... “Jeffrey Katzenberg is the rare instance of someone who actually should be running a bigger company,” said Roger Smith, a former film executive and the New York editor for Global Media Intelligence.
That’s not the way Mr. Katzenberg sees it. “I can see why we would be valuable to other people,” he said. “The challenge for me is to see why we need them. I’m not convinced at all that we need to be part of a larger company to be successful.”
Currently, most stand-alone movie outfits are openly for sale (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), looking for new money (Creative Artists Agency) or angling for an alliance (Lions Gate Entertainment). But Mr. Katzenberg insists that his company, with no debt and a powerful track record, has all it needs to thrive. ...
The days of Disney doing animated features while every other major stands around and watches is twenty years behind us. Maybe DWA's Megamind will be another solid hit (the crew is certainly hopeful), but the competitive ups and downs of the cartoon business just now have got to make existence a little queasy for the moguls.
When a good friend of Pres Romanillos's called from the City of Hope late last week to say Pres was going home, I knew it wasn't a good sign. Pres had been tenaciously fighting a recurrence of leukemia, and lately he'd had setbacks. On Saturday night, the fight ended ...
Priscillano A. Romanillos came into the animation industry in the late 1980s, at a time the cartoon business was undergoing a Renaissance. Starting as a trainee at Disney Feature Animation on The Little Mermaid, his career grew like a Sequoia. Within a few years he became one of the top animators in the biz, animating on a string of Disney and DreamWorks Animation hits, swinging from hand-drawn to digital production with relative ease. His last feature film, completed this Spring, was Shrek Forever After.
Pres was always kind, always enthusiastic, always willing to reach out. (He and his wife Jeannine were "parents" to a large menagerie of dogs and cats that they had rescued from various shelters.) If there was anyone in this whacky business who deserved another twenty or thirty years of artistic success, Pres was at or near the top of the list.
He was 47. And one more reason I don't believe in the word "fair" when I contemplate this mist of tears.
Our friends at the Reporter keep us abreast of the box office scorecard around the globe:
DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek Forever After" in 3D supplanted the latest "Twilight Saga" installment as the top-grossing weekend title on the foreign theatrical circuit, snaring $52.2 million from 8,063 locations in 57 markets.
The weekend was the first to find "Shrek" occupying the No. 1 spot. Opening on the foreign circuit on May 20, the animation film has been pursuing since then a graduated overseas rollout via Paramount. "Shrek's" foreign gross total now stands at $292.5 million ....
Shrek 4's performance abroad is $60 million more than its domestic performance, and it's still rolling out and rolling along. Make's me wonder if the picture ends up like Ice Age 3: okay grosses stateside ($234 million to date), huge numbers everyplace else ....
Then there's the other two animated features now in general release ...
Third on the weekend was "Toy Story 3" in 3D, which captured $32.9 million from 3,452 screens in 41 markets. After playing about 60% of the foreign territories, the Pixar/Disney animation title has rolled up a cume of $267.5 million, making it the tenth biggest Disney hit overseas. Worldwide, "Toy Story 3" has grossed $630.2 million, the tenth biggest-grossing animation title ever released. ...
Still in early international release, Universal's "Despicable Me" drew $4 million on the weekend from 503 locations in seven territories. ...
Too soon to know how DM ends up performing, but my estimate for TS3 is pretty straightforward. It's got a ways to run here in the States, and 35-40% more of its overseas total to accumulate, so we're looking at a worldwide gross of $800-$900 million before all the theatrical runs tail off. This will put it firmly in the last Ice Age 3'sterritory.
I talk a lot about the animation workplace, but here's the other side of the cartoon career (or any career): If you're between 21 and 75 years of age and still working, you should think seriously about putting money away for retirement ...
I'm not a licensed financial advisor, but because of the TAG 401(k) Plan I have taken on the task of boning up on investment information. Here, in ludicrously broad brushstrokes, are some basic chunks of same:
The more money you put away and get working toward building wealth now, the more money you will have twenty or thirty years hence.
There are not, short of a monster salary or monetary windfall, any quick and sure-fire shortcuts to accumulating wealth.
Almost all the information you will ever need to make intelligent investment decisions is available on the worldwide web for free.
Intelligent investing is not complicated or hard. What's hard is initiating an investment plan and sticking to that investment plan.
Any investment strategy that you use should be broadly diversified in a wide selection of asset classes (cash, stocks both foreign and domestic, bonds, real estate, etc.)
When you are younger, you should be investing in more stocks and fewer bonds. When older, you should be doing the reverse. (But if you are, say, twenty-eight-years-old and putting money away yet cannot keep solid food down when the stock market declines, you should probably stick more to bonds. In other words, know your risk tolerance.)
The main thing to do is start a savings program, figure out where you want to divvy up the dollars, then be disciplined about it. (I know I beat this bass drum a lot, but I made many idiotic mistakes back in my reckless youth. I'm trying to atone for the errors by haranguing others to practice better behavior via blog posts.)
Enough already. Go save, go invest. Fifty years from now you can visit my gravesite and thank me.
1. [Inception] with Friday's $21 million including $3M midnight shows in 1,600 locations. Audiences rated it an overall "B+" Cinemascore, with the under-25 crowd giving it an "A". ...
2. Despicable Me (Universal) Week 2 [3,501 Theaters] -- Friday $11.5M with an impressive -46% hold from a week ago.
3. Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Week 3) [4,001 Theaters] -- Friday $5M with a still strong -54% hold ...
4. Sorcerer's Apprentice only made $5.2M Friday from 3,504 theaters for what should be a paltry $17.5M for the 3-day weekend.
5. Toy Story 3 (Disney) Week 5 [3,177 Theaters] -- Friday $3.5M for an amazingly strong -45% hold this long in release.
It appears that the Cage-Bruckheimer magic has been fading of late. (Ah well. Nothing is forever ...)
But it won't escape your notice that there are two animated features in the Top Five. Animation Domination (theatrical division) seems to occur with greater frequency as time goes on.
Add On:At the wire, Inception collects $60.4 million, Despicable Me adds 25 theaters, declines 42%, and now owns $118,365,000 in domestic greenbacks.
In the fifth slot, Toy Story 3 gathers up $11.7 million and now stands with a total of $362.7 million after five weeks.
Farther down the list, Shrek Forever After has made $234,373,000 after nine weeks of release.
Animal Logic and Warner Bros. head to the home stretch with their new animated epic.
... The movie comes out Sept. 24 and the studio has already conducted some tinkering on the project, changing the title from “Guardians of Ga’Hoole” to the more friendly, if more generic, “Legend of the Guardians.” In March, it rushed out a teaser trailer that was a bit on the cheesy side; it didn’t indicate that Snyder, who made zombies and horror remakes respectable with “Dawn of the Dead” and comic book adaptations just plain cool with “300,” was behind the family adventure. ...
And now for something different: Let us sample a few internet sites of TAG members/merry-workers:
Peck n Paw And the Black Mirror (Disney Feature artists' book of personal art pieces -- paintings, comic, line-drawings, you name it -- all of the pieces good and all of the pieces available for viewing and/or purchase at ComicCon and on-line.)
Animation veteran Tom Ruegger has launched Cartoonatics, a blog of comics, paintings and prose you might find worth your while.
Ace animation artist Victoria Ying has a scintillating blog of artwork (a visual from same just above) and commentary.
MY DOG TULIP, an animated feature film based on the acclaimed best-selling memoir by author J.R. Ackerley, featuring the voices of Christopher Plummer, the late Lynn Redgrave, and Isabella Rossellini, is the first acquisition of the newly reopened New Yorker Films ....
A little over a year after New Yorker Films was forced to close its doors, the pioneering distributor of foreign language and independent films has reopened. New Yorker Films is committed to continue releasing quality art and independent films from around the world. ...
In 1956, when it was decided that live animals were too messy and unpredictable, the area was refurbished and the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train came into existence, complete with a colorful finale inside Rainbow Mountain (among the highlights was a spectacular fluorescent waterfall designed by Disney Legend Claude Coats).
