The Motion Picture And Television Fund has announced the closure of the Woodland Hills hospital and long-term care facility by the end of 2009. There have been questions about this decision and how it is being handled. Come to this meeting to hear all sides of this important issue and learn how it impacts us.
This informational meeting is for ANIMATION GUILD MEMBERS ONLY (active or inactive).
"Walt & El Grupo" is the best kind of labor of love. A documentary made with affection and intelligence, it looks at a brief episode in the life of a cultural icon and uses it to illuminate what turns out to be a telling moment in time ...
Disney's South American trip turned out to be the rare goodwill tour that actually created goodwill. It's fascinating to see and hear, more than half a century later, how excited everyone was to have him visit, especially the schoolchildren in Uruguay who were given a half day off from school.
Disney's trip not only created time and space to settle the [Disney Studio] strike, it provided inspiration for such films as "Saludos Amigos" and "The Three Caballeros." And it revolutionized the lives of numerous people, including Disney artist Mary Blair, who completely altered her style to great success, and Brazilian composer Ary Barroso, whose career got a huge boost when Disney heard him play and said, "this is the music I want." ...
The '41 trip came along at an opportune time. The studio artists' labor action was dragging on, and the studio was struggling financially because big foreign markets had dried up. (Adolph Hitler had grabbed himself a lot of temporary real estate and put most of Europe out of reach to Disney cartoons,) As Grupo's director Theodore Thomas says:
"There was an awful lot riding on the success of this trip, both in terms of helping Walt find his creative bearings again and also in terms of providing a financial lifeline."
The research trip to Latin America was paid for by the government. Disney's contract also called for the production of 12 short films culled from the trip.
"The finances of the film were the typical go get a loan at the bank ... But the bank was kind of wary of Disney having such a huge debt and then going off to make films about Latin America. The Rockefeller agency said not to worry, if the films don't make back their budget we will guarantee the loan of the banks."
With the world at war and the tail end of the Depression still lashing working stiffs (unemployment hovered at 10%), it was a tough time. Happily, the guvmint was there to assist the Diz Co. in staying afloat until peace and prosperity returned.
The Den of Geek thinks that it knows what conglom soon goes sniffing after DWA.
... [A]nimation is, bizarrely, something of a Warner Bros weakspot. On the small screen, with the likes of Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo, it's got no shortage of good properties, but big screen animation has been less successful. How many people do you know bought a ticket to The Ant Bully? DreamWorks Animation, while not cheap, would instantly give Warner Bros another dimension to its movie business ...
There's really only two possible suitors.
Viacom already distributes DreamWorks Animation product, and Nickelodeon Cartoons produces Penguins of Madagasca and (shortly) Kung Fu Panda, the TeeVee series (or whatever it's called.) I would speculate that Viacom could end up buying DWA if it comes up with the scratch ($4.5-$6.5 billion). But does Viacom have that kind of money?
Good question. And I don't know the answer.
Time-Warner has the deep pockets and a hole to fill, so it's the only other possible candidate. Everybody else -- Fox/Blue Sky Animation, Sony/Sony Pictures Animation-Imageworks, Disney/Pixar -- already has a dance partner.
I'm guessing that some kind of marriage happens in the next twelve to twenty-four months. I know that Jeffrey has loudly proclaimed tht his baliwick isn't for sale ... but I rmemeber being at Disney a quarter century ago and hearing him loudly proclaim that Project X was terrific and blew him away ... only to see Project X get deep-sixed a few weeks later.
Nothing is immutable. Especially when the price is right.
Paul Krugman has a long article in the New York Times weekend magazine in which he makes the following observation:
[Economist Milton] Friedman certainly never bought into the idea that mass unemployment represents a voluntary reduction in work effort or the idea that recessions are actually good for the economy. Yet the current generation of freshwater economists has been making both arguments. Thus Chicago’s Casey Mulligan suggests that unemployment is so high because many workers are choosing not to take jobs: “Employees face financial incentives that encourage them not to work . . . decreased employment is explained more by reductions in the supply of labor (the willingness of people to work) and less by the demand for labor (the number of workers that employers need to hire).”
Mulligan has suggested, in particular, that workers are choosing to remain unemployed because that improves their odds of receiving mortgage relief. And Cochrane declares that high unemployment is actually good: “We should have a recession. People who spend their lives pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.” ...
I was pleased to find out that the phone calls complaining about no work and losing houses and bills not getting paid are all just voluntary time outs from the old 9 to 5 grind. For a minute there, I thought we were in deep manure.
Rick Alexander, a master carpenter in Florida who has given up searching [for jobs] after months of effort, said the disappointment eventually became unbearable.
“When you were in high school and kept asking the head cheerleader out for a date and she kept saying no, at some point you stopped asking her,” he said. “It becomes a ‘why bother?’ scenario.”
Rick Alexander is truly an uneducated man. Now, if he had only taken a few of Dr. Mulligan's graduate seminars, maybe he would be thinking more clearly.
Add On: And it doesn't look like all the long vacations will change anytime soon.
A net -3% of employers said they'll hire in the fourth quarter, down from -2% in the third quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Milwaukee-based firm's survey of more than 28,000 employers. Before this year, the survey's previous low point was a net 1% hiring outlook for the third quarter of 1982 ...
It rankles some that TAG Blog dwells on grosses foreign and domestic, but it's the way the entertainment conglomerates keep score ... and plan their next moves.
The year's biggest foreign grosser to date, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," added $10.8 million, drawn from 5,000 screens in 39 markets, to boost its international total to $657.5 million. Distributor Fox said the animation title is the fourth-largest overseas grosser in industry history, on pace by the middle of the week to take the No. 3 all-time spot behind only 1997's "Titanic" ($1.24 billion) and 2003's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ($742 million).
Pixar/Disney's "Up" continues its marathon overseas run with an $8.6 million weekend from 2,576 locations in 32 territories, raising its foreign cume to $168.9 million ...
Short of the sun prematurely reaching its red star phase, it's a safe bet that Pixar will be turning out a lot more films, that James Brooks and Matt Groening will (someday) get around to making The Simpsons Movie 2, and that Fox will tee up one more movie with big furry elephants in it. As the Wise Old Hollywood Exec said to me recently at lunch:
"Fox will produce another Ice Age, and they'll do it their usual way: hire a new animation crew like always, reinvent their production pipe line again, and spend less than DreamWorks Animation and Pixar do ..."
So far, it's been a winning production formula. Even if there are a few kinks in it.
What are you so smug about, boys? You're soon to be eated!
More linkage for a holiday weekend.
Waking Sleeping Beautytells the tale of Disney Features from 1984 to 1994:
Director Don Hahn (a producer during that era) and Peter Schneider (an animation exec during that era) decided not to use talking heads at all and instead only use archival footage in an attempt to take us back to that time (as they explained). It works. I was drawn in to the behind-the-scenes world of Disney Animation in such an immersive, honest, and revealing way. The film does feature audio-only interviews from other powerful individuals like Roy Disney, then-CEO Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. While it's being released by Disney, the now-CEO Dick Cook let them tell the real story, even if it wasn't always positive ...
Tub-thumping for the next animated feature down the theatrical chute begins with the L.A. Times overview of Shane Acker's 9:
... The ideas in "9" date to when Acker was a graduate student in architecture at UCLA and opted to take some animation classes on the side. He created the small numbered characters for a storyboard class and used two of them, 9 and 5, in his short, which played at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and won the gold medal at the Student Academy Awards that same year. In 2006, it was nominated for an Oscar in the animated short category.
