Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Studio Rounds

Lots of studio visits the last few days.

Frozen is wrapped at the Hat Building. A few odds and ends to clean up, but I'm informed that 99% of the work finished last week. (Some supervisors I know were not in evidence ... so maybe their vacations have started.) ...

I fell into conversation with a Mouse artist about the delay of the latest Pixar flick; the artist said:

"We're working to get the shows that are in development tied down as much as possible. The trouble with Dinosaur is they put it into work before they knew where they were going. They said "things will work out," and some things didn't. I don't think John [Lasseter] wants to go through that again." ...

To which I replied, "LOTS of pictures get greenlit and pushed into production with story bits hanging in mid-air. Lots of times story departments get away with it, but other times not." (This isn't story exactly, but when The Rescuers production issues and Bernard and Bianca were off-model, director Woolie Reitherman said: "We paint the off-model mice the same shade of gray, nobody will notice." He was 90% right.)

At Marvel Animation, I explained how the Affordable Care Act intersected with TAG members working under Guild contracts (for the most part, it doesn't. But if a member finds himself running out of Motion Picture Industry Health Insurance, he can opt into the ACA marketplace and purchase health insurance there. This option will be cheaper than buying MPI coverage under COBRA.) There was also a discussion about Marvel Animation shop stewards being appointed.

Inside Film Roman/Starz, the latest season of The Simpsons is well into work, and employees are wondering if Fox will pick up yet another season when the 25th wraps up next Spring. (Artists are hopeful ... but nobody knows.)

Lastly, DreamWorks Animation: The studio has lots of development going on in the Lakeside Building next to Lake Katzenberg, but a lot of empty cubes on the production floors. One production staffer noted: "We're going to have to ramp up hiring production to get some of these new shows out."

No argument from me. Far better to do the work here than in the bay area or China.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any updates on the other flicks Disney has in development? Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Giants, Moana?

Grant said...

Yes. There are NO hand drawn projects. And don't bother the Business Rep. for that kind of info. You think Disney (or any other company) wouldn't know where that info came from? Just stop it. You're a bore.

Steve Hulett said...

But a wonderful bore.

(We must be positive.)

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