Rainbow Caverns was replaced by the Nature’s Wonderland train ride in 1960, which featured scenic vistas and an abundance of 204 lifelike inhabitants. Again, Walt Disney designed the layout of this attraction. ...
Disneyland’s original marquee was purchased by actor John Stamos for $30,700 in 2000 on eBay.
(We banged the same gong last year, when Disneyland was 54 years old. We are nothing if not redundant.)
It can now be (officially) revealed that Beavis and his close friend are returning to television.
The move to resurrect the hugely popular 1990s animated anti-heroes [Beavis and Butthead] has been rumored for several days. But yesterday, sources at MTV confirmed that a new batch of "Beavis and Butt-head" episodes are in the works.
The new series would keep Beavis and Butt-head in their perpetual high-school state, but it would be updated so that the pals -- who obsessively watch music videos on a battered TV set -- could lob their snarky comments at more current targets like Lady Gaga. ...
Our pal the Nikkster relates that Jeffrey Katzenberg wants to move onward and upward.
To overhear Jeffrey Katzenberg's private conversations these days, Comcast supposedly wants to buy DreamWorks Animation and make him head of NBC Universal. But at last week's Camp Allen -- Sun Valley's annual Alllen & Co investment conference attended by the Who's Who of tech, Internet, entertainment, and media industries -- Comcast's Brian Roberts and Steve Burke were telling a very different story. They mentioned to several power players that Katzenberg has been pursuing them to buy DreamWorks Animation and lobbying them to make him head of NBCU ...
(We've said for a few years that DreamWorks will ultimately be sold. Someday we might even be right.)
Have a fine weekend. Try and find a pool and cool off.
The Journal's story (forwarded to us by a faithful correspondent) here observes some things about animation production correctly, but also the inverse. Par example:
Illumination [Entertainment] ... relied on young, less-expensive animators and first-time directors, who can cost less than half that of a more experienced hand.
The trouble with the equation above is, less-expensive animators and novice directors often need an older pro close by to clean up sub-par animation or straighten out sequences and storylines that don't come quite together, because otherwise you end up with flat and bo-ring. (Of course, I have no way of knowing because I wasn't there, but I would wager that among the novices and trainees who were getting their feet wet at MacGuff/Paris were experienced professionals who held things together.)
Then there's the reality of a seasoned hand knowing how to do the shot right the first time instead of the fourth or fifth. On a dollar for dollar basis, the artist who knows the rig and the shortcuts produces more usable footage. Besides, longevity and experience don't always mean premium wages anyway. Just ask the "experienced hands" who commanded five thousand dollars a week in the booming '90s and have seen their wages cut by 50% and more (if they are collecting wages at all.)
One other major cost driver of late has been operating your own production shop. The big players out there -- Pixar, DreamWorks Animation and Chris Meladandri's alma mater Fox/Blue Sky -- all have permanent studios. As noted here earlier, Illumination Arts has gotten away from that particular business model. (Can we say "studio overhead?" I knew we could.) MacGuff, IE's animation sub-contractor in France, no doubt secured the gig on the basis of quality and cost.
And yet, despite recent media attention to "the new business model," I would submit that a well-run studio can do its own productions and deliver high-end work at a competitive price. That was the case with Cloudy With Meatballs (production budget $100 million in Culver City) and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (production cost $90 million in the Tri-State area) or the upcoming Winnie the Pooh ($35 million in Burbank, with a chunk of the feature outsourced.)
But what counts more than anything else? Savvy and efficient planning, from script to rough animation to final color. "Doing it right the first time" is the big money-saver.
The animation team put in about 50 weeks of work, about two-thirds the number that often goes into animated features.
The Journal hasn't gotten the memo, but a lot of recent features have been turned out in under a year. (Bolt is one recent example of which I have first-hand knowledge.)
But the phenomenon of a fast production schedule isn't exactly new. From start to finish, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs took twenty-six months to produce. Dumbo moved along even faster, costing all of $900,000. (By contrast, Pinocchio cost $3.75 million -- the most expensive film of its era on a per-minute basis.)
After the creative dust settles, what really pares the cost of movie-making is good decision-making. It strokes a lot of egos to have ten administrators in the room protecting turf, throwing out dime-store ideas and signing off on the latest story pitch, but what it mostly does is gum up the works. Nobody, in the end, cares if all the highly-placed bureaucrats had their say, of if a character's hair strands fluttered around just right or if the soft, ambient light in that nighttime exterior came from the correct source.
What audiences care about is having a a rollicking good time in a darkened auditorium. If Chris Meladandri, Jeffrey K. or John Lasseter can pull that magical feat off, it won't matter a whit how much the picture costs. (But if it occurs on a $69 million budget, so much the better.).
... Movieline hears that Pixar is currently developing Planes as a semi-sequel and spinoff franchise to Cars, one meant to take advantage of the enormously lucrative direct-to-video market. It’s a format that Pixar has flirted with before — Toy Story 2 was once meant to go direct to video, and Toy Story 3 was originally developed for DVD in a semi-unauthorized fashion by Disney before Pixar head John Lasseter took over the company — but with Planes, Pixar could leverage the Cars brand without diluting its bigscreen appeal. ...
(Apologies to the folks who have badgered me in comments to 'fess up, but breaking out proprietary info isn't my job description.)
However, now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag ....
There is the often-repeated meme that animation production gets outsourced to the low-cost providers in the low-cost countries, but in many cases it's not about budget, lower budget, and lowest budget. Often the driver is making a high-quality product that sells, and for that the savvier film producers recognize the need for a work force and infrastructure that gets the job done.
New Zealand’s largest CG (computer-generated) animation studio has opened in Auckland.
The Freemans Bay facility is a joint venture between Australian-owned Oktobor (part of the OmniLab Media group) and US company Backyark Animation Pictures.
Its primary client will be US kids network Nickelodeon, for which it will create animated series ...
New Zealand offers production subsidies, but does anybody seriously believe that a government underwriting of a few million dollars makes up for lower labor costs and a weaker currency? I sure as hell don't.
The answer is the same as it's always been: It doesn't do a movie producer a damn bit of good to go to the provider with rock-bottom prices (with talent to match) and create an animated or live-action feature that nobody wants to see. They might not spend a lot of money, but they don't make any money.
Zero or minimal profits is not what the moving picture game is about. That's why there's a lot of vfx production in the higher-rent areas of California. That's why Illumination Entertainment went to Paris for production work on Despicable Me.
From time to time, we point out the small percentages of women in creative positions in Cartoonland. But it isn't just animation:
In the 2008-'09 television season, women comprised 25 percent of "all creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors and directors of photography working on situation comedies, drama and reality programs," according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
The most powerful creative people in the television industry tend to be show creators and/or showrunners (i.e., the executive producers in charge on a day to day basis), but only 21 percent of the creators and 23 percent of the executive producers in the 2008-'09 season were women, according to the Center (the summary of the 2008-'09 report is here).
Statistics from the Writers Guild of America paint a similar picture. As I've noted in the past, in 2007, 28 percent of all writing credits went to women -- a 2 percent uptick from 1999, when 26 percent of credits went to women ....
The 17% totals that the Animation Guild's statistics have shown in the recent past might be a little low compared to other parts of the business, but they're not very far out of the ordinary.
"It's getting hard to find a parking space around here. The place is packed to the gills."
On my visit to the big yellow building on Hollywood Way this morning, a bunch of people told me they'd never seen the joint busier ...
There's Marvel product, Hasbro's animated series, Dave Vs. _____, and of course the Yellow Family.
"We just heard that The Simpsons got picked up for another season beyond this one. Fox had an option on the show beyond the two seasons they'd already agreed to, and they exercised the option ..."
Which means, if true, an additional year of work for the Simpsons's crew. But it makes sense. Fox isn't dumb. They can read ratings numbers as well as anybody.
