Pre Holiday Studio Report

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?

Click here to read entire post

Toys Underperforms in the Motherland

Apparently you can't win them all.

'Toy Story 3' flops in Russia

...{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.

Click here to read entire post

Which Side Would Luke and Han Be On?

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.

* Those that have the gold, make the rules.

Click here to read entire post

Anime in Old L.A.

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.

Click here to read entire post

Tail-of-June Linkage

Links for hump day, starting with Gore V's new trailer for his new -- and first -- animated feature. (It plays like a cartoon to us ...)

It isn't just American animation that prospers in the world marketplace:

The animated adventures of a six-and three-quarter-year-old pig called Olivia, who has inspired an unlikely quasi-feminist movement in the pre-school market, have helped media company Chorion report an 11% rise in annual profits.

Launched in the highly competitive US market last year, Olivia has proved a hit and is now broadcast in 120 countries. Books based on her exploits were publisher Simon & Schuster's most successful licensed character launch last year, shifting over a million copies in America alone ,,.

Mark Kennedy analyzes a western study of "The New School Marm" at The Temple of the Seven Golden Camels:

... There's a nice circular frame for her that keeps your eye moving around her and keeps your eye from sliding out of the edges of the frame. The signs, the lamp, the porch, the horses, the old man, the kid, the dog and the stagecoach all create a circular frame for her. If you cover up the dog you will see how the picture would suffer if he wasn't there...there would be too much of a gap between the sidewalk and the stagecoach and your eye doesn't really bridge the gap, it gets stuck and might slide off the bottom of the page. ...

(The painting reminds me a lot of John Ford's film compositions in My Daughter Darling Clementine, seen below. (See? Hulett can reference old movies that don't have Errol Flynn in them ...)

Jeph Loeb, the new topkick at Marvel, discusses the Disney subsidiary's cartoon portfolio:

... [T]here's three different areas that Marvel is exploring and will continue to work with: the first are the direct-to-DVD animated videos, like Planet Hulk — which I loved. The second are continuing and expanding in the areas of animation, currently they have Super Hero Squad, which is on Cartoon Network, starting in the fall will be Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes on Disney XD, and we're developing Ultimate Spider-Man, also for Disney XD.

There are some projects in animation that we're not ready to talk about, but we're going to be developing and expanding into that arena. Our hope is to bring Marvel Animation up to the quality and notoriety of the publishing and movie division. We're now part of the legacy of Disney, where animation is king, and it's our responsibility to up our game and create something that sets Marvel Animation apart from everything else that's out there. At least that's our challenge and our hope ...

Nickelodeon and the National Football League partner on new toons:

[The] short-form series [is] called "Rush Zone: Guardians of the Core" for Nicktoons. ... The 22-episode series is based on the NFL Rush Zone, the league's online world for kids. The series will be comprised of two- to five-minute shorts featuring a kid as the hero, and feature all 32 NFL teams and the voices of NFL players and coaches. ... "Rush Zone" will air weekly to coincide with the upcoming football season from September through February ...

Let's see DreamWorks with its celebrity voice-casting top this:

Croatian president Ivo Josipovic's voice features in a Pixar short being shown with the record-breaking "Toy Story 3"

... The radio message is about how "the most beautiful things are those that are still unknown to us, so we should not be afraid of the unknown but rather investigate it," Josipovic said.

And speaking of Pixar, Toy Story 3 has enabled its older siblings to resurge on the video sales charts:

... "Toy Story 2" was No. 3 in both overall disc sales and in Blu-ray Disc sales for the week, while the original "Toy Story" was No. 5 on First Alert and No. 4 on the Blu-ray Disc chart ...

We'll end with a brightly-colored super hero:

... Warner Brothers Home Video has revealed that "Green Lantern: Emerald Knights" is on their upcoming slate of animated projects. The new animated film was hinted at earlier this month during the Cartoon Network upfronts that also announced the upcoming "Green Lantern" animated series.... "Green Lantern: Emerald Knights" is expected to coincide with the summer 2011 release of director Martin Campbell's live action "Green Lantern" ...

