Battle of the Funny Animals

So what have we got in the zany four-legged creatures department?

There's the African contingent from DreamWorks Animation, then the Scottish lass from Pixar, and then this:



And the video games people in the Fall.

What strikes me is how similar the Blue Sky and DreamWorks offerings are: Two "furry animal" tent poles played for broad comedy. They're both going to do gangbusters in foreign venues that voraciously gobble 3-D, and somewhat less well in the Home Country.

Even now, the DreamWorks Animation offering is raking in heavy coin beyond the seas:

... Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is breaking records in Russia, where it scored the biggest opening day ever for an animated release with $3.7 million. ... The family pic opened to $1.9 million in Korea on Wednesday, a national holiday, and grossed $1.9 million in France ...

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Box Office Forecast

Weekend forecasts have the lion, zebra and giraffe (oh my) taking the second slot behind the Ridley Scott sci fi picture:

[Madagascar 3] may not reach the heights of its predecessors domestically, [but] strong international sales are all but guaranteed. The $145 million 3-D picture is the first animated family option since The Lorax debuted 14 weeks ago (I’m not counting The Pirates! Band of Misfits, which hit theaters in late April), and entertainment-starved kiddies will fill seats. Still, animated sequels like Kung Fu Panda 2 have seen diminishing returns in recent years. (That picture only opened to $47.7 million vs. the original Kung Fu Panda‘s $60.2 million debut haul.) Thus, I’m thinking a $48 million weekend is probably in store. Of course, it could surprise and top the chart as well!

Earth to Entertainment Weekly: Though it's true that the second installment of KFP underperformed the first domestically, Kung Fu Panda 2 made more money globally than numero uno.

The Associated Press has a contrary view:

Paramount brings Dreamworks' PG-rated "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" to more than 4,000 domestic theaters this weekend, likely drawing huge family business worth more than $55 million in the first animated opening of the summer. ...

I'm a bad psychic regarding worldwide grosses of animated entertainments, but I'll bet my dental implants that Mad 3 makes big bucks overseas. As a DreamWorker explained to me:

After the weak foreign grosses of Monsters Vs. Aliens and Megamind, the studio decided to set more stories outside the U.S. The figured, "Hey, since a big slice of our box office is in Europe, let's locate a story in Europe. I think it's going to pay off for them.

We'll see if the DWA employee is right along about Sunday next. Click here to read entire post

Moonrise Kingdom's Animation

Director Wes Anderson has released several short animation sequences that were produced in conjunction with his latest feature, Moonrise Kingdom.

From Entertainment Weekly's website:

In Wes Anderson’s indie mega-hit Moonrise Kingdom, 12-year-old Suzy (Kara Hayward) packs an unusual set of items for her runaway adventure with her pen-pal boyfriend, Sam (Jared Gilman): A half-dozen (fictitious) storybooks she stole from the library, three of which she reads aloud over the course of the film. Anderson commissioned six artists to create the books’ evocative jacket covers, but initially the director wanted to take the artistry even further. “At one point in the process, when she’s reading these passages from these books, I’d thought about going into animation,” he says.

Anyone who’s seen the film knows Anderson ultimately chose to simply hold on the faces of his cast as they listen to Suzy read, but with his experience making the stop-motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox still fresh in his mind, Anderson never quite let go of the idea.

So in April, the idiosyncratic filmmaker decided to animate all six books anyway, as a supplementary treat to the film itself. “I wrote passages for the other books that didn’t have any text [read aloud in the film], and we animated that too,” he says. “So we now have this piece where our narrator, Bob Balaban’s character, takes us through these little sections of each of these books.”

The sequences can be seen here (embedding isn't enabled).
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"Wreck-It Ralph" and the Mouse House

I tottered over to the hat building yesterday, where most employees are turning and burning on the project named (and seen) above ...

Like for instance, the entire layout department is on WIR at the moment, with one lonely artist on Frozen. (First things first, I say.) And the crew is pretty much psyched about the picture. An artist pointed out to me:

The production just released art work that shows other game characters that have cameos in WIR, way in the background there. The company lawyers could have just had us do parodies of other characters, but they went and got the rights to use actual personalities from other video games. ...

