Visited Walt Disney Animation Studios' Riverside Drive facility this afternoon. ...
There are very few animation artists there just now. The Moana crew, now that it's plunging into full production, has just moved to WDAS's Tujunga Boulevard studio in North Hollywood (you know, the big building at the end of Bob Hope Airport's main runway?)
The Hat has had its interior spaces rebuilt in stages. The top two floors are now done, and the first floor and basement are currently under reconstruction. The completed interior looks great. It's light, airy, and modern; when the company has the unveiling of the "new" studio, people will be impressed.
And the artists are going to be delighted to be back under one roof ... that isn't at the end of an airport runway.
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Thursday, January 07, 2016
Robert Balser, RIP
Another animation veteran leaves us.
Mr. Balser held a number of positions in Cartoonland, animator, director, and storyboard artist. He worked both in Europe and the United States, which isn't unusual. Many animation artists are globe-trotting gypsies.
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Robert Balser, animation director for The Beatles’ trippy animated musical Yellow Submarine, who also worked on other iconic animated projects including Heavy Metal, died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles of respiratory failure. He was 88.
Born in 1927, Balser enjoyed a varied career stretching back to the 1950s. Among his work, the animated end titles from Around The World In 80 Days, the animated Jackson Five TV series from the 1970s, and The Glorious Muskateers. He served as a sequence director on the animated 1979 television adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and served as animation supervisor on five episodes of the 1980s The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show. ...
Mr. Balser held a number of positions in Cartoonland, animator, director, and storyboard artist. He worked both in Europe and the United States, which isn't unusual. Many animation artists are globe-trotting gypsies.
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Wednesday, January 06, 2016
Musicals!!
Mr. Timberlake goes to work* on a DreamWorks feature.
* This news is a couple of days old, but it demonstrates how film trends go in cycles.
Not counting the Beatles and Yellow Submarine (and face it: all those songs in the animated feature were not created for the animated feature), Billy Joel was the pioneering rock and roller who wrote songs, sang and also acted in an animated feature. (There was country-western star Roger Miller who performed the same task in Disney's Robin Hood, but Rog was in a different musical genre.)
Then there was Elton John writing songs for Lion King, and Sting composing tunes for the ill-fated Kingdom of the Sun, but animated musicals fell out of favor** in the early part of the century. It wasn't until Tangled, Frozen, and now Trolls that the genre came roaring back.
When an animated musical makes a billion dollars, the odds are high that there will be other musicals coming along behind it.
** Okay. A lot of animated features have songs. But we're talking about pictures that have an abundance of music, and are remembered for their music. The "Shrek" franchise has songs, but nobody remembers those features for their zazzy, original numbers. It's the comedy and satire that stick with most people.
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Justin Timberlake has signed on to write and perform original music for DWA's Trolls.
Timberlake, who has notched 16 top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, will serve as executive music producer for Trolls, overseeing the creative direction for the film’s music as well as performing several songs on the soundtrack. ...
* This news is a couple of days old, but it demonstrates how film trends go in cycles.
Not counting the Beatles and Yellow Submarine (and face it: all those songs in the animated feature were not created for the animated feature), Billy Joel was the pioneering rock and roller who wrote songs, sang and also acted in an animated feature. (There was country-western star Roger Miller who performed the same task in Disney's Robin Hood, but Rog was in a different musical genre.)
Then there was Elton John writing songs for Lion King, and Sting composing tunes for the ill-fated Kingdom of the Sun, but animated musicals fell out of favor** in the early part of the century. It wasn't until Tangled, Frozen, and now Trolls that the genre came roaring back.
When an animated musical makes a billion dollars, the odds are high that there will be other musicals coming along behind it.
** Okay. A lot of animated features have songs. But we're talking about pictures that have an abundance of music, and are remembered for their music. The "Shrek" franchise has songs, but nobody remembers those features for their zazzy, original numbers. It's the comedy and satire that stick with most people.
Click here to read entire post
Hirsch to Fox
His Disney show is wrapping up, so time to move on.
Mr. Hirsch started his animation career at Cartoon Network on The Marvelous Misdventures of Flapjack, moved on to the Disney empire where he developed Fish Hooks with Maxwell Atoms, then his own show Gravity Falls, which was of course) a hit.
But the show is now ending. And when you've conquered one mountain, the natural inclination is to challenge another. We wish him all the best at Fox.
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“Gravity Falls” creator Alex Hirsch is graduating from the world of Disney with a deal to develop an animated series for Fox.
Hirsch has set a deal for a script and presentation pilot for Fox and 20th Century Fox TV. Details of the project are being kept mum.
“I’m cooking up some brand-new weirdness,” Hirsch told Variety. ...