We do love us the "synergy" that Hollywood always employs to boost new franchises. Have yourself a productive Thursday and Friday.

Click here to read entire post

Interning For Occasional Fun ... And No Profit

Once again on the subject of the Free Work Brigade, the L.A. Times mentions this:

... Federal and state wage-and-hour regulations typically govern internships. And, while enforcement of these rules has not been a priority for state and federal labor officials [You think?] there has been some new attention directed to this topic in recent weeks.

David Balter, acting chief counsel at California's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, said, "We are well aware that there are a lot of abuses of internship programs where it's not really being done to provide a skill or benefit to the intern, but is basically being done for cheap or free labor."

... Basically, those criteria say training must be similar to that given in an educational environment and must be for the benefit of the intern. The interns must not displace other workers and must be closely supervised.

Internships can be both beneficial and educational, no doubt about it. But they can also screw over twenty-somethings working gratis on projects at animation and visual effects facilities. Take this recent example that showed up in our e-mail in-box:

... I talked to the intern who works here. He is no longer a student and did work on X for about 10 weeks. He said the students didn't like it because they had to PAY to work on the show.

I told him that there might be a case for them to get paid but he was hesitant because he doesn't want to burn bridges. He said it would be awesome to get paid for the work he did. He thinks it would be alot of money. ...

Let's sort this out. You slave away for free, and state officials and the Federales never come around to enforce their own rules, so you figure:

"Okay, I worked for nothing on this project but the supervisor likes me so maybe I get a paying job on the next thing that comes through, then it will all be worth it ..."

Or maybe not. Because companies aren't supposed to have people work on profit-generating movies for nothing, yet they do so, again and again. And when they get away with the practice, they tend to do the "free work" strategy more. I once strolled into a small animation house where an "intern" was animating a commercial for the princely sum of nothing. When I pointed this out to a supervisory person, his response was, "Ahm, well, yeah. Maybe we should address that, huh?"

This time around, I contacted an attorney, and detailed the problem. He wrote back:

... I am willing to bet company didn't comply with requirements for unpaid interns. We could potentially do a minimum and overtime case but need at least one person's name for the complaint which might qualify for class action though the group is small. ...

And therein lies the conundrum. To make a case, you need to get people to come forward, but most don't want to get labeled as troublemakers and so suffer the abuses in silence. They are, after all, reaching for the next rung on the career ladder and don't want to jeopardize any chances.

It's a totally human response to a crappy situation, but ultimately (we think) the wrong response. Because the longer the situation is allowed to go on, the crappier it will get.

Click here to read entire post

Here and There ... Good Guys Win

This is pleasant to note:

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the duo behind Sony Animation's hit "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," are in final negotiations to write and direct the Lego movie, which is set up at Warner Bros ...

One winning component that convinced Lego and Warners that the duo was up to the task was their work on "Cloudy." They took a 32-page children's book, developed a story and characters and used their unique sense of humor to turn it into a family movie that also played to adults.

During Cloudy's production, I ran across Mr. Lord and Mr. Miller during my walk-throughs. I always found them to be engaged, high-spirited guys.

They clearly brought a lot to the party because at the time they rolled onto the scene, Sony Pictures Animation had been wrestling with the property for a long time and the story crew was ... dispirited. (I know this because I used to listen to the complaints whenever I breezed through the Culver City studio.)

I'm heartened that nice guys don't always finish at the rear of the pack. Congratulations on the new gig.

Click here to read entire post

So ... Another Animation Studio?

That was the first thing that popped into my brain when I skimmed across this:

Marvel Entertainment has created a small-screen division, Marvel Television, and named Eisner-winning comic and TV writer Jeph Loeb as its head.

Loeb, ... will oversee the translation of Marvel's popular characters and stories to the television medium, in both live-action and animation formats. Loeb will also oversee the development and distribution of live-action, animated and direct-to-DVD series.

