Trailer for Sheridan College's Upcoming Industry Day

Floyd Norman: An Animated Life Screening in Toronto

Floyd Norman, animator and story artist, was one of the first African-Americans to work at Disney and in the animation industry.  A documentary on his life is showing at the Hot Docs cinema on Bloor Street on Sunday, February 19 at 11 a.m.  It's a one-time screening.

Floyd will be present via Skype after the film.

For more information, go here.

John Canemaker's New Blog

John Canemaker (left) with Jules Feiffer

Animation historian and Academy Award winning filmmaker John Canemaker has started a blog.  His first entry features an event last November with the multi-talented cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and author Jules Feiffer.  Anyone familiar with Canemaker's work knows that anything he writes is worth reading.  Included is a letter Feiffer wrote to his daughters, providing political perspective on today's world.

Michael Dudok de Wit and The Red Turtle

Michael Dudok de Wit's film The Red Turtle is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto as of January 27.  Some Sheridan animation students and I had the pleasure of spending an hour with Michael Dudok de Wit when he was in Toronto to publicize the film last September as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

After the success of his Oscar winning short Father and Daughter, Dudok de Wit was approached by Studio Ghibli and asked if he had a feature idea that they could produce for him.  He told us that when he was a student, just getting laughs was enough but as he's gotten older, he wants his films to be built on more substantial emotions.

Creating the story reel was a case of  two steps forward and one step backwards.  His feeling is that without a good storyboard, it's impossible to make a good film.  He sought out feedback from the Ghibli producers and praised Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takahata for their input.  Their goal was to be as ego-free as possible and just look for the best idea.

In creating the story reel, he felt he benefited from working with an editor.  He said that rhythms and flow are far more important in a feature than in a short and the editor, who regularly cuts live action, was able to help.

For the production, done entirely in Europe with TV Paint software, live action reference was shot.  There was no rotoscoping, but as Dudok de Wit was interested in realistic motion, various gestures from the live action were used.

Dudok de Wit's preference for long shots has to do with his interest in the environment the characters live in.  He also prefers to communicate using a character's whole body.  He talked about how subtle human expressions are and how difficult it is to duplicate that subtlety in animation, especially when you're trying to communicate to a crew.  Therefore, long shots work best.

He worked 80-100 hour weeks because he wanted the film to be as good as possible.  He's too close to the film to know if he wants to make another feature or if he will return to shorts.

(There are spoilers below.)

I have mixed feelings about the film.  In some ways, it reminds me of Pete Docter's work at Pixar in that Dudok de Wit is excellent at evoking emotions, particularly those that come from familial relationships, but like Docter he seems to have problems with story logic.

Fantasies are delicate things.  The audience must understand what is possible and what's isn't in a story in order to believe the film's events.  The opening of The Red Turtle is brutally realistic.  A man is lost at sea, being battered by stormy waves with nothing to hold onto.  Once he reaches an island, the film maintains the realism.  The flora and fauna are real and the man's struggle to leave the island is completely believable.  He tries several times and each time his raft is destroyed by a red turtle.  There is no hint at the turtle's motivation for this.  As the film shows baby turtles hatching on the beach, it makes more sense that the turtle would be glad to get the man off the island as his presence might threaten the turtle's spawn.  When the turtle comes to the beach to lay eggs, the man is justifiably angry at the creature who has foiled his escape. He flips the turtle onto its back and it appears to die.

Earlier in the film, the man dreamed or hallucinated the presence of a string quartet on the island.  It's clear to the audience that this is not real.  The man himself realizes it.  So when the dead turtle turns into a woman, the audience has not been prepared for the possibility that the transformation could be real.  The earlier dreams led me to believe that the man was once again hallucinating.  But within the film, it most certainly is real.

The lack of preparation for this moment took me out of the film.  I kept waiting for some sort of explanation after the fact, but there was none.  The turtle's destruction of the rafts and the man's murder of the turtle in no way suggest the eventual transformation or relationship.  For me, the film never recovered from this.

Visually, the film is lovely.  There are bravura sequences of the storm at sea and a later tsunami.  The environment of the island is portrayed in great detail.  There are moments of powerful suspense and there is comedy provided by a population of crabs.  The musical score is lovely and emotionally evocative.  The bulk of the film is about the loving relationship between the man and the woman, the birth of their child, and their life as a family on the island as they deal with the unpredictable natural world.  But the flaws in the first act are never addressed.

Another issue is the lack of dialogue.  I have no problem with a film that doesn't have talking, but the characters do yell.  The director has given them voices, yet they say nothing intelligible to each other.  At the TIFF screening, Dudok de Wit said that they tried writing dialogue for key moments but couldn't find words that seemed to fit the style of the film.  As the film relies heavily on sound effects, he could not have natural sound and keep his characters completely mute.  But by allowing them to make sounds yet not talk, he's created an artificial constraint that doesn't work in my view.

There are other inconsistencies that are minor, but still forced me out of the story.  The man builds a small shelter to protect the woman from the sun before she wakes for the first time.  Yet when they have a child later, the family builds no shelter.  There are sudden, heavy downpours on the island, yet the family seems to have no problem being constantly exposed to the elements.

