish -- $20,210,000 for Racer and $20 million for the Cameron/Ashton comedy.

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At Film Roman

... which is what Starz Media is now calling their Hollywood Way Studio. They spent years down-playing the old name, now the company has reversed field.

This mean anything? Hmmm ...

In any event, I went through "The Simpsons" unit and the place -- usually jumping -- was mostly empty. Far more empty than I'd ever seen it before, startlingly empty. An artist in an office next to rows of un-artisted cubicles said:

"Thirty people got laid off last week. There's going to be more next week. I think there's only one show still going."

There's a simple reason for this. The voice actors have still not signed for another season.

"They keep telling us the actors will be signing this week. They've been tellins us that for at least a month. There's six scripts ready to be recorded, but no actors."

I opined that maybe the six actors -- now in a wrestling match with Fox -- are holding off so they can leverage the threat of the oncoming big actors strike. Like, "You don't come more our way, then we'll be into July, and nobody will be recording ... or filming ... or anything."

Not saying the boys and girls are doing this, but it's a strategy, you know?

Meanwhile, the King of the Hill unit awaits the return of its crew, allegedly scheduled for sometime in June.

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YOU MAY BE A WINNER!!!!*

* definitions of "winner" may not be valid in all states

Has anyone ever actually started a successful and sustained career in the animation business as a result of winning a contest? I don't know of any such person, although it's likely that someone, somewhere, can trace their ascension to the professional ranks of the business from winning a blue ribbon and a handshake for their early efforts.

In recent years contests have become big throughout the entertainment biz, whether it's American Idol and its many photocopies, or the 267 screenplay contests to be found here. And with that explosion has come an increase in complaints about exploitation of contestants and winners, and the problem of contest rules ignored by the very people who wrote them.

The most recent controversy has risen over the AniBOOM website's music video contest based on a Radiohead song. The rules for Round One of the contest required entrants to submit "new, original and unique" storyboards, and prohibited entrants from submitting copyrighted materials.

The Round One semifinalists were announced earlier this week, and some of the entrants, amateurs as well as professionals, were amazed to discover that at least three of the semifinalists had allegedly submitted re-edited clips of previously produced animation, at least one of which was allegedly made from material for which the animator editor did not hold the copyright. As one of the frustrated participants expressed in an e-mail to us:

... what has come to pass is that a site which claims to be devoted to the production of independent, cross-platform animation, has awarded semifinalist positions to at least four established industry professionals who did not create original animation, and submitted re-edit projects, as though the music in question was totally arbitrary.

And what is worse, is that even after promoting and advertising this contest heavily to amateurs and music fans, including television ads on Adult Swim, and after claiming that it's purpose was to not only build the site's community, but also encourage and develop submissions from aspiring unknowns - AniBOOM has awarded the meager $1,000 in funding for semifinalists to professionals to whom it will not in any way be substantial ...

There have been several threads on the AniBOOM site on the subject, one of which resulted in some responses from AniBOOM management [all verbatim]:

once again, i can't speak on thebehalf of others. the chosen movies are all great pieces of work, and so were most of the non winners of the first round. i don't want to keep om writing things that will not ease your mind.

we didn't answer nything about that movie [one of the semifinalists that used copyrighted material without permission], because right now there is nothing to say. the movie was chosen by the jury, and other people that were a very important voice in this contest so far, so if they will have something new to tell you, i'm sure they will [...]

your videos were kick ass, so it was hard to choose based on concepts. so we decided to just play it safe by funding videos that were already finished and made by people who already have production teams. round 2 due date is coming up, so just have faith that we will do the same thing once again, so waste your time working on a fully rendered animation this time.

The misspelled ramblings of the contest rep notwithstanding, neither the Guild nor this blog are taking any position on this particular controversy. To those of us not in the middle of it, it might seem like a tempest in a distant teapot.

But it does point to a real problem we have always had with animation contests. "Spec work" – work that is performed without pay on the promise of future compensation pending approval and/or funding – is a violation of our collective bargaining agreement. And at the end of the day, that's all these contests are – an excuse to solicit free work on the distant promise of compensation/glory/fairy dust. And believe me, in the real world $1,000 isn't much compensation for the amount of work this contest is demanding.

So maybe the issue isn't really whether these contests are being run fairly or whether rules are being changed in midstream, but whether the very premise of an animation contest – that $1,000 and 300 seconds of fame is sufficient compensation for the work that goes into these projects – is inherently unfair.