FOX SIZZLES IN THE KITCHEN AND ON THE DANCE FLOOR FOR A WEEKLY WIN
Originals of HELL’S KITCHEN and SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE along with encores of GLEE and Sunday Animation Domination favorites led FOX to rank No.1 among Adults 18-49 last week.
FOX had 6 of the Top 20 programs among Adults 18-49: ... FAMILY GUY (No. 16) and THE SIMPSONS (No. 20).
FOX had 8 of the Top 20 programs among Adults 18-34: ... FAMILY GUY (No. 9), ... THE CLEVELAND SHOW (No. 13 tie), THE SIMPSONS (NO. 13 tie) ...
FOX had 8 of the Top 20 programs among Teens: FAMILY GUY (No. 5)... THE CLEVELAND SHOW (No. 13 tie) ... THE SIMPSONS (No. 13 tie) ...
And I'm thinking if the voice talent can be nudged into a new, multi-year contract, the production crews should be busy for at least a couple more years, yes?
There have been complaints in the lower thread about some of the salary numbers of the survey; allow me to expand on them and our process a bit ...
First off. There's been some skepticism about some of the listed wages. Speaking from anecdotal evidence I've picked up at the studios, the salary rates reflect what I hear many people are making. (One animator commented that the wages in the survey were no higher than the salary he was making in the 1990s. That's probably accurate. Animators in the '90s were making historically high levels of pay.)
We've been mailing survey forms out for a dozen years, changing questions and formats based on feedback. When we started the TAG survey, we got fairly high response rates. (We would have liked it to be even higher, but then we always want more data.) But over the years we've noticed a trend. Year by year, the response percentages have declined, usually something around 2% a year. This year, we had a total of 690 survey forms (22.9% of the total sent out. Last year, the percentage was 25%.)
Happily, some categories have seen pretty good returns, while other classifications have minimal data and are only marginally worth reporting. (We kept the pipeline open and encouraged people to return survey forms. Some folks did. Others said "I like to keep the wages I make to myself, even on an anonymous form." Still others didn't think it was all that important.)
My position is that the information is both important and useful, but that's me. Companies have plenty of wage information, it's only right to level the playing field a bit. However, we live in Freedom's Land, and people can do what they want. They choose to throw survey forms in the trash, nobody can stop them.
But enough of that. Without further ado, click here for the full and complete 2010 TAG Wage Survey.
The Nikkster's site details Chris Medadandri's (and Illumination Entertainment's) next moves.
... Despicable Me 2 talks are already underway among the studio, Meledandri, and writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio.
Illumination is also making two short films featuring The Minions ... Right behind Despicable Me is Hop--a live-action CG film with Russell Brand voicing the Easter Bunny—which Universal releases April 1, 2011. After that is Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, most likely followed by the Ricky Gervais-created Flanimals. There is a Where’s Waldo film and Tim Burton is involved in a new version of The Addams Family ...
Sounds like Illumination Entertainment is going to be a busy little company ...
Entertainment Weekly reports Pixar helped polish Tron Legacy.
... In late March, the Tron filmmakers chose to show a very early working cut of the film starring Garrett Hedlund and Jeff Bridges to Pixar’s John Lasseter, Ed Catmull, The Incredibles director Brad Bird, Toy Story 3 screenwriter Michael Arndt, and others. ... Disney hired Arndt and Bird to write some pages for the upcoming re-shoots, which lasted six days last month. Original writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Lost) were also integral in the writing ...
... [Thomas] Jane, [voice of the Jonah Hex], campaigned for the role of Hex in the live-action film based on the character— a role that eventually went to Josh Brolin. Would Jane have made a better Hex? "DC Showcase: Jonah Hex" could be our best way to find out. ...
Here's hoping it's better received than "Jonah Hex, the live-action feature."
Pharrell Williams talks about his foray into Cartoonland:
... "Working on Despicable Me expanded my mind. The opportunity to work with Hans Zimmer and seeing posters on his wall of spaghetti westerns, made me think. I thought of Ennio Morricone's sound, and wanted that to [blend] with N.E.R.D and it went from there. It ends up sounding very Doors, America, Crosby, Stills, & Nash and Neil Young influenced. There's a bit of Queen. ..."
Farewell to Betty Kimball. (Betty had a long, productive and fulfilling life. We should all be so lucky ...)
The Daily Express in Britain rattles on about the latest "Golden Age of Animation."
Over the past decade, animated film-making has not only been revived, it has come close to dominating the movie industry. Cartoons are no longer just for children. Adults are no longer going along under sufferance to see films such as Ratatouille, The Incredibles or the Shrek series; they’re going because they actually want to see them too.
There have been adult, high-grossing animated features in every decade from the 1930s onward. We don't need another half-informed columnist telling us nothing like this has happened before.
I buzzed through the hat building in the A.M., and the CGI crew is working six-day weeks on Tangled but happy to have jobs (and overtime). "We're employed, and that's good" ...
Meantime, Winnie the Pooh is in the last couple of months of animation, after which:
"A new hand-drawn project called [X] has been greenlit for development. It's the only thing on the traditional side right now, so hopefully it will stay on track ..."
Hopefully.
A story person informed me that Richard Ross, the production honcho across Riverside Drive on the Main Lot, is looking at animated projects in early development as they progress and has said: "If I don't like something at its first stages, I usually don't start liking it more after more development ..."
(Now. How true the Ross quote is, or how accurate, I cannot say. But I know it sure as hell sounds like a studio head's words. But you can judge for yourself.)
We have now compiled the 2010 Wage Survey, which will shortly appear in all its full-length glory in the Peg-Board and on the TAG website. But we wanted to preview a few highlights for you while the figures dance brightly in our heads. (Please note that the first dollar figures are wages for 2010, while the second sums are 2009's salaries.) ...
** Wage Survey **
2010 wkly earnings -- 2009 wkly earnings
Stry Edtrs (weekly) -- $2500 -- $2312.50
Writers (weekly) -- $2500 -- $2,572.50
Directors (f) -- $3,054.55 -- $3,284.14
Directors (tv) -- $2,500 -- $2,500
Timng Dirctrs -- $1,830 -- $1,900
Stry Artst (f) -- $2,273.68 -- $2,500
Prdctn Brd (tv) -- $1,900 -- $1,800
Revsnsts -- $1,575.09 -- $1,600
Chrctr Layout -- $1,677 -- $1,811
Bckgrnd layout -- $1,900 -- $1,750
Viz Dvlpmnt -- $2,115.38 -- $1,818.18
Chrctr Dsgnrs -- $1,790.14 -- $1,737
Tech Drctrs -- $2,000 -- $1,790
Riggers -- $2,120 -- $1,642
Lighters -- $1,672.73 -- $1,649.09
Viz Effcts -- $2,152 -- $2,500
3D Cmpstrs -- $1,936.84 -- $2,000
3D Anmtrs -- $1,565.82 -- $1,700
Effx Anmntrs -- $1,818.18 -- $1,640.05
For those of you new to the party, we initiated the TAG wage survey back in the 1990s after a background artist suggested it, and have mailed out yearly survey forms to members ever since.
A few notes re the above: Response rates range from 14% (errgh) to 40% (much better.) Although the survey mostly takes in signator studios, there are a number of non-union shops included because a number of members work for those places.
Last point: We will be putting up the complete survey results in a few days, including unit rates for board artists and writers. So stay tuned.
Herewith a couple of animation drawings by animator Ray Patterson, for the short Flirty Birdy (circa 1945).
Ray Patterson began his career at Charles Mintz in the late 1920s. (You can view some of Ray's Mintz-era artwork here, courtesy of ASIFA.) In 1940, he went to work at Disney, where he animated on Fantasia, Dumbo and a clutch of shorts.
In 1941, Ray departed Disney after a job action that unionized the studio. He spent the next twenty years working at M-G-M, then another thirty animating and directing television cartoons. He retired as a Hanna-Barbera Vice-President in 1993.
