Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Didier Ghez on his site Disney History recently posted an article about life at the Disney Studio after Walt’s death in 1966. There were quite a few such articles during this period, and we were made to hope something would happen to generate life into the animation division of a company that was turning out bad films.

Time Magazine had the following article in their Aug. 16, 1979 issue:

CORPORATIONS
Running Disney Walt’s Way

When lung cancer killed Walt Elias Disney a decade ago, there were fears that the world of Disney would lose some of its wonder—and its profits. But before his own death in 1971, Roy Disney, who succeeded his younger brother, and a cadre of post-Walt executives had turned Walt Disney Productions into a thriving empire of fantasy. Today the company is bigger and richer than ever. Profits flow in from Disney’s two successful theme parks, Disneyland in California and the magic kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, from film rentals and television, from re-releases of such longtime favorites as Bambi, Pi-nocchio and Fantasia, and from sales of record albums, Mickey Mouse wrist-watches and everything else bearing the Disney stamp.

Last year the various forms of escapism earned Disney nearly $62 million on sales of $520 million—four times the total in 1966 when Walt died. For the first nine months of its current fiscal year, Disney was flying higher than Dumbo the elephant. Corporate profits were up 30%, and sales rose 16%. More than 6 million people flocked to Disneyland (which turned 21 in July), another 9 million to Disney World. The fifth re-release of the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which came out in 1937, will gross an estimated $10 million in the U.S. alone by the end of this year.

Analysts’ View. No one questions that Disney has come a long way since the studio gambled $1.5 million on Snow White. But Wall Street analysts insist that the company should be doing even better and are hypersensitive to any developments that could remotely be considered adverse. Last month, for example, Disney stock fell several points (to around $50, or more than 20 times earnings) because third-quarter earnings, though a record $19 million, were not up to Wall Street’s expectations. Says a Disney vice president: “That’s a source of irritation around here. They seem to run in a pack on the Street.”

The founder’s ideas still run the show: almost everything Disney is now into was conceived of by Walt. “That’s the way Walt would want it” is a refrain heard frequently in the stucco Disney headquarters in Burbank, Calif. The executive most responsible for sticking to Walt’s winning formulas is E. Car-don Walker, 60, who joined Walt as a camera operator in the 1930s and has been Disney president since 1971. A tall, husky man whose use of profanity is limited to an occasional G-rated “damn,” Card Walker occupies an unpretentious office on the Disney lot not far from Dopey Drive and Mickey Avenue. His only concessions to the Hollywood movie mogul image are tinted glasses and a sleek gray Porsche (license plate: CAR WIN).

Walker believes that “the biggest challenge we face is still to make top-quality films,” and film critics tend to agree. Though slick and successful, the recent crop of Disney animated and live-action films (Gus, Treasure of Mate-cumbe, Robin Hood) shows little of Walt’s skill at tugging an audience over pop-emotional peaks and valleys. Nor do the forthcoming The Rescuers and Pete’s Dragon. Indeed, not since Mary Poppins in 1964 has Disney produced a genuinely smashing, supercalifragilisti-cexpialidocious hit.

This fact troubles Walt’s corporate heirs. Says Walker: “I don’t know exactly what it is. We don’t cut costs. Based on the quality of people involved in the film making, I would just have to say that we do our best.” Others blame excessive reverence for the traditional Disney method of moviemaking: batteries of cartoonists working under a rigid discipline on a single project for as long as three years. Says one young artist-animator who worked briefly for Disney: “The work is too confining. There’s not enough room to use your creative talents. It’s sterile.”

More and more, Disney is setting its animators to work on gutsier movies that seize audiences instead of rocking them to sleep. One feature in the storyboard stage, The Hero from Otherwhere, is about two schoolboys who find themselves on a strange planet whose black leader persuades them to help destroy a wolf that has been ravaging the land. Another, Spacecraft One, about a mile-long spaceship in its search for life on other planets, is Disney’s most elaborate sci-fi undertaking since 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Black Cauldron, still in the treatment-writing stages, is about a pig keeper’s struggle with a villain whose shtick is regenerating an army of warriors from dead bodies—a long way from Poppins. Sex and excessive violence still are taboo on the Disney lot, but Walker foresees increased sophistication as younger animators reflect contemporary themes.