Acker didn't win the prize -- though "Eric Bana did hold the bathroom door open for me," he said -- but the acclaim "9" garnered brought him to the attention of independent producer Jim Lemley. He, in turn, recruited the movie's two big-name producers, Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov ...
Pixar picks up another award, this time in Venice. (It's wonderful when these small studios from Chicken Scratch, Nowhere get some recognition.) ...
They were rewarded for their work creating a new generation of childhood memories populated with Nemo, Woody and Sulley. It is the first time in festival history that the award honors not just one filmmaker but an entire studio.
Pixar, founded in 1986 and based in northern California, pioneered digital computer animation and has made 10 feature films to date, four of which have won Oscars since the animation category was introduced in 2001.
... Pixar and owner Walt Disney Co. are infringing Luxo's brand by selling functioning, special-edition lamps bearing the Luxo Jr. name and using a six-foot animatronic version in the Walt Disney World theme park, Luxo said ...
Analysts said Dreamworks remained one of the few fair-sized, attractive acquisition targets left in an industry that has gradually consolidated over the past few years ...
Goldman Sachs raised its six-month price target on DreamWorks to $38 from $36, after Disney announced the $4 billion takeover. The U.S. investment bank also raised the chance of a "take-out" to 35 percent from 20 percent.
"With Marvel out, DreamWorks is really the only logical choice for branded content with well-known, high profile franchises," said Marla Backer, Hudson Square Research analyst.
The entertainment conglomerates are hungry. Have a most glorious Labor Day, comrades!
Of late I've gotten complaints about the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan requiring participants with long-term prescription needs to use the Medco mail order pharmacy.
Some participants are angry that they can't go to their corner drugstore anymore and get their asthma medicine, or Lipitor, or whatever.
I get their unhappiness, because options are being taken away; I also get how the Plan is trying to contain the rising costs which are happening worldwide:
Health Care Inflation -- 2008 (est.)
Asia and Africa
China 19.6%
Hong Kong 9.1%
Philippines 11.5%
Russia 15.7%
Saudi Arabia 16.3%
Singapore 7.5%
South Africa 12.6%
Europe
France 7.3%
Italy 11.3%
Netherlands 6.0%
Switzerland 6.0%
United Kingdom 8.0%
Americas
Brazil 7.2%
Canada 12.0%
Chile 7.1%
Mexico 12.6%
United States 11.0%
Venezuela 25.0%
But this painful global reality doesn't go down well with some participants, one of whom told me on the phone:
This isn't fair! I like going to my neighborhood drug store! They're taking away my freedom of choice! This is socialism!"
I responded that it might be many things, including arbitrary, but socialism it ain't, since this is a private plan (jointly run by unions and movie companies) making private decisions free of government interference.
It's just that when a bureaucracy ... any bureaucracy ... takes actions to contain costs, somebody gets nipped and doesn't like it.
However, it gave me insight into some of the groups yelling at town hall meetings. Many of our citizens, based on my first-hand experience, are a little hazy about what socialism actually is. But it certainly is a fine, all purpose curse word.
But, of course, there will be a lot of animated flicks hitting the multiplexes in the next few months, so it's not like there's a drought of anything. (White doggie, still active in Japan, now owns a worldwide gross of $308.3 million.)
Add On: The shorter weekend is in, and the leaders in the Top Ten turn out to be Final Destination ($12.4 million), All About Steve $11.2 million), and Inglourious Basterds ($10.8 million).
Down list, animated toonage G-Force has taken $114.6 million, Tranformers now owns $400.4 million, and Ponyo is just a smidge shy of $13 million ...
Fox's Sandra Bullock starrer "All About Steve" proved the weekend's strongest new pic with an estimated $13.9 million in third place, as Warner Bros.' 3D frightfest "The Final Destination" repeated at No. 1 with $15.4 million through Labor Day ...
Elsewhere on the weekend list, Inglourious Basterds (#2) rakes in $15 million and now totals $95.2 million, domestic.
Ponyo (#16) has $13.4 million in the till, while Up at #20 owns $291 million and Ice Age 3 (#21) now stands at $194.2 million ...
We've discussed Canada, France and the studios of Mumbai. But there's much going on in the countries to our south.
Latin America is becoming a hotbed for animation as local producers forge ties with international companies, while more studios are keen to distribute their toons.
Animated pics are a goldmine for the region’s young, family-oriented population. Fox’s "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has reached "Titanic" status as the all-time box office leader in Latin America, with nearly 12 million admissions in Mexico.
Several companies are ready to bow Latin feature toons ... In October, Fox releases its first local animated pickup across Latin America ... Universal Pictures Mexico will release its first local animated, "Nikte" ...
Argentina’s Patagonik Film Group struck box office gold at home with comic strip-based "Dibu, la pelicula" in 1997 and "Patoruzito" in 2004.
In 2006, irreverent toon "Una Pelicula de Huevos," about an egg that wants to be a chicken, surprised the Mexican market when it rose to number two all-time local blockbuster status.
"Few Latin American movies have worked across the region, but we’re hoping to break this trend ... " says Hernan Viviano, Fox Chile general manager ...
The theme here (as elsewhere) is that animation production and exhibition now thrives on all parts of the globe, including South America and Mexico. (Maybe especially South America and Mexico.)
As always, American entertainment conglomerates are heavily involved with financing and co-production deals, hoping for a mega blockbuster they can own and distribute, but happy to settle for regional hits that will keep local turnstiles spinning.
Thus far, of course, it's the big budget domestically-produced toonage that has had the greatest impact. That might one day change, but so far the locals' thirst for wooly mammoths and dinosaurs has carried the day. (And lest you think I'm being chauvinistic here, please know that I speak as a proud, Latin American cartoon creator ... even though my name was spelled wrong in the credits. )
Wade Sampson -- and Chuck Jones -- tell us how Chuck spent 1/3 of 1953:
CJ: I called up Walt Disney and asked him if I could come over there for a while. He said, ‘Sure, come on over.’ I was there for four months. I worked on Sleeping Beauty and the beginning of the television show. But I couldn't adjust to waiting for Walt ... the Disney people were raised that way, and used to it. You'd finish a sequence, and then you'd wait, maybe for weeks. Five or six men, just sitting around waiting for Walt to come around. When he did come around, he'd already been there the night before when the plant was dark and looked at the boards, and everybody knew he'd seen the sequence, but they still had to show it to him as though he hadn't ...
THR reports on casting for an animated feature set to roll out in 2011:
[Jeff Foxworthy] will voice the role of Babe the Blue Ox in "Bunyan & Babe," the animated feature from MGM and Exodus Film Group. ... Tony Bancroft and Jim Rygiel are directing the pic, with Exodus execs John Eraklis and Max Howard producing ...
The Wall Street Journal observes that the financial meltdown has put a crimp in filmmaking ... but there are still lots of non live-action films getting made.
... A wave of animated films based on children's stories are scheduled for release over the next several months, including Disney's revision of the age-old fairy tale, "The Princess and the Frog"; Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," a mostly stop-motion animation version of the Roald Dahl novella; and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," a 3-D take on the popular children's book. ...
In "Fantastic Mr. Fox," a crafty chicken thief—voiced by George Clooney—strives to outwit three farmers who wage war against him for stealing their prized goods. In an unusual move for an animated feature, Mr. Anderson, best known for offbeat comedies shot in subdued tones like "The Royal Tenenbaums," made all the actors record the audio tracks together and act out some of the motions in the film, says Jason Schwartzman, who performs the voice of Ash, Mr. Fox's runty son. "George and I are having an intense emotional scene," he recalls, "and we weren't in costume or makeup, but I was really on the ground digging for dirt." ...