And as if organizing animation isn't hard enough, how in the name of Art Babbitt do you organize a contest?

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Don't Bogart That Joint ...

Ah yess. As an earlier generation toked up before traipsing to the revival house to see the latest re-release of Fantasia (1940 version), there is now a new animated morsel for the hemp-cigarette set:

Some College Kids Say They Get High Before Watching "Yo Gabba Gabba!"

... "It makes sense that college-age kids would take interest in watching because there is a strong pop culture element to this show, and because we have popular bands that college-age students like on the show," said Jacobs in an e-mail to ABCNews.com.

Matthew Ingraham, a 21-year-old student at Washington's Everett Community College, told ABCNews.com that he loves "Yo Gabba Gabba!" for its "randomness."

Like, wow, man.

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Once More Around With SAG and the AMPTP

Tuesday night, before a TAG executive board meeting, I was on the phone with a reporter about the SAG and the AMPTP negotiations, then in progress.

"It doesn't look too good," he told me. "All my sources say the sides are still pretty far apart. SAG has backed off their original DVD proposal but it doesn't look like the deal's much closer.

"They'll probably break off negotiations tonight. AFTRA sits down for talks on Wednesday."

I observed that the AMPTP seemed to be using the same template they used with the WGA and the DGA: talk to one union, and when that doesn't go anywhere, talk to the second union that you get along with better, and try to reach a deal.

"If I were Nick Counter," I said, "that's what I'd do."

The problem I see for SAG is, they're going to get whipsawed by the done deals with all the other guilds, and they'll be under enormous pressure not to strike. (I know that the IA will be wildly unhappy if its members are thrown out of work again due to a second labor action. And the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan will once more take a hit.)

The reason I go on about this is a second strike, if it comes, will have a bigger impact on all animation artists, and so it's important to pay attention regarding what's going on. With that in mind, I found this Reuters interview with SAG topkick Alan Rosenberg worth reading:

Q: Does the break-off in negotiations make the potential for a strike a greater possibility than it was before?

A: "I really don't want to go there. I don't even want to entertain the thought of a strike at this moment. It's something I've always said was on the table. It's the one weapon a labor union has when they reach impasse. ... But I don't even want to think about, or talk about a strike until I'm convinced that we can't make progress in negotiations. I'm not at that point yet."

I'm not sure where the players are right now. A strike? No strike? With luck, the industry won't have to go through another job action.

With luck.

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Time at the SPA

I roamed through Sony Pictures Animation this morning, chatting to artists who are riding that tricky steed called "Change" at the studio.

Cloudy with Meatballs is still on course to go into production, and various other projects are in work, but it hasn't been an easy time in Culver City.

As previously noted, there have been personnel shifts at SPA, founding execs Penny Finkelman Coxe and Sandy Rabins are executives no longer, and different projects have fallen in and out of favor ...

As one artist said to me:

"Management expected more business for Surf's Up. They didn't think being the third or fourth penguin picture out there would hurt, but it kind of did. So now they're doing some second-guessing of themselves, and we've all had to work with that."

The good news is, with the changes at the top, Sony now seems focused on getting more projects in development and keeping the division in business. I'm told there's a long-term plan to get more competitive with other animation studios. If true, this is a good thing, yes?

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The Studio of Disney Animation

I whiled away Tuesday afternoon at Disney Animation Studios. There was lots of activity going on -- story meetings, animator meetings, supervisors rushing to and fro. I was told by a staffer that more production employees are coming on board for Princess and the Frog in the near future as Princess continues to ramp up ...

The Bolt crew is working lots of overtime. Nobody seems downhearted about it (but maybe genuine fatigue hasn't set in). One European said to me: "I never got extra money for working overtime back home, so I like this fine."

It does my heart good to see a little of the moolah spread around.

Meanwhile, Disney liked its quarterly results fine. The company reported a heart-warming increase in revenues, cash flow, and profits:

Disney impressed Wall Street by announcing a 22% jump in quarterly profit after Tuesday’s closing bell ...

The media and entertainment giant reported fiscal second-quarter earnings of $1.13 billion, or 58 cents per share, compared with $919 million, or 44 cents per share, a year ago. Disney's revenue increased 10% during the period to $8.71 billion.