Non-film projects, however, account for three-fourths of Disney revenues and therefore generate the greatest excitement in the Disney organization. With Disneyland and Walt Disney World booming, the company is now moving on the biggest of Walt’s ideas: EPCOT, or Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. To be built by the early 1980s in Florida as an expansion of Disney World, EPCOT will be a living laboratory of applied technology in transportation, housing, communications and waste disposal. Near it will rise the World Showcase, a permanent World’s Fair. Still another theme park. Oriental Disneyland, now planned to open late in 1979, will border Tokyo Bay in Japan; the Disney people expect it to draw 10 million visitors annually at the tourist hub of Asia. Estimated cost: about $175 million—most to be borne by the Japanese.

Double Duty. Whatever its problems, Disney has perfected one talent that other Hollywood fantasy factories envy: piggybacking. The familiar cartoon characters boost attendance at the theme parks, and the parks increase attendance at the movies. Though no one at Disney claims to be Walt’s equal in artistry or dreaming, Card Walker has made Disney’s characters do double duty as stars and as barkers to all the world. As a merchandising idea, it has proved to be almost as successful an inspiration as the original Mickey Mouse.

- Chuck Jones: Memories of Chldhood is a film by Peggy Stern. John Canemaker also served as producer and director of animation.

In 1997, John brought Peggy Stern and Chuck Jones together for a series of interviews that became the basis of this film. Jones often sketched his boyhood self as he related his memories. These sketches later inspired the documentary’s animated sequences, which Canemaker directed.

Just prior to his death Jones saw a rough version of the film and was delighted. His family sunsequently provided Ms. stern with additional archival material. The end result is an intimate film about the early years of Chuck Jones’ life.

This film is going to air on Turner Classic Movies Tuesday, March 24th at 8 p.m, and it will be followed by three classic Jones shorts: Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening and What’s Opera Doc.

- An exhibit celebrating Manga and Anime is opening tomorrow, March 14th, at the Japan Society in New York. has

The films that will be shown include:
___ Katsuhiro Otomo’s classic, Akira (1988)
___ Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game (2004)
___ Satoshi Kon’s, Paprika (2006)
___ Patlabor 2: The Movie, by Mamoru Oshii _____ (1993)
___ The Place Promised in Our Early Days _____ (2004), by Makoto Shinkai
and
___ Super Dimension Fortress Macross:
_____ Episode 9, 17, 18, and 27 (1982-83),
_____ designed by Ichiro Itano.

Screenings will begin Saturday, March 14 and will continue until June 14, 2009.

The exact Anime screening schedule in the auditorium is here

A listing of Manga on display is here.

The NYTimes has a review of this show in today’s paper.

- Reading a short piece about Ralph Bakshi on David Levy’s Animondays blog, brought me back to my collection of drawings. Here are some drawings from Fritz the Cat, the first scene of the pool sequence.

The drawings are by New York staple, Marty Taras. He, Johnny Gentilella and Nick Tafuri all had similar drawing styles. The clean rough. An inker could (and did at Hubley’s) work directly from their drawing without a cleanup by and an Assistant. These drawings were assisted by Jim Logan, who gave the drawings to me back in 1976.

(Johnny was an amazingly sweet guy, who spent a lot of time teaching me much in those early days. Marty was someone whose defenses always seemed to be up. Perhaps this is the reason he was the brunt of som many gags back at Terrytoons. Nick, when I knew him, was grumpy. He seemed not very talkative – just wanted to hand in the job and get outta there. But he did a couple of the best takes I’ve ever seen in the animation he handed in.)

Marty’s style was to work so light that it’s a struggle to see the red lines. For these scans, I had to darken the artwork so that the paper ends up with a bit more yellow than it has in reality.

The crow chats with Fritz.
His arm and pool cue are on another level.

(Click drawings for enlarged versions of the entire animation sheet.)

Crow’s head moves to a separate level as he chats with Fritz.

Fritz comes into the foreground.

- This is my fourth installment of Bill Peet‘s illustrations for the Little Golden Book adaptation of the Disney feature film, So Dear To My Heart. The book was written by Helen Palmer and is much longer than other Little Golden Books. It’s novella length and includes many short stories built on the film’s original story.

I believe it’s the first book Bill Peet illustrated, and it led the way to a very successful career after he left Disney’s in the 60s. In his autobiography, Peet doesn’t mention this book. He talks about writing Lambert, the Sheepish Lion as his first potential children’s book. Obviously, he sold that to Disney instead of selling it as a book.