Also coming back to the multiplex: Buzz Lightyear and teenage heartthrob Robert Pattinson. Disney will debut "Toy Story 3" next year and in preparation, the studio will rekindle the franchise by releasing new 3-D versions of "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2."
... Disney will release "Tron Legacy" on Dec. 17, 2010, which has suddenly become a competitive date for male-skewing fare ... Sony already had one movie slated to open the same day, 3-D toon "The Smurfs." Studio is likely to move the kiddie pic elsewhere, considering Warner Bros.' 3-D animated pic "Yogi Bear" will unspool that weekend as well.
Yogi, Tron and Smurfs. It's a veritable Disney and Hanna-Barbera fest.
The Guardian (U.K.) speculates on animated features undercutting screen stars' asking prices:
... The success of the animated film Up illustrates another threat to Equity members: actors are necessary only for a short voice recording. These computerised cartoons can be seen as helping to preserve the legend of the star: in most cases, A-list faces – Hanks, Travolta, even Paul Newman – have been hired merely for their voices. But it's not clear how much difference this disembodied stellar presence makes, especially to young audiences. Performers with Beverly Hills mansions and private jets to maintain must legitimately fear that Hollywood's next move will be the use by animatorsof anonymous voices or even digitised ones ...
Have yourself a safe and joyous holiday weekend. Or not.
A dozen years ago, Disney built two animation studios in Canada -- one in Vancouver and one in Toronto. They turned out hand-drawn animation for Disney's home video division, but they were short-lived production units, lasting only a few years before being shuttered.
Now, however, Canada is making moves to lure more animation production north of the 49th parallel.
... [T]ax credits offered by [Canadian] provinces reveals the same game of incremental one-upmanship that has become standard in the U.S. And, while that's a mixed blessing north of the border, it might herald even sweeter giveaways for Hollywood studios seeking to film here.
Quebec got the ball rolling in mid-June. That's when the province extended its tax credit, allowing producers to get a 25% break not only on labor costs (as had been the case previously) but also on all production expenses ....
Provincial governments are pouring money into new animation and video game studios as they look to increase high-tech digital jobs. British Columbia got the ball rolling when Disney's Pixar announced it would open a new studio in Vancouver in the fall. Pixar's move north was accompanied by lucrative tax credits and other financial incentives from the B.C. government for digital animation and R&D.
Over in Ontario, Toronto then acquired a 20% stake in the city's Filmport Studios complex to make way for Britain's Pinewood Studios Group to take control of the mega-studio, newly renamed Pinewood Toronto Studios. The Ontario government subsequently agreed to invest $20.5 million in the Starz Animation Toronto 3D cartoon studio during the next five years, to create and retain high-tech jobs locally. And Ontario then convinced French interactive game maker Ubisoft to open its fourth Canadian development studio in Toronto by pitching in $226 million over 10 years to create 800 jobs ...
To date, Canadian animation studios have not been major players in the global 'toon marketplace. A number of projects have been turned out in Toronto and elsewhere; none have been box-office chart busters.
At this juncture, Canada offers job shops to sub-contract animation, but it hasn't built any studios that turn out successful originals. And with the Canadian dollar and wage scales running at near-parity with their American counterparts, Canada will never be the low-cost provider for sub-contracted animation.
That honor will continue to be shared by China and India.
(Ontario premiere Dalton McGuinty explains Ontario's game plan here.)
Studios say the increase at the foreign B.O. is especially noteworthy considering that exchange rates no longer favor American companies, as they did before last fall's economic collapse.
Heading into the season, no one in Hollywood would have guessed that 20th Century Fox's 3-D toon "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" would finish the summer No. 1 at the international B.O., cuming some $640 million through Aug. 31 and even besting "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" ($613 million).
... The 3-D headlines didn't stop with "Dawn of the Dinosaurs," however. Disney/Pixar's 3-D toon "Up," which still has a substantial number of territories in which to open, has grossed an impressive $156.6 million to date. Disney's 3-D toon "G-Force," the studio's mid-range summer entry, has cumed a healthy $67 million overseas ...
Then there is Transformers 2, another (partially animated) cartoon that cleaned up around the world. (The woods seem to be full of them.)
My take-away from animation's continuing rampage across theatrical marketplaces is that the girls and boys who front the money to create it will be making more features which are chockablock with funny animals and quirky human beings.
Naturally enough, they'll be hiring people who know how to do it. And the odds are good that a major portion of that work will be done stateside, since (so far) foreign-produced features haven't made the bushel baskets of cash multi-national conglomerates desire.
Guess we'll see how close to future reality I turn out to be.
... or so says Yoshiyuki Tomino. And he ought to know, since he's spent a lot of years creating them.
At the 2009 CESA Developers Conference, Tomino, the creator of the much-beloved mecha franchise, ... took advantage of the opportunity to deliver a keynote to game developers, reportedly to provoke them and try to make them reconsider gaming's future ...
"I think that video games are evil," Tomino told those in attendance. "[Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Let's say we have about three billion people on this planet wasting their time, bringing no productivity at all. Add 10 billion more people, and what would happen to our planet? Video games are assisting the death of our planet!" ...
This "games are evil" thing will certainly dishearten my resident teenager, who has been sitting in his bedroom for hours on end doing evil. (And has the gaming thumbs to prove it.)
But of course, this evilness paradigm can be easily extended to comic books, movies, cartoons, and doodling mindlessly in a notebook with lined paper. (I mean, land sakes alive! How productive are all those things?)
We really should be out there, every last one of us, harvesting crops, performing brain surgery, and manufacturing the Cars of the Future.
The subject of overtime has come up a lot the last few days, and one storyboard artist said to me: "Could you please put up a post about how overtime works? I keep forgetting". So here is your short tutorial for today.
If you're working as an hourly employee under the TAG contract, then you get:
Straight time for the first eight hours worked of the first five days of the workweek (generally Monday through Friday).
Time and a half for the ninth to fourteenth hours during those first five days (and you're supposed to take two meal breaks).
Double time for the fifteenth through twenty-fourth hours (if you or the studio are masochistic/sadistic enough to work 25 hours in a row, the twenty-fifth hour returns you to straight time ...
A couple of other small but delightful points. Under Federal labor law, there are two classifications of employees -- exempt and non-exempt.
If you work in an exempt labor category, then your employer isn't required to pay overtime. (Exempt categories include "professional", "creative" and "supervisory.")
I'm not going to get into all the permutations of "exempt" since I don't want to turn this into a Wikipedia entry. But for animation employees, the areas of exemption from o.t. include designers, layout artists, and storyboard artists, also supervisors. (This doesn't apply to animation employees working under a labor contract.)
"Non-exempt" employees would include animators, timing directors, and any artists who were revising or reworking previously-existing images. ("Animators" are specifically listed as non-exempt in the federal labor code -- they're working with those existing images.)
In the real world, there are many ways companies do overtime work-arounds. At Disney Animation Studio, to use one example, they've gone to a hard 45-hour workweek (five hours of pre-paid overtime) and cut salaries. DreamWorks has had a fifty-hour workweek (ten hours of pre-paid overtime) for years.
And many studios practice the "free overtime" business model, which goes as follows:
The production manager comes up and says:
"We need this storyboard by next Friday, and we don't have any money for overtime in the budget."
The second half of the preceding sentence technically has nothing to do with the first part, but it signals to the employee that any request for overtime authorization by said employee will be looked upon in the same way as if the employee drops trou and defecates in the main hallway.
Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.
“We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate,” said Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors and a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the City University of New York. The study, to be released on Wednesday, was financed by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations.
*As played by the incomparable Claude Raines in Casablanca.
Unions and guilds have wrangled with the major studios over payment fees and residuals for that strange new beast called "New Media," (internet downloads, streaming video, etc. All on the ubiquitous Worldwide Web.) They didn't solve all the contractual problems in the 2008 negotiations (although they made a start) but it's definitely a part of entertainment delivery that's hear to stay.
Warner Brothers has been trying to innovate in digital entertainment.
Housed in a scrappy little division called Warner Premiere ... [t]he latest project – a series of 10 animated videos called “The Adventures of One eskimO” (the artistic capitalization is theirs) – arrived on digital platforms like iTunes and WBShop.com on Monday. The “visual album” has one video for each song on the debut CD of a British band called One Eskimo (
... Warner thinks the content has potential – maybe the foundation of a series on Adult Swim? – and hopes to incubate the idea online. “It’s definitely got characters and story potential that we would hope to see grow beyond digital,” said Diane Nelson, the president of Warner Premiere ...
Our friendly entertainment conglomerates are working to stay ahead of the curve in the brave new digital age. They are, in a word, throwing many things against the marketplace wall and looking to see what sticks.
One problem: The congloms haven't (yet) figured out how to make significant money on the internet. The iTunes download strategy hasn't borne much fruit; paid downloads are declining while ad-supported streaming is up. The difficulty with the streaming business model is that ad fees, according to the studios, are paltry.
If the people I talk to are right, companies haven't figured out any kind of stable, reliable business model with new media. They are experimenting and hoping for the goose to flap down and lay several golden eggs (instead of just, you know, eggs.) Animation is one of the trains on which the multi-nationals will be riding; it's important for creators ("the employees") of this new product to be fairly compensated.
The WGAw is in the midst of an officers' election. On one side is the Writers United group (incumbent Prez Patric Verrone, candidate Elias Davis, and WGA negotiation committee head John Bowman); on the other Presidential candidate John Wells.
The contest to elect a new leader of the Writers Guild of America, West, took an ugly turn Friday when the union's current president and a key figure in last year's contract negotiations blasted John Wells, the writer and producer who is campaigning to be the union's next president.
In an e-mail to guild members, Patric M. Verrone, the union's outgoing president, and John F. Bowman, the former head of the negotiating committee, accused Wells of undermining their efforts during last year's contract negotiations.
The men alleged that Wells kept them in the dark about his involvement in negotiations that the studios were holding with the Directors Guild of America ... "As it worked out, after John publicly supported the DGA deal, without also publicly stating his own involvement, our hands as negotiators were tied," Verrone and Bowman wrote.
"We'd been on strike for three months and people wanted to go back to work. We understood this. What we did not understand, and still don't, is why one of our own would negotiate with the DGA without informing his guild's president or the chair of its negotiating committee ..."
Apparently Mr. Wells takes exception to their e-mailed allegations.
"Let me say simply and directly that Patric Verrone and John Bowman are not telling the truth, and that they know they are not telling the truth ...
"What I was doing was trying to find out whatever I could about the details of the deal[the DGA was] planning to negotiate, which would inevitably become the basis of our deal. And I was passing on what I could find out to John Bowman and several other members of the Negotiating Committee whenver I had something to report ...
And on February 10th, 2008 John Bowman sent me an email that said simply, and I quote: 'Good work on the deal." ...
So, why do I nadder on about an internal WGAw election? One that we have (mostly) nothing to do with?
Because the election outcome could well impact working TAG members. If Mr. Wells is elected, I believe there's a lower probability that the WGAw will hit the bricks. (Wells is considered more moderate, and less likely to use the strike option.) If Davis is elected, given the Writers United stance and track record, there is (I think) a higher probability the Writers Guild will strike.
And if the WGAw goes out a year and a half hence, or goes out on strike with SAG, TAG members could find themselves out of work for a considerable stretch of time when animation studios shut down for lack of scripts and/or voice tracks.
That simple.
And the Animation Guild could end up with the kind of collateral damage we endured in 2008, when hundreds were without work for an extended period of time, and the Motion Picture Industry Health and Pension Plan took a financial hit as live-action and animated production shut down and Plan contributions slowed to a trickle.
Elections have consequences. And the ongoing WGAw and SAG elections could have major consequences for us in the not-distant future, which is why it's useful to be aware of what's going on.
We have close to zero leverage affecting the election outcome, but owning knowledge about what could happen after the outcome occurs will help in planning our futures.
When you talk about world toonage, you need to talk about the country that enabled the U.S. of A. to get started (nation-wise) two hundred and thirty years ago:
France boasts the biggest TV toon industry in Europe by a wide margin, according to international showbiz industry analysts Screen Digest and Gallic promo org the Centre National du Cinema.
Pulling in E41.7 million ($59.76 million) in 2007, toons are Gaul's biggest TV export, repping 35% of total overseas sales, according to a CNC/TV France Intl. study.
The business has boomed this decade thanks to domestic backing including compulsory broadcaster investment plus CNC subsidies and tax breaks that cover between 10%-80% of series' budgets.
It's not just television work thatFrench animation studios are doing. Illumination Entertainment, doing Despicable Me for Universal-GE, tapped Mac Guff Ligne to do the production work for U-GE's second entry into the longform cartoon biz (The Tale of Despereaux -- from Framestore Feature Animation in London -- being the first). The company looks as though it's done an all right job:
A couple of years back an industry artist raved to me about some test c.g. footage a French company had done for the Disney Co.: "The animation was of the seven dwarfs, and it looked fantastic. And Disney was high on using the company for animation work but got turned down. The sample work the company did on the dwarfs was so impressive that they got inundated with other offers that paid more ..."
The animation business is one big global workshop, divided into departments labeled "Quality" and "Quantity." France appears to be trying to fill slots in both areas.
I trundled around to a couple of studios today, and hey. There are animation artists working at studios who are actually content.
"A lot of us are going to be working on Sponge Bob Square Pants until October 2011. Last month when we heard there was a big sigh of relief. We're doing the shows at the same pace as before, just moving along, and it's a nice feeling when you know work is going to be there awhile." ... "This is the best place I've ever worked ..."
The deal about animation studios is, one of its shows on the first floor can be an unadulterated pleasure on which to work, while the production upstairs might be a grinder with insane deadlines, uncompensated overtime, and a production manager who's a first cousin of Atilla the Hun. The difference usually comes down to budgets and who's running the show. You get somebody fairly enlightened who knows how to design and schedule show episodes, you get a crew that gets to have a life nights and weekends, and is happy.
And when not, the fifth circle of hell is often the result.
... Then there's Film Roman, the second studio I drove to.
"It's been tough on The Simpsons crew the past year. Fox has cut budgets and we've lost artists. The time we have to do each show is less, and everybody is more stressed. But you know, the new producer Tom Klein is talking to people and really trying to make things better. I mean, we know there's only so much he can do because Fox and Gracie are squeezing the budget, but a lot of us appreciate he's communicating and trying to make things better."
I'm pretty much a freak about communication myself (proven by all these posts), so I think it's a good thing when a studio honcho wants to talk to the people working for him.
Transparency, short term, is often a pain for management. Long term, however, it's a fine way to improve the workplace environment.
Add On: This is the sort of video various artists were watching at their desks today.
It's probably related to the fact that it's hard to breathe when you walk outside and get enveloped by the hundred degree heat. That could have something to do with it.