Right now, Marvel is doing its animated series at Starz Media-Film Roman in Burbank (where there's a TAG contract). In the recent past, it was producing direct-to-video animated features out of a small studio in North Hollywood. (A few years back, TAG won an NLRB election to represent the artists there, but never achieved a contract.)

Which leaves the question: Is Marvel -- owned by the Mighty Mouse -- going to continue producing animation by jobbing it out? Or will Disney/Marvel ramp up a new cartoon studio? Or perhaps migrate to one of the Mouse's existing animation facilities?

I wish I had a crystal ball and prescient answer, but right now I have no idea what the plans are for Diz Co.'s new army of comic book characters.

Click here to read entire post

Gore Verbinski's Rango

The director of live-action blockbusters rolls out his first animated feature next year. But what do the magical words "animated feature" mean?

... [T]he most interesting thing about this new project is that Industrial Light & Magic will be doing the animation using “cutting edge techniques” that Verbinski has said, “will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny’s performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature.” ...

Anybody know what "cutting edge techniques" point to? Slash Film seems to think the words actually enfold our old friends rotoscope and motion capture.

But that couldn't be right, could it? Most of the knowledgeable understand that even the most comprehensive motion capture has those computer operators we're privileged to call "animators" at the back end of the pipeline, molding and tweaking the raw data into the performances we finally see up there on the silver screen.

Click here to read entire post

Nostrums

... and the state of Cartoonland.

At present, the animation industry is better than it was a year ago, or two years ago. But it's often like a multi-cylinder engine. When one piston is up, another's going down. Just now a partial list would include ...

Warner Bros. Animation doing more shows this year than they've done in the previous three. (Junior Justice League, Batman, Scooby Doo and Loony Tunes to name a few. Thirty-six months ago the place was pretty much a ghost town.)

Universal Cartoon Studios being kaput, having closed its doors six months ago. (However, rumors circulate that Curious George, long a PBS/Universal project, will go return to production at Starz Media.)

Starz Media/ Film Roman -- has The Simpsons, several Marvel action heroes shows, a few other things not yet announced.

Rough Draft -- They're finishing production on Futurama, developing a couple of pilots. (RD isn't signed to TAG, but I throw them in the mix anyway.)

Nickelodeon Cartoon Studios -- I overheard a studio administrator telling visitors the studio had 12 projects, but damn if I can name them all (Penguins of Madagascar, Tough Puppies, Chum Chum and Fanboy, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters and Robots, SpongeBob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer and then my head starts to throb.)

IM Digital is shutting down, but doing the closing in slow motion. It still has Mars Needs Moms to get out, and is shutting down department by department as the picture progresses. (We'll be sorry to see them go, they've had great people up there in Novato, California.)

Hasbro/The Hub -- Transformers and G.I. Joe. The artistic staff moves from Beverly Hills to Burbank at the end of the month. (Or so they say.)

Fox Animation has its Big Three, Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show, with Cleveland being picked up for a third season. Fox loves its Sunday night animation block.

DreamWorks Animation has Megamind coming in the Fall, then a long list of projects over the next four years (at the rate of 2-3 per annum.)

Disney TV Animation -- six shows in various stages of work, from Fish Hooks to KIck Butowski to Phineas and Ferb, Inspector Oso and Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

Disney Toons still works on the Tinkerbell features and is deep into production on the newer series that they haven't announced yet. (So I'll continue to keep my mouth shut.)

Disney Feature Animation has the CG Tangled and the hand-drawn Pooh followed by (I'm told) a gap in the production pipeline.

Cartoon Network has five animated series that I can think of and keeps trying on the live-action shows with varying results.

And so on and so forth ...

As you can see, the industry chugs along much as before, parts of it on the upswing, other parts not. Long-term employment is the exception rather than the rule, but a lucky minority has longer gigs on the Fox shows, SpongeBob, Phineas and Ferb and a handful of others. In features, Walt Disney Animation Studio offers project-to project hires while DreamWorks leans toward multi-year hires, (which explains the different morale you find at each studio.)