(Ordinarily we would crop and tweak the images above, but ordinarily our Photoshop software works. Apologies for the raw pictures, but the hungry blog must be servied.)
Gnomon top-kick Alex Alvarez explains that Gnomon is innocent of exploiting student labor:
...Gnomon is NOT a vfx vendor marketing our services to producers. We do not have a website or a producer trying to bring in work ...
Regarding Green Lantern and Fringe, these two jobs were flukes that represent about six weeks of work over the past nine months. As we had just started the studio to work on Plus Minus, I figured I'd put the job through the studios so that students there could get some exposure to the kind of work I do. This was really just a few weeks and the students who worked on it have since graduated and are now at Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, ILM, Gentle Giant, etc. Fringe was the same thing as I have a relationship with Bad Robot. Another fluke that just lasted a couple weeks ......
So we got that, everybody? Alex doesn't run a studio where Gnomon students work for free, except for when he does. If the work, you know, drops into his lap.
(Frankly, this long-winded explanation of how Mr. Alvarez is not in the business of "doing this kind of thing" while confessing that he does indeed do this kind of thing, is bewildering.
You can't say "I don't rob banks!" if at the same time you're admitting that you knocked off a small Wells Fargo branch in Panorama City because it was A) just kind of there and B) was really just a "happy accident."
Where we come from, that still counts as a bank heist. Or are we missing something?)
But it's certainly good to know that Gnomon Studios doesn't exploit student labor.
Much.
(Add On: Alex says students won't be doing any more production work. Let's hope that's correct.)
These folks need to learn the glories of free trade.
China is opposed to importing a large number of foreign cartoons because the move would hinder its domestic animation industry, said a senior official with the country's top TV and film watchdog.
The purpose of introducing foreign cartoons is to learn from their strengths, such as creativity and technique, said Jin Delong, director of the publicity and administration department of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). But importing too many will hamper the development of Chinese animation, he said.
I'm sorry, but these people aren't going to get anywhere if they behave like 19th-century Republicans*. Because owning a trillion dollars of our bonds might not be enough. They'll need to open their borders and ports to the bracing winds of international commerce.
* 1857 -- Democrats lowered tariffs further. An economic panic hit soon thereafter, precipitating a fall-off in imports in the wake of the recession that followed. Government revenues plummeted by 30 percent. In response, the nascent Republican Party called for higher tariffs ...
New York magazine tells us whyDespicable Me came through like gangbusters.
... Despicable Me's giant opening is doubly shocking when you consider where it was just a month ago. Vulture obtained one firm's tracking numbers, and on June 16th, only 57% of people polled had general awareness of the film (when told the title, they recognized it), and only 26% expressed definite interest. These are not encouraging numbers for a big summer movie one month prior to opening, and some box office watchers started writing its obit early. But then Universal paired its trailer up with the behemoth Toy Story 3, and the numbers started rising. Posters ran everywhere, focusing less on the despicable main character (voiced by Steve Carell) and more on his little green minions.
It was a wise move; these little guys not only made a far better hook than Carell's hook-nosed Gru, but they also likely created a positive connection in people's minds with the tiny three-eyed green martians in Toy Story 3. Soon, kids recognized them on sight, and the tracking numbers quickly began to climb ...
When in doubt, hitch your wagon to Pixar. (Genius, I tells ya. Pure genius.)
Added to which, thick-witted news outlets were calling Despicable Me "the new Disney feature." That was probably useful ....
... No. 2 on the weekend was "Shrek Forever After" in 3D, which took first place in 16 of its 17 new markets on the weekend, grossing $56.2 million overall from 7,022 venues in 47 territories. Foreign cume for the fourth and presumably final title in the "Shrek" franchise stands at $210 million so far, with openings due this week in four new markets, including Mexico and Belgium. ...
To date, Shrek Forever After has a worldwide cume of $443.7 million ...
Then there's that other 3-D animated film currently making the rounds.
... "Toy Story 3" ... took the weekend's third spot with $39.1 million derived from 6,992 venues in 39 territories. Overseas gross total for the animation threequel stands at $213.1 million extracted from a bit more than half of the international marketplace. ...
It would seem to be a foregone conclusion that both of these features are going to gross north of $500 million each from the planet's far-flung theatres.
TIME'S Richard Corliss explaining some of the creative origins of Despicable Me (with Steve Carell talking about it up above. I'll wager you didn't know it was a Disney movie, eh?):
... [Chris Meledandri] took Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, the Horton screenwriters, to expand on an idea by Spanish animator Sergio Pablos. Meledandri handed the directing chores to Blue Sky veteran Chris Renaud and the French animator Pierre Coffin. The movie was developed by this Spanish-Franco-American team.
That explains the movie's Euro feel: its lithe simplicity of line, its occasionally noirish palette, its pointy rather than round character shapes. ...
Almost every company that jumped into the hand-drawn feature game in the mid-nineties flamed out. Yet a decade and a half later, many plunge into CGI features and triumph ....
10:00-11:00 Marvel X-Men— Following Second Coming, Marvel's merry mutants are unable to catch a quick breather. As Curse of the Mutants begins, there's no telling what the vampires have in store for the X-Men...or is there? You've got questions & these people have answers! [... etcetera ...]
... [T]he Pixar wizards are so good they've managed to obscure the fact they've been making the same movie over and over again for the last 15 years.
To reveal this secret, I have obtained a copy of the top-secret Pixar plot generator ...
The San Francisco Chronicle offers a digital photo album of the Gods who reside up there at the crest of the American Olympus. They were all, it seems, at an extra-special annual event in the piney woods a few days ago:
Investment bank Allen & Co. is once again hosting its rich white guy media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Attendees include Google cofounder Larry Page, News Corp king Rupert Murdoch, Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, and whole bunch of other people who flew in on their own jets. ...
London's Cartoon Museum wants to remind Brits of their teevee cartoon heritage:
... [It] has just launched a show that celebrates classic British children’s animation. "Toy Tales" showcases some of Britain’s favourite animations over the last fifty years – from the Clangers, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog and Bagpuss through Roobarb and Custard, Morph, Basil the Brush, the Snowman and Father Christmas to Wallace and Gromit, Fireman Sam and Peppa Pig. ...
Last of all, the L.A. Times pointed out a few days ago that though Shrek Forever After has been a bit of an under-achiever at home, the story is considerably different overseas:
... In France, it had the biggest ever opening for a DreamWorks film, slightly ahead of “Shrek the Third,” with $11.7 million. In Great Britain, it took in a healthy $13.1 million and it also had good starts in South Korea, Hong Kong and Austria. ...
Although it has a steep hill to climb to hit the $479 million and $476 million international grosses of the last two “Shrek” movies, “Forever After” still has a shot, particularly with potentially lucrative markets such as Italy, Japan, Mexico and Spain left to launch ...
Have a restful Sunday.
Add On: The Hollywood Reporter speculates about a Katzenberg-Murdoch meetup in Sun Valley:
... DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeff Katzenberg and Rupert Murdoch: We also spotted those two walking through Sun Valley together on Wednesday afternoon. Maybe just a friendly catch-up chat among moguls, but Wall Street has long wondered whether DWA may leave its current distribution deal with Paramount early. It runs through 2012, but DWA can end it with six months notice in 2011 -- meaning starting right around now. News Corp.'s Fox has its Blue Sky Studio, which currently turns out about one animated movie per year ("Ice Age," the upcoming "Rio"). Arguably, it could get a little crowded to add in a potential two DWA movies per year, but not undoable. Of course, Katzenberg has said he is happy with the Paramount relationship. So, maybe DWA just enjoys being popular and having us mention a public flirt with other distributors. And hey, looking popular could also help DWA get better terms with Paramount if they re-up ...
The Nikkster informs us that Universal and Chris Meladandri's Illumination Entertainment have themselves a hit:.