Disney said in a statement that it would pay a combination of about 60 percent cash and 40 percent stock to acquire Marvel, which has a stable of some 5,000 characters that includes the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor ...
It's not hard to see why the House of Mouse wants to do this deal:
Marvel’s intellectual property tends to be more popular with boys — an area where Disney could use the help. While the likes of “Hannah Montana” and the blockbuster Princesses merchandising line have solidified Disney’s hold on little girls, franchises for boys have recently been harder to come by ...
When you're a hungry conglomerate, it's about finding ways to strengthen and shore up your brands. Increasing cash flow and market share are now and forever the prime motivators.
Variety details the Henson Company's real-time c.g. facility:
Whereas a lot of animation companies use motion capture to capture precisely what an actor does, we’re somewhere in the middle," explains Brian Henson, co-CEO of the Jim Henson Co. and son of the famed Muppets creator. "We’re always working through some kind of technical interface."
... [T]he Henson Digital Puppetry Studio ... allows the company’s pros to translate their performances into broadcast-quality 3-D animation in real-time, resulting in shows such as "Sid the Science Kid."
At Henson’s Hollywood-based HQ, tucked behind the Kermit statue, the team has transformed a soundstage into a 40-foot-by-60-foot motion capture performance space or "volume." It takes two puppeteers acting in synch to create a character’s "live performance"; one dons a custom exoskeleton and acts out body movements onstage, while the second controls the CG head and face from a separate booth on the sidelines ...
Close to thirty years ago, the early Disney Channel was cranking out Winnie the Pooh half-hours with actors in cloth suits in front of chroma key sets on a small stage in Hollywood. They produced a show every two or three days, and they were extremely cost effective (read "cheap.").
The Henson mo-cap studio is, I think, a descendant and cousin of that long ago operation: a streamlined method to get a type of animated children's show to the marketplace at a relatively low cost.
Motion capture has a place in theatrical features and television. It's proven, over the years, that it's a viable sub-set of the movie industry, but I would disagree with Variety about this:
Motion capture technology may still be new enough to intimidate actors and animators (with both groups terrified such technology could eventually render them obsolete) ...
Mo cap is what it's always been: digital rotoscope, the computerized grandchild of Out of the Inkwell and Gulliver's Travels.
Rotoscope didn't replace animators in 1939, and Motion Capture won't replace animators in 2009. Both technologies are tools, not art forms. Animation is an art form.
Also Life Like provides a list of its favorite directors of cartoons of the seven-minute variety:.
The “100 Important Directors of Animated Short Films” list is not intended to be comprehensive. These are simply 100 directors whom we feel are important and deserving of increased recognition by film lovers.
But it's still pretty thorough. There are a lot of directors here who are known for their longer work: Lasseter, Wlfred Jackson, Frank Tashlin. But it's a fine compendium of artists who made their mark in an important corner of the movie business.
Marty Murphy passed away Wednesday evening, August 26, at his home.
Marty was a master cartoonist who contributed regularly to Playboy and is probably best known for that work. But to animation fans his credentials are equally impressive.
Marty was a Production Designer on Mister Magoo in 1960, a Layout Artist on Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Character Designer on Wait Till Your Father Gets Home 1972 - 1974, and Hong Kong Phooey 1974. He was a Storyboard Artist on DuckTales, Garfield and Friends, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, and a whole lot of other stuff which can be found at the IMDb site.
Every once in awhile the cartoonist community suffers a great loss, and this is one of them.
There will be a memorial service on Monday evening, August 31 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery from 6 to 8 pm. There will be a funeral mass on Tuesday morning, Sept. 1, at St Brendan's Church, 310 S. Van Ness Ave. in Los Angeles (contact the church at 323-936-4656 for the time.
4. District 9 (Sony) WEEK 3, Fri $3M, Est Wkd $10M
5. Julie & Julia (Sony) WEEK 4, Fri $2.1M, Est Wkd $7M
6. G.I. Joe (Paramount) WEEK 5, Fri $2.1M, Est Wkd $7M
7. Time Traveler's Wife (WB) WEEK 3, Fri $2.1M, Est Wkd $6.5M
8. Shorts (WB) WEEK 2, Fri $1.2M, Est Wkd $4M
9. Taking Woodstock (Focus) NEW, Fri $1.1M, Est Wkd $3.7M
10. G-Force (Disney) Week 6, Fri $710K, Est Wkd $2.5M
In the animation department, G-Force clings to the tenth position, with $109 million in the Disney ruck sack, while Ponyo closes in on $10 million at #15. (And will probably edge past the $11 million cume of Miyazaki 's previous top domestic grosser.)
Weekend's ticket sales were horrifyingly good, up as much as 38% over the same weekend a year ago. Summer 2009 is now tied with 2007 as the best summer ever at the domestic B.O., with revenues approximately matching last summer's total of $4.16 billion. And with Labor Day weekend yet to come, revenues will easily zoom pass that mark ...
The animated G-Force takes in $2.8 million at the weekend box office to run its total to $112 million. Go, guinea pigs, go!
Disney is having a noteworthy late-summer stretch, with three films hitting the top 10 chart. The studio's 3-D guinea pig-themed toon "G-Force" placed No. 3 for the frame, grossing $9.1 million from 2,508 runs in 22 territories for an international cume of $54.4 million and worldwide total of $161.6 million.
Mouse House and Pixar's "Up," which rolled out slowly over the summer and now begins to expand in a major way, came in No. 4. The stereoscopic 3-D toon grossed $8.7 million from 2,237 playdates in 19 territories for an international cume of $142.3 million and a worldwide haul of $431.1 million. (The film is at the end of its domestic run.) ...
"Up" hopes to follow the pattern of 20th Century Fox's stereo 3-D toon "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which has grossed a boffo $616.4 million this summer, surpassing Disney-Pixar's "Finding Nemo" to become the top grossing animated film of all time internationally. Worldwide total is now $809 million.
... [N]ervous Hollywood studio executives are trying a little bit of everything in an effort to weather, and maybe rise a little bit above, these uncertain economic times ...
[A] bevy of animated projects, including "9," "Astroboy," ... "Planet 51" and 3D re-releases of "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2"; and stars including George Clooney ("Men Who Stare at Goats"), Charlize Theron ("The Road"), John Travolta and Robin Williams ("Old Dogs") and Sandra Bullock ("The Blind Side") ... [also] Wes Anderson ("Fantastic Mr. Fox"), Robert Zemeckis ("A Christmas Carol"), even rookie Drew Barrymore ("Whip It") ...
Among the more anticipated offerings are the post-apocalyptic hero tale "9" (Sept. 9); a re-imagination of the pioneering Japanese anime series "Astro Boy" (Oct. 23), with Freddie Highmore as the world's most powerful pre-adolescent robot and Nicolas Cage as his creator/father, Dr. Tenma; and "Planet 51" (Nov. 20), set on a planet where a visiting astronaut discovers little green men leading a pretty nice life.
Not to mention Cloudy with Meatballs from Sony, coming along September 19, and two animated features for Christmas: The Princess and the Frog, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeaquel.
Maybe when nervous Hollywood execs are releasing more 'toons thn live-action, the genre will get respect.
The IATSE and the Disney Co. have reached agreement on a new three-year deal covering animation employees at Disney Animation Studios and elsewhere. (This was the negotiation discussed at a recent meeting of Disney Animation employees.)
The 2009-2012 contract is similar to the increases recently negotiated in the Animation Guild agreement, with 2% annual wage hikes coupled with 1 1/2% yearly contribution bumps to the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan ...