The other topic that came up was the TAG negotiations. Even though most everyone inside the hat building is under a different IATSE agreement (although repped by the Animation Guild), several were at the meeting last week and want to keep abreast of developments. I told them we plunge into the festivities again next week.

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The Duncan Marjoribanks Interview -- Part II

When he arrived at Disney, Duncan Marjoribanks hit his stride as an animator and character designer ...

TAG Interview with Duncan Marjoribanks

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Designing and supervising Sebastian the calypsonian crab, supervising Abu in "Aladdin," then designing and supervising the villainous Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas highligted Duncan's versatility with wildly different kinds of characters.

Mr. Marjoribanks continues to be a force in animation, working as both a CG and hand-drawn animator in the 21st century. Among more recent credits: Meet the Robinsons, Kung Fu Panda, and The Princess and the Frog. Click here to read entire post

Once More Into The ...

... festivities?

TAG will be returning to the negotiating table on Tuesday, June 12, at 10 a.m. or thereabouts. At the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in Sherman Oaks.

We wanted to keep you informed. We have two days scheduled. We will let you know where we are at the end of the two days.

Or, as Deadline Hollywood puts it:

Carol Lombardini called the Animation Guild’s Business Representative Steve Hulett this morning to offer specific dates that the two sides could meet. This call came after a series of calls and correspondence last week from both sides regarding scheduling. ...

After TAG's May 30th informational meeting, we pulled six dates off the calendar when our side had all of its duckies in a row, and the Alliance chose two of them. That's how the meeting days were arrived at.
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The Duncan Marjoribanks Interview -- Part I

Duncan Marjoribanks has been a pillar in the field of animation for decades ...

TAG Interview with Duncan Marjoribanks

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

Born and reared in Toronto, Canada, Duncan attended Sheridan College. After a short period working fora small locally-based animaiton studios (which ultimately) went out of business) Duncan decamped for Los Angeles, where he found work at Hanna-Barbera and Ruby Spears, and animated on Brad Bird's Spielberg project American Dog.

Duncan recalls that working for Brad was a fine, uplifting experience, and it led to his jump to Disney a short while later, when Mr. B. told two fresh-faced feature directors named Ron Clements and John Musker about Duncan's skill as an animator ...
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Mega Collector's John W. Dunn

Mr. John W. Dunn was born in Scotland in 1919, and breathed his last in California's San Fernando Valley in 1983. In between those dates he created hundreds of storyboards, wrote many, many cartoon shorts, and drew some wild stuff. To quote Ward Kimball:

“You would ask [Dunn] to do a page full of crazy-looking dogs and it was very hard to pick the craziest.”

Mr. Dunn clearly had his own way of doing things, and did them well enough to garner a sizable following three decades after his death. So he clearly had that special something .



A chunk of Mr. Dunn's early career was spent in Ward Kimball's television unit, where he was involved in designing this ...



And this ...




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It's Your Attitude

On some website ... or maybe it was a magazine article ... a wise person wrote:

"You can't control people. Or daily events. But you can control your attitude."

Well, sometimes ...

Biz repping at the front end of the nineties, I had the good fortune to be standing in the middle of an animation industry updraft, with jobs proliferating, salaries rising like helium balloons, and artists who wanted employment getting employment. (Mostly.)

During that happy time, I had a bunch of people marching through my office asking "Where's work?" And I pointed them toward one studio or another, and most of them went to those studios and found work. And I began to feel pretty good about myself, because lots of people were getting jobs with sizable salaries, and many were telling me I had helped them. (I had, after all, given out a studio recruiter's phone number.) But in reality I was only slightly more responsible for them getting their pricey cartoon jobs than a crowing rooster has something to do with the sun coming up in the morning. The work was expanding, and they had the skill sets to get it. I was just a conduit.

But it made it easy for me to feel good about life, about my place in the world, about wonderful little S. Hulett. And so it made for a rude shock when the industry went south and people started getting laid off in droves and venting their anger at the same S. Hulett. ("You have a job! I'm unemployed! How does it feel?!") I got stressed out and took a lot of the downsizing personally, just as -- a few years earlier -- I had taken the frenzy of hiring amid the studio expansions personally.