I've been reading various books about how to succeed in the workplace. There's some cute and semi-constructive stuff inside the covers ("Make Peace with Chaos;" "Spend Ten Minutes a Day Doing Absolutely Nothing;" -- Personally, I'd opt for at least a half hour -- "Manage Priorities, not time;" "Good results cover up a multitude of sins." etc.)

However, some are a little off the mark for the cartoon business, so allow me to throw out some of my own (yet again):

Know when to gracefully lose the argument. Nothing wrong with throwing out your two cents, but you have to know when to back off and do it the way your supervisor wants, even if your supe is wrong and an idiot.

Never give out a bright idea before the time is right. Long ago one of the smartest story artists I've ever known said to me: "You can't give them the solution to the problem before they're ready to hear it, or else they'll reject it." It was good advice three decades ago; it's fine advice now. Develop the skill of knowing when to show your cards.

Sometimes it's necessary to lie down, put all four paws in the air and expose you throat. In other words, occasionally you need to apologize and acquiesce to hang onto your job, even when the person you're doing the apology to is a dick. (You don't have to be sincere in the apology, just look like you are. Because once in a while we will find ourselves working for unreasonable, unpleasant people. This is when we learn to navigate the raft called "self-preservation.")

Know your own limits, and which personal lines you cannot, will not cross. (And it's better to know them before that crisis at work, rather than after.)

Those are enough helpful tips for one evening. (If you want more, you can find a few of them here.) The cartoon/animation industry can be challenging in even the best of times, and we're a few clicks away from "best."

It's useful to keep in mind that as much as we would like it to be otherwise, animation is a subset of Hollywood, the capital of bull dung.

Click here to read entire post

Overseas Race of the Horses

Woody and Buzz run the joint worldwide, just as they do in Freedom's Land.

Grossing a total of $100 million in overseas boxoffice since it opened offshore a week ago, Pixar/Disney's "Toy Story 3" retained the weekend's No. 1 spot on the foreign theatrical circuit for a second consecutive round with $36.1 million drawn from 6,278 screens in 32 markets.

Worldwide total for the latest in the Pixar franchise amounts to $326.6 million ...

And the DreamWorks contingent also seems to be rolling along nicely.

... Previewing strongly in the U.K., DreamWorks Animation/Paramount's "Shrek Forever After" in 3D drew $3.7 million from 1,281 spots in 21 markets (with the official U.K. opening due this week). Foreign cume stands at $91.5 million. ...

To date, the ogre has collected around $321 million worldwide. As for DWA's other entry:

"How to Train Your Dragon," $262 million ...

Which gives Dragon a worldwide gross of $477.4 million. Not bad at all.

Click here to read entire post

Weekend Linkage

The Grey Lady preps us for the Great San Diego convention:

... Comic-Con, entering its 41st year, is a tribal gathering of more than 100,000 comic book, science fiction and fantasy fans. They converge on San Diego each summer to dress up, swap old Ant-Man comics and ponder imponderables like “Klingon Lifestyles” ... This year, the four-day convention, which begins on July 22, will be host to what has become an obligatory parade of filmmakers and stars hawking their next big thing with extended film clips and question-and-answer sessions in the cavernous Hall H of the San Diego Convention Center ...

Despite earlier denials, Tim B. appears to be doing a new stop-motion project.

... While chatting about his upcoming film Despicable Me, producer Christopher Meledandri said The Addams Family is happening and that Burton is indeed attached. He also confirmed that Burton isn’t going the computer animation route and instead is sticking with stop motion animation as used on movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. There’s also a chance that the animated film will be released in black and white, however, no final decisions have been made on that matter. And, even with all of these details, Meledandri did emphasize that the film is only in the very early stages.

As Futurama returns once more to nightime t.v., the Times quizzes the voice cast::

Katey Sagal: I had known Matt from the “Married With Children” days, because he and I were both there when the Fox network had nothing but rabbit ears on top of your television. We had some history, and I just went in and read for him, and he gave me the job. ... I didn’t know this till years later, but there was a previous Leela [Laughs]. They’d already cast somebody, and then they wanted to make a change. I don’t want to know who — I think it’s better that way.