After the tsunami, the family burns all the uprooted trees.  This is the only time fire is present in the film.  The family never builds a fire for light, warmth or to cook with.  As shelter and fire are not present except for these two occasions, it is every bit as odd as the characters yelling but not talking.  They have the knowledge, but don't use it.

Feature scripts are difficult.  There's no shortage of films whose scripts don't work.  For a director who is moving from shorts to features, there are many new challenges in terms of story, characterization and pacing.  Dudok de Wit spoke a great deal about using intuition to find what worked for him.  And while his intuition has created a film with excellent parts, it failed him in constructing the whole.

While Dudok de Wit was undecided about future films, I hope that he makes more features as he has much to contribute.  The film has great sequences and strong emotional moments.  It broadens animated features' range and nudges the medium a bit more towards adult content.  I'm glad the film received an Oscar nomination and hope that it makes the film profitable and motivates Dudok de Wit to continue.

Happy Holidays from Sheridan Animation's Class of 2017

Long Way North is a Great Film

Long Way North is a dramatic adventure film, devoid of the comic relief and musical numbers all too common in North American animated features.  While artists and fans are constantly calling for animation to expand its horizons, Long Way North has done it, but its botched release in Canada will keep it hidden from the people who would champion it.

With Canada's recent hunt for Sir John Franklin's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror lost during the search for the Northwest Passage, there was a natural Canadian marketing hook for this film.  Set in Czarist Russia, an explorer sets out to find the Northeast Passage across the pole.  When the ship doesn't return, everyone assumes that it sank.  A search turns up nothing.  But Sasha, the granddaughter of the explorer, finds some notes in her grandfather's study indicating he took a different route than expected.  She argues for another search mission, but is not only refused, she damages her family's position with the royal court.

Vilified by her father, Sasha takes off on her own to prove her theory correct.  Connecting with the crew of a ship thanks to the reward offered by the Czar as well as an obligation a crew member owes her, they take off following her suggested route.

What follows is a rigorous adventure, where she and the crew undergo storms, ice avalanches, bitter cold, hunger and injury.  It is an uncompromising look at a difficult journey and the film pulls no punches.

The script, direction and art direction are all excellent.  The story has echoes of Captains Courageous and what might be an homage to a moment in Chaplin's The Gold Rush.  The characterizations are realistic.

The film, a French-Danish co-production, has an insane number of partners.  Pulling together the financing for this must have been hell.  And for all the film's excellence, the budget is the weak link.  Act 1 is full of animation done on threes, fours and maybe sixes.  The resolution of various story threads is done with stills during the end credits instead of being animated.  However, director Remé Chayé has put the money where it counted.  The search is doesn't skimp on animation or effects.

I can't think of another animated feature I can compare this to directly.  It is like The Iron Giant in that the release has shortchanged it and people who eventually find this film will like it.  It's like Castle in the Sky as it is a straight up adventure without the cuteness that plagues so many animated features.

In its second week in Toronto, it's showing just once a day on a single screen at Canada Square.  The Sunday screening I attended had maybe 8 people in the audience.  It was preceded by trailers for Trolls, Sing and Moana.  The three reeked of formula, which made Long Way North that much more impressive.  I'm afraid the film will be gone by October 28.

If you get a chance to see this in a theatre, don't pass it up.  Eventually it will turn up on other screens.  When it does, watch it.  I wish that GKids was distributing this, as they are great at marketing independent animated features.  I've seen The Red Turtle and will see Miss Hokusai shortly.  I'm betting that either those films or Long Way North will get a Best Animated Feature nomination as the art film this year.  Should Long Way North get it, know that it deserves it.

Long Way North Playing in Toronto

Long Way North, a French-Danish animated feature, has arrived in Toronto playing on a single screen.  Three of the five papers in town have not reviewed it.  None of this bodes well for its box office prospects or for people in the animation industry being aware of it.

If you want to see this film, head to Canada Square at Yonge and Eglinton.  Who knows if it will last more than a week.

Copyright Craziness

Warner Bros. is accusing itself of pirating its own copyrights.  If this doesn't prove that modern copyright enforcement is hopelessly broken, I don't know what does.

Warner Bros hired Vobile to search the web for sites that violate Warner copyrights and to send notices to Google to prevent the sites from being listed in searches.  The only problem is that Vobile listed the following sites as pirates:

http://www.warnerbros.com/dark-knight
http://www.warnerbros.com/matrix
http://www.warnerbros.com/lucky-one

I hope that Vobile will become even more aggressive, listing every Warner site so that eventually Warner Bros. is completely invisible to search engines.  At that point, maybe somebody will realize that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its take down notices are not workable and that some sort of reasonable balance between copyright owners and the public has to be established.

Jam Filled Purchases Arc

According to C21 Media, Jam Filled has completed the purchase of Arc's assets.  There are about 200 employees returning to a facility in Toronto.  While the article specifies that the company will "take over production of current Arc projects," it does not specify what they are.  No word on whether Blazing Samurai, a feature that was in production, is still in-house or, if rumours are true, has moved to another company.

Jam Filled Entertainment Negotiates to Buy Arc

The Globe and Mail has another article behind a pay wall, providing some details.  Deloitte, the receiver, ran an auction to purchase the rights to Arc's continuing projects.  Jam Filled Entertainment, an Ottawa studio bought just weeks ago by Boat Rocker Media, won the auction