... Sources are telling me that early North American box office numbers show that Universal Pictures is going to enjoy something it hasn't had in a very long time: a big hit film. That's because rival studios say that weeks of great parent-kid family tracking for Despicable Me 3D today is translating into "amazing" attendance of $22 million for what could be a $55M-$60M weekend opening despite having two other 3D family films in the marketplace. ...
Universal's last animated feature Curious George ran up a total gross of $60 million after several weeks in the marketplace. DM appears to be doing almost as well in its opening weekend, and gives Hollywood its fourth cartoon hit in six months: Two from DreamWorks Animation, one from Pixar, and now one from Illumination Entertainment-Universal. ...
Add On: The Reporter weighs in with figures for Friday:
Universal's 3D animated feature "Despicable Me" -- a potential boxoffice champ this weekend -- proved pretty lovable for moviegoers in its first day of release on Friday.
The family comedy rung up a nifty $21.7 million during its first day in release. That topped the daily rankings and put "Despicable" on track for a much better than expected three-day opening of more than $50 million, with Saturday and Sunday matinees certain to bolster its weekend success. ...
Add On Too: Wowee yowee. For its opening weekend, Despicable Me collects way more than originally anticipated:
And while we're at it, there are two DreamWorks Animation Features still in release -- Shrek Forever After at $233.7 million, and How to Train Your Dragon at $216.9 million.
Seeing as this is my inaugural post on the Blog .. Hello all! I'm Steve Kaplan and I've taken the illustrious and honorable Labor Organizer position with our beloved Guild. I am interested in meeting as many of you readers and members as I can. Please drop me a note or stop by the Guild office and say "Hello".
As is expected in my first few weeks here as the Labor Organizer, I've reached out to the artists I've worked with and met in my travels over the past few years. I've encountered a lot of feedback on my new employment; much of which I will be sharing here to both enlighten the group and to gather opinions and reactions. The first topic I was interested in feedback on is the name of our organization.
More than I expected, I hear something like this from visual effects artists:
The Animation Guild will represent us? But, I'm not an animator. I am [modeler, rigger, texture artist, lighter, insert other vfx labor category here] Is there a VFX Guild?
To this, I always answer the same. "The Guild currently represents visual effects artists as well as traditional animation artists". I know too little about traditional animation to be able to list all the jobs and tasks that it holds. I can certainly expound on what it takes to get CG art from its beginning stages to the screen. I can safely say that both fields have artists whose job isn't to take an object and/or character and move it from one location to another in a series of frames. I can also say that among our membership are artists who perform those tasks for both traditional and CG animation.
Many people I've talked to also don't realize that our Guild changed its name from Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists back in 2002 for the same reason. As the title of the post implies, I agree with W. Shakespeare on this topic. However, I do see the advantage of a proper moniker. It helps identify our organization to the parties that should know of its existence. So, in the interest of better exposure to visual effects artists while not alienating our traditional animation artist brothers and sisters, what would be a good addition to our name? The Animation and Computer Graphics Guild (TACGC)? The Animation and Visual Effects Guild (TAVEG)? I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments.
In your opinion and through your observations....why doesn't animation get the respect/recognition that live action gets across the board? ...
Because the vast majority of Academy voters are tied to the Live Action Village, and they tend to vote (as do many) in favor of fellow villagers.
It used to be worse, screenwriter/producer Niven Busch once told me in the heyday of the Studio System.
"Management expected you to vote for your studio's films. And if you didn't, you weren't a good studio employee ..."
There's probably less of that kind of bloc voting than there once was, but to the larger question of animation features getting "more respect?" don't hold your breath, Mike.
The only difference during my lifetime has been that animation now makes the conglomerates piles of money, to the point where some big live-action players (Spielberg, Jackson, Verbinkski) dabble in it.
This has meant that the genre formerly known as "cartoons" is now allowed to sit at the adults' table, but really. Animation getting more of those little gold men in the mainstream movie categories?
Won't be happening. Because 'toons are still, at the end of the awards' season, the bastard step-children of the movie industry.
Despicable Me from Chris Meladandri's Illumination Entertainment opens later today.
Rotten Tomatoes currently gives the Universal release an 80%-plus fresh rating, although Ken Turan of the L.A. Times is less than ecstatic ...
... [W]atching "Despicable Me" can be something of a chore, especially when you factor in a penchant for what the MPAA ratings board characterizes as "rude humor." ....
The trailers I've seen of the movie have all been amusing. But whether DM takes off in the DreamWorks or Pixar manner with its European-flavored animation will be answered by the end of its opening weekend.
My friend the Wise Old Animation Producer told me two weeks ago, "If it takes in thirty-five or forty million, Universal and Meladandri will be ecstatic ..."
..."Despicable Me" looks like it will perform well compared with other recent animated films that aren't sequels and don't come from established studios like DreamWorks Animation or Pixar. "The Princess and the Frog" from Disney Animation Studios, which has been in a box office slump, opened to $24 million in December, while Sony Pictures Animation's "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" opened to $30 million in September. ...
... "DM" is set to open to about $35 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada, according to people who have seen pre-release audience polling ...
The big green ogre might not be as profitable as earlier incarnations, but Paramount/Viacom isn't complaining.
... PPI said Thursday it has powered past the billion dollar benchmark after a $42.6 million weekend for "Shrek Forever After" across a slew of territories including U.K./Ireland, France, Germany and Korea.
... The final film in the "Shrek" franchise has laughed up an international cume of $140 million to date.
PPI's coffers have also been boosted with a $262 million boxoffice cume to date for the release of DreamWorks Animation's "How To Train Your Dragon." That film is scheduled to roll out in Japan at the beginning of August. ...
Mr. Katzenberg has his detractors (many of them often showing up here), but when you pull off the hat trick of having two animated features in the Top Ten during the same week, you must be doing something right.
The Motion Picture Academy has its new rules for visual effects and animation.
“An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of greater than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.” ...
Uh, okay.
Motion capture, it's not animation. Check.
So, what about motion capture that an animator has reworked so that it flows and doesn't look, you know, "weird?" And does this mean that Snow White, who had a lot of 1930s style motion capture (also known as rotoscope) in her DNA, wouldn't qualify as an animated character?
How do we deal with a character who's 40% motion capture and 60% animation? (More importantly, how do we tally the percentages?)
A few years back, I sat in a meeting hall and listened to the director of Monster House explain how they began the film with motion capture, but reworked all the raw data and it ended up "about 60-70% animated."
So I guess my final question is, where is the dividing line?
Ms. Magazine apparently has issues with Toy Story 3.
Toy Story 3 opens on a woman-empowerment high, with Mrs. Potato-Head displaying mad train-robbing skills and cowgirl Jessie skillfully steering her faithful horse Bullseye in the ensuing chase. And that’s the end of that: From there on, the film displays the same careless sexism as its predecessors. ...
Pixar has not left its male-heterocentric scripts behind. Nor has it moved beyond the “everyone is white and middle class” suburban view of the world. Perhaps we should expect no more from Pixar, especially now that Disney, the animated instiller of gender and other norms (a great documentary on this is Mickey Mouse Monopoly),now owns the studio.
Poor unenlightened me. I know that Pixar's upper reaches are pretty much a boys' club, but I sat through the whole damn movie and never picked up on any of this.
The subtleties of the male-hetero-centric script flew right over my under-powered cranial cavity ....
And then I read Danielle Bean at the National Catholic Register, who thought that Ms. was ... uh ... full of it.
I have to say: Did we watch the same movie? Gimme a break, Ms.
Here’s Wilson’s “evidence” of Pixar misogyny, along with my commentary:
Andy’s mother is a nag.
No, she’s not. She’s a busy, loving mom wrestling with the complicated emotions involved with letting go of her son as he heads off to college. She gives her kids a lot of direction, just like every good mom I know.
Only one out of the seven new characters is female.
This count actually misses the most important and sweetest new female character—Bonnie. She’s a wise, fun, and loving female protagonist. If Pixar made a “Toy Story 4” starring Bonnie, I would pay to see it. ...