Mr. Hirsch started his animation career at Cartoon Network on The Marvelous Misdventures of Flapjack, moved on to the Disney empire where he developed Fish Hooks with Maxwell Atoms, then his own show Gravity Falls, which was of course) a hit.
But the show is now ending. And when you've conquered one mountain, the natural inclination is to challenge another. We wish him all the best at Fox.
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Tuesday, January 05, 2016
Oncoming Negotiations
The trades tell us:
The Secret Lab agreement (known as the "TSL contract") has been in existence since 1999, when the IATSE negotiated a visual effect agreement with Disney for live-action visual effects then being done under Disney Feature's expansive umbrella. (The division was doing "Dinosaur" at the time, and so the livea-ction visual effects must have seemed a good fit.)
Long story made briefer: Disney's visual effects group did the VFX for a number of movies over a three-year span, then went out of existence. In the meanwhile, however, Disney Feature decided it really really liked the TSL contract, and migrated its CG animation staff ... and later its Princess and the Frog staff ... under the newer agreement. The TSL agreement mirrors the 839 agreement in many ways, but has fewer classifications. The Mouse has been using it as its theatrical animation and Disney Toons union agreement since the early oughts (the year 2000).
Walt Disney Animation Studios has approximately 560 union employees in North Hollywood, Burbank, and Glendale. So the TSL agreement covers a goodly number of animation employees.
You will find the Variety version of the above information here.
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Negotiations for a new three-year contract covering hundreds of feature film animators at the Walt Disney Animation Studios will get underway Wednesday. In years past, the contract with IATSE has covered the animators, storyboard artists and writers behind such films as Frozen, Big Hero 6, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. Disney’s upcoming Zootopia also was shot under the contract.
The current contract, which had been set to expire last October 31, was extended at Disney’s request. It’s the only major film industry contract that will be negotiated until the three-year cycle of DGA, WGA and SAG-AFTRA contract talks begin again next year, followed by the IATSE, Teamsters Local 399 and Basic Crafts in 2018.
The Disney Animation Studios contract is similar to the pact that the Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, has with the rest of the industry but is negotiated by its parent union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. ...
The Secret Lab agreement (known as the "TSL contract") has been in existence since 1999, when the IATSE negotiated a visual effect agreement with Disney for live-action visual effects then being done under Disney Feature's expansive umbrella. (The division was doing "Dinosaur" at the time, and so the livea-ction visual effects must have seemed a good fit.)
Long story made briefer: Disney's visual effects group did the VFX for a number of movies over a three-year span, then went out of existence. In the meanwhile, however, Disney Feature decided it really really liked the TSL contract, and migrated its CG animation staff ... and later its Princess and the Frog staff ... under the newer agreement. The TSL agreement mirrors the 839 agreement in many ways, but has fewer classifications. The Mouse has been using it as its theatrical animation and Disney Toons union agreement since the early oughts (the year 2000).
Walt Disney Animation Studios has approximately 560 union employees in North Hollywood, Burbank, and Glendale. So the TSL agreement covers a goodly number of animation employees.
You will find the Variety version of the above information here.
Click here to read entire post
More DWA Product
Netflix and DreamWorks, they are going to keep on being a couple. (Which is good, since they're so cute together).
This is excellent news for animation employees, because it means there will be more jobs. It's a safe bet that some work will flow to Canada, the land of Free Money, but more work (and more of it longer) should be percolating in the East San Fernando Valley.
That's MY hope and assumption, at any rate.
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Netflix and DreamWorks Animation will expand their partnership to include new series and more family-targeted entertainment, the companies announced Tuesday, “making Netflix the global home, outside of China” for the shows, they said, and covering streaming rights to the DreamWorks Animation feature film library. ...
Netflix plans to launch several new series from DWA in the coming year, including a reimagining of Voltron, and the new series, Trollhunters, from Guillermo del Toro. ... In addition, the deal extends the rights of current original series for kids from the studio available on the service throughout operating Netflix markets as well as expanding to include second window rights for the series everywhere around the world, outside of China. Series include The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Dinotrux and Dragons: Race to the Edge, among others. ...
This is excellent news for animation employees, because it means there will be more jobs. It's a safe bet that some work will flow to Canada, the land of Free Money, but more work (and more of it longer) should be percolating in the East San Fernando Valley.
That's MY hope and assumption, at any rate.
Click here to read entire post
Monday, January 04, 2016
The Animation Guild Golden Award Interview #4 -- Ed Rehberg
Harvey Deneroff interviews animation vet Edwin Rehberg.
Harvey Deneroff tells us about Mr. Rehberg's long career here, at Cartoon Research. It's a longer interview than earlier specimens, filled with ambient noise, but a dandy time capsule back to January 1984.
