LAIKA Produces

The Portland animation studio picks up a new book to adapt to the big screen:

LAIKA has optioned "Wildwood," the debut HarperCollins children's novel written by Colin Meloy, lead singer and songwriter for The Decemberists, with illustrations by award-winning artist Carson Ellis. ...

"Hands down, there is no other movie studio in the entire world besides LAIKA that I would entrust Wildwood to," said Mr. Meloy. "Carson and I were prepared to stonewall any and all suitors for the movie rights, so close was this book to our hearts. However, when LAIKA came calling, our defenses promptly came down. ..."

LAIKA has employed a number of TAG members over the years. Some worked on Henry Selick's Coraline, others worked on projects that didn't make it to completion and distribution. (TAG's President Robert Foster was there for a time, working on a film that was later cancelled.)

I've received varying reports on the working conditions at the studio. From the information received, I gather that some features have been more pleasurable to work on than others, but isn't that generally the way? With luck, Wildwood will turn into a franchise builder for the studio.

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Employment, Unemployment

One of my best friends, economist John Hagens (also a former Republican council member for the borough of West Chester, PA) sent me this handy chart and short article today about Presidents Bush and Obama's performances over their first two years in office. Since "Jobs, JOBS, JOBS!" is much in the news right now, I pass it on for your review:

... Pundits are evenly divided over whether or not we have entered another recession, but pundits almost never get the future right. What we do know is that 14 million people were defined as unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August 2011. Millions more have stopped looking for work or have taken part time instead of full time positions. As the months go by, we digest the economic news and wonder when matters will brighten. It is sometimes forgotten that just ten years ago, before the boom-boom years of the housing market, but also as the nation recovered from the shock of 9/11, the U.S. jobs machine was sputtering. The attached diagram compares the unemployment record during the first 31 months in office for Presidents Bush (red line) and Obama (blue line) ...

President Bush entered office In January 2001 with 6 million people unemployed, steadily rising first rapidly then more slowly to almost 9 million people by August of 2003. During this mild recession period the unemployment rate rose from 4.2% to 6.1% as 2.9 million people became unemployed. President Obama began his term when the economy was in freefall as the collapse of the financial market in 2008 took its toll. The number unemployed was already a staggering 12 million in January 2009 and continued to rise rapidly before peaking at 15.6 million in October of 2009. In total 3.6 million jobs were lost during the first 10 months of Obama’s presidency. Since then, the number unemployed has dropped, in fits and starts, by 1.5 million.

Determining the right policies to battle unemployment are debated endlessly, likely without resolution. Is a shortage of demand for goods and services the problem and will another round of fiscal expansion get employment growing again? Or is it uncertainty and excessive regulation and taxation that are holding back businesses from hiring more people? Or has the U.S. economy undergone a structural change, with the jobs lost unlikely to return as our workers are replaced by less costly foreign workers? What seems true is that the U.S. economy has recently taken a very long time to heal after a downturn and that finger pointing and holding to strident policy positions aren’t productive in getting people back to work. Deploying policies that address all three questions seems most productive.

-- John Hagens | Managing Director | International Planning & Research (IPR)

We'll get to see over the next several months and years how America manages its recovery. But this is a pretty good representation of what's happened in the recent past.

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The Never-Ending Quest for Gold

Rango is going to be picking up a shiny trophy:

The 15th annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Film Awards announced Tuesday that ... animated hit "Rango," ... will receive this year's Hollywood Animation Award at the gala ceremony on Oct. 24 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

I've never heard of the Hollywood Animation Award, but then I get around so little.

Interesting factoid: The meme among news-gatherers is that Rango is a hit. The feature made $242,605,737. (Contrast this with the undying theme about DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda 2: The feature was disappointing, earning a mere $650 million.)

So is everything crystalline now? In the trade and business press, Rango is a winner, and Kung Fu Panda 2 not so much. But of course, there's a big difference in the pictures' production budgets, yes? KFP2, after all, had a sizable budget of $150 million, while Rango owned a tight-fisted $135 million.

Easy to see why one's a hit and one is a disappointment. Except that large parts of the media have the actual reality bass ackwards.

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An Exciting Event

Last week I got a call from Women in Animation, asking that I be a member of a panel they're having. I said "Sure, you betchya."

And today, a knowledgeable person tipped me off to this announcement found elsewhere on the internets:

Friday, October 21, 2011

Women In Animation (WIA) GENERAL MEETING

7 PM TO 10 PM AT THE ANIMATION GUILD

UNION: AN ARGUMENT

Representing The Animation Guild: Tom Sito, Craig Miller and Steve Hulett

Representing Independents: Charles Zembillas

WIA MEMBERS ARE FREE

NON WIA MEMBERS $10.00

PLEASE PARK ON THE STREET ...

Should be fun. Should be a crowd. (Or not.)

But there's one error (I think) in the announcement. Craig Miller (a writer) is an officer on the Animation Writers Caucus at the Writers Guild of America.

So ... unless I'm way out of the loop, I think he'll be representing the AWC inside the WGA, and not TAG.

Mark your calendars!

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The Mike Cedeno Interview -- Part II

*ADD ON: Updated Video files after the jump due to YouTube limitations

Mike today, hanging his paintings at Gallery 839.

In the second half of Michael's audio interview, he discusses the dynamics of animation and the Disney features that inspired him ...

TAG Interview with Michael Cedeno

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Note: We put the entire Cedeno interview up in video form for you today. (Video, of course, is new. We continue to divide the audio version into two parts. We are kind of experimenting here, learning and morphing as we go. On yesterday's post, we inserted a short video piece with Mr. Cedeno discussing his paintings.)

Kaplan here: I'm aware the intro slide needs work. This was put together quickly to flush out the process. I'll be working on creating a nicer intro background in the future.

Apologies for the YouTube error. Apparently we'll have to split the video interviews along with the audio ones. This is all part of the learning process.

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Jennifer

Box office wise, she's one of the winningest directors going:

... Kung Fu Panda 2, has grossed over $650 million globally to date, making Jennifer Yuh Nelson the highest-grossing female director of a film at the worldwide box office. ...

Added to which, she's one of the nicest people in the business. Very occasionally, the good finish first.

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Interviewing Mike Cedeno -- Part I

Cal Arts class in 1976 -- Back: Joe Lanzisero, Darrell Van Citters, Brett Thompson, John Lasseter (pencil in mouth), Leslie Margolin, Mike Cedeno, Paul Nowak, Nancy Beiman; Middle: Jerry Rees, Bruce Morris, Elmer Plummer, Brad Bird, Doug Lefler; Front: Harry Sabin, John Musker

Video Add On: Mr. Cedeno talks about some of his paintings at Gallery 839 (below the fold.)

Artist and animator Mike Cedeno started drawing at a tender age ... like shortly after he figured out how to talk ...

TAG Interview with Michael Cedeno

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Mike's father was a career military man, so Mike got to draw in various corners of the globe. But when he was drawing (also painting) in high school, he was residing in California, and sent a portfolio into a freshly-formed arts-type college named Cal Arts. And Mike soon found himself learning the art of animation with the likes of the people seen directly above.

The rest (as they say) has been a long and illustrious career in Cartoonland.

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Wage Survey -- Useless or Not?

I'm going back several days here, and this sort of gives me a headache, but an adamant commenter who believes the posted salary numbers of the TAG Wage Survey to be "useless" wrote:

... When you combine salaries that are derived from different hours per week, and then AVERAGE them, you DON'T GET A TRUE average. ...

I went over the comment, reviewed the forms, looked at the collated data.

Here's the deal: All the posted data is calculated back to a 40-hour pay week.

That's the way most people put the data down, and most write in the variables when the variables apply. But "forty hour week" is the way we crunch the individual salaries, so that they're consistent.

Are we clear on this?

Now, somebody might give us inaccurate dollar amounts, but we can only do the math from the wages submitted. And the wages submitted come down to forty hours per week.

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Live Action Production, Animation Production

Just now, California struggles to extend its move and television tax credit. In live action, New York appears to be eating L.A.'s lunch:

In the most recent TV season, New York City drew a record number of cable and network pilots: 22, up from only three the previous season. ...

“We’ve never seen numbers like this,” said Katherine Oliver, New York City’s film commissioner since 2002.

New York’s gain comes as Los Angeles is struggling to hold onto its share of TV production. A recent survey by FilmL.A. Inc., the nonprofit permitting group, found ... the region’s share of pilot production has fallen to 51%, down from 58% the prior season and 82% six years ago.

Contrast this data with a recent meeting I had with a New York-based cartoon producer (who does most of his work out here):

New York City is completely dead as an animation center. Studios keep disappearing. There's not even as many as there were four years ago, and there were damn few then. That's why I keep telling animation students from the East Coast that they have to come out to California if they want to have a career. Because they are never going to go much of anywhere in Manhattan. ..."

Decades ago, New York City had a pretty thriving animation industry that did commercials, television shows, even the occasional feature. Raggedy Ann and Andy (directed by Richard Williams) was made there, the Fleischers thrived there, Paramount and Terry Toons had sizable studios inside or near the city limits. But all of that is gone now. (There is Blue Sky Studios in Connecticut, but no other large facilities.)

Dan Haskett got his start in New York, as did Tom Sito. Both of them, like numerous others, now live and work in Los Angeles. Show me an animation veteran born and trained in one of the burroughs, and I'll show you an artist who isn't around there anymore.

New York is highly competitive in live-action production. On the animation side, however, the Big Apple puts up a minimal fight.

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Election Battle for WGAw Presidency

As we earlier discussed board candidates for the Writers Guild, the LA Times profiles the two men running for the top spot:

... [Chris Keyser,] co-creator of the Fox television series "Party of Five" is locked in an usually close race against the better-known Patric Verrone, a former two-term guild president who led the 8,000-member union during the 2007-08 strike and who remains a polarizing figure.

The outcome of the election, to be announced Sept. 16, is being closely watched because it could set the tone for labor relations in Hollywood ...

Elections are important. And elections often set the tone for a lot of collateral issues that voters don't think about when they cast their ballots. (True in national election. True in state elections. And true in municipal and union elections.)

Patric Verrone has track record that works for him, also against him. The perception of him as a union militant at a time when labor is hunkered down and clinging to the ledge by its finger pads, will gain him some votes and lose him others. (I wouldn't have a clue whether gains outweigh losses ... or if it's the other way around.)

What I do know is that the winner will have a sizable influence on the next cycle of industry negotiations, which will have a direct impact on how every other entertainment guild and union fares when its turn at the negotiating table comes around. We live in a corporatist age, and it's important that all of us pay attention if we plan to successfully navigate the shoals waiting for us downriver.

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Vanity Fair's Influential People

This one's for Disney fan-people everywhere.

John Lasseter is now #8 on the "New Establishment" list:

Each year, Vanity Fair Magazine identifies who they believe to be the world’s most influential people with their New Establishment List. ...

[C]reative chief officer for Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios John Lasseter has earned a coveted spot on the New Establishment List, with the ranking of #8 out of 50. He is ranked in between Reed Hastings of Netflix and music superstar Lady Gaga. ...

This accolade is a wee bit like the Golden Globes or some other shiny trophy. Nice to have, but mainly an indicator that the honoree has already arrived, and is now in middle of her/his ascent up the platinum stairway.

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Hybrid

Not another combined feature with live-action and animation, but a studio partnership ...

India's Crest Animation Studios has “entered into an understanding to form a joint venture” with U.S.-based animation and FX studio Reel FX to coproduce 10 films over eight years. ... [T]he objective of the JV is to finance and produce a slate of ten CGI animated/hybrid feature films over a period of seven or eight years. The films will be developed by top talent in Hollywood under the supervision of Cary Granat, ex CEO of Walden Media.

Yeah, the piece above is a few weeks old, but it triggers a thought ...

The first joint animated project in which Crest was involved was last year's Alpha and Omega, with Lionsgate. Like the new slate of features, AO was aimed at the global marketplace. Unfortunately ...

Worldwide gross: Alpha and Omega -- $50,507,267

You can't produce a picture for twenty or thirty or forty million dollars, toss in an equal amount for prints and advertising, and come out smelling like a rare and precious flower with a $50 million gross. Your fragrance will be closer to a homeless ex-studio executive who's been lying in the gutter too long.

As a grizzled animation veteran who's worked at studios on both coasts and overseas expressed to me:

"It's not enough to have the right hardware and software. And it won't work if you have hard-working beginners that can move characters around but not really animate. Plus you can't just have people who throw drawings up on a cork-board or onto a Cintiq and have a feature that works. You have to own staff with some real production experience, know-how and talent ..."

Which is often easier to advocate and propose than actually do. I've had more than a few people who claim to know tell me that India has a sub-contracting culture with a lot of creative and quality problems, and that China -- building animation "centers" like mad -- is ten to twenty years behind India.

As I've noted previously, there are lots of talented Indians and plenty of top-flight Chinese artists and technicians. But based on current evidence, their home countries aren't nurturing the high flyers required to make the Chinese and Indian animation industries take off. What's required is a mind-set that aspires to quality and innovation. I don't think they're close to that yet.

And partner Reel FX, which has had a development studio in Santa Monica these last few years, will shortly be closing the shop down and moving the whole enterprise back to Dallas, Texas. (Not a real swift move, in my opinion, because they're removing themselves from a dynamic talent pool. But I'm sure they have their reasons.)

In the fullness of time, we'll see how the Crest-Reel FX marriage plays out.

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Lobbying For Tax Credits

The IATSE has been energetically plumping for a new round of feature and television tax rebates:

In the final days of the legislative session, the [movie] industry is seeking a five-year extension of a tax credit for producing films and television shows in California. It has assembled a powerful coalition of moguls and unions, who argue that failing to re-up the program risks losing film jobs to states offering even more generous rebates. ...

The bill scooted through the Assembly, but isn't on the same greased rails in the Senate. There's been opposition from other unions and Democratic power groups, since the state's budget is a wee bit in the red and dollars are tight. Plus, there is some question whether $500 million in tax credits for the big entertainment companies is a real swift idea just now.

Early next week, a host of IA union reps -- grips, editors, cinematorgaphers -- will be flying to Sacramento to push for a final vote. Whether they end up with a one-year extension, something more or something less should be known in short order.

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Record-Smashing Foreign Derby?

Your friendly trade paper says:

What looks certain to be a record box office summer on the foreign theatrical circuit for the big Hollywood studios ended over the Labor Day weekend with The Smurfs narrowly taking the No. 1 spot with $23.3 million drawn from 8,360 screens in 71 overseas markets. ... The Smurfs had collected a total gross of nearly $300 million ($295.8 million) offshore, nearly two-and-a-half times its domestic cume. ...

For those scoring at home, the Small Blue People have now earned $427,753,000 in worldwide revenue.

Elsewhere in foreign theaters:

... DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 2 upped its overseas cume to $485.5 million ... Finishing No. 2 once again was 20th Century Fox’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which grossed $19.35 million ... lifting its market cume to $186.5 million (versus $160 million in the U.S. and Canada). ...

What becomes increasingly obvious as we march deeper into the 21st century is, animated features of various stripes are taking sizable bites of cash from the global box office. Star-driven vehicles like Cowboys and Aliens aren't gaining a lot of traction, even as KFP2, Cars 2, The Smurfs, Apes, etc. cause the turnstiles to whirl.

Not every animated picture hits a three-bagger or home-run. (Mars might have needed Moms, but planet Earth sure as hell didn't.) Yet a large number pull down $300-$600 million dollars within six months of release, over and over. This isn't lost the executives of our fine, entertainment conglomerates.

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The Oncoming Puss In Boots

... of which director Chris Miller says:

"It's not a send-up of fairy tales. Our approach was, you thought you knew how all of those fairy stories went, but they went this way. Then from there, let's make sure the characters are driving the comedy and story, steer away from the popular culture references and make it a real character piece."

So in other words, it has Shrek characters in it, but less of the Shrek sensibility.

The studio is just now wrapping production on PiB. (A month ago, there were sixty animators on the feature in the final, mad dash to the finish line.) The artists I've talked to think it's solid, but it's often difficult for people in the middle of a production to see how well the different moving parts fit together. As Slash Film noted months back:

Puss in Boots smacked me in the face.I can’t tell you how excited I am to see more of the movie. It doesn’t even feel like a spin-off — from the footage I screened, Puss seems like a stand-alone movie in its own right. ...

Or as Peter Sciretta says in the linked video: "... It's not a money grab."

Of course, how the global marketplace takes to a feline with plumed hat and sword, and a talking egg sidekick, remains to be seen.

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Comic Book Artist as Film Director

Animators have become live-action directors since the time of Frank Tashlin. Comic book creators, not so much. But French graphic novelist Joann Sfar has made the transition with pinache ...

Does being a graphic novelist make storyboarding a film easier?

It’s actually more difficult to do a comic book than a movie. If something doesn’t work in a movie, you can blame the crew or do it again. If it doesn’t work in a comic book, then it’s your fault. I know I have many things to learn in movies, but I had so much fun making the movie. Comic books may not have been useful for making a movie, but drawing was. My crew all had more than 20 years of experiences, and I’m a newbie. So I didn’t come with orders, I came with graphical suggestions. There are visual propositions in the film that may be appealing for the studio people.

We just finished [the animated movie] “The Rabbi’s Cat,” and it came out in France a month ago, and animation is so slow. When I do comic books, I do five pages a day, and it takes one animator to make one second a whole day. I’m so happy when I work with actors. The way they work is pretty much what I do in drawing. You’re not wondering if your work is beautiful, you’re just wondering if it’s accurate. ...

Five pages a day. Monsieur Sfar would fit right in doing production boards for television animation studios in Los Angeles. "The deadline is Tuesday. And we don't have any money in the budget for overtime ..."

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Labor Day Derby

With more tropical storms swirling, nobody knows how the three-day weekend will financially shake out. But here's how the animation/mo-cap part of it looks now:

6. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (Fox) Week 5 [3,193 Theaters] Friday $1.8M, Estimated 4-Day Weekend $10M, Estimated Cume $162M ...

10. The Smurfs (Sony) Week 6 [2,706 Theaters] Friday $875K, Estimated 4-Day Weekend $5M, Estimated Cume $133M

Sadly, Disney's widening of Cars 2 for some extra Labor Day moolah has not been a wild success, as the Mojo notes:

... [T]he re-rollout of Cars 2 stalled. The Pixar sequel took in an estimated $215,000 at 2,043 locations, or around half of Toy Story 3's re-expansion on the same Friday last year. With $187.7 million in 71 days, Cars 2 will be the first Pixar movie since A Bug's Life not to reach $200 million, and it's also the company's least-attended movie yet by a wide margin. ...

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The Haves Keep On Having ...

Now with royal Add On.

You'll be pleased to know that Rupert, who by the nature of his position is an animation king-pin, continues to prosper:

... An SEC filing today showed that ... [News Corp.] CEO Rupert Murdoch made a whopping $33M for the 2011 fiscal year, including a $12.5M bonus, which amounts to a 47% raise. ...

But it's easy to see why he gets the nice boost, isn't it? When the company does well and the shareholders get showered with capital gains, they just naturally want to reward the bloke in charge, right?

Or not.

On the other hand, maybe it's because when you're the CEO of a large conglomerate, you have a pliable board anxious to continue the collect a nice salary and cater to your wants, and so will give you a nice bonus whether you add value to the outfit you're running or not. As a Rio animator told me recently:

"Nobody is paying more to animators and tech directors these days. Salaries have been flat for a long while. Hardware and software are cheaper, so overall costs for animated features are down. Everybody is working harder for the same -- or lower -- paychecks."

Well, not quite everybody. Some lucky duckies get a nice, double-digit pay boost. It's good to be king.

Add On: The Los Angeles Times dryly notes:

... In 2010, Murdoch collected $22.7 million. Each year he receives an $8.1-million base salary, an amount which has long raised the eyebrows of corporate governance experts because it is not linked to the company's financial performance. Murdoch also was paid $8.5 million in stock awards. ...

Let them eat stock options.

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A Brief Announcement

What some might consider a tease ...

Due to the oncoming holiday, our next interview will go up on Tuesday instead of Monday. It will be with this fine gentleman here.

As an added treat, the next TAG interview (again, in two parts) will have some added bells and whistles that we hope you like.

So stay tuned.

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A Careful, Well-Planned Release Schedule

Are the film creators and entertainment conglomerates in charge of the new Tintin franchise a bit nervous? Or merely savvy?

... Sony and Paramount, which are sharing most territories, are releasing Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in the major European territories from October, two months ahead of its rollout in the US. The aim is to arrive in the US with the wind of a European blockbuster hit behind it. ...

“Tintin is very well known in Europe and less well known in other parts of the world,” says Andrew Cripps, resident of Paramount International. “The best thing for this film is to do very well in Europe and then move into the US on the back of huge success.” ...

But will that be enough? There have been numerous movies that were blockbusters in Europe and weaklings elsewhere. Tintin is close to a cult on the continent, and has been for sixty-plus years. Unfortunately, the kid has never caught fire in other parts of the globe. And face it: Pure mocap is not riding a tall, cresting wave of popularity just now.

What's becoming evident as we roll along is, motion capture combined with live-action often finds favor (Avatar and Rise of the Planet of the Apes being two sterling examples.) But it's hard to point to any breakout hits with motion capture alone. Zemeckis had a middle-of-the-road hit with Polar Express, followed by a long string of box office under-achievers. The uncanny valley is, apparently, tough geography to hike through.

So Paramount and Sony might be understandably tense about how their latest mocap movie performs world-wide. On the other hand, the picture does have Andy Serkis in it, so I'm confident there is little reason for anyone to be uptight.

After all, what could go wrong with Serkis aboard?

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