Futurama	Thursdays 10pm / 9c
Recap-O-Rama: 5 Seasons in 7 Minutes
www.comedycentral.com
Futurama New Episodes Futurama New Episodes Ugly Americans

(Perhaps someday TAG will rep the artists on it ...)

Mr. Temple of the Seven Golden Camels emerges from his work vault:

.... it's been a long time.

I've spent the last few weeks wrapping up the movie I've been working on for the past five years ...

Go visit him soon.

Moving on to Emeryville News, what was long a rumor is now official:

... [John] Lasseter will get a co-director credit on [Cars 2], indicating that he has provided a substantial amount of work to the project ...

The L.A. Times points out what's been driving the 2010 summer box office:

... [T]hree movies primarily aimed at kids and their parents are drawing a surge of significantly older moviegoers — many of whom are going without their children — in a trend that single-handedly has reversed the vacation season's box-office doldrums.

Thanks to the performance to date of the PG-rated "Shrek Forever After" ... the G-rated "Toy Story 3" ... and the PG-rated "The Karate Kid" ... total receipts since the first weekend of May are now even with where they were a year ago ...

Disney says 40% of "Toy Story 3's" non-family audience was ages 17-24 — people who ordinarily wouldn't make animated movies their first choice. ..."We aggressively marketed to that audience," says Disney studio chief Rich Ross ...

Have yourself a joyous Sabbath.

Click here to read entire post

Voice Actors and Awards

Yet another question:

Will A Voice Actor Ever Get Nominated For An Oscar?

And the obvious answer ...

Perhaps nominated (never underestimate the power of our fine conglomerates) but never elected. The Academy has a large contingent of actors, and most would sooner tear out their fingernails than grant an Oscar to a thespian performing only with his vocal chords.

But along with voice acting, there's the issue of emoting via mo cap:

... The onslaught of award-winning motion capture has presented us with a more realistic possibility of an Oscar-nominated performance. I strongly believe Zoe Saldana was snubbed by last year’s Academy Awards when she was not nominated for Best Actress. ...

Don't think so. Journalists have this idea that there's "animation" done by artistic nerds called "animators", and then there's this new technology called "motion capture," where actors in wired nylon leotards drive the performances.

Animators, of course, are heavily involved in both disciplines and technologies, despite the denials of various high-powered film directors.

If you're going to give a little golden man to an actress for motion capture, you should probably hand out duplicate statuettes to the people hunched over their computers, tweaking and polishing her performance.

Click here to read entire post

End of June Derby

Now with the Add On.

Box Office Prophets handicaps the oncoming festivities.

... [T]he weekend almost certainly belongs again to Toy Story 3. Pixar’s latest opened to a record for the studio, at just a little over $110 million, and is showing no signs of stopping mid-week. ... It should get to at least $200 million by the end of this weekend with a $68 million effort.

Only two other holdovers have a chance to put up significant numbers; The Karate Kid and The A-Team both put up as strong of numbers as you would expect for their second weekends, at $30 million and $14 million apiece ...

1) Toy Story 3 -- 68.3 miilion

2) Grown Ups -- 46.9 million

3) Knight and Day -- 34.6 million

4) The Karate Kid -- 17.5 million

5) The A-Team -- 8.1 million

Meanwhile, a few notches down, Shrek Forever After clicks along. Through Thursday, the ogre has collected $226.4 million domestic dollars.

(CNBC's rundown of top-grossing animated films -- no doubt cribbed from B.O. Mojo -- can be found here. But they have a nice set of factoids for each feature.)

Add On: The Hollywood Reporter reports Friday numbers:

Sony's ensemble comedy "Grown Ups" rung up an estimated $14.5 million in domestic boxoffice on Friday to kick off a likely $40 million-plus opening weekend. ...