We won't reiterate what Mr. Deneroff writes of Ed Rehberg, but a quick word about where these interviews come from.
They were under-written by the Animation Guild (aka Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists) thirty-one years ago. The tapes have been sitting in a cardboard box in our offices for three decades, and Harvey and Jerry Beck through it was high time to dust them off and hoist them on to YouTube, which they are doing ... week by week.
They are a small bright window that looks back on a time long gone by.
And I got this post up late, unfortunately. Too many things going on at the office to stay focused on old, history-laden interviews with guys who worked in cartoons in the 1920s. Shame on me.
Click here to read entire post
Harvey Deneroff tells us about Mr. Rehberg's long career here, at Cartoon Research. It's a longer interview than earlier specimens, filled with ambient noise, but a dandy time capsule back to January 1984.
We won't reiterate what Mr. Deneroff writes of Ed Rehberg, but a quick word about where these interviews come from.
They were under-written by the Animation Guild (aka Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists) thirty-one years ago. The tapes have been sitting in a cardboard box in our offices for three decades, and Harvey and Jerry Beck through it was high time to dust them off and hoist them on to YouTube, which they are doing ... week by week.
They are a small bright window that looks back on a time long gone by.
And I got this post up late, unfortunately. Too many things going on at the office to stay focused on old, history-laden interviews with guys who worked in cartoons in the 1920s. Shame on me.
Click here to read entire post
One More Cartoon Into the TV Pool
The Reporter reports:
Louis C.K. has made forays into all corners of movie and TV land, writing, directing, acting and distributing his own productions. He co-stars in Trumbo (now in release) and never stays in one box for long.
Albert Brooks is best known for his co-starring role in Broadcast News and voice work in Finding Nemo and The Simpsons. We'll soon find out if this pilot takes flight or not. Hopefully it'll get airborne.
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... Louis C.K. and Albert Brooks are expanding their professional relationship.
The duo is co-creating, co-writing and providing the two lead voices for an untitled animated pilot for FX, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
While details about the half-hour animated project are being kept under wraps, C.K. and Brooks will voice two of the lead roles and executive produce. The entry marks comedy veteran Brooks' first television credit following feature work. ...
Louis C.K. has made forays into all corners of movie and TV land, writing, directing, acting and distributing his own productions. He co-stars in Trumbo (now in release) and never stays in one box for long.
Albert Brooks is best known for his co-starring role in Broadcast News and voice work in Finding Nemo and The Simpsons. We'll soon find out if this pilot takes flight or not. Hopefully it'll get airborne.
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Sunday, January 03, 2016
A History of TV Animation on the Sub-Continent
The strange thing: every time I read about animation produced in India, the local press is noting how lacklustre the product is. Like for instance:
When Indian press disses both the country's television animation and it's theatrical output, you know something is up. As several animation supervisors told me a while ago:
To date, there hasn't been much product from India that's made much of an impact outside of the country. The list of television shows up there at the link, many based on Hindu legends, don't get much traction on the world market.
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The children’s animation industry in India has long been dominated by foreign characters of international fame. Local successes are very few and far between and are easily forgotten. ... Even the recently popular ‘Doraemon’ started off as a manga in 1969, and was later turned into a TV series in 1973.
The cost of producing [Indian] cartoons is quite high, while the success rates are low. As a result, Indian children have long been familiar with only some very popular international cartoons, which are at times, dubbed in Hindi. ...
When Indian press disses both the country's television animation and it's theatrical output, you know something is up. As several animation supervisors told me a while ago:
Indian cartoon studios? They seem more focused on doing sub-contract work, and doing it as inexpensively as possible. Quality animation employees who come from India, and there are some, usually leave, because they hit a glass ceiling with wages and quality. Indian studios just want to get the work out, and maintain their profit margins. That's the priority. ...
To date, there hasn't been much product from India that's made much of an impact outside of the country. The list of television shows up there at the link, many based on Hindu legends, don't get much traction on the world market.
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Your International B.O.
No surprises over what is doing well at the world box office. You got your Space Opera. You got your other heroic epics. And you got your cartoons.
And of course the trade journal rundown:
Hotel Transylvania 2 has been in release since Spetember 25 last year, and is still pulling in theatrical grosses.
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WEEKEND FOREIGN BOX OFFICE -- (GLOBAL TOTALS)
Star Wars 7 -- $96,300,000 -- ($1,510,766,000)
Alvin and the Chipmunks -- $10,300,000 -- ($91,676,600)
The Peanuts Movie -- $16,800,000 -- ($205,884,800)
The Good Dinosaur -- $9,500,000 -- ($243,815,000)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay 2 -- $4,400,000 -- ($635,922,959)
The Little Prince -- $4,750,000 -- ($48,500,000)
Hotel Transylvania 2 -- $2,700,000 -- ($461,803,439)
And of course the trade journal rundown:
The Force Awakens has accumulated $770.5M in international box office after 19 days in release. That takes the global total is $1.51B and makes it the No. 3 movie of 2015 globally. ...