All illustrations are drawn with ink and painted with watercolor. THe printing is done on cheap paper, and the inks have obviously saturated the paper.

(click any image to enlarge.)

There’s something iconic about this image which
strikes a chord with me.

There are two more chapters to go, so one more post. It’s certainly turned into much more work than I’d expected. It should be complete later this week.

– This past weekend, Michel Ocelot was in town for the NYInternational Children’s Film Foundation screening of his feature, Azur and Asmar. Candy Kugel had a wonderful Saturday night dinner for Michel, and it was nice to see him. He gave a gift of a DVD just released in Europe. It’s a collection of his short films. He finally was able to gather the rights to make them available. The DVD was region 2 PAL, but played nicely on my computer.
They’re exquisite hand-made gems, as was expected from this brilliant filmmaker.

Michel Ocelot: Les Trésors Cachés (Hidden Treasures) comes in an absolutely stunning package and features commentaries (albeit all in French) as well as 11 short films.

I’m not sure if there will be an English release of the DVD, but it’s worth having right now. It’ll give you a chance to practice your French while watching some beautiful animated films.

Here are a couple of frame grabs:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Above left and above that: The 3 Inventors
Above right: The Insensitive Princess

Earth Intruders: A music video for Bjork

- It’s 1940 again.
Yesterday’s NYTimes had a good review comparing two newly refurbished features: Pinocchio and Gulliver’s Travels. The Fleischers always seemed on the short end of the stick, and tying Gulliver’s rerelease to the same date as Pinocchio, probably isn’t helpful for sales . . . or reviews.

- I noticed in yesterday’s LA Times that there was a review of a one-man show starring Kirk Douglas. “Before I Forget” is a review by Mr. Douglas of his own career in 80 minutes.

Back in the 70s, I was a headstrong young man. I’d just gotten out of the service, immediately found my way into a film company which led to working for my hero, John Hubley. I was happy and full of pep.

One weekend while visiting an exhibit of Chaim Soutine at a larger gallery on 57th Street I was aware that Kirk Douglas was in the room with another gentleman. It filled up the gallery experience, and when I was ready to leave I did. Just before the doors close on the elevator, Kirk Douglas rushed on with his friend. For some reason, he and I locked eyes. A very small staring contest. He broke it. Of course, I could have been a mad man ready to assassinate Spartacus.

I left the experience exhilarated. Without saying a word, I’d communicated with a very real star. One of the fun bits of living in NYC.

Years later I was asked to direct a small filming of Michael Douglas giving a message for the Heartland Film Festival in Indiana. I went to his home, got to actually communicate with him, and wisely kept my story of his father to myself.

If I were living in LA, I’d be down to the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City in a NY minute. Only $25, how could you pass it up? One of the last of the REAL stars.

Grim Natwick animated a spot for Mountain Dew when he worked for Robert Lawrence Productions. This is a run cycle from the film that was assisted by Tissa David. All of the drawings, here, are Tissa’s clean-ups.

- It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The weather forecast calls for 60° temperatures today. It’s hard to believe that last Monday we’d been hit with over 8 inches of snow. Most of it, by now, griming its slushy path into the sewers.

My friend Steven Fisher sent me some pictures he took in the snow, and they were better than those I shot. So let me post his.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Somehow, to me, this picture looks as though it could have been shot
in the 40s. Or a Currier and Ives lithograph. In reality, it’s the by product
of a school holiday in NY. The first in 5 years. I can’t help but ask:
Why aren’t these kids home watching tv or playing video games?

There are times when some simple change reminds us that
there is a grace in Nature always in front of our eyes.
The berries at the bottom of the picture are so truly hopeful.

Christmas yet to come.

Even something as mundane as cable wire feels the effects of the day.

Studio cat, Robbie, enjoys the snow by finding a way to watch it
without standing in it. He’s on a gate guard outside my window.
By the way, the pics are now out of focus because I’m shooting them.

Within a day, the mounds of white snow show the effects of the
pollution around us.

Duane Ullrich, a friend who worked on Raggedy Ann, used to say that
New York was the only place that had black snow. It’s probably not the
ONLY place, but it sure is one of them.