There is, of course, the small point that every Pixar feature is male-driven (both on and behind the screen), but you could say the same for most major live-action films. Hollywood was finally shamed into giving an Oscar to a female director after eighty-two years, but the reality is:
Men run most of the industry.
Men call most of the creative shots.
And things aren't likely to change very much anytime soon.
Happily, Pixar is finally giving Brenda Chapman the opportunity to be Emeryville's first woman director, but Jeffrey Katzenberg broke the gender barrier over a decade ago with Prince of Egypt, Spirit and Shrek.
Cartoonland is still, as it has been since Farmer Alfalfa and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a boy-driven enterprise.
My morning was spent at Warner Bros. Animation, down the street at the Warner Ranch.
The place is busier than it's been in a couple of years (have I mentioned this previously?) There are so many shows and artists that WBA now occupies four different buildings -- two of them actual multi-story structures, the others collections of double-wide trailers.
I had a long talk with a board artist on one of the super hero shows who admitted:
"I pulled some late nighters on my first two scripts for Blank, but I like to see my wife and my kid, so I'm not doing that now. I've gotten more adjusted and comfortable with the characters and show, and I figured out ways to get more efficient and save time. My director thought the last board I did was my best, but it was the one I spent less time on.
"When you work fourteen-hour days, six or seven days a week, you work a lot slower and the quality of the work goes down. I also work faster by drawing the boards in Photo Shop and importing them into Toon Boom ..."
The high point of my morning was getting a look at the three new Coyote and Road Runner shorts that animation veteran Matt O'Callaghan has directed.
They are each three minutes long, designed as eye candy to be placed in front of three different "family oriented" features. And they are terrific. They are also ...
[Spoiler Ahead]
... well-realized reboots of the old shorts, wherein the coyote chases the bird in new and interesting ways, and meets disaster each time.
(Now you know the plots. Sue me.)
I sat in Mr. Callaghan's office and watched one cartoon in 3-D, and the other cartoons in non 3-D. They are done up in artful CGI and saturated colors, and the updates and high techery decorating the productions work real well. (The cartoons were animated by Reel Effects in Texas.)
I think they are going to compete nicely with, or maybe overshadow, the Warners' features they accompany. We'll see.
Maybe it isn't my imagination about more cartoon action on the teevee side. Because new players are jumping into the mix.
Production powerhouse Reveille is getting into the TV animation business ...
The producer of such shows as NBC's "The Biggest Loser" ... has entered into a first-look deal with Mechem Media ... Reveille will work with Mechem to create animated fare in the signature style of Hanna-Barbera ... First on the slate is a comedy titled "The Gloomers," about the unluckiest family in the world who happen to live next door to the luckiest family in the world. ...
Yesterday a story artist said to me: "This business goes in cycles. I don't mind the ups, but you really have to be creative to power through the downs. But what the hell can you do besides wait it out?"
TAG's goal is two-fold: to help people weather the bad times, and to organize the new non-signator studios.
Today I worked through Cartoon Network (up against the brow of the Verdugo Mountains) and Disney Television Animation at Frank Wells.
At both places, artists told me they could see that the t.v. animation business is growing and getting busier. The Mouse has Fish Hooks, Inspector Oso, Phineas and Ferb, Jake and the Neverland Pirates plus additional episodes of Mickey' Clubhouse to keep staff busy, Cartoon Network has a half dozen projects, and Warners employs sizable crews on various series and direct-to-video features.
Compared to, say, twenty-four months ago, the conglomerates' studios are veritable beehives. But that's not all ...
There is also Diz Co.'s recent acquisition of Marvel, and the happy prospect of more comic book properties finding their way to animated glory.
"Marvel is very bullish on animation and has fully funded its third 52-episode series," [Eric Rollman, President of Marvel Animation], says. "In the past, we never did that and the great thing about being part of the Disney family is that the company is made up of animators. They respect it and understand that it's animation that drives consumer products, and so our strategic business is the same." ...
"We're a 360-degree entertainment company and we're concentrating on what Marvel does best, which is managing our brands. We understand our characters and have several thousand in the universe that in some way interconnect. So to build these integrated universes but at the time keep them separate is something of an art form ..."
Some years back, when Marvel was starting to roll out direct-to-video animated features, TAG organized the artists working on them, and I got to know Eric Rollman at the time we held the NLRB vote and then -- a short while later -- contract negotiations.
Sadly, Eric let me know that Marvel was operating on a shoe-string and they "just didn't have any money" for better salaries and benefits. More sadly, we were never able to reach agreement on a contract, and the crew was reluctant to strike.
But that was then, and this is now.
Marvel isn't a struggling comic book company anymore, but a subsidiary of the Mighty Mouse. So everything's good. And we look forward to working with Eric R. and the Marvel Group in the future. Nothing could please us more.
Setting aside the worldwide love of blood-suckers, our friendly neighborhood ogre did quite well for himself.
... No. 2 on the weekend was DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek Forever After" in 3D, which opened in nine territories and took the number one spot in all of them. Leading the fresh markets were the U.K. ($13.5 million from 539 venues) and France ($11.7 million from 952 locations, a record opening for a DreamWorks title in the market) with the 3D animated movie defying hot weather conditions in each territory.
The film opened No. 1 (via C.J. Entertainment) in Korea at 630 spots drawing $6.3 million. Overall weekend take for the latest "Shrek" was $42.6 million extracted from 4,484 venues in 25 markets. Foreign cume now stands at $137 million. ...
Which means that the latest Shrek has now accumulated $ 359 million around the world ...
And the other animated entry?
Third on the weekend was Pixar/Disney's "Toy Story 3," which grossed $25.5 million from 5,001 screens in 34 territories, with Latin American markets providing $89.3 million or 60% of the film's total overseas take. Mexico alone has provided a market cume of $44.7 million ...
After being released in only 37% of the total international marketplace, the animation threequel in 3D rolled up a total foreign tally of $150.8 million. Worldwide, "Toy Story 3" has accumulated $439.8 million, making it Disney's twelfth biggest animation release ever. ...
A couple clicks down, somebody makes a statement I hear from time to time. I was going to answer it in comments, but I've opted to do a tutorial here ...
Commenter: ... It's common that Animation Artists are working 10-14 hour days without overtime at union shops because the union has no balls.
Me: Since you apparently live in dark ignorance (whoever you are), allow me to throw light on this subject ...
Over the years, I've had various union artists complain to me about working overtime without pay. To each one I've said:
"I will file a grievance today. Just say the word."
Almost all have said no.
And unfortunately, here's the way it works: TAG can initiate a grievance for unpaid overtime without an artist's cooperation, but TAG can't win it.
Here's why.
When I get into the arbitration hearing, I will be alone. And the arbitrator (the judge and jury) will say to me "Where's the grievant?"
And I will have to answer "He refused to come."
And the arbitrator will say "This isn't good. We need his testimony."
And my response will be "I know we do. But he's not here to give it. He didn't want the company to know who he was, so he won't be testifying."
To which the arbitrator will respond: "Okay then. I guess we're done. Being as how there's no evidence regarding the unpaid o.t., I find for the company."
So we clear now? Without the testimony -- or equivalent evidence -- regarding the uncompensated overtime, it's a tough grievance to win.
It's a contractual holiday, I've been catching up on my recreational sleeping, so here's some new Disney art (cribbed from other corners of the internets) of the oncoming CGI feature formerly known as Rapunzel.
I've had people tell me (as Floyd Norman has mentioned here in comments) that the Tangled preview hasn't gotten huge responses from theatre audiences.
Well, the trailer amused me (though I cringed at Rapunzel's line: "Best. Day. Ever!" It's beyond cliche and why the hell do we need it?)
I think the picture will perform well, despite the long development time and despite some of the brickbats that have been chucked at it. For my money, it combines the best of CG with the best of early nineties Diseny hand-drawn features. (My caveat: I haven't a clue how the story plays ... or even exactly what the story is.)