A ratification vote for the new contract is scheduled for September 11 at the Disney Animation Studio.
J. Lasseter gives the secret for making quality animated features (again).
He is adamant that teams not be allowed to sequester themselves or work too long without sharing their progress with others. No matter what state a project is in, every three months, directors are required to put their film up on reels and test how it screens. That way, Lasseter and his fellow leaders can identify problems early.
Lasseter doesn't believe in mandatory notes, introducing instead what he calls the "creative brain trust" at Pixar, a peer-support strategy in which all the directors and key story people from around the company get together and selflessly help on one another's films. "It doesn't matter whose idea it is, the best idea gets used," he explains.
"Animation is the most collaborative art form there is in the whole world," continues Lasseter, who says his goal at both Pixar and Disney Animation has been "to build a studio where everyone's working for the same thing, to make the best movie you can, and then to be open enough to let people put their two cents into it. The next thing you know, you're seeing stuff you would never have thought of yourself."
See? The method worked real well at the Disney Hyperion studio in the 1930s, and it works fine today up in Emeryville ...
Screenwriter Stan Berkowitz tells of the fun of writing a memorable cartoon villain.
[T]his is Luthor’s story. Luthor has more dialogue than either Batman or Superman. And frankly, I actually gave him even more dialogue in those long speeches because I was hoping Clancy Brown would get the part, which he did. It’s so pleasurable to watch – and hear – Clancy do those Luthor lines, to watch Clancy’s descent into madness. It just brought me back to the days when I got into this medium in the first place. Suddenly, I was just a 13-year-old with a movie camera having fun with my friends and doing these little movies ...
With animated features, you work on one project over the course of several years, so there's time to really develop the character and the story. For my character's specific arc [in 9], he started out quite innocent and naive to his world and who he is, but then we started to make him more heroic and more assertive ...
The students and profs of San Jose State have created a feature length animated feature:
Bye-Bye Bin Laden, the first film of its kind to be produced at a university, was created by students and faculty at San Jose State University. Writer-director Scott Sublett describes the film as South Park meets The Daily Show ...
Avatar trailer: Get your flashy 3D stick out of my face, Mr Cameron.
If James Cameron's 3D space epic is so revolutionary, why does it remind me of Ferngully? ...
Hey now. I likedFerngully ...
Singer Paul Simon is getting into the animation game:
Paul Simon, of Simon & Garfunkel ... will be voicing the role of Yankee great Thurman Munson in Henry and Me, an animated film set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next year ...
ASIFA's archives puts up some dandy Looney Tunes artwork from the late 1930s:
Plac-emat art, no less.
The Hollywood Reporter posts that Indian animation growth rate will decline:
India's animation industry will see slower growth according to the annual report by the National Association of Software and Services Companies.
“The Animation and Gaming Report 2008-09” has revised its forecast for the sector, expecting a dip in growth rates for two years before becoming a billion-dollar industry by 2012 ...
Slow growth of domestic box-office for animation movies, absence of adequate proof of concept or intellectual property creation, and lack of availability of skills for the animation industry are other factors that have led Nasscom to revise its earlier forecast.
Add On: The L.A. Times reviews an anthology on the thoughts on Japanese culture, animation and Hayao Miyzaki:
... [R]are insights into one of the greatest talents the art of animation has produced make "Starting Point" essential reading for anyone interested in Japanese -- or Western -- animation. However, the anthology covers only to 1996, before Miyazaki made his most mature films: "Princess Mononoke" (1997), "Spirited Away" (2001) and "Howl's Moving Castle" (2004). Readers and viewers can only hope a second volume is already in the works.
Have a restful weekend. And don't inhale any more smoke and ash than you need to.
Cartoon Network has had an uptick in viewership the past few months (whether this helps its animated shows long-term, or accelerates its shift to live action, remains to be seen.) But it's got a half dozen 'toon shows in various stages of work, and a few more in development ...
The newer version of Ben 10 is in production. and Sym-Bionic Titan (produced at the Orphanage and top-kicked by Genndy Tartakovsky) has recorded its first show.
The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack has six newer episodes in work and The Regular Show also has a six episode order. But as a CN veteran told me:
"These shorter episode orders cause problems, because by the time we assemble a decent crew to make them and everyone is starting to mesh creatively, the six shows are finished and everyone goes off to other studios. Then management decides to order more shows, but can't get the people who made the first ones because the artists are now working elsewhere. Not good ..."
Meanwhile, the last episodes of Chowder are getting thesmelves animated overseas and moved through post-production. (Pre-production has long been ended and most of the Chowder staff picked up by Disney TVA.)
Fox Animation, where I spent my morning hours, is a small empire of continuity. Artists are working on new seasons of Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show, and nobody seems worried about getting laid off when a show shuts down, since all three are continuing into the foreseeable future. Said a board artist:
"I'm not saying things are perfect around here, but when you know you've got a gig that continues on for a year or two, you relax a little ..."
SAG has just ratified a new live-action cable agreement with a 93% "yes" vote, and a new animation contract has been approved by the guilds national executive committee.
And as I write, ballots for the new TAG agreement are being delivered by snail mail ...
We encourage, exhort, and hereby ask TAG members reading this to mark their ballot, put it in the inner envelope and then in the orange envelope with prepaid postage, and mail it to the American Arbitration Association for counting on September 9th. (And please don't tear of the little white tag with you name on it. That invalidates the ballot.)
(Results of that contract vote will be posted here on that same September 9th.)
Despite government support for Chinese animation, private capital has been slow to fund the domestic sector, leaving it lagging in the wake of 2008's imported "Kung Fu Panda" success.
So far in 2009, just four Chinese animation and animation-related merchandise producers have received capital injections, according to a report released Wednesday by investment analysts at JLM Pacific Epoch ...
While Disney's "Mulan," based on Chinese legend, spawned a sequel and DreamWorks is considering a follow-up to "Kung Fu Panda" -- which raked in $560 million in global ticket sales -- China's animation industry lacks talent, originality and creativity, [JLM's Ely] Yan said ....
I'm picking up a trend here.
All these spokespeople for overseas cartoon industries keep saying their domestic studios are missing something, and that's why they don't keep up with, you know, those Stateside cartoons.
I'm not convinced that this will forever be the case. I'm not sure it's completely the reality now, since there is quality work coming out of various countries beyond the Pacific and Atlantic.
The U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on animation talent; it's just taking awhile for overseas cartoon makers to get it together, one reason being that a lot of their high-end artists keep jumping ship to go work in America. (I know this because their immigration visas come across my desk with a metronomic regularity.)
Ice Age 3 and Up are chasing the record books as they unfold in movie theaters around the world. Cartoon Network is 19% higher in viewership. Family Guy is vying for multiple Emmys and The Simpsons is working on their 21st season. Dven hand-drawn animation is making a comeback.
But apparently animation is not quite as robust in another country that has always loved itself the cartoons.
Japan's domestic toon market, including pics, TV shows and DVDs, has declined for the second year in a row, according to a study by private media think tank the Media Development Research Institute.
After taking a record $2.54 billion in 2006, the local toon market fell to $2.24 billion in 2008. This number includes both domestic and foreign toons.
The drop occurred despite the 2008 release of Hayao Miyazaki's smash hit "Ponyo," which earned $163 million domestically, making it the year's top box office earner. But the number of toon releases that exceeded 1 billion yen ($10.5 million) -- the traditional mark of a hit in Japan -- fell, while foreign toons failed to take up the slack.