By now, most of this is washed away.
The city needs some rain to wash away the residue.
For now, everything is moist.

- After my several posts on Exposure sheets, I am planning to write a short piece on the scene folders used at the various studios. These, in a way, are works of art in their own right.

However, Paul Spector sent me something that I talked about quite a while back. When a short or a longform film is done, the amount of paperwork that’s prepared to keep things organized becomes immense. There’s an awful lot of bookkeeping.

All the scenes get numbered, all the sequences get numbered, all the drawings get numbered to correspond to the scene and sequence numbers.

With all those sequences and scenes, you start needing a chart to be able to tell one from the other. Disney’s “Drafts” are a precursor to these. This is what Paul’s sent from his father, Irv Spector‘s collection. It’s a flow chart for some scenes from a Pink Panther short done for DePatie-Freleng. The corresponding page of the script is posted below it.

It looks like they ran out of scene descriptions in the heat of the production and just concentrated on the numbering. John Hubley, I remember, as being the absolute best for scene descriptions. One or two words would completely capture the scene. In the Carousel feature, there were hundreds of scenes, yet you could always tell one from the other. The chart wasn’t done on 8½x11 or 14, but was done by hand on oaktag and pasted in the main I&P room. Using that one or two word caption, you could synthesize the scene you were searching for, and it made a lot more sense than searching for scene C129a or whatever.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Thanks to Paul Spector for this great example of a flow chart.
__________________________

Tonight!

Don’t forget that Sita Sings the Blues is on ch 13 tonight
in the New York area at 10:45pm.

__________________________

- And now for something completely different.

The Animated World of Robert Breer
Sunday, March 15, 2009, 10:30 a.m.
At The Noguchi Museum

This free event for children between the ages of 2 and 12 and their families, features an hour-long program of short films by artist and filmmaker Robert Breer followed by art-making activities. Breer, who has been at the forefront of American avant-garde cinema since the 1960s, is a painter and sculptor who turned to animation to create a unique and amazing body of work. Introduced by David Schwartz, Moving Image Chief Curator, Breer’s playful and lively films will engage the entire family and provide a new point of entry from which to view and explore Isamu Noguchi’s work. Following the screening, Noguchi Museum educators will be present to facilitate activities and art-making projects. Families are encouraged to bring a snack and kick back while they enjoy the films. See below for a full list of titles.

Free admission, but reservations are required. To register, send an email to: smurphy@noguchi.org with your family’s name, the number of attendees and preferred form of contact (phone or email) or call 718.204.7088, extension 203.

The Noguchi Museum is located at Vernon Boulevard between 10th St and 33rd Rd in Long Island City. Sunday shuttle-bus service is available between Manhattan and the Museum.

The following films will be screened:

Homage To Jean Tinguely’s Homage To New York (1960, 9 mins.) This record of the birth and death of Tinguely’s famous auto-destructive sculpture at MoMA is itself a sculptural work, through its camera and editing techniques.

Fuji (1973, 8 mins.) Rotoscoped images of Mount Fuji, as seen from a train, are blended into the magical dreamscape of this lyrical voyage.

Swiss Army Knife With Rats and Pigeons (1981, 6 mins.) Images from everyday life are intercut with abstract and imaginary shapes in this virtuoso collage of drawings and live action photography.

Bang! (1986, 10 mins.) TV images of a boy paddling a boat, an arena crowd cheering, flowers, phones, and a wide array of personal doodle, photos, and assorted images whiz by in this mayhem-filled gem.

ATOZ (2000, 5 mins.) In this film dedicated to his daughter, Breer uses humor—along with a frog, planes, and other shapes—to look at the impact of the ordered alphabet on a child’s awakening mind.

Trial Balloons (1982, 5 mins.) One of Breer’s most lyrical films, Trial Balloons combines home movies with animation and hand-cut traveling mattes.

What Goes Up (2000, 4 mins.) The richness and the impermanence of life are captured in this rapid-fire animation of images capturing the joys of family and work life, and of food, drink, nature, and love.

- Here is the third installment of Bill Peet‘s illustrations for this wonderful Little Golden Book (it’s not so little) adaptation of the Disney feature film, So Dear To My Heart.

The book, written by Helen Palmer, is quite a bit larger than any other Little Golden Book I’ve seen. It really was a large job for Bill Peet to undertake.