Disney’s stock has performed better than its peers in 2008, rising more than 3% while Viacom (VIA: 38.78, +0.34, +0.88%) has fallen 12.5% and Time Warner (TWX: 16.31, +0.16, +0.99%) has declined 2.2%.

Tuesday marked the eight straight quarter Disney beat the Street, including an 11-cent beat in its first-quarter results on Feb. 5, according to Thomson Reuters.

All this good news should be enhanced by the animated releases rocketing into the Big Mouse's future over the next several months and pulling in even more coin.

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Ted Key, 1912-2008

Until I read today's Los Angeles Times obit of Ted Key, best known as the creator of the Saturday Evening Post magazine-cartoon character of Hazel the maid, I had no idea that Key, who died May 3 at the age of ninety-five, had a connection to the animation business.

It turns out that Key created the characters of Mr. Peabody and Sherman for Jay Ward in the late 1950s. He also wrote Showdown At Ulcer Gulch, an animated promo for the Saturday Evening Post that was produced and directed by Shamus Culhane.

Key wrote two episodes of the live-action Shirley Booth TV series based on his Hazel character. He also wrote the screenplay for the live-action Disney movie The Cat From Outer Space, and the stories for Digby - The Biggest Dog In The World, The Million Dollar Duck and Gus.

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Compelling Stories

Kevin writes:

... We’re suckers for stories, but only if they’re pretty good ones. ... When you’re setting up your own shots to animate, you’re the story teller; you’re the seller. You need to pull in your audience just like that guy at the flea market pulled in his customers, and sell them with entertainment value.

Find a fascinating, unexpected context. Give your characters enough specificity that you know exactly how they need to behave — make them be so unique and authentic that your audience can’t help but believe in them, and be interested in them.

Reading President Koch's post (and read all of it, not just the snippet above), I tripped back to compelling stories I'd witnessed over the years, either verbal tales, printed novels, or two-hour narratives on the silver screen.

At a Katzenberg-Eisner pitch meeting a quarter century ago, I watched Pete Young say: "My feature idea is Oliver Twist with dogs." Jeffrey and Michael immediately lit up. Pete didn't have to say anything else. The execs got it with a mere four words -- Oliver Twist with dogs. Dickens pre-provided the basic story, and Mr. Young added the fresh angle.

Then there was that movie I went to on the spur of the moment, over in Hollywood, in 1977. I plunked down in the padded seat at Mann's Chinese Theatre, the auditorium darkened, and there in wide-screen splendor was a big space-ship racing across a starfield. Then a few seconds later came a space-ship the size of a small planet chasing it, and a roar went up from the audience, and we were into some fascinating, unexpected context. And George Lucas, shortly thereafter, ended up a billionaire.

Finally there was that book that came out some years ago. You know, that story about a semi-abused boy going to a school for wizards? Wonder how that worked out for Ms. Rowling?

Compelling, fascinating stories. They're easy to see when they're in front of you, but sometimes a little difficult to create.

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Two Fine Examples of Leverage

In two different directions.

On the front page of yesterday's Hollywood Reporter are two stories, side by side. The first offers this:

... After 2 1/2 years of negotiations, "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane has inked a new mega overall deal with 20th Century Fox TV that would make him the highest-paid TV writer-producer.

The pact, which could be worth more than $100 million, will keep MacFarlane at 20th TV through 2012. It also encompasses new-media projects related to MacFarlane's TV series as well as DVD and merchandising revenue from them. ("Guy" alone has grown into a $1 billion franchise with red-hot DVD and merchandise sales.) ...

MacFarlane has been red hot since he left Hanna-Barbera as a fresh-faced twenty-three-year-old in the nineties. And ever since Family Guy took off on DVDs after its teevee cancellation, Fox execs knew damn well they had themselves a winner, one they didn't want to lose

[Re the long negotiation of the contract:} "It's a relief to have it done," 20th TV chairman Gary Newman said.

Added [20th TV exec Dana] Walden, "Today marks the first time in a long time (20th TV top business affairs execs) Howard Kurtzman and Neal Baseman did not have their shoulders up to their ears with anxiety."...

[T]hroughout the process, 20th TV brass never considered letting MacFarlane go.

"I'd rather lose a limb," 20th TV chairman Newman quipped. ...

Could we stipulate that young Mr. MacFarlane had big leverage? I think we could. And the news Corp. people still love Seth even though he said unkind things about the company during the recent Writers Guild unpleasantness. Money and levrage have a magical way of letting bygones be bygones.