The one constant of the animation market around the world is its up and down nature -- much like a roller coaster. Cartoons are a commodity that rise and fall based on their perceived quality.
The American cartoon biz has always been boom and bust. The early promise of animated features (1938-1941) quickly gave way to a long fallow period that lasted into the fifties. The roaring success of television animation (1958-1961) faded into the up-and-down nature of the seasonal Saturday morning market powered by the broadcast networks until the 1980s and syndication, the 1990s and cable, the turn of the century and the big money earned by animation on video cassettes and disks. (Family Guy was reborn when millions of DVDs got sold.)
What Japan is going through is its own version of the American cartoon marketplace, where good times follow bad ... and vice versa.
I would wager that when the world economy repairs itself, Japanese animation will hit new records. (Of course, product will need to be created that people want to see, but sooner or later somebody will do that. Japanese artists haven't lost their talent, after all. Just their hot streak.)
I've been in three studios in as many days, and the theme that echoes back to me as I stumble around the halls is: "Our morale is crappy". Which is understandable given the staff reductions and salary rollbacks, not to mention the general good times in which we now live.
The plunging morale issue isn't news to anybody paying attention, but a new report highlights part of the problem.
A report called "Talent Tightrope: Managing the Workplace through the Downturn", has found that employers are unaware of their employees’ stress levels.
Hudson executive general manager Marc Burrage says that 44 percent of the 2394 employees surveyed indicted that worker morale has plummeted.
“In contrast, only 26 percent of the 247 employers interviewed acknowledge that workplace morale has dropped.”
He adds that local companies have responded to the global recession by slashing workforce costs through restructures and staff cuts ...
Almost a third of employees are concerned about losing their jobs. This is a very different scenario to only one year ago. Nearly half [42 percent] said they feel their job is less secure than the same time last year ...
I think the general cluelessness of employers referenced in the report is reflected in the actions of various animation studios (They are, after all, employers too.)
I could think of a bunch of examples, but let me give you one: During the recent contract negotiations, a studio rep came to us during the contract-talk equivalent of the ninth inning and proposed getting rid of his company's sick days. I told him I thought the proposal was on the late side, and also a bad idea. I then told the employees, and an already bad morale situation got worse.
In fact, the employees went sort of ape shit.
The studio, after due consideration, decided getting rid of sick days was maybe not such a swift idea after all and withdrew the proposal.
But here's my point: I think the idea was put forward in the first place because the company's management didn't have a clear grasp of how ticked off employees already were.
(Management, in my experience, often gets caught up in an echo chamber of its own design where it hears what it wants to hear, and tunes out bad news that gets in the way of preconceived notions. Let's stipulate here that it's often difficult to burrow down to cold, hard reality; a lot of union members tell me what they think I want to hear. So I'm not always the recipient of clear, shining truth either.)
The lesson in this story, I think, is that it's a good idea for corporate administrators to communicate with A) each other and B) the employees whose benefits they feel compelled to take away. "Talking things out" beforehand isn't necessarily going to solve the problem and it probably won't make people perform jigs in the hallways, but it will go a considerable distance in avoiding bigger mistakes and cushioning some of the blows that now fall on the folks who have to work for a living.
When the summer winds toward a close and you can't think of anything worthwhile to pontificate about, hold a linkage carnival.
The teevee 'toon series you've been waiting for: a half-hour of interactive merriment.
Reality production company RDF aims to launch the first interactive animated series in the United States.
The firm behind such shows as Fox's "Don't Forget the Lyrics" and ABC's "Wife Swap" is teaming with new-media company Artificial Life to design a TV series in which viewers can participate in the onscreen action.
In the proposed series, "Sleuths," viewers would customize their own avatars, which will appear onscreen during the show's live telecast ...
Apparently filmmaker Terry Gilliam is looking to do janitorial work:
After praising Pixar for their films, noting how they are clearly a studio run by “creative people” and not suits, and commenting on how much of the bold political cinema he’s seen recently has been in animated family films, Gilliam also let on that he wants to work for the studio ... Gilliam went so far as to claim he’d “sweep the floors” at Pixar ...
Let's see. We had the Texas film student who was willing to fetch coffee at Pixar, now Terry G. is saying he'll sweep up, so where does it end?
For a studio that's moving away from animation, Cartoon Network is doing all right in the awards department.
Cartoon Network is taking an early lead in this year's Primetime Emmy race, picking up five of seven juried awards announced Monday.
... Among the animation winners are character animators Elizabeth Harvatine, for Cartoon Network's "Moral Orel," and Joshua Jennings, for the channel's "Robot Chicken." Also picking up the Emmy will be background painters Joe Binggeli, for Cartoon Network's "Chowder," and Chris Roszak ...
Pixar's latest film release already has overperformed in the U.S. and Canada, proving wrong predictions its star-free voice cast and adult-oriented tone would hamper appeal ... Up" was slotted to open during a span of several months in different territories ...
So far, "Up" sits at $142 million and counting internationally. Eventually, it should fetch upward of $400 million abroad as Pixar pics tend to overperform internationally ... The international appetite for animated features would seem high at the moment judging from the global appetite for Fox's summer opener "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs." The 3D threequel has more than tripled its domestic tally with a stunning $616 million in foreign lucre ...
Happy Feet 2rears up far off in the Land Down Under.
George Miller has decided to do a sequel to his 2006 animated film Happy Feet ... [and] Robin Williams has apparently agreed to reprise two of his voice roles from the first film ...
DreamWorks Animation doesn't have a new film out until next year, but its stock doesn't seem to be impacted by the lack of product.
Dreamworks Animation (NasdaqNM: DWA) closed yesterday at $31.71. So far the stock has hit a 52-week low of $17.32 and 52-week high of $32.73. Dreamworks Animation stock has been showing support around 31.33 and resistance in the 32.19 range ...
Digital kids network CBBC is expanding its online portal Cartoon Works to become a destination to premiere shortform content ...
[T]he portal will showcase new animation from budding under-18 amateurs through to established professionals. Anyone can submit animation, the best of which will be selected and showcased on bbc.co.uk/cbbc and then transmitted on the CBBC channel ...
Somebody please tell me that the British Broadcasting Corporation is going to compensate the creators of the work that they use, that there will be deals struck and royalties paid to the makers of the content which the BBC is happy to use on air.
That's all going to happen, right?
Meanwhile, CBBC has commissioned a new animated series, Muddle Earth, based on the books by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. It has also ordered another season of Aardman Animation-produced series Shaun the Sheep ,,,
Lemme guess. Aardman is getting paid. Stewart and Riddel and their adaptors are getting paid.
On Saturday night, the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills was the site of a panel discussion, exhibition opening and employee reunion, all focused on the seventieth anniversary of Hanna-Barbera Productions.
Above: The H-B panel consisting of Ken Spears, Willie Ito, Butch Hartman, Jerry Eisenberg and moderator Garry Owens taking questions from the audience.
Enjoy the rest of the photographic smorgasbord. You'll probably recognize numerous faces.
The crowd enjoyed the exhibits of vintage Hanna-Barbera art, photos and home movies on display in the lobby.
Joanna Romersa enjoys a laugh with Don Jurwich.
Mark Evanier and Scott Shaw!
Bob Tyler and Kirk Hanson.
John Tucker, Mark Kirkland, Tim Walker and Bob Foster.
Here's an example of a film worker in animation who has the leverage for a nice pay day.
FUNNYMAN John Cleese is laughing all the way to the bank - after netting $1MILLION for just 23 minutes' work ...for the fourth instalment of hit movie "Shrek."