All illustrations are ink with light watercolor. They certainly foreshadow the look of Peet’s children’s books to come some 15 years later.

Looking at the book through the illustrations, alone, one gets the feel of a very innocent, bucolic setting. The problems of the child are front and center, but these aren’t very real problems. This makes for a light series of stories. (To be honest, I haven’t read the text, but there is an overwhelming feeling that comes over you when you spend a bit of time with the images.) The film wasn’t an extraordinary success. I don’t imagine it’d fare better today. In fact, I’d suspect it couldn’t get released by today’s Disney. Maybe if you switched the lamb to a talking chihuahua.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Thanks to John Canemaker for the loan of the book.

- The post on exposure sheets drew a lot of attention, which is something that pleased me. Perhaps there’s enough interest in the heart of the medium to keep it alive.

Robert Cowan sent me an exposure sheet that was tucked into an envelope in the Ingeborg Willy Scrapbook, which he owns. (Ingeborg Willy was an inker working at Disney’s during the 30′s and made a photographic scrapbook of her stay.)

The sheet is from the Silly Symphony, Elmer Elephant (1935).

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The film’s about a bunch of baby animals.
Elmer is the shy kid who gets laughed at by the other kids.

Eventually with the help of an old giraffe he saves the day by putting out a fire …

… and winning the girl.

This exposure sheet is about a sequence wherein Elmer is pushed across a row of animals and is poked and prodded in absolute humiliation.

Let’s review what’s on the sheet for the completely unitiated viewer:

There are several columns: Action, 4,3,2,1 and camera.
These are basic to all X-sheets. Sometimes you get 5 numerals, oftentimes you get a column for Bg. Uusaly there’s also a Track column.

Below these descriptives you have lines. Each light blue line represents one frame of film. If the drawing’s on twos or threes or more it’s indicated as in #149. Other numbers are on ones – one frame per drawing.

In the “Action” column, the director writes notes telling where he wants some action to happen. For example: the director has noted that he wants Elmer to try to stop his turn from frames 32 through 49. The animator will follow this as best as possible.

The numbered columns represent cel levels. #1 is the bottom cel and #4 is the top cel. Most sheets also have a column for the Background so you know what number Bg is called for.

The “Camera” column indicates any special camera movements or effects. There we see a pan. The Bg is moving from screen right to left. The actual amount of the physical movement is indicated on every frame. 1/2 is a half inch, 1/4 is a quarter inch etc. Pans usually slow down as they come to a stop and gear up when they start out. This is why it goes from 1/2 to 3/8 to 1/4 to 3/16 to 1/8 to 1/16 before you reach STOP PAN.

You’ll see the sound track indicated at red marked 163 top line middle of the sheet. A character is saying, “Bye Elmer.” The actual number of frames it takes is broken down for you. The animator would animate the mouth accordingly.

Here are frame grabs for the part exposed.

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8

9 10

Let’s analyze the exposure sheet a bit. (For those not familiar with X-sheets, I have more of a breakdown below.)

First off, for me it’s an oddity. There seem to be two sheets combined onto the one. It’s split down the middle into two full sheets – all using only one cel level.

Secondly, there are some highlighted numbers – 160 through 165.
These fall at every 32nd frame. I’m not sure why. It’s not a foot (16 frames) or a second (24 frames). Is it a beat? I notice that the action calls for “ACC” at each of these markings. I assume it stands for “Accent” which would make that part of a musical tempo. Every 16th frame is also marked in red. This would be the only indication that this is what it is.

The pan moves are indicate in FRACTIONS ! I’m not sure why since it created a difficult transposition to decimals for the camera operator. I mean 3/8 of an inch equals what? Quickly now. Time is money. How about 1/16th? I have only met fractions which divided into 20ths. When did the change come in? John Oxberry, anyone?

Of course, some master checker would probably do the math before the scene got to camera.

Some of the drawings are exposed on twos, even for a short bit during the pan. This would be anathema in modern day animation, yet it hasn’t gotten better.

The track reading isn’t the most detailed I’ve seen, yet it does the job, doesn’t it?

The film is directed by Wilfred Jackson. I assume the “Action” column was filled out by him. I think the animation was by Paul Hopkins.

There’s a lot of information that can be pulled out from this one exposure sheet of a film done 73 years ago. Is that enough reason to advocate for continued use of the Exposure Seet?