Now contrast the Seth saga to the news story right next door:

SAG backs off on DVDs as extended talks continue

... SAG has scaled back some of its demands, including its initial proposal to increase DVD/home video residuals ... SAG is now seeking a 15% increase in DVD pay... However, it's unlikely the AMPTP will budge now ...

Not budge? You think?

Within days, AFTRA will start negotiating with the Alliance of Mega Producers, and it's as likely as the sun rising in the east that AFTRA will reach a new agrement, and then SAG will be the odd Guild out.

And then sooner or later, one way or the other, the Screen Actors Guild will beat a tactical retreat and end up with essentially the same deal that every other guild and union in town possesses: the DGA formula.

Because fairness, goodness and loving justice are wonderful things, but leverage is what counts.

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DreamWorks of the West

Here's the thing about union reps visiting studios. The mission is always to cruise through and visit as many employees/members as possible. Mingle with the people who employ you. Show the flag.

Sometimes you're successful, and sometimes ... it's talk intensely to six people for a large amount of time, recognize that you're not going to cover much geography, and call it a day ...

That was my fate for this visit, but I did have a take-away.

Kung Fu Panda has got hand-drawn animation in it, and the DVD is going to have a bunch more of that older animation style that Jeffrey Katzenberg describes as being similar to a "nice, hand-written letter."

I saw, with my own eyes, people animating at animation desks. With animation disks and light boards!

But the black-and-white bear has already been pegged as a winner in various corners of the business world:

... Goldman Sachs analyst Ingrid Chung ... raised her six-month target on DWA shares to $32 from $30 [because] ... Chung and her associates liked the portions of [Kung Fu Panda] they have seen so much that she is proclaiming it the next DWA franchise, predicting a sequel in 2011.

She upped her domestic boxoffice estimate to $220 million, which would make it the ninth-biggest CGI film in history, sandwiched between the Pixar duo of "Cars" and "Ratatouille."

The buzz around the studio has been strongly positive regarding this flick for a long time. Most everyone I've talked to dubs it a winner, which will (hopefully) translate into heavy box office coin.

And Mr. K. is once more beating Disney to the punch. Princess and the Frog isn't going to be the feature that reintroduces "traditional" animation to the big screen. Panda is.

Update: Oh my. It's pointed out below that there has already been two examples of hand-drawn animation in the recent past. One I'd seen but conveniently overlooked, and the other one (Horton) I hadn't laid eyes on.

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Pixar of the East

Ben Fritz has a fine, in-depth profile of the most successful animation studio east of the Mississippi:

When Fox acquired Blue Sky in 1997, building one of the most successful CGI studios in the biz wasn't even on its radar. At the time, it was investing its animation money into a studio in Arizona that produced 2-D flops "Anastasia" and "Titan A.E."

Instead, Blue Sky was merged with Fox's VIFX, a now-defunct special effects company. Blue Sky was meant to contribute its CGI skills, which had been honed for years on commercials and only recently has been used in movies, starting with "Joe's Apartment" in 1996 ...

Funny thing, but I recall the early days of Blue Sky well. For a brief time, Fox had a Blue Sky satellite studio on the West Coast doing work in Visual Effects and I strolled through it on occasion.

Back before Ice Age Uno opened, I had the opportunity to visit Blue Sky Animation in White Plains. (No, I didn't hand out any rep cards.) Then as now, it was on multiple floors of the IBM building on Broadway. Unlike now, nobody had any idea if the studio would survive beyond the release of Ice Age. (In fact, one of the execs told me that Fox was pitching the place to various potential buyers. The pitching stopped abruptly after scenes from the first feature received a rapturous reception at Cannes prior to release and News Corp. began sniffing "major hit" blowing in the wind.)

And since then:

... Only 2005's "Robots" was something of a disappointment, while the first and second "Ice Age" pics were big and huge, respectively, and this year's "Horton Hears a Who" has already taken $274 million worldwide, with several foreign markets left to go. In total, Blue Sky's four films have racked up over $1.5 billion in worldwide grosses. "There's not as much luxury here, not the same time, and certainly not the same budgets as some who started before us," admits company vet Carlos Saldanha, who co-directed "Ice Age" and "Robots" and solely helmed "Ice Age: The Meltdown" and the third "Ice Age," which comes out next summer. "At the same time, we have more a family culture not being in L.A. and we put out stuff that I think is of comparable quality."