Insiders tell me the story is good; insiders tell me the story is "so-so." But I don't think insiders are necessarily the best judges. They're too damn close to the product to see the thing objectively, and they often change their opinions over time.
"Girls Drawin' Girls" presents "Sugar & Spice," an art show celebrating the release of their third volume of collected pin-up art titled "Girls Drawin Girls: Sugar & Spice, Volume III."
The evening will feature original pin-up artwork on display and for sale, burlesque performances by the ladies of Victory Variety Hour, figure drawing models provided by Gallery Girls, and tunes by DJ Marlowe. Refreshments will be provided. A $5 donation is requested at the door to help go towards the evenings' performers.
Artwork on display will feature pin-up pieces from Volume III, as well as original artwork by some of the most talented ladies working in animation, film and graphic design today!
In addition to copies of "Girls Drawin Girls: Sugar & Spice, Vol III" being sold, Girls Drawin Girls will be selling their past books, "Girls Drawin Girls; A Girl in Time, Vol I" and "Once Upon a Girl, Vol II," art prints and other pin-up themed merchandise.
About Girls Drawin Girls:
Girls Drawin Girls was founded in 2006 by Simpsons veteran Melody Severns and storyboard artist Anne Walker as a way to showcase women artists working in the male-dominated industry of animation. Together, they felt it was time for these talented women to demonstrate their creative abilities and artistic interpretations of female sexuality by re-defining the art of the pin-up.
Since its conception, the group has published three volumes of pin-up art and grown to over 90 active members who work professionally in various entertainment industries.
The group provides collaborative projects for its artists (such as book collections, group art shows, and opportunities to participate in charity art events such as the Pasadena Chalk Festival), in addition to promoting each member's individual artistic endeavors through cross-promotion and marketing prints, original artwork and other art-related merchandise.
About Gallery 839:
Gallery 839 is overseen by The Animation Guild (TAG 839). Located in the Union's office headquarters building, Gallery 839 focuses on the work of artists in the animation industry, highlighting their fine art backgrounds apart from their day-to-day jobs in animation.
Gallery 839 hosts monthly shows of TAG members' personal art, with a gala opening reception the first or second Friday of each month. The main goal for these shows is to help give TAG members a venue to show their personal artistry. The talent of the Animation Guild's membership runs deep and wide, and the purpose of Gallery 839 is to share that talent with both the membership and the rest of the community.
TAG 839 Headquarters/ Gallery 839
1105 N. Hollywood Way
Burbank, CA 91505
For sales or inquiries, please contact Girls Drawin Girls at (818) 434-6900.
Here's the way t.v. animation development happens*:
1) Scripts for a cartoon series are written and handed off to in-house board artists.
2) Boards come back. New animation exec says: "These things are too costly. ... I know! Let's freelance them out!"
3) Boards are freelanced out. Come back. General reaction is "These things look like shit!" (Of course they do. The freelancers are doing the boards quick and dirty so they can make enough money to maintain their "going rates.")
4) An exec says: "Let's hire some in-house board revisionists to clean up these shitty boards." So revisionists are brought on staff to improve the shitty boards.
5) Another exec suggests bringing board artists in the studio "to improve quality." Management agrees this is a fine idea and so hires in-house board artists.
6) The consensus soon is: "Heey. The production boards are improved!" A little time goes by and a new executive says: ""These things cost too much!" ...
Rinse and repeat.
* With the spread of the ubiquitous Cintiq, this pattern is changing. Now in-house production board artists are starting to build and time their own digital animatic story reels (along with partially animating them.)
The New York Times details how a heavy-duty kids cable network is moving to your neighborhood AMC.
... The reboot of Nickelodeon Movies came over the weekend with “The Last Airbender,” about a boy who can control air, fire, earth and water and embarks on a quest to save the world. Johnny Depp — the biggest family star around — is the headline name for the animated “Rango,” set for release on March 4. After that is a splashy new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” produced by Michael Bay, the director of the “Transformers” movies. ...
For all the majors now, the movie and t.v. biz is about extending and maximizing "brands." Making a good movie is fine, but really beside the point:
The model is Walt Disney Studios, which has successfully moved Disney Channel programming like “Hannah Montana” to the big screen. Adam Goodman, president of the Paramount Film Group, said he wanted to stretch the Nickelodeon brand to include racier content — just as Disney did with PG-13-rated movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”
... (One example of what Paramount is trying to avoid: “The Princess and the Frog,” the Disney animated movie that fizzled at the box office in part because of cool interest from older children and adults.) ...
Once upon a time, what we would call "the major film studios" had specific house styles that reflected the tastes, points-of-few and creative chops of their founders. Disney product would never have been mistaken for Warner Bros. cartoons or -- for that matter -- the kinds of entertainment that the Fleischer brothers turned out.
But in the age of the conglomerate, all of those things have blown away like topsoil in a hurricane. Now it's about building franchises and cross-pollinating different corporate divisions. About maximizing profits.
The days of making a ninety- minute feature for the sake of that animated feature are ... long over. Please don't hold your breath waiting for them to come back.
Ilene Woods, who provided the speaking and singing voice for the title character in Walt Disney's classic 1950 animated feature " Cinderella," has died. She was 81.
Woods, a Calabasas resident, died of causes related to Alzheimer's disease Thursday at a nursing and rehabilitation center in Canoga Park ...
Hayao Miyazaki wrote the script for the film based on Norton’s novel. Directing is 36-year old Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who served as a key animator on Miyazaki’s classics Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away. He’s the youngest feature director in Studio Ghibli history.
Walt Disney Co said on Thursday it has acquired startup iPhone app developer Tapulous, as the company continues its push into mobile games. ...
Tapulous struck gold with the music game "Tap Tap Revenue," which was one of the early hits on Apple's iPhone.
Tapulous says it has more than 35 million users, and "Tap Tap Revenge" has been played more than 1 billion times. The company also makes games for the iPad ....
Some Southern California art/animation schools go belly up, and lawsuits follow.
LOS ANGELES - The owners of Southern California art and design schools were sued for fraud Tuesday by dozens of immigrant families who claim they were lured into paying tuition for courses that were never completed because the company folded. ...
The suit alleges that from 2005 to 2009, the couple took some $1.5 million in tuition from 77 families for admission to their Montecito Fine Arts Inc. schools in suburban Monrovia, Arcadia and Brea. ...
The lawsuit alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation and violation of state laws. It seeks unspecified damages and asks the court to rescind the school contracts and permanently bar the couple from unfair business practices.
The suit claims the couple took prepaid tuition even though they knew the campuses were in financial trouble. The schools went bankrupt last year ...
(There is, unfortunately, too much of this kind of stuff going on.)
... Without [the dog] there my eye gets "stuck" in that area where the dog used to be, it can't quite make the transition over to the stagecoach, and my eye starts to slide out the bottom of the painting. And without the dog the picture becomes too symmetrical to me...now the top of the picture is an empty blank area and so is the bottom ....
Despicable Me is the next animated feature out of the gate, and leading voice Steve Carrell talks about it.
Q: In most of the characters you play, we see you as this great deadpan comedian who’s so good at playing it straight and making it funny. Is this a different side of your sense of humor we get to see where you do a crazy voice and go wild?
Steve Carell: It’s fun to go wild and it’s interesting when you’re trying to create a character in animation. It’s really a communal effort. It’s not like I would just come in with a singular idea and start doing it. I saw the artwork. I talked to the directors and the writers and got a sense for what they wanted. And then, what’s great about it is that you do have the license to just go for it and you trust that the editors and the directors will put in what’s necessary. I felt like my job description on this was to just give as wide a range as possible – do things small or smallish and then sort of blow the doors off on other takes because you never know what they’re going to need in any given moment in terms of the narrative of the movie ....