The Peanuts Movie added $16.75M this weekend, from 8,716 screens in 44 markets. The international cume is now $77.1M led by some cracker jack holds. A solid performance in Germany ($2.13M from 1,093/$6M cume) was up 19% from opening weekend. ...
The Good Dinosaur added $9.5M in its 6th weekend of overseas release from 54 territories representing about 66% of the international marketplace. The UK was a hotbed of activity for family fare this frame, lifting The Good Dinosaur by 97% over last week for an $18.5M cume. ...
Hunger Games added $4.4M for an international total of $361.7M. The cume worldwide is $636M with play continuing in 61 offshore markets. Germany is now tops at $43.1M. ...
Hotel Transylvania 2 rang up $2.7M in 34 markets as it approaches $300M internationally with $294M to date. Korea, its last market to release, has a local cume of $8M after two weeks. ...
Hotel Transylvania 2 has been in release since Spetember 25 last year, and is still pulling in theatrical grosses.
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Saturday, January 02, 2016
Mostest With the Fewest
A bit of clear-eyed analysis regarding which of our fine conglomerates made the most money with the fewest ... and least expensive ... movie releases.
What leaps out here is how thin the line is between victory and disaster. Sony made a big chunk of its money on James Bond and Hotel Transylvania 2, even as Disney had Inside Out and Universal had Minions.
Animation wasn't the only driver in various entertainment conglomerates' successes, but cartoons sure as hell played a role.
Add On: On the other side of the not-so-shiny coin, there are the mega-budgeted flops, recounted by the Boston Globe:
When you're hot you're Star Wars Episode VII. When you're not, you're a $160 million movie that has an opening weekend under $19 million.
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... Universal, Disney, and Fox are not being sold.
Sony, Paramount, and WB could change hands at any time.
And amazingly, none of this has anything to do with last year’s box office. ...
Disney released just 11 movies in 2015. Four of them had production budgets of $40 million or under. Their entire take, worldwide-to-date (with not too much more on the horizon) was $215 million.
Disney released two movies with budgets between $100-$150 million. They grossed a solid $1.1 billion against costs (production and p&a) of somewhere around $550 million, making them profitable in post-theatrical revenue streams.
Disney releases five movies with budgets starting at $200 million and likely rising to just over $300 million. Even with an investment in those five titles of about $2 billion, the studio will do well with theatrical revenues of $4 billion to date, with at least another $1.25 billion on the way. ...
The only other company to do $3 billion on new movies in 2015 was Fox. (if you were thinking WB, you were wrong by $350 million or so.)
Fox did it with no mega-movies. The highest grosser of their year was The Martian, which should pass $600 million worldwide shortly. But four other $300m+ titles (Kingsman, Home, Taken, and Maze Runner 2), the three live-actions films each under $85m each and the animated film on an output deal with DWA. ...
Sony made a little less ($2.4b) than Warner Bros ($2.6b) in worldwide gross. But Sony has only 16 releases, while Warner Bros. had 25. So marketing costs for the nine extra titles alone makes up for the difference. ...
What leaps out here is how thin the line is between victory and disaster. Sony made a big chunk of its money on James Bond and Hotel Transylvania 2, even as Disney had Inside Out and Universal had Minions.
Animation wasn't the only driver in various entertainment conglomerates' successes, but cartoons sure as hell played a role.
Add On: On the other side of the not-so-shiny coin, there are the mega-budgeted flops, recounted by the Boston Globe:
... Superhero movies are usually a sure thing, but studios may think twice before unleashing just any old comic onto the big screen after the failure of this Fantastic Four reboot. There’s bad and then there’s bad — as in when the director of a movie takes to social media to warn people about how awful it’s going to be. ...
Ahead of its release, the Peter Pan origin story Pan got the most buzz for its casting of white actress Rooney Mara in the role of Native American princess Tiger Lily, but that was hardly the only reason the movie brought in only $15 million its opening weekend — a tenth of its production budget.
The biggest issue may have been that it didn’t really look like a children’s movie. Only 23 percent of the audience that went to see it in the theater was under 18. ...
When you're hot you're Star Wars Episode VII. When you're not, you're a $160 million movie that has an opening weekend under $19 million.
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New Year's Box Office
The Space Opera appears to be going like hyper-drive gang-busters.
The Good Dinosaur appears to be the weak entry in the Pixar canon, having shed another 252 theaters. It's now fallen out of the Top Ten after six weeks, and probably won't be picking up any Big Mo after the holidays.