If Blue Sky's budgets are smaller than its rivals, so are salaries -- assuming the anecdotal evidence that comes across TAG's transom to be an accurate indicator. The complaints we've gotten from various Blue Sky staffers have been ongoing. (L.A. area wages are here.)

This shouldn't come as a major surprise, since the studio has few upward pressures on salaries in White Plains (what other studio in the neighborhood does it compete with? Not a one). Added to which, the place has never been under a union or guild collective bargaining agreement.

Nonetheless, having another thriving animation house in the U.S. of A. is a good thing. Even if it doesn't pay its employees quite as well.

(For some Blue Sky artists' blog sites, go here, here, here or here.)

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Linkadoodle

An abreviated roundup of animation news, starting with Sigourney Weaver's enthusiasm for the oncoming hit Wall-E.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER is back in outer space ... as a ship's computer in Disney's new Pixar Animation Studios film, "WALL-E" ...

"I think it was given to me because Andrew Stanton loves science fiction and is such a fan of the 'Alien' movies," says Weaver. "And he thought it would be funny after having such an important computer mother in 'Alien,' if I played the ship's computer. I'm playing such a small part, but it's such a great movie to be a part of, I'd play the wastebasket" ..."

In the "Where are they now?" category, The Age in Australia answers the question "Whatever happened to Gumby?"

The original trippy green guy, Gumby, is enjoying a revival ... Debuting on the Howdy Doody Show in 1956, Gumby's adventures in Toyland and his battles with the nefarious Blockheads, have become part of popular consciousness. He kept going for 40 years, from the original episodes to a kitschy revival in the '80s and, finally, to the feature-length Gumby movie released in 1995.

At 86, [Gumby creator} Art Clokey is now ailing, his speech and mobility affected by strokes in 2005, and so [son] Joe runs the Gumby empire ... "When you own a character like Gumby, it's hard to weave a deal that doesn't have somebody swipe Gumby away forever," Clokey says. "And we want to keep Gumby in the family."

Clokey Studios is now in pre-production for another Gumby movie and TV series. One has to wonder, though, how Gumby's classic stop-motion animation style will translate into the dazzling, 21st-century CGI world ...

Animation Magazine has a dandy interview with Batman Gotham Knight writer and story editor Alan Burnett:

From a visual point of view, this is the most stylized Batman that’s come out of Warner Bros.,” says Burnett. “What they’ve done is really eye-catching, and it truly expands his world. Their visualization of Gotham City is stunning, and it’s very interesting to see how they’ve envisioned Batman, his environment and his action and movements" ...

“I’ve always liked Deadshot as a villain, and I really like stories with assassins,” Burnett explains. “The fact that they’re killers, and what they do has impact, automatically heightens the energy of the story. For my segment, I think the first Deadshot murder is quite good—there’s a lot of eye candy within the cityscape. The artists added fireworks and balloons and a lot of interesting elements to what ultimately is a cold-blooded murder.”

While on the subject of the Brothers Warner, it's good to know that Kids WB! lives ... if only on the internet:

Warner Bros has unveiled two new Internet destinations including TheWB.com, a personalized video-on-demand network, and KidsWB.com -- both sites offering youth-oriented entertainment ...

Destination KidsWB.com which has been designed for children aged 6 to 12 years, will offer a collection of animated characters such as Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, and DC Comics heroes like Batman at a single online destination. Typically, it will unite Warner Studios libraries of animated characters and programming, including Warner Bros Animation, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, and DC Comics. The site will feature games, videos, prizes, and original programming. It will also enable kids to interact with these iconic characters using tools to personalize and customize them ...

This must be that "new media" that everyone is talking about.

Let's end on a happy note: DreamWorks Animation better-than-expected profits!

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. said Tuesday that its first-quarter profit surged 69% on solid DVD sales for "Bee Movie," "Shrek the Third" and its earlier films.

The Glendale company, best known for the "Shrek" franchise, reported net income of $26.1 million, or 28 cents a share, versus $15.4 million, or 15 cents, a year earlier. Analysts had predicted profit of 22 cents a share on average, according to Thomson Financial.

DreamWorks shares slid 49 cents to $25.74 before the earnings release, then rose nearly 5% to $27 in after-hours trading.

Revenue rose 67% to $156.6 million, thanks partly to television and DVD revenue from 2005's "Madagascar" and "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," as well as 2006's "Flushed Away."