He picked up a whopping pay cheque of £604,000 for his troubles - which works out at a cool £26,000 a minute or £437 a second ...
There's been discussions here and elsewhere about whether movies in three dimesions are just a flash on the silver screen, as in the 1950s, or will have staying power. Personally, I think the question has already been answered, what with all the 3-D features already in the pipeline and marketplace.
Until now, of course, those pictures have mainly been animation and mo cap. But I think the question is about to be answered as regards live action:
Screenings of 16 minutes of footage from "Avatar" were held across the country in 102 Imax locations and in 238 additional theaters overseas ...
The reason behind Fox's decision to mount "Avatar Day" was two-fold: To whip up a fan base among moviegoers and encourage theater owners to install more 3-D screens before "Avatar" opens Dec. 28 ...
Fox's 3-D toon "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has grossed $615 million at the international B.O., the most of any film this year and surpassing "Titanic" in a handful of Latin American markets. On "Ice Age 3's" opening weekend, the 3-D screens repped only 18% of the total theater count, but made up more than 35% of the gross, at least ...
21st century Three Dee has already lasted way longer than the dimensional movie splurge of 55 years ago. And the box office returns are now way too pronounced for any of the conglomerates to ignore the technology.
It won't be long before 3-D features are the rule instead of the exception. (I'm not sure this is necessarily a good thing; the three dee product I've seen hasn't bothered me, but it seems a tad ... I donno ... gimmicky. Of course, it doesn't really matter what old fuds -- of which I'm a member in good standing -- think is good. It's all about what the prime movie-going audience likes, and it appears to like 3-D quite a lot.)
Last week I talked to some of the crew that is working on the dimensional reboot of Beauty and the Beast at Disney. When I mentioned semi-facetiously that I couldn't wait for the 3-D versions of Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz and Casablanca to roll out, one of the artists said to me:
"After working on Beauty and seeing what's being done with it, I think it would be kind of neat to work on those old pictures and make them into 3-D. The process is getting easier and more powerful all the time, and I think maybe it will happen."
If the studios sniff money to be made in reconfiguring old productions ... and the cost for doing it is low enough ... I have few doubts that at some point we'll see Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion and the rest of the Oz posse prancing down the yellow brick road in glorious Three Dee.
The quest for increasing cash flow and profit margins, after all, is eternal.
It wasn't the young wizard that took the overseas crown.
Most had expected Warner Bros.' "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" or Par's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" to be the top grossing pics at the international B.O.
Instead, it was 20th Century Fox's "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" that stole the crown, thanks to the franchise's enduring popularity and the added boost of 3-D.
Through Aug. 16, the 3-D toon had cumed $601.7 million at the international B.O. for a worldwide tally of $792.6 million.
As regards the other major 'toon release:.
"Up," Disney-Pixar's summer 3-D toon, also continues its strong run. While "Dawn of the Dinosaurs" largely opened day and date, "Up" is rolling out more slowly and into the fall.
During the Aug. 14-16 frame, "Up" grossed an estimated $10.1 million from 2,162 playdates in 22 markets for a foreign cume of $126.9 million and worldwide tally of $415.1 million. "Up" remained No. 1 in France for a third consecutive frame, bringing the cume to $21.2 million.
And the White Doggie? He's still in release in Japan, pushing Bolt's worldwide cume higher. The canine is now, per Box Office Mojo, sitting at $305.5 million, which places it one notch abovePolar Express and two about Mulan.
Writers Guild's foreign levies pool is bigger, annual report shows
The guild's West Coast union as of March 31 had amassed about $30 million in funds that have yet to be paid to writers whose movies or TV shows were viewed overseas.
The guild's West Coast union had amassed about $30 million in funds that have yet to be paid to writers as of March 31, according to its recently released annual report. That's up from $20 million in 2007.
Most of the funds belong to hundreds of writers, or their estates, whose movies or TV shows were viewed in foreign countries that levy special taxes to compensate authors for the reuse and copying of their work.
The guild receives money, held in trust, from foreign collection societies and is responsible for disbursing the proceeds to writers ...
If you're thinking: "Heey. Is the WGA holding money that belongs to animation creators?" you're firing on all eight cylinders . The WGA does indeed hold money for animation writers ... and others ... that it doesn't represent.
Back when I was young and frisky, Brian Walton was the head of the WGAw, and the Writers Guild repped zero animation writers (even while collecting European levies for them), I took issue with this cozy little racket. My gripe was that the WGA not only held money for animation writers, but that it told the union that did rep them absolutely nothing about the amount of funds held.
At the time, I was informed by the WGA that I could shove it. Walton's response to my objections was: "We (the WGA) should get gratitude we're doing all this work, instead of these brickbats being thrown at us."
Uh, no.
The WGA holds $30,000,000 that hasn't been distributed to the people who earned the thirty mill, and the problem, if the Writers Guild's report is accurate, is now worse rather than better. Year before last the amount was $20,000,000.
Think about those figures for a minute. Assuming interest is being earned on the dough, the Guild is picking up a nice chunk of change, on top of which, it's collecting almost $540,000 annually to administer the money (Does this include interest? Or is it an add on? Inquiring minds want to know.)
Either way, it sounds like lucrative work if you can get it. Especially when you're the Lucky Ducky sitting on the millions. (Maybe it's not a giant surprise that the WGA is being sued over the issue. And maybe I'm a little bit correct believing the set-up stinks.)
My issue is the same as it was in the 1990s. A labor organization that represents more animation writers and board artists than the Writers Guild of American (west) ever has, is shut out completely on administering foreign levies for animation writers. We are given no reports or updates, allowed no input. The only communication that flows between our two organizations is when the WGAw asks us for contact information for one of the people they don't represent but TAG does.
So they can, you know, mail out a check and have an address to send it to. Neato jet.
No doubt by next year, the WGA will be sitting on $40,000,000 that doesn't belong to it, and earning $700,000 for the privilege.
On Friday, the IATSE and TAG held an informational meeting in Disney Feature Animation's first-floor theater, explaining about the oncoming negotiations for the Disney-IA contract. (The agreement ends in October, so now seems like a fortuitous time to commence talks on the next three-year deal.)
We spent a lot of time talking about the mechanics of negotiations, the state of the industry, and the studios' current attitudes about negotiations with labor organizations. (Can you say "hard line"? I knew you could ...) There were complaints about Disney's recent wage rollbacks. We explained how unions don't deal with overscale salary cuts but only pay minimums; that didn't make anybody feel happier about the corporate belt-tightening now being done at their expense.
There was concern about changes to the health plan ("The MPIPHP had to fill a big deficit" was the answer), and relief that the pension accumulations and benefits are the same as before. One attendee button-holed me to talk about her struggle getting enough hours to hang on to health coverage: "I just made the number of hours I need, but I'm being laid off in a week or two, and don't know when I'm coming back ..."
The joys of project-to-project employment are never-ending ....
Before we started our meeting in the big theater, the crew of The Princess and the Frog had one there. As everyone filed out, people told me that:
* There a few weeks left on cleanup and ink and paint, then the visuals are done.
* A lot of the music has been laid down in scoring sessions and sounds great, and that there will be a few more sessions in September.
A large part of the P and F crew is gone ... and waiting for Winnie the Pooh to be written and boarded so they can come back to work.
The thoughts and observations of the leaders of The Animation Guild (TAG), Local 839 IATSE. Jason MacLeod is the Business Representative, KC Johnson is the President. Mike Sauer is Assistant to the Business Representative.
This weblog reflects their individual personal opinions and does not necessarily represent the official position of the Animation Guild.
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