Happily for the Mouse, they have another picture with a similar $200 million production cost that is picking up the slack.
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1). Star Wars: The Force Awakens (DIS), 4,134 theaters (0) / $34.46M Fri. (-30%) / 3-day cume: $90M-$94M (-39%) / Total cume: $741M-$745M Wk 3
2). Daddy’s Home (PAR), 3,342 theaters (+71) / $11.476M Fri. (-26.9%)/ 3-day cume: $28M-$29M (-25% to -28%)/ Total cume: $92.7M-93.7M / Wk 2
3.) The Hateful Eight (TWC), 2,474 theaters (+2,374) / $6M-$6.3M Fri. (+215% to 232%) / 3-day cume: $16.2M-$17.4M (+251% to +278%)/ Total cume: $30.8M / Wk 2
4/5). Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Road Chip (FOX), 3,474 theaters (-231) / $4.5M-$4.6M Fri. (-7%)/ 3-day cume: $12.28M-12.35M (-6%) / Total cume: $68M / Wk 3
Sisters (UNI), 2,978 theaters (+16) / $4.6M-$4.8M Fri. (-1% to +4%) / 3-day cume: $12.1M-$12.5M (-12% to -15%) / Total cume: $61.5M / Wk 3
6). Joy (FOX), 2,924 theaters (+28) / $4M-$4.1M Fri.(-40% to -42%) / 3-day cume: $10.4M-$11.1M ( -35% to -39%) / Total cume: $39M / Wk 2
7). The Big Short (PAR), 1,588 theaters (+3) / $3.36M Fri.(-11%) / 3-day cume: $8.8M-$9.3M (-11% to -16%) / Total cume: $32.7M-$33.3M / Wk 4
8). Concussion (SONY), 2,841 theaters / $3M-$3.2M Fri. (-25% to -29%) / 3-day cume: $7.9M-$8.4M (-20% to -25%) / Total cume: $25.8M / Wk 2
9). Point Break (WB), 2,910 theaters / $2.68M-$2.75M Fri. (-35%) / 3-day cume: $6.75M-$7.4M (-25% to -31%) / Total cume: $22.3M-$23M / Wk 2
10) The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (LGF), 1,485 theaters (-328) / $1.79M Fri. (+19%) /3-day cume: $4.7M (-11%)/ Total cume: $274.3M / Wk 7
11). Good Dinosaur (Disney), 1,735 theaters (-252) / $1.57M Fri. (+62%) / 3-day cume: $4.3M (+15%)/ Total cume: $115.1M / Wk 6
The Good Dinosaur appears to be the weak entry in the Pixar canon, having shed another 252 theaters. It's now fallen out of the Top Ten after six weeks, and probably won't be picking up any Big Mo after the holidays.
Happily for the Mouse, they have another picture with a similar $200 million production cost that is picking up the slack.
Click here to read entire post
Friday, January 01, 2016
At the Zoo
Diz Co. dropped a new trailer for its oncoming cartoon today.
The crew on this baby put in a lot of overtime hours at the company's Tujunga facility (that's the building in North Hollywood, out near the end of the Bop Hope Airport runway), and I think the wit of the picture shows through.
The scene with the bunny rabbit, fox, and sloths, which has been out for a while, played well with the large audience at the local AMC. I think this Diz Co. feature will open buoyantly. Movies with furry animals usually go over with global audiences.
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The crew on this baby put in a lot of overtime hours at the company's Tujunga facility (that's the building in North Hollywood, out near the end of the Bop Hope Airport runway), and I think the wit of the picture shows through.
The scene with the bunny rabbit, fox, and sloths, which has been out for a while, played well with the large audience at the local AMC. I think this Diz Co. feature will open buoyantly. Movies with furry animals usually go over with global audiences.
Click here to read entire post
Reluctant
Seems like it only happened 74 years ago.
While we're posting factoids, longtime Disney writer Larry Clemmons left assistant animation work behind around this time. Larry appears in one of the live-action segments with Walt (he's one of the Disney staffers in the screening room scene). He also received story credit on the picture.
Mr. Clemmons departed Walt Disney Productions shortly his work on The Reluctant Dragon was completed. He had been an employee since 1930, but he exited just before the Disney strike, not returning until the mid 1950s. During his time away, he wrote technical manuals at a war plant and became a writer for Bing Crosby's network radio show, where he worked for almost a decade.
When he came back to the studio, he worked as a writer and segment producer on the Mickey Mouse Club. The assignment was supposed to last a couple of months, but he remained at the Mouse House for twenty-two years, working on Walt's spoken introductions for Disneyland/The Wonderful World of Color, finally returning to animated feature work on Jungle Book, Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound.