Use the rest of your Sunday wisely and well.

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And On the Foreign Front ...

Horton is still doing nicely:

Twentieth Century Fox’s family toon “Horton Hears a Who!” stayed on the upper reaches of the international B.O., grossing an estimated $5 million for a cume of $125.9 million.

“Horton” narrowly beat out Warner Bros.’ romantic adventure “Fool’s Gold” to place No. 5 for the weekend. “Fool’s Gold” grossed $5 million from 1,600 in 40 markets for a cume of $26.5 million. Film saw modest launch in Germany with $929,000 for second place.

So let's do some rough math here. Horton will most likely pass $150 million marker on the North American continent this weekend. With another $24 million overseas, the Big Elephant will have a worldwide theatrical total of $300 million, which will no doubt gladden the heart of News Corp.

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Weekend of Box Office

The weekend box office derby is about as expected. The well-reviewed Iron Man has sucked most of the oxygen out of the air (I suspected this would be happening when my teenager began agitating to see it a little while back.)

For Friday, Iron Man gobbles up $32.5 million ...

The lacklustre Made of Honor (carried along by McDreamy) collects $5.4 mill.

Baby Mama scoops up $3,480,000 (for a $25.5 million total).

And Horton has dropped from the Top Ten, now standing at $148,765,000 after fifty days of release.

Weekend Final: Here's a surprise. Iron Man did sort of well.

“Iron Man” blasted into the box office stratosphere over the weekend, selling an estimated $100.8 million in tickets at North American theaters and almost certainly establishing a new movie franchise for Marvel Entertainment ...

Including international sales, “Iron Man” grossed an estimated $201 million, according to Paramount Pictures, which distributed the $135 million film. The totals were slightly short of first-weekend sales for “Spider-Man,” the 2002 blockbuster that holds the record for the top nonsequel superhero movie opening ...

Marvel/Paramount's latest blockbuster did indeed suck most of the air from the box office chamber. $100,750,000 for Mr. Heavy Metal; a little more than half that for the next nine features in the Top Ten. Combined.

Second place Made of Honor gathered in $15.5 million, while #3 Baby Mama made $10.3 million.

Rob Minkoff's Forbidden Kingdom dropped 62.5% (ouch) to #6, collecting $4.2 million and running its total to $45.1 mill.

The big elephant Horton remained at #11, sucking in $1,350,000 and bumping against the $150 million mark. The Seuss fable is the only film other than Iron Man to find itself in triple digits within the Top Twenty.

Ouch.

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On the Subject of Investing

I went through Barnes and Noble a little while back. In the "Investing" section of the store, there are a plethora of books on Warren Buffet, the world's richest man and "the sage of Omaha."

Most of the books go into his philosophy of investing, what he considers most important and what not. In broad brush strokes, Mr. Buffet is a "value investor", a disciple of Benjamin Graham, and likes to buy solid, under-valued companies with good managements. Sometimes he waits years to purchase a company that meets his specs.

But what advice does Mr. B. have for the average, non-professional, semi-skilled investor. You know, the investor who does it part-time and whose main interests are somewhere else? Here it is:

... If you're* not going to be an active investor -- and very few should try to do that -- then you should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And you should buy it over time. You're not going to be able to pick the right price and the right time. What you want to do is avoid the wrong price and wrong stock. You just make sure you own a piece of American business, and you don't buy all at one time.

-- Warren Buffet in Fortune Magazine, April 28, 2008

I've invested in various funds long enough to know the man has a firm grasp on what he's talking about. Pay particular attention to "you should buy it over time." This is dollar-cost averaging and is crucial, because over a span of years the index fund is going to move up and down like a freaking roller-coaster, and you want to go right on buying during the dips, so that you're buying cheaper shares when it's down.

What you don't want to do** is panic after a drop and pull money out, because invariably you will be bailing at or near the bottom of the cycle.

Trust me on this.

* I've substituted "you" for "they" throughout the quote.

** I need to point out that I am not a certified financial consultant/advisor.

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The Disney TVA

When I go to Disney's Sonora Building, I always get a twofer.

Upstairs, there is Disney Toons Studio, home of soft lighting and artsy cubicles and a big kitchen eating area. Downstairs, there's the TVA folks, with their all-business gray cubes (with higher walls!) and cement floors ...

Today at Toons, a goodly amount of crew was working on various Tinkerbell features.