Disney's 3D threequel "Toy Story 3" is virtually guaranteed to repeat at No. 1 in its sophomore session after fetching $18 million on Friday and topping the daily rankings. The Pixar-produced pic totes $175.5 million in cumulative boxoffice through its first eight days ...

Add On Too: The Nikkster tells the tale:

... Toy Story 3 tops the North American box office for the 2nd straight week, recording the highest second weekend ever for Disney/Pixar. It's also the second fastest Disney film to pass $200 million domestic box office -- 9 days, compared to Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest's 8 days. Thanks to higher 3D ticket prices and a wide release into 4,028 theaters, the toon with massive appeal did $18.0M Friday and $22.6M Saturday and an estimated $18.4M for Sunday. ...

And at the wire, we find Grown Ups in second place, Knight and Day in third, and Shrek Forever After in the 7th position, with $229.3 million in the haversack.

Click here to read entire post

Wasted Production Board Panels

I motored to a pair of animation studios today; at the first, I encountered a tired group of production board artists on a popular half-hour show who told me:

"I'm not happy that I'm not doing my best work, but I don't have time. I've got like nineteen pages of script for an 11-minute short, and the schedule is cramped, and I know they're going to cut pages after I turn in the boards ..."

"I had fifty-five panels cut from my last board. They seem to think that fourteen pages of dialogue equals fourteen minutes of screen time, but you need to put in the action, the pauses, and let the board breathe. That seems to get lost in the process."

I told the second artist to who I talked that I didn't get -- had never gotten -- why story editors and supervisors don't trim scripts before they hand them off to board artists, many of whom exhaust themselves trying to hit a deadline while at the same time boarding an extra five or six minutes of show that will be cut to length down the line.

Why this is the way the business now often works is a continuing mystery to me. Long ago, I wrote half-hour animation scripts for a living, and the process was straightforward:

1) Steve would write his multi-page wonder and turn it into his story editor.

2) The story editor would give Steve's script to his secretaries, who would read dialogue and descriptive action aloud with stop-watches, jotting down the time it took to read same onto the script's title page. (They had done this for a long while and were good at it.)

3) The story editor would look at the time on the front of the script, then tromp down to Steve's office and say: "Cut four pages out of this ...."

Simple, no?

But apparently this art has been lost on a number of current show-runners, who hang on to every syllable of golden prose and so allow board artists to draw themselves blind with extra work. And then, after that work is completed and the animatic is assembled, cut the boards.

I'm probably just an old-fashioned nit-wit, but this seems wasteful to me.

Click here to read entire post

The Ageism Thing

The Writers Guild of America has an issue.

The Writers Guild of America, West ... wants to keep the age of its members hush-hush. According to the film-town blog The Wrap, the Guild is pleading with the Internet Movie Database to stop listing birth dates on its widely consulted website. ...

There's no business like show business for sheer relentless pressure always to be securing the next gig. ... Nothing exacerbates age anxiety like a job hunt. It's bad enough to get pink-slipped. But if you're also over 40, you face the prospect of being considered a wheezy geezer ....

Fifteen years ago, at the height of the last animation boom, older artists securing and keeping jobs was not a huge issue. Newbies were flooding into the industry and finding work. Sixty and seventy-year-olds were coming out of retirement to work on the flock of animated features being made by Turner, Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera to chase after Disney's string of hand-drawn hits. (I talked to a lot of them.)

Now, I get weekly phone calls from story-boarders, designers and t.v. directors in the middle of their fifth decade who are under or unemployed. Some 0f the joblessness is due to bad timing and bad luck. Some of it happens because of our current cultural and business bias: people 18-34 are the key demographic for movie execs, so it's that age group the moguls are most eager to employ (for they hold the secret for hit t.v. shows and movies, as everyone knows.)