DC Comics is already doing a second print run after more than 60,000 copies were snapped up. There will be 100,000 in all for the issue. Downloads of the free issue preview for Wonder Woman #600 though DC Comic's one-week-old digital publishing app have been "phenomenal"
We'll end as we began, with a DreamWorker. Jeffrey Katzenberg recalls for Business Week the non-joy of getting canned:
Sixteen years ago, Michael Eisner called me into his office and fired me. ...
Disney (DIS) put out a press release. When I got back to my office an hour later, I got three calls. The first was from Bill Gates. The second was from Tom Murphy, CEO of CapCities/ABC. The third was from Steven Spielberg and Bob Zemeckis, who were vacationing together in Jamaica. They called to congratulate me on getting fired. They thought it was hilarious. ...
As rockets go off and family canines cower under beds, we find two animated features rolling along in the Top Domestic Ten. As the Nikkster reports:
3. Starting its third week is Disney's Toy Story 3 with $10.5 Friday from 4,028 plays. That's probably a 3D-aided $48M for the 4-day holiday weekend to pass $300M. The pic's cume after 18 days should reach a whopping $306M.
9. Shrek Forever After 3D (DWA/Par) Week 7 [957 Theaters] Friday $1.4M, Est 4-Day Holiday $4M, Est Cume $235 ...
The latest teeny bop vampire movie will be dominating this weekend. But two animated features raking in millions isn't bad. (Shrek currently has a multiple of its opening weekend of around 3.3. Toy Story's opening clearly took a chunk out of S4's domestic gross.)
Add On: The New York Times tells us the winners of the Gala Holiday Box Office:
“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” drew an estimated $161 million out of North American theaters in its first five days of release, a spectacular if not quite record-breaking result. ... “The Last Airbender,” which opened Thursday on Paramount’s Nickelodeon Movies banner, was a solid No. 2 for the weekend with about $40.7 million for a domestic total of about $53.2 million. ... “Toy Story 3” ... was third with about $30.2 million for a new total of $289 million
“Grown Ups” (Sony Pictures Entertainment) was fourth with about $18.5 million for a new domestic total of $77.1 million. ... “Knight and Day,” ... was fifth with about $10.2 million ...
Today a chunk of my morning was whiled away at Hasbro/Starz Media, located next to the Bob Hope Non-international Airport ...
Hasbro's animation staff, working on G.I. Joe and The Transformers has now made the move from Beverly Hills to sun-kissed Burbank. A veteran who shall remain nameless walked up to me as I walked through the doors and said:
"This place is one of the best working experiences I've had in the business. We have to put in the hours, and some people work late, but it's been good ..."
Smart ass that I am, I rejoined that it was only because Hasbro hasn't been in the cartoon business long. "Just give them time," I said. "They'll learn how to squeeze employees with the best of them."
The "Starz Media Building" a big, three-story structure just north of the airport's runways, now houses Film Roman, Hasbro, and Starz Media corporate offices. Hasbro occupies a third of the square footage inside Starz Media, with administrative offices on one floor and animation production on another. The company completely blew out the existing interiors and replaced them with their own.
(I'm informed that Dave Vs., a newer comedy episodic created in another part of the building, is a joint Hasbro-Film Roman show.)
And of course work on the Yellow Family continues in the Film Roman section, and the Marvel episodics are also happening ("The budgets are tight, but we find ways to make things work.") One new hire mentioned that more of her friends are finding employment, she's now employed, and things seem to be looking up. I answered that was my impression of the t.v. animation biz too, but it's always a "Three steps forward, two steps back" kind of deal.
Last tidbit: Several artists I encountered at lunch let me know that the balance of Disney TV Animation is moving from the Frank Wells Building on Disney's Burbank lot to the fabled Sonora Building in neighborhing Glendale, with Disney Toons shifting next door to a facility that now houses a training center for entertainment industry workers.
"They're going to be moving TV Animation into the upstairs space, and getting rid of all the expensive cubicles Sharon Morril had put in. I just hope the don't get rid of the chairs and eating area ..."
The artists weren't happy with the prospect of losing their proximity to the Burbank studio commissary. But I say, in times like these, we all have to sacrifice, no?
...{T]he Pixar Animation Studios sequel has posted surprisingly frigid box-office results in Russia, one of the hottest international markets for movies, especially for animated films. The critically acclaimed computer-animated sequel generated only $4.8 million in ticket sales through its first 10 days at Russian theaters
I don't think Robert Iger is going to be able to sleep nights.
Yes, we all love us the space movies, but this is nevertheless beneficial to actual flesh-and-blood human beings, I think.
A Marin County jury awarded $113,800 in damages against filmmaker George Lucas' company Wednesday for withdrawing a job offer from a San Francisco woman after she disclosed that she was pregnant.
Lucasfilm Ltd. denied discriminating against Julie Veronese, and said it revoked its offer of a 30-day job in 2008 as a manager at Lucas' San Anselmo estate for reasons unrelated to her pregnancy.
But the Superior Court jury, after 2 1/2 days of deliberations in Veronese's lawsuit, found that Lucasfilm had discriminated against her because she was pregnant. Jurors also agreed with Veronese that she had been assured of an ongoing position after a 30-day tryout ....
When this story was pointed out to me today, I (facetiously) said: "Just wait. The Supreme Court will reverse it."
Because actual human beings mostly get short shrift here in Freedom's Land. Our fine corporations now own the keys to Congress, the White House, Supreme Court and the vaults at Fort Knox, so everyone who works for a living gets to stand at the back of the line when the goodies are handed out.
What makes me say things like this? Especially when a Kenyan-Muslim with Communist leanings resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Why, thing's I've observed as Your Faithful Union Rep. For instance:
* A large animation company demanding in writing that its employees not share wage information with each other, even though the demand was illegal.
* Another large company insisting it had the right to lay employees off at its whim, but the employees had no corresponding right to resign from the company.
* Companies badgering employees to work for free, telling them they weren't "team players" unless they did.
What I've discovered over the years is that some companies are more scrupulous about following the law than other companies. Many corporations are happy to push envelopes and cut corners if it increases profit margins. (Perhaps you've noticed this trend in different news reports over the past few years. There's a kind of a theme: "We got away with it last time, we'll get away with it this time too.")
Which is only right, because if there's one thing I firmly believe it's that the folks with most of the money here in the U.S. of A. just don't have enough.
The top 1 percent of families hold half of all non-home wealth.
The middle class’s major assets are their home, liquid assets like checking and savings accounts, CDs and money market funds, and pension accounts. For the average family, these assets make up 84 percent of their total wealth.
The richest 10 percent of families own about 85 percent of all outstanding stocks. They own about 85 percent of all financial securities, 90 percent of all business assets. These financial assets and business equity are even more concentrated than total wealth ...
What's happened, of course, is we've long since become a country that -- in its day-to-day life -- lives by the Golden Rule*. And even then, if the some of the rules prove inconvenient, many of our corporate citizens have few qualms about breaking them.
Nice to see a court rule the other way ... if only until the next court above reverses the ruling.
The latest anime expo shortly hits the Convention Center.
... Since its inception at the San Jose Red Lion Hotel in 1992, the Anime Expo has grown bigger each year. The celebration of Japanese anime and manga now claims the Los Angeles Convention Center as its home, and this year will expand into L.A. Live’s Nokia Theatre, Club Nokia and Nokia Plaza ...
The world premiere of the Japanese movie “Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail” will screen Thursday at 1:30 pm, presented by the creator and artist of the manga series that had inspired the movie, Rei Hiroe.
There are, after all, commercially successful animated features beyond the usual suspects of Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, etc.
It's always useful to dwell on that a bit, in between our ongoing obsessions about Emeryville's next move.
The thoughts and observations of the leaders of The Animation Guild (TAG), Local 839 IATSE. Jason MacLeod is the Business Representative, KC Johnson is the President. Mike Sauer is Assistant to the Business Representative.
This weblog reflects their individual personal opinions and does not necessarily represent the official position of the Animation Guild.
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