There is Tink I, now in production overseas for a Fall 2008 release, with just a few design tweaks on a few small pieces of the flick still going on in the building.

There is Tink II (aka Tinker Bell: North of Neverland) well into storyboards and design, and off into production ...

There is Tink III, fully scripted and now being boarded.

And there is word of Tink IV, with (possibly) a Tink V and VI after it.

"The deal is the company's going to release one of these a year over several years. I think the third one really has a solid story, and I like it a lot"...

-- DT staffer

To sum up, there's a whole lot of Tinkerbell going on. And it seems -- I'm going out on a limb here -- the company sees these features as a ... whattayacallit ... franchise?

Downstairs, the series in work are the new season of Mickey's Clubhouse (with storyboard artists just now returning) and My Friends Tigger and Pooh. There's also some teevee shorts in development.

At the moment, there are more shows in work on the third floor of the Frank Wells Building than at Disney Sonora, and as one of the employees said to me: "It costs Disney Teevee Animation way more money in rent at Frank Wells than over here at Sonora. So why are they over there?"

I replied: "Come on. It's all Disney. It's just the company taking the money out of one pocket and putting it in another. Nothing but internal book-keeping."

He acknowledged that I had, maybe, a point.

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Oncoming Train Wreck?

Somebody down below asked: "What's with the SAG negotiations?"

They're going pretty much nowhere, is what they're doing:

... [T]he negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild and the AMPTP are not making any progress with both sides very far apart and very frustrated. Negotiators for the Hollywood CEOs are privately making it clear they plan to make a deal first with AFTRA in order to use that as a wedge to soften up SAG. And, get this -- my sources tell me that the AMPTP is now prepared to wait out SAG for a deal until as late as mid-July. Which means the Big Media moguls are virtually daring SAG to strike when its contract expires the end of June.

Hmm. What a shock ...

Not.

... [D]on't anybody kid themselves. SAG starts negotiations with the AMPTP in mid-April; two weeks later, AFTRA gets its turn at the Alliance's shiny new headquarters in the Sherman Oaks Galleria. What happens if SAG still has issues when its alloted time runs out?

I'll tell you. The AMPTP will smile and say, "So sorry, but we have to go talk to AFTRA now, catch you later." And then the Alliance of Motion Picture and Teleivsion Producers will negotiate with AFTRA, and most likely reach an agreement with AFTRA.

And SAG, despite any screams and wails that "they can't live with!!" Provision D or Provision F, will have to live with them, because the DGA, WGA, IATSE, and AFTRA will have already gone before them, and (by then) the mold (made of high-strength stainless steel) will have been set. And SAG -- like it or not -- will get the same party platter as everyone else.

The AMPTP, you see, has set up a squeeze play. SAG can strike, but SAG will be undercut by the cold reality that every other labor organization is on board with the basic deal. And the Alliance will be uninterested in changing it in any significant way for the Screen Actors Guild ...

SAG, once upon a time, had an opportunity to dodge all this. Happened several years ago. SAG could have merged with AFTRA, and today it would be negotiating as One Big Union, with more power and leverage. There are some SAG members that get this now. I ran across one of them some weeks ago at one of our fine, major studios. When I brought up how stupid it was that SAG hadn't merged with AFTRA, he grimaced.

"Yeah, you're right. I'm one of those people who voted against merging. How stupid was that?"

There's an easy, one-word answer: Very.

Because it isn't about how just and noble your Cause is. All that matter is, do you have the juice to make the other side accept the Cause and label it "wonderful," even when the other side hates it?

The only power SAG has is to get approximately the same deal that every other union has thus far gotten (and the IATSE will soon get). Because the congloms won't move the goal posts for the Screen Actors Guild, no matter how long SAG marches around the football field with picket signs.

I only hope an actors' strike, if it comes, is mercifully short. Enough workers in this town have suffered enough.

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401(k) Gripes

During the last week, as I've done 401(k) meetings, people have complained about their investments going south. One artist said to me that he'd lost thousands in the last several months, and wasn't happy about it.

"So where did you put your money?" I asked.

"Stock funds," he answered.

"That explains it. Stocks haven't done too well the last six months."

Rule of thumb: When the stock market is kicking and bucking like a berserk bronco, investors lose money ...

Among other complaints: the administrative cost of 401(k) funds, also the limited number of funds in the 401(k) Plan.

So let me address these gripes, last to first.