Add On: The Reluctant Dragon was released mid '41 during the Disney strike. Picketers showed up at Dragon's Hollywood opening, some of them arriving in limousines and evening dress.
You can see some of the strikers' handiwork here and here (scroll down for the pics).
As Turner Classic Movies relates:
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In the “Baby Weems” sequence in the Disney feature The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Mount Rushmore is seen with only George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s heads. The faces were still under construction until October 1941 and this movie was released before it was finished, which is why presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson are missing.
The Mickey Avenue/Dopey Drive signpost outside the Animation Building was built specifically for the movie, and was supposed to be removed afterward. It wasn’t, and it still stands at the Disney studio today. ...
While we're posting factoids, longtime Disney writer Larry Clemmons left assistant animation work behind around this time. Larry appears in one of the live-action segments with Walt (he's one of the Disney staffers in the screening room scene). He also received story credit on the picture.
Mr. Clemmons departed Walt Disney Productions shortly his work on The Reluctant Dragon was completed. He had been an employee since 1930, but he exited just before the Disney strike, not returning until the mid 1950s. During his time away, he wrote technical manuals at a war plant and became a writer for Bing Crosby's network radio show, where he worked for almost a decade.
When he came back to the studio, he worked as a writer and segment producer on the Mickey Mouse Club. The assignment was supposed to last a couple of months, but he remained at the Mouse House for twenty-two years, working on Walt's spoken introductions for Disneyland/The Wonderful World of Color, finally returning to animated feature work on Jungle Book, Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound.
Add On: The Reluctant Dragon was released mid '41 during the Disney strike. Picketers showed up at Dragon's Hollywood opening, some of them arriving in limousines and evening dress.
You can see some of the strikers' handiwork here and here (scroll down for the pics).
As Turner Classic Movies relates:
... At the premiere of The Reluctant Dragon at the Pantages Theater, picketers marched in front of the theater entrance with extraordinarily well-drawn caricatures of Walt Disney as a fire-breathing dragon, above the slogan "The Reluctant Disney." The placards were well-drawn because they were drawn by the very artists who'd made the movie, now on strike against Uncle Walt.
There are many different ways of telling the story of Disney's labor strike, but it is not unfair to say that the artists who worked at Disney felt underpaid and unappreciated. Ever since the grueling slog of making Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, they had been working unpaid overtime to help secure popularity, profits, and awards for their boss. Although The Reluctant Dragon depicted the new Burbank Studio as a bright, whimsical campus full of shiny, happy artists, many of the actual staff thought of it as a grim sweatshop. ...
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Thursday, December 31, 2015
The Big Box Office Derby
And here's how all our fine conglomerates (also non-conglomerates) finished for the year:
Animation played a big part in several studios' overall performance.
Universal had the billion-dollar Minions; Disney owned the global hit Inside Out; Sony traveled to glory with Transylvania 2.
And Paramount, which was a loong way from having a great year, got considerable mileage from The Sponge Bob Movie. There were also several live-action extravaganzas -- most laden with animated visual effects -- that did wonderfully well at the box office.
Click here to read entire post
DOMESTIC B.O. WINNERS AND LOSERS
-- box office share -- total dollars -- increase/decrease
Universal Studios -- 22.1% -- $2.44B -- +119%
Walt Disney -- 20% -- $2.2B -- +38%
Warner Bros. -- 14.4% -- $1.59B -- +1.5%
20th Fox -- 12.8% -- $1.41B -- -27%
Sony -- 8.7% -- $960.8M -- -24%
Lionsgate -- 6% -- $663M -- -10%
Paramount -- 6% -- $658M -- -38%
Weinstein Co. -- 2.7% -- $294.2M -- +32%
Animation played a big part in several studios' overall performance.
Universal had the billion-dollar Minions; Disney owned the global hit Inside Out; Sony traveled to glory with Transylvania 2.
And Paramount, which was a loong way from having a great year, got considerable mileage from The Sponge Bob Movie. There were also several live-action extravaganzas -- most laden with animated visual effects -- that did wonderfully well at the box office.
Click here to read entire post
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Tub-Thumping Begins
Okay, the latest from Disney's Emeryville unit isn't burning up the box office, but soon there will be this:
Robert Iger touted "new originals" in the Disney pantheon, and cited Inside Out as a good example of an original.
For some reason, The Good Dinosaur wasn't mentioned in the same proud way. (Under performers cause that to happen. Box office winners are what corporations talk about.)
But hey, boys and girls! Finding Dory is coming! And we KNOW you'll want to be made aware of that!
Click here to read entire post
‘Finding Dory’ Introduces New Underwater Characters Bailey and Destiny
“Modern Family” actor Ty Burrell voices beluga whale Bailey, and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” actress Kaitlin Olson plays Destiny the whale shark. ...
