Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

There are a lot of animation events around my world today.

- The MP Academy is holding their screening for the animated shorts that are eligible for __nomination. The program starts at 11:30 today and will go for the length of the films (with
__a break for lunch.) I’m assuming I won’t be done with that until 7PM. I expect that the
__films will be as they usually are:
____There are the great ones that undeniably should be nominated.
____There are those that are just good and do not stand up.
____There are those that you can’t wait to get on with it. The dull.
__Since I don’t know how many films, nor any of the titles to be screened, I’ll report on this
__screening after the fact.

- In LA, there’s the Raggedy Ann reunion. Jim Hill has a great article on this in case you’d
__like to know more about it. They will show a 35mm print of the film (thanks to Mark
__Kausler) and will chat about the experience of working on the film. It was intended that
__we would have a NY version of the event at the same time so that the Raggedy people
__in NY could feel as though they were a part of it. However, given the long
__Academy screening scheduled for us, given the lack of a suitable copy of the film to
__screen, and given the lack of a space to hold the event, it’s obvious we weren’t able to
__have it here. The timing isn’t right, I guess. Raggedy Ann, the film, always did suffer the
__fate of being an “also ran.”

__If you’re in LA, go to it. The film has moments worth seeing, and the chat should be fun.
_______Raggedy Ann & Andy Reunion
_______November 17th at 3pm
_______Mark Goodsen Auditorium
_______American Film Institute
_______2021 N. Western Bl
_______Hollywood, CA

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– Nina Paley will hold a preview screening of her
__82 mins. feature film, Sita Sings The Blues.
__Nina says:”We’ll screen the whole 82-minute
__feature on DVD, then the 3-minute 35mm film
__test of “Battle of Lanka,” so you can see just how
__gorgeous it looks on film.”

__Saturday, November 17, 7:00 pm and 9:00pm
__NYU Tisch School of the Arts
__room 006, (lower level)
__721 Broadway
____between Waverly Place and Washington Place
__New York City
__Free!

__If you want to attend the New York screening,
__please RSVP with “Sita NY” in the subject, to:
_______Nina_Paley@Yahoo.com.

__Space is limited, and priority will be given to
__those with names on the list. This is just a sneak preview;
__“the bigger and better genuine premiere will happen in 2008.”

__The 7pm show is full, so you probably should expect to go to the 9pm show if you’d like
__to see it.

_________________________________

Finally, I’d like to direct you to the monthly column in today’s NYTimes by cartoonist, James Stevenson. His work is just about my favorite these days, and this piece is excellent. It’s called “Balloons Over Broadway” and tells the story of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

- Before I get into my wail over Beowulf, let me express my sadness over the loss of
Hans Bacher‘s multiple blogs. The artwork he created and/or recreated for his blogs Animation Treasures 1,2,3 was too rich to have been lost so quickly. Apparently, Hans was having problems with “Blogspot” re the number of images he could support on his sites. Hans has decided to eliminate all of his blogs, and that’s an enormous loss for us all. I checked in at least once a week just to look at the Snow White treasures he’d recreated, and now they’re gone. I should have saved copies, ____The Art they once painted and
but I wanted to support the blogs by going there. ______Hans once recreated & posted.
Ah well, time moves on, and nothing lasts forever.
They were among the very best sites out there, like all the work Hans has done.
It’s our loss. I still wait for a copy of his book, Dream Worlds, from Amazon.

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- Beowulf likes to lay claim to being “animated”, while at the same time issuing statements from those who worked on the film that it’s something other than animation. “Beowulf” director Robert Zemeckis’ longtime producer Steve Starkey calls the method ‘digitally enhanced live action.’” (quote from a NYPost article.) Yet the distributor, Paramount, is pushing for that Oscar in the animated feature category.