But there's another reason. Unlike the business of fifteen or twenty years ago, the cartoon industry isn't expanding like mad and outgrowing its talent pool, which means a strange kind of age discrimination comes into play. Creators of shows are in their thirties, and reach out to their peers to fill key jobs. They, in turn, reach out to people they know. This leaves the twenty-five and thirty-year veterans at the end of the employment line, because the movers and shakers they relied on for work -- other fifty-somethings -- aren't in the drivers' seats any longer. As a long-time board artist told me last week:

"[A forty-six year old director] called me up last month for a two-week boarding job on a movie he's doing. He just phoned one morning and asked 'Are you available for work?' and I said 'You bet I am.' He's one of the few guys in town who doesn't feel he has to use the younger crowd but goes after people he knows and has worked with before. And that he knows can do the job.

"The two weeks ended up being five weeks. Thank God there's still a few people like him around, or I wouldn't have much work in the biz at all."

The sobering part of this tale is, for animation employees the hiring situation is relatively better than it is for workers on the live-action side. That isn't particularly joyful news, but in this day and age, you take comfort and solace wherever you can find them.

Click here to read entire post

The Disney Walkabout

Today was hat building day, and about all I can tell you is that everyone is turning and burning on Tangled, that the new shots I saw of the movie look real good, and I keep being reminded of the settings and color saturation of the 3-strip Technicolor Adventures of Robin Hood every time that I see it ...

Upstairs, I related to a Disney veteran how I found Toy Story 3 a terrific, engaging film but that the Three Dee in it was pretty ... ah ... humdrum. The answer I got surprised me.

"Tell you the truth, I found the 3-D kind of pedestrian myself. But John likes the 3-D to support the setting and environment, not to come out of frame or do anything super 3-D-ish.

"I just like to look at the movie. I think the 3-D just gets in the way of watching the story."

Ah, poor Disneyite. You are in for a long stretch of heartache and sorrow:

Imax Corp. and Walt Disney Studios said Wednesday that they have agreed on a deal to release three more 3D movies to Imax theaters next year.

The movies are "Mars Needs Moms," which is scheduled to be released next March; "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," set for release in May; and "Cars 2," which is scheduled to be released next June.

Three Dee is going to be with us for years, girls and boys. So get used to it. As for me, as long as they have a small theater in the multiplex showing the flat screen version, I'll be happy.

Click here to read entire post

Jumping the Divide

Since animation and live-action are moving closer and closer together, maybe this is natural and inevitable. But I'm glad to see it happening.

Animation director David Bowers will make his live action debut by tackling "Diary of Wimpy Kid 2: Roderick Rules," the sequel to Fox 2000's sleeper hit "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." ...

Fox 2000 is moving fast on the sequel, hoping to capitalize on the slow-burn success of the first movie, which opened March 19 and went on to gross almost $64 million domestically. The movie was made for a modest $15 million ...

Since the time of Frank Tashlin*, animation artists and directors have moved on to direct live-action features. Rob Minkoff, Kevin Lima, Jerry Reese, Tim Burton, the list is extensive.

Minkoff, of course, was an easy decision for the folks in the executive suites to make. It makes perfect sense to give the director of an animation blockbuster like The Lion King a shot. Mr. Bowers hasn't directed any big animated hits, but it's still nice to see him getting the nod.

* Walt Disney was one of the earliest hybrid directors with "Alice's Wonderland."

Click here to read entire post

An Exciting New Concept, Except Not Really

We've talked about these kinds of deals before. Here's yet another another that doesn't sit too well with us.

Gnomon School of Visual Effects ... today revealed that it has established Gnomon Studios, where advanced Gnomon students prepare for professional careers by working on short films in a studio environment under the guidance and mentorship of production professionals. Gnomon Studios is currently working on Academy Award-nominated Director Shane Acker’s new short film, “Plus Minus.”

Maybe we're misreading this completely and jumping to horrid conclusions, but this sounds remarkably like viz effx students paying money to work on somebody's professional film for zero or minimal wages ...

Short films such as Acker’s ... will be the core production focus of Gnomon Studios. Alvarez also expects Gnomon Studios to contribute to the occasional feature project when opportunities arise, as was the case with the facility’s recent contributions to the 2011 film “Green Lantern” and the popular TV series, “Fringe.”