Robert Iger touted "new originals" in the Disney pantheon, and cited Inside Out as a good example of an original.
For some reason, The Good Dinosaur wasn't mentioned in the same proud way. (Under performers cause that to happen. Box office winners are what corporations talk about.)
But hey, boys and girls! Finding Dory is coming! And we KNOW you'll want to be made aware of that!
Click here to read entire post
Co-Directors Discuss Shaun
Messrs Burton and Starzak talk about tandem work routines:
All animated features have similarities. They get boarded and put on story reels. Most are scripted. The differences, of course, come in the way they move through production.
Hand-drawn features have people working over light-boards or Cintiqs with their drawing instruments, creating characters and environments in two dimensions. The process used to be analog, with cameras, painted backgrounds and painted cels. Now much (all?) of the pipeline is digital.
CG features also have animators, lighters, surfacers, and programmers creating their movies on computers.
Only stop motion animation remains much as it was when King Kong was tromping through the undergrowth on a miniature set, terrorizing Faye Wray. Shaun the Sheep, like every stop-motion feature and short before it, existed in time and space while it was made, with small physical characters in their small physical environments. Shaun had 12 to 20 setups going at any given time. with Burton and Starzak orchestrating (and molding) the movies progress.
The fact that they were doing it much the way Willis O'Brien did the same thing 80-plus years ago is a credit to the durability of the art-form.
Click here to read entire post
Richard Starzak: There was no real separation until production. We worked on the script equally. ...
Mark Burton: We had a traffic light system, which is, “Red light means we have to work together on it. Green light you can go ahead and do it,” and by the time we got to the second half of the movie, we were much more relaxed about it. ...
Richard Starzak: It was a 10-month shoot. I think a month or two in, we had an easy rhythm. There’s a yin and yang element to it, but I think we both equally contributed to the script. ...
It kind of varies between 12 or 25 movements, or frames, per second and so that per animator we were expecting them to do about two plus seconds a day. Again that’s quite fast, but we had the advantage of no dialogue so we could work a bit faster. ...
Mark Burton: It’s a trial and error exploration, in terms of how it all hangs together. ... You’re constantly watching the film. ... What you do is you sort of throw the film up and you’re constantly watching it in very basic form. If stuff is working on the animatic, then you have a good sense that it should work when you actually animate. ....
All animated features have similarities. They get boarded and put on story reels. Most are scripted. The differences, of course, come in the way they move through production.
Hand-drawn features have people working over light-boards or Cintiqs with their drawing instruments, creating characters and environments in two dimensions. The process used to be analog, with cameras, painted backgrounds and painted cels. Now much (all?) of the pipeline is digital.
CG features also have animators, lighters, surfacers, and programmers creating their movies on computers.
Only stop motion animation remains much as it was when King Kong was tromping through the undergrowth on a miniature set, terrorizing Faye Wray. Shaun the Sheep, like every stop-motion feature and short before it, existed in time and space while it was made, with small physical characters in their small physical environments. Shaun had 12 to 20 setups going at any given time. with Burton and Starzak orchestrating (and molding) the movies progress.
The fact that they were doing it much the way Willis O'Brien did the same thing 80-plus years ago is a credit to the durability of the art-form.
Click here to read entire post
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Writers Guild Amendments
The WGA is changing its constitution.
Lowering the hurdles to serve in office seems like a good thing.
And it's understandable the WGA is doing this. It's a challenge for unions to get volunteers in the best of times. Usually a small cadre of members shows up at meetings over and over, sits on committees, comes in to staff phone banks. These are the folks who end up serving as board members, vice-presidents, and recording secretaries.
We'll see if the constitutional changes are approved.
Click here to read entire post
Members of the WGA West are being asked to approve three amendments to the guild’s constitution to make it easier for members to run for guild office, and that once elected, for officers and board members to remain in office longer. ...
The first of the proposed amendments would lengthen the terms of office for elected officials from the current two years to three years. It would also change the number of consecutive terms elected officials could serve. ...
The second amendment would reduce the number of board candidates the guild’s nominating committee is required to nominate during each election. ... This amendment would allow the committee to nominate as few as 12. A booklet sent to guild members says that this amendment “addresses the difficulty experienced by recent board nominating committees of recruiting nominees to run in a large field of candidates.” ...
The third amendment would reduce the number of supporting signatures that a candidate needs to be nominated by petition. ...
Lowering the hurdles to serve in office seems like a good thing.
And it's understandable the WGA is doing this. It's a challenge for unions to get volunteers in the best of times. Usually a small cadre of members shows up at meetings over and over, sits on committees, comes in to staff phone banks. These are the folks who end up serving as board members, vice-presidents, and recording secretaries.