The critics seem a bit confused. However, they all have the same criticism: “Beowulf” can be a lot of fun to watch – at least in the 3-D IMAX version I saw – but it’s hard to forget for long that you’re stranded in a waxworks netherworld between live action and animation.
This quote from Lou Leminick‘s three *** star review in the NY Post. The review is generally positive and puts its focus on Angelina Jolie‘s beautiful body
(Wait! Isn’t this an animated film?).

I’ve made no bones about saying that it’s a travesty to equate this film with other animated features and allow it to compete in an Oscar “animation” category. It’s just a different sort of beast. For a hundred years now, Live Action people have persistently considered animation to be little more than “Special Effect.” Now they’ve proven it and have taken the reins of their “Effx” films out to one-up the animators. The Academy is allowing them to do it if they include this film in their Best Animated Feature category.

I know I’m an old fart with outdated principles, but I think of it as a voice crying in a desperate attempt to keep real animation alive. I think too much of the medium in which I work to let it be so easily sideswiped..

Clips from other reviews:

Mr. Zemeckis throws a lot of stuff at us in “Beowulf” besides Ms. Jolie, including spears, swords, pools of gore, dribbles of mucous and images with extremely forced perspectives, which direct your vision toward the center of the frame, goosing the 3-D effect. Mostly he throws technology at us. The main characters in the movie were created through performance capture, a system that allows filmmakers to map an actor’s expressions and gestures onto a computer-generated model, which is then further tweaked. (Eye movements are captured separately.) Neither wholly animation nor live action, it is a sophisticated visual technique, and true believers see it as the future of movies, though really the most interesting thing about it is that it’s not intrinsically interesting.

To be honest, I don’t yet see the point of performance capture, particularly given how ugly it renders realistic-looking human forms. Although the human faces and especially the eyes in “Beowulf” look somewhat less creepy than they did in “The Polar Express,” Mr. Zemeckis’s first experiment with performance capture, they still have neither the spark of true life nor that of an artist’s unfettered imagination.
- NY Times Manohla Dargis

. . . director Robert Zemeckis delivers a muscular, sometimes stirring but ultimately soulless reinterpretation of “Beowulf.” For all its visual sweep and propulsively violent action, this bloodthirsty rendition of the Old English epic can’t overcome the disadvantage of being enacted by digital waxworks rather than flesh-and-blood Danes and demons.
- Variety

. . . Despite the story’s new bridge, there’s still no middle to it. After Beowulf is compromised and inherits the kingdom from Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), we simply fast-forward a few decades, barely alluding to the guilt that has estranged the hero from his queen (Robin Wright Penn), also inherited from Hrothgar.

An even greater problem is that while the performance-capture process gives “Beowulf’s” world a mythic quality, it drains the characters of nuance. The movie may be three-dimensional, but the people in it are not.

For those Beowulf scholars already groaning out there, there’s even worse news: The movie sets up a sequel.
- NY Daily News Jim Mathews

Go directly now to Mark Mayerson‘s site to read his commentary on this film. A big BRAVO for Mark.

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- To add to the detritus filling the blogosphere, I’m going to post this brochure that was distributed during the Lincoln Center celebration of all things Disney. It took place back in 1972, and I guess this brochure helped to keep the would-be animators from charging the stage to show their wares to Ken Anderson, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston or Woolie Reitherman, who were all there to promote Disney and Robin Hood.

There were a number of other handouts, and it was great to walk away with something, anything that had the Disney look.
Things were much more innocent back then. With such material it’s surprising that I stayed in New York instead of rushing to Hollywood. (I guess working for John Hubley, at the time, meant a lot more to me.)

This document may have appeared elsewhere, but I don’t remember it.

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- Last night concluded the Michael Sporn weekend at the Museum of Modern Art. What a treat for me to renew my acquaintance with some of the many films I’d done over the years and to find out how many of them still hold up. Others I would have liked to have trimmed down for the occasion. As the wolf says in The Amazing bone: I can’t help being who I am; I didn’t make the world.