The advanced students? Doesn't it ... uh ... seem like they're paying hefty tuitions to help somebody's feature film or television series keep costs down? (I mean, you can buy yourself a whole lot of labor when the going price is zip.)

Or are we being unduly suspicious, cynical and paranoid?

Click here to read entire post

Your Mid-Week Linkage

As we crawl over the crest of hump-day, the question is asked:

"Could Toy Story be the first animated best picture winner?"

And the answer is given.

"No."

So the idea appears to be that much more of the Marvel stockpile will, in the fullness of time, be rolled out for public viewing:

... Marvel Studios is planning to include short films alongside upcoming superhero movies. Just as Pixar offers a new animated short with each annual release, Marvel fans should hopefully be able to look forward to short superhero adventures before the main feature begins. According to the rumor, these shorts are specifically intended to highlight Marvel's lesser known characters, providing them a chance at Hollywood glory ...

This is commonly known as "exploiting the product."

Warner Bros. Animation's super-hero top-kick Bruce Timm explains the art of one particular pitch, plus a lot more:

Q: How did Judd Winick convince you that his comic series/graphic novel would translate well to an animated film?

BRUCE TIMM: When we first heard that Judd wanted to pitch ["Batman: Under the Red Hood"] as an adaptation for our DC Universe film line, Alan Burnett and I quickly got copies of the book and read through it.

My first impression was that it was an entertaining comic, but it was quite a long mini-series and it had all these tangents of supporting characters who came and went through the course of the story. Quite frankly, it was confusing to me and I kept thinking to myself that I didn’t see how a lot of those things would work. The big thing about the story is that it’s a sequel to a big event in the history of DC comics – the death of Robin that happened back in the 1980s – and I didn’t see how we could set that up, because it all hinges on being a sequel to that story.

Furthermore, the way the pitch was arranged, we were in a room in Burbank and Judd was in San Francisco and had to pitch over the speakerphone. But amazingly, every single problem I thought we’d have trouble making into a movie, Judd had fixed in the pitch. Judd had already clearly put a lot of thought into the entire film – how to stay focused on the main story, how to clean up the death of Robin thing, and how to eliminate all the extra baggage. He pitched for about 45 minutes and when he was done, Alan and I looked at each other and said, “Yeah, that’s a movie. Let’s do it.” And away we went.

Fox News Corp.'s Blue Sky Animation Studio has a new animated feature baking in the oven, and they display a sample here:

Empire Online shares the scuttlebutt it's collected from Producer/animation executive Don Hahn:

“I’m actually trying to work out a 3D conversion of The Lion King. I’ll be doing that when I go back to the States in a couple of weeks.” ...“It’s going to be spectacular – we will do a good job for ya! The technology is tremendous. We did A Nightmare Before Christmas a few years ago and Tim thought it was better than the original because it allows you to walk onto the set ....”

"[The Snow Queen] is on the low shelf – we can’t reach it! But seriously, we don’t have the story. It’s a bit like Beauty And The Beast, which sat there for years. We cracked Beauty finally by putting in the objects and creating more plot. The Snow Queen we’ve had a lot of trouble with and I’ve spent years on it. I love it and I think it’s one of the last great fairy tales. It’s kind of crappy that it’s just sitting there right now.”

(The information I heard re SQ is that the first story pass was put up on story reels... and a short time later Disney's own Richard Ross shelved it, sight unseen. It's a girl picture, don't you know.)

Regarding overseas animated features: I really, really want to like this more than I do, based on the trailer.

It seems that Nickelodeon is near the top of the heap in basic cable:

Nickelodeon closed the week as basic cable's number-one network in total day with kids 2-11 and total viewers. ... Nick's weekly ratings performance also was highlighted by SpongeBob SquarePants and The Penguins of Madagascar- which, quarter to date, ranks as the number-two animated series on all TV with kids 2-11 and kids 6-11, behind only SpongeBob SquarePants ...

Have a joyous Thursday and Friday.

Click here to read entire post