We'll see if the constitutional changes are approved.
Click here to read entire post
The Animation Guild 401(k) Plan Made Easy
Everything you need to know about the Guild's 401(k) Pension Savings Plan in 2 minutes and 48 seconds.
(In case you're wondering, those are Steve Hulett's dulcet tones narrating the above.)
Whoever you are, wherever you are, you're being short-sighted if you don't participate in an offered 401(k) Plan. This isn't because 401(k)s are the end-all and be-all of retirement plans (they're not) but because in this uncertain age, when other pension plans are going away and Social Security and Medicare are under assault, people are idiots if they don't stash money into tax-sheltered accounts for their sunset years. A few tips:
Last point: Pick an asset allocation with both stocks and bonds (60% stocks/40% bonds; 50% stocks/50% bonds; 40% stocks/60% bonds are the most popular) and stick with it. Understand that, during the course of your career, investments will go up and down. And know that the best thing you can do is ignore the gyrations and soldier on. At the end of your time in the labor force, you'll have a sizable pile of cash*.
* Fidelity Investments -- the second largest mutual fund family -- performed a survey of the most successful Fidelity investors. Fidelity discovered that the most successful investors were the individuals who forgot they had investments with FI in the first place, and never touched or moved anything. (In other words, by accident they weathered every market drop and therefore ended up with more money.)
Click here to read entire post
(In case you're wondering, those are Steve Hulett's dulcet tones narrating the above.)
Whoever you are, wherever you are, you're being short-sighted if you don't participate in an offered 401(k) Plan. This isn't because 401(k)s are the end-all and be-all of retirement plans (they're not) but because in this uncertain age, when other pension plans are going away and Social Security and Medicare are under assault, people are idiots if they don't stash money into tax-sheltered accounts for their sunset years. A few tips:
... Maximize your tax break. Traditional 401(k) plans allow you to defer paying income tax on the money you save for retirement. Investors can contribute up to $18,000 to a 401(k) plan. And after age 50, the limit jumps to $24,000. ...
Diversify with a Roth. A growing proportion of employers now offer a Roth 401(k) option in which workers can save after-tax dollars, and distributions are tax-free in retirement. A Roth 401(k) generally offers the biggest benefits to young and low-income workers who expect to be in a higher tax bracket later on in their career, but can also add tax diversification and flexibility to the portfolios of people closer to retirement. ...
Don't cash out. Most workers switch jobs several times over the course of their career, which means they need to decide what to do with the 401(k) balance at their former employer. It can be tempting to withdraw the cash, but workers who withdraw money from their 401(k) account before age 59½ face a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty (Federal), a 2 1/2 percent penalty from the state of California, and income tax on the amount withdrawn. Early withdrawals also cause you to miss out on valuable compound interest. ...
Avoid funds that charge the big management fees. Index funds generally have the lowest fees, because they require little or no hands-on management by a professional. These funds are automatically invested in shares of the companies that make up a stock index, like the S&P 500 Index. ...
Last point: Pick an asset allocation with both stocks and bonds (60% stocks/40% bonds; 50% stocks/50% bonds; 40% stocks/60% bonds are the most popular) and stick with it. Understand that, during the course of your career, investments will go up and down. And know that the best thing you can do is ignore the gyrations and soldier on. At the end of your time in the labor force, you'll have a sizable pile of cash*.
* Fidelity Investments -- the second largest mutual fund family -- performed a survey of the most successful Fidelity investors. Fidelity discovered that the most successful investors were the individuals who forgot they had investments with FI in the first place, and never touched or moved anything. (In other words, by accident they weathered every market drop and therefore ended up with more money.)
Click here to read entire post
Another Small Tale About Leverage
As CNBC tells it.
This, ladies and gents (and children of all ages) is what happens when you have a red hot property, a lot of eager theater chains, and the mojo to extract more money for the privilege of screening it.
Click here to read entire post
Studios on average take about 55 cents of every dollar of tickets sold in the U.S. Eric Wold, analyst at B. Riley & Co., said the average has been 53 percent since 2008. But when it came to striking a deal for the new "Star Wars," Disney was able to secure more than 60 percent of ticket sales, sources told CNBC.
The split that theaters and studios negotiate generally slides over a film's lifespan. The studio gets a slightly bigger cut toward the beginning of a film's release, which then generally slides in favor of the theater over time. This is one reason studios are incentivized to spend big on advertising to get a huge opening weekend. For "The Force Awakens," Disney likely holds onto its bigger-than-usual piece of revenue throughout its run. ...
This, ladies and gents (and children of all ages) is what happens when you have a red hot property, a lot of eager theater chains, and the mojo to extract more money for the privilege of screening it.
Click here to read entire post
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