Last night it was a treat for me to gab on the stage of the Titus 2 theater within the museum and to casually answer some intelligent questions put to me by both John Canemaker and Josh Siegal. It really was a somewhat controlled conversation; they didn’t seem to have a list of prepared questions that I was required to answer. (Maybe they did, but it didn’t feel that way from my vantage point.) We just talked.

And talk I did. It was planned for the event to last an hour, and we went to two hours – almost exactly. I’d prepared 44 mins of video clips, and we strolled across those clips hitting some key spots in my career. It was fun, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. The theater was about 90% filled. At first it seemed like only close friends were coming, but at the last five minutes the place filled up. It turns out that only close friends did come. The audience was so supportive. I still can’t believe Michael and Phyllis Barrier came so far to be there. The same is true of John and Cathy Celestri. But it was also a long trek for a lot of others to come out on a rainy evening to watch ME talk. I can’t tell you how touching it all is.

My primary goal here was to thank some of those individuals that were so important to me over the years. Tissa David, Maxine Fisher, Christine O’Neill, Bridget Thorne and most importantly Heidi Stallings. So I did. To top it all, I’ll have it on tape when the museum gives me a copy of the video record they made of the program.

Afterward the museum offered us cocktails next door at their restaurant. A relaxed, enjoyable way to end the evening and to sit back with some of those who came. Many thanks to John Canemaker and Josh Siegel for taking the time to put this together. It meant a lot. Now it’s back to business.

- Today is the last day of the MOMA show. I’ll be chatting with John Canemaker and Josh Siegel on stage. We haven’t really gone through it; we do have a program of clips that skip across the horizon of my studio’s history, but we haven’t really discussed the conversation. Anything goes, I guess. The problem they’ll have is stopping my talking.

Among the films to be shown tonight are a lot of clips from the half hours, the titles to Garbo Talks (which hasn’t come out in dvd). I’ll talk about this piece maybe later this week. We’re going to show two versions with two different music tracks. Bob James, a great jazz pianist (he did the music for TV’s Taxi) did the original.
I have his temp track against a pencil test to screen.
He was stupidly replaced after a test screening.
Cy Coleman did the final version, a more lush and romantic track. Different. It didn’t hit the spots, just glossed over them.

We’ll also show a couple of new pieces. Pab’s First Burger was finished this past July. It’ll start the show. Gertrude On The Beach was finished a month ago. It’s a film I did with Rick Litvin to a song sung by his wife, Lucy Kaplansky‘s excellent recording. That’ll screen toward the end of the program. We’ll end with a clip from the animatic of POE. It’s a section done by Tissa that features Hugh Dancy’s voice.

___

- Yesterday, I went to the last two shows which were repeated from Saturday. I have to say that each program was wholly unlike the others. Just a completely different tone. The audiences for both shows on Sunday were about half full. Dave Levy and Ray Kosarin were there, and we sat together. They stayed for both shows. I was told that Saturday’s shows were packed, and I know of about a dozen or more animation people who showed up. I assume there were more since I was told they applauded whenever my name came on screen and did the same for Tissa David with The Marzipan Pig. That also happened a couple of times on Sunday. Ok, maybe I was the one who started applauding, and the rest of the audience followed.

Yesterday morning, Tissa and I had a good conversation about these two programs. We went through them all and talked about what worked and what didn’t, what held up and what seemd to have dated. Of course, we also talked about the fun of making some of them.

Tissa has never liked the backgrounds for The Marzipan Pig (though I do). She was sad when Bridget Thorne wasn’t available to do them since she loves Bridget’s work. (Bridget was having her second child during the course of that production and had bigger things to do.) Tissa would have preferred a delicate watercolor style rather than the oil pastel style I chose.

Watching that film again after all these years was every bit as enjoyable. It’s a really fine movie. Tim Curry‘s voice performance has to be one of the best I’ve heard in animation. He’s such an excellent actor but gets so much trash to do in animated films. I take pleasure in knowing that his first was for me in Abel’s Island.