No 401(k) Plan has a super wide array of funds. TAG's 401(k) Plan has more than most, but even with the three bond funds, sixteen stock funds, and six asset allocation funds, our universe is not overly wide.

You can, however, get yourself broadly diversified across different asset classes (bonds, international stocks, domestic stocks) without too much heavy breathing. And if you use the Plan's index funds, you can do it without high costs. For example:

Select Indexed Equity (Northern Trust) is a large cap U.S. equity fund with a .20% expense ratio.

State Street Global Advisors Mid Cap Equity Index covers U.S. small and midcap stocks. Expense ratio - .68%.

Select NASDAQ - 100 (Northern Trust) is a large-cap tech company index. Expense ratio - .65%.

State Street Global Advisors International Index Fund is a large cap foreign stock fund with wide global diversity. Expense ratio - .61%

To be honest, most of these index funds (excepting Select Indexed Equity) are pricier than Vanguard index funds, but still realtively low cost. A Plan participant who wanted to keep expenses down, could build a diverse portfolio of index funds, combine them with, say, the PIMCO Total Return Bond Fund (.68% expense ratio) and have exposure to most areas of the investing universe.

Understand that no 401(k) Plan is going to offer all the mutual funds a participant desires because the current thinking among fund managers is: "too many choices confuse people." And few Plans will offer participants a "brokerage window" (which enables them to pick any stock or fund they want) because the expenses are high and it might increase the Plan's liability.

The best advice I can give (and which is reiterated by investment guru Jim Cramer in his book Mad Money): All 401(k) Plans have administrative costs, so if you have the opportunity to roll your money out of any 401(k) Plan into your own self-administered IRA rollover account, do so. You'll be able to lower your future costs, and invest in any equity or bond that you like. (Note that there are limitations in most 401(k) Plan documents that limit participants' ability to roll investment money out of a plan It usually can't be done when you're employed by a company that participates in a 401(k) Plan).

As for losing money in the market, both high-expense stock funds and low-expense stock funds will be in negative territory if they're caught in a down-draft. I'll say here what I've said in various studios over the last eight days. You want to stop the big ups and downs, invest in intermediate and short-term bonds. Put your dough in the fixed investment accout, the PIMCO bond account, and the TIPS fund (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities).

You won't lose much money, but you won't make much, either. Bonds are not the greatest way to build wealth; however, they are a relatively safe haven during economic storms.

Just be aware: if your bond funds are returning 3.5% and inflation is running 4.5%, you're still losing one percent of your real wealth each year.

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Making a "Union Shop" ... What Does It Take?

Back from my undisclosed location, I respond to

What does it take to get guild benefits at DD , R&H and other VFX studios?

I can fill in my rep card , but with short term gigs being the norm at these studios it may be difficult to get enough cards of current employees to get anything off the ground.

To get a viz effx facility ... or an animation studio ... or anyplace unionized and paying health and pension benefits into The Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan (or some other labor pension plan) is simplicity itself.

All you have to do is apply sufficient leverage to company management, and they sign on the dotted line.

So ... what the hell is "sufficient leverage"?

It could be no more than a simple rep card count and well-mannered negotiation ... closely followed by a contract signing.

Or ... it might be a decisive vote of the employees in a National Labor Relations Board election, and then a negotiation and contract signing.

On the other hand, the company, after losing the NLRB election, could kick and scream and stall and insert poison pills into a contract negotiation that the guild or union would never agree to.

Which might call for more leverage, like for instance employees walking out en masse when the company is staring a production deadline in the face and the consequences of being shut down are catastrophic. (Its back to the metaphorical wall, if you get my meaning.)

This "wild cat strike" method is how the IATSE often organizes production crews on film shoots. It's often hard to pull off with a production house, but is certainly a weapon that has -- on different occasions -- worked.

The option that would most likely achieve results with a visual effects company might well be the last one, because the other methods are slower and whatever leverage the employees had could be, like, gone before cards were collected and a vote held.

Over the years, I've witnessed all the above strategies used successfully in getting union contracts. I've also seen these various strategies fail. The biggest problem for viz effx houses is they operate on razor-thin margins and cut their own throats in bidding wars with other effects shops.

It's one of the reasons so many of them branch out in trying to produce original content where profit margins are (maybe) higher. But God knows there have been facilities that have flourished as "union shops." In the final analysis, if the employees have the will and sufficient leverage, the company ends up union.

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