After two years of steady job losses, I realized I had to stop internalizing the downs of the cartoon business the way I had internalized the ups, otherwise the insomnia would become permanent and my head would explode.

So little by little, I separated myself emotionally from the bad times, since there wasn't a damn thing I could do to prevent them from happening anyway. (It's a little like being a paramedic: You can't go to pieces every time you come across the latest disaster. Doesn't do you or anybody else any good.)

And I came to understand that when I detached, I could do my job better, because I didn't become stuck on the negative side of the ledger, but pushed on and did my job, which was policing contracts, negotiating new ones and serving membership, instead of wallowing in the miseries of the moment.

The business changed in the new century, but eventually righted itself and found a new equilibrium (not all of it wonderful for old-timers.) And I learned the lesson I never absorbed in the 1990s:

Don't get wrapped up in every defeat and victory. They all pass. Separate yourself from the hub-bub, calm your mind, and focus on the important, long-term agenda items.

It's been a useful rule to live by. Once in a while I even manage to achieve it.
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The Foreign Steeple Chase

Where CGI effects are in abundance.

Taking the No. 1 box office spot overseas for the second consecutive weekend, Sony’s Men In Black III bagged $79.1 million on the foreign theatrical circuit – down a mild-mannered 38.9% from its opening offshore round ... Opening No. 2 overseas overall was Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman, which collected $39.3 million ... [T]he weekend’s No. 3 title, Prometheus, drew $35 million from 4,695 locations (3,300 spots in 3D) for a per-venue average of $7,461. Prometheus ranked No. 1 in 14 of its opening territories with Russia drawing $11.1 million ...

And on the pure animation front:

Dr. Seuss' The Lorax has now collected $97 million to give it a worldwide total of $308.5 million.

Meantime two animated features are getting prepped for June rollouts in a variety of ways.

... VisitScotland has set aside £7m for a global advertising blitz to piggyback on Brave's launch in 72 countries this month, a budget which dwarfs its normal campaign spending. The agency believes its Brave-themed Discover Scotland campaign could increase tourism in Scotland by £140m a year. ...

And ...

Zynga has partnered for the third time with DreamWorks Animation, integrating the studio' s campaign for the upcoming movie "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" into the social gaming firm's popular Draw Something title. Running through May 31, the campaign on Zynga incorporates video trailers, banner ads, and user-generated content. The UGC feature will entail drawings inspired by prompts related to the movie that players can share socially. ...

If Mad 3 performs close to its predecessors, it will be a solid money-earner. Consensus appears to be that Brave will be a major hit.
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Big Guns Market Wares

... and a charming French village is where they do it.

... [T]he 52nd Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival kicks off Monday with a varied U.S. major presence ... [including] the world premiere of Walt Disney Animation Studio's "Paperman," a b/w, minimalist short melding CG and hand-drawn animation. ... a sneak preview of DreamWorks Animation's "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted," which plays Tuesday, one day before its French release ... the Universal-distributed "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax," the first movie delivered by Paris-based U-owned Illumination Mac Guff, ... Sony Pictures Animation's monster resort comedy "Hotel Transylvania" bows Annecy's Work in Progress strand. ...

And on and on.

American animation studios have caught wise to the fact that, despite sagging economies, Europe provides hefty box office for American animated features, particularly if they have European settings.

It's not for nothing that DWA is rolling Madagascar 3 into Europe first. Leading from strength is always a good marketing move.
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Still Numero Uno

... as the stats reveal:

... Cartoon Network in May 2012 ranked as television’s #1 network for early prime (7-9 p.m.) delivery of boys 2-11, 6-11 & 9-14. Monthly average growth among targeted kid demos vs. May 2011 include kids 6-11 (up 1%, 652,000) and kids 9-14 (up 8%, 505,000). Total Day delivery in May 2012 also grew among kids 6-11 (up 3%, 357,000) and kids 9-14 (up 13%, 290,000). ...