Mike and Phyllis Barrier, with Bill Benzon, arrived in time for the final program. It was great seeing them again, and we completed the day by going out for drinks afterward. Sardi’s seemed appropriate given the theater strike in progress.

Since I’m a bit tired of all this self-promotion, I’ve decided to dress up this post with paintings I photographed in the museum yesterday.

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- Yesterday, the NY Post had an interesting article about BEOWULF. Not the animation vs MoCap issue, but MoCap vs live actors. This is not animation. I repeat: this is not animation. However, there’s a nice chance that studio money could help it get the Best Animated Feature Oscar. This is definitely the time for the Academy to start writing new rules.

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Theres an article in today’s NYTimes telling us why it took a year to make the Spongebob Squarepants special which airs tonight. Maybe they’ll be able to switch to MoCap if they do one next year.

Yesterday, I wasn’t able to make it to any of the three screenings. They repeated the first one from Friday night and screened the next two. I was told that they went well and were filled. I’ll make up for it today by seeing the 2nd and 3rd screenings this afternoon.

Last night, we did have a party for the event, and we had a great group. Lots of schmoozing, eating and drinking. Thankfully, the drizzling rain stopped early in the day. I took a number of photos late in the party. They were rushed and I didn’t get most of the people there. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of everyone there.

(Click any image to enlarge.)
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(L) Irina Margolina, Signe Bauman and Biljana Labovic
(R) Matt Clinton, Jason McDonald and Paul Carrillo

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Dave Levy and Debbie mug for the camera while Ray Kosarin looks on.

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Lisa Crafts and Howard Beckerman ________ George Griffin and John Canemaker

>_
(L) Jason McDonald, Masako Kanayama, Adrian Urquidez and Janet Benn
(R) Ray Kosarin, Ken Brown, Cathy and John Celestri

_
All that’s left.
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– Today is the final day of the film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art. Program II will screen at 2:45 and Program III will be screened at 4:45.

Program II:A Peaceable Kingdom includes the following films: Goodnight Moon, The Marzipan Pig, The Amazing Bone, Ira Sleeps Over, and The Story of The Dancing Frog.

This selection is somewhat dear to my heart. The Marzipan Pig and The Hunting of the Snark are my two favorites of the films. I purposefully separated them in the programs. Both are enormously different from each other, but both are similar. The metaphysical lies just on the surface as characters in animated films try to move forward with their lives. Only the important things matter to them. In the Snark they’re trying to rid the world of its demons. In the Pig they’re trying to find “love”, or, at least, connection.

The Marzipan Pig sits while all the sweetness runs out of him.

I love all of these films, and look forward to seeing them again on a big screen. The great artists who helped put these films together include the following:

___________Julie Allen___________John Aller___________Ed Askinazi
___________Debbie Baber________Dante Barbetta______.Gary Becker
___________Quentin Blake________Bob Bushell_________Laura Bryson
___________Charlotte Cary-Booth__Doug Compton______Tim Curry
___________Billy Crystal_________.Tissa David_________John R. Dilworth
___________Rodolfo Damaggio____.Steven Dovas_______Ray Feldman
___________Wolf Ferro__________. William Finn_________Maxine Fisher
___________Danny Gerard_____-__Stephen Gambello____Eddie Gomez
___________Edna Harris_________.Xiaogang He_________Jonathan Hill
___________Russell Hoban_______.Grace Johnston______.Masako Kanayama
___________Yvette Kaplan________Carol Kilbanks_______Sophie Kittredge
___________Michael Klein________.Ray Kosarin_________James Laev
___________Stephen MacQuignon__Robert Marianetti_____Miguel Martinez
___________Mark Mayerson______.George McClements___Jason McDonald
___________Giuliana Nicodemi____.Christine O’Neill______Gregory Perler
___________Sue Perrotto_________Amanda Plummer____.Caleb Sampson
___________Susan Sarandon______Morton Schindel______Elizabeth Seidman
___________Theresa Smythe______Jarrod Specter_______Heidi Stallings
___________Michael Starobin______Jeremy Steig________William Steig
___________Tape House Toons____Ian Thomson________Bridget Thorne
___________Mary Thorne_________Bernard Waber______Mo Willems
___________Michael Wisniewski

Many thanks to all of these people for all your help in getting these films completed so beautifully.

Goodnight Moon: Duplicating a book with cg and hiding that fact.

Ira Sleeps Over at Reggie’s.

Program I: Last night, Friday, was the start of the MOMA series. Heidi Stallings, Matt Clinton and I met up with Josh Siegel of the Museum in the lobby. Heidi and Matt left to grab seats while Josh and I stood in the rear waiting for the start. He’d introduce me and I’d said hello. We also decided that I answer a Q&A at the end.

The audience was close to full – I saw a few empty seats. From the animation community I saw a handful of people (at least, of those I knew). They were all people who had worked with me in getting the films made. Masako Kanayama, Ray Kosarin, Patty Stren, John Canemaker. This sort of pleased me in that there was a big audience of people who didn’t know me or the films. They were interested.

After the opening pleasantries, the show started with Mona Mon Amour. This is a film that I always thought was funny. But in the few screenings I’ve seen of it, the audience of animators didn’t even sound like they were even smiling. It always confused me. Well, this screening got big laughs. It really made me perk up. I’m glad Patty and here husband were there to hear them laugh with her film. Champagne was politely quiet, as the audience stayed involved in this difficult film. It’s always been a tad heavyhanded for me, and it was so again last night. The Man Who Walked Between The Towers was the best received. The audience was completely into it. They laughed when they should have, and gasped when I didn’t realize it was coming. Lyle Lyle Crocodile looked beautiful. The music score seemed a touch loud, but it worked well with the stereo screening. How off character the characters are for so much of the film, but it somehow works. The film was pleasant to see again. The Little Match Girl was a completely different film than the one I remembered. It’s a long story, but the film went through a long hard making, and I removed myself from it after completing it in 1990. Many of the voices were those of animators, and it was great hearing them again. Theresa Smythe did an absolutely brilliant job as Angela, and she got a lot of laughs. The film moved slowly for me and was the most problematic, but it looked great, and I was glad to have seen it again.

The Q&A afterward was about 15 mins. long and the audience asked good questions. One woman asked if creativity had changed over the 26 years in the history of my studio. I answered that the creativity came from within me and the people who worked with me, so it hadn’t really changed because of time but had because of influences and finances.

All in all it was a great evening for me. I had a lot of fun. A fine start.

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Program II:Fables at the Museum of Modern Art will be screened today at 3:30PM and tomorrow at 2:45. The films to be screened include: Doctor DeSoto, Abel’s Island, The Red Shoes and The Hunting of the Snark.

Abel witnesses the first thaw of the season in Abel’s Island.

I’d like to take this moment to thank all the artists who were involved in the production of these films. I couldn’t have made these films as beautifully without their help. They include:

__________Isabella Bannerman ______Betsy Bauer ______Gary Becker
__________Charlotte Booth__________Laura Bryson______Mark Bykov
__________Diana Sara Cherkas______Devon Collins______Doug Compton
__________Lisa Crafts______________Tim Curry________ Arthur Custer
__________Tissa David_____________Ossie Davis_______ John R. Dilworth
__________Steven Dovas___________Daniel Esterman___ Madeline Fan
__________Wolf Ferro______________Maxine Fisher______Kathryn Gradner
__________Simi Gulati_____________ Kit Hawkins_______ Matthew Jacobson
__________Lionel Jeffries___________James Earl Jones___ Perry Kiefer
__________Carol Kilbanks__________Sophie Kittredge____Ray Kosarin
__________Terry Waxman Koshel____Sono Kuwayama____Stephen MacQuignon
__________Robert Marianetti________Mark Mayerson_____George McClements
__________Jason McDonald_________Giuliana Nicodemi___Christine O’Neill
__________Edwin O’Neill___________ Gregory Perler_____.Thomas Repasky
__________Caleb Sampson_________Morton Schindel_____Elizabeth Seidman
__________Theresa Smythe________ Heidi Stallings______William Steig
__________Bridget Thorne__________Mary Thorne_______ Ernest Troost
__________Larry White____________Michael Wisniewski