Cartoon Network continues to roll right along, propelled by Regular Show, Adventure Time (which Nickelodeon allowed to slip through its fingers) and The Amazing World of Gumball, among others.

Informants tell me CN has new shows in development, and their hits coming back. There is also super hero offerings from Warner Bros. Animation. It took awhile for one part of the Warner Bros. empire to reinforce the other (Green Lantern, Young Justice from WB Animation), but over the last couple of years it's finally happened.

Better late than not at all.
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Early Summer Derby

It appears that Snow White can be a contender in live-action of animated form.

1. Snow White And The Huntsman (Universal) NEW [3,773 Theaters]
Friday $20.3M, Weekend $55.8M, International $39.3M

2. Men In Black 3 (Columbia/Sony) Week 2 [4,248 Theaters]
Friday $8.1M (-54%), Weekend $29M, Cume $112M

3. The Avengers (Marvels/Disney) Week 5 [3,670 Theaters]
Friday $5.6M, Weekend $19M, Cume $541.5M

4. What To Expect When… (Warner Bros) Week 3 [2,907 Theaters]
Friday $1.4M, Weekend $4.8M, Cume $31.1M

5. The Dictator (Paramount) Week 3 [2,649 Theaters]
Friday $1.4M, Weekend $5M, Cume $51.1M

6. Battleship (Universal) Week 3 [3,144 Theaters]
Friday $1.3M, Weekend $4.9M, Cume $55.2M

7. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Fox Searchlight) Week 5 [1,294 Theaters]
Friday $1.2M, Weekend $4.8M, Cume $25.7M

8. Dark Shadows (Warner Bros) Week 4 [3,002 Theaters]
Friday $1.0M, Weekend $3.6M, Cume $70.6M

9. Chernobyl Diaries (Alcon/Warner Bros) Week 2 [2,433 Theaters]
Friday $1.0M (-70%), Weekend $2.8M, Cume $14.2M

10. For Greater Glory (Arc Entertainment) NEW [575 Theaters]
Friday $585K, Weekend $1.5M

Universal says it will make money on this latest incarnation of Ms. White. It's useful to remember that the Disney version had a two-year reign as the highest domestic grosser to that point in time (1938). Box Office Mojo lists SW&SD as #10 (adjusted for inflation) domestically.

Meantime, in the here and now, Pirates! Band of Misfits has collected a pallid $28 million after 36 days of release, and Dr. Seuss' The Lorax has made off with $211.2 million after three months on U.S. theater screens.
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Ed Talk

Eric Savitz types it as Dr. Catmull says it at D10. This caught my eye:

... Pixar benefited early from being near Silicon Valley; watching companies rise and fall from doing stupid things. When Disney acquired Pixar, it was important to me that we not merge Disney Animation and Pixar. Disney Animation was not healthy when we got there; we had to turn it around. Get people with a lot of talent to operate in a different way. Philosophically, Pixar and Disney Animation do the same things. They do have their cultures. If one gets in trouble, the other studio can’t help them. Not allowed to. In the end, when Disney made Tangled, they made it. It was their film. ...

Pixar hummed in all cylinders for a long time. Twelve hits in a row is nothing to sneeze at. But when Ed Catmull says that many of the pictures had "make or break" points, and creative staff was replaced, I believe it. Because most animated pictures have story problems at one point or another. And sometimes the problems are repaired, and sometimes a whole new engine and body are brought in.

And sometimes the unrepaired, unreplaced production is allowed to limp out to the world, as is.

Pixar (mostly) strives to fix them. And mostly succeeds.
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At the meeting

Members line up on the steps to the second-floor meeting hall.

Gathering downstairs before the meeting.

Members of the Negotiating Committee and Executive Board, left to right: Gordon Kent, Nathan Loofbourrow, Bronwen Barry (behind Nathan Loofbourrow), Nicole Dubuc, Eugene Son (behind Steve Hulett), Steve Hulett, Bob Foster, Sherm Cohen, Jack Thomas, Mike Roth, Jeff Massie.

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Incoming Mouseketeer

New top-kick in Burbank:

[Alan] Horn, who spearheaded such expensive hits as the "Harry Potter" series while president of Warner Brothers Entertainment, intends to focus on six to eight films a year geared toward Disney's core audience of families and young adults, he says, and was not told by Disney CEO Bob Iger to rein in budgets.

"All Bob said was 'make good movies,'" Horn, 69, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I've made expensive films that have flopped, and boy do they hurt." ...

Mr. Horn has lots of movie exec experience in the deep end of the pool, but he's no spring chicken. So it will be interesting to see how long he remains at the studio's helm. (Robert Iger has announced his retirement, and he's a lot younger than Horn.)

It seems his last interaction with animation -- that he talks about -- was greenlighting Happy Feet.
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Fred Moore Birthday

We're talking about a watercolor by Mr. Moore, undated. And charming.

This is, of course, from the Mega Collector, and features little kids rather than the usual unclothed females that were one of Mr. Moore's specialties.

We thought it was a nice change of pace from other recent posts.
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Counterpoint

Last night's meeting had a lot of positive energy and good input from the membership.

But it wasn't (isn't?) all lollipops and sunshine. ...

Here is a screed from a member who has a different POV:

Why IN THE WORLD would you walk away from any negotiation?!? How old are you? Do you walk in this animation world that I LIVE in? Do you realize that all you do is take without really giving back? And NOW you threaten my job? What is there to discuss? I want to work! I will send this to every member I can and I would hope that if the guild truly represents the artists; you will put it into the "Pegboard".

Now to a couple of the terms you say are past negotiation.

1. Tests: These are not a studio thing, but are demanded from other "Guild" members, Directors, Supervising directors, Supervising Producers etc...

2. Raises: Wow! really? In 1996 I was making more than I do now.

3. Health benefits: I was told in my "Welcome to the union" meeting that the co-pay was going up. (Not to mention that I don't have them yet.and may never.)

I'm sure there are more, but I need to get ready to go to bed because "Thank GOD!! I get to go to work tomorrow!"

People close to me tell me I should keep my mouth shut, but you asked for my opinion. Sooo... Here it is.

Lead, or get out of the way. When you are making more than most of us each year there is an issue. Remember, We pay you to represent US. at least for now.

My OPINION ...

I'm not really clear about some of the objections. But what I scope out:

1) The artist objects to the committee voting to reject a low-ball proposal and walking out of negotiations.

2) The artist doesn't want to go on strike. (Nobody has proposed that.)

3) The artist doesn't want his co-pays/premiums to go up. (If he's single, neither will.)

4) The artist doesn't like what I'm paid.
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Tonight's Special Membership Meeting

Biggest turnout in thirty years.

The room was way too small for the number of people who showed up. Two hundred and forty artists, writers and tech directors sat, stood in the back and crowded the stairwell listening to the negotiation committee's presentation of the two days of talks that ended in a walkout at the start of Day Three ...

I gave a synopsis of the producer and Animation Guild's proposals, after which members gave their own eloquent takes on the progress (or lack thereof) the committee encountered during negotiations.

* How the AMPTP let the committee know that live-action scripts are more "complex" and "sophisticated" than the animated variety.

* How almost all of TAG's proposals were rejected. And then the committee got a low-ball offer on wages.

* How there is no need to take account of holidays in work schedules, because "the show must go on."

* Etc.

Members in attendance made it clear they weren't inclined to take less than the IATSE and local unions in the Basic Agreement negotiations achieved. The committee asked for additional input from the membership, and asked them to give their priorities on proposals. (In the next few days, members will receive a list of proposals with the request to get the digital form back to TAG as rapidly as possible for tabulation.)

Near meeting's end, I said that any member who desired to serve on the negotiation committee for the next round of talks should contact me via

shulett@animationguild.org.







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Don't forget tonight's meeting ...

... about the state of negotiations for the 2012-2015 collective bargaining agreement.

At the union meeting hall, 1105 N. Hollywood Way in Burbank. Beer, wine and refreshments at 6 pm; meeting starts at 7 pm. Active and inactive members only. See you there!

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