The crew listens to the Bellman speak in The Hunting of the Snark.

A dance in the deep dark woods with non-stop dancing red shoes.

___=(Click any image to enlarge.)

Program III: A Peaceable Kingdom will screen today at 5:30 and tomorrow at 4:45. I’ll focus on it tomorrow.

For the weekend, I’d like to take some space to thank the many people that worked on the films being screened at the Museum of Modern Art. It’s great to have this venue to get the thanks out there.

Program I:New York Stories will screen today at 6:30PM and tomorrow at 1:30PM.

The opening scene from The Little Match Girl

Many thanks and huzzahs to the following people who worked on the films in this program: Mona Mon Amour, Champagne, The Man Who Walked Between The Towers, Lyle Lyle Crocodile and The Little Match Girl

______F. Murray Abraham______Lew Achenbach______Ed Askinazi
______Michael Bacon__________Gary Becker________ Bob Bushell
______Paul Carrillo___________.Matthew Clinton______Leigh Corra
______Tissa David____________John R. Dilworth______Steven Dovas
______Natalia Elina___________.Daniel Esterman_____.Madeline Fan
______Ray Feldman___________Maxine Fisher________Paul Gagne
______Julie Garton____________Mordicai Gerstein_____Krista Grasso
______Jake Gyllenhaal_________Donald Harrison______Masako Kanayama
______Perry Kiefer____________Bruce Knapp_________Ray Kosarin
______Linda Lee______________Stephen MacQuignon__Jason McDonald
______Robert Marianetti________Neil Murphy_________Giuliana Nicodemi
______Christine O’Neill________.Gregory Perler_______Melissa Reilly
______Champagne Saltes______Caleb Sampson______Matt Sheridan
______Theresa Smythe________Heidi Stallings______._Cristina Stanculescu
______Patti Stren_____________Mary Thorne________.Diego Turcios
______Adrian Urquidez________.Michael Wisniewski

Angela sits on the library steps in The Little Match Girl

A BG from Mona Mon Amour.

___=(Click any image to enlarge.)

________________________Today’s NYTimes features an editorial by a realio-trulio beekeeper and her comments on the “facts” in Bee Movie. Sounds like Jerry Seinfeld didn’t do the research. What a surprise! If only he’d done more research on what’s funny.

- Bob Jaques‘ excellent new site gives overdue attention to some lesser-known animators who worked on the Popeye shorts.

His recent post placed focus on Lillian Friedman‘s work. She apparently is the first female animator to have worked in a major studio.

Her first animation, as reported by Bob, is the only Popeye film she worked on, Can You Take It (1934). As John Kricfalusi points out, there are a wealth of entertaining walks in this film. This is the very first walk (not really a cycle, though I’ve made it one) in the film, and it’s a great one that we can attribute to Lillian Friedman.

The cycle is hilarious, with the bottom half of the body – the legs – moving at twice the speed. To quote Mark Mayerson, “Note that she uses Popeye’s head to hit the first accent in the 1-2-3 beat structure and then uses the feet to hit beats 2 and 3. So on one step, the head comes forward with the right foot and the next time it comes forward it’s with the left foot. That’s pretty sophisticated for a beginning animator.”

It’s an original walk, and it’s also a very good one. With all the digital assistance available today, how infrequent is it to see something so original. And this was Lillian Friedman’s first credited walk cycle.

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Popeye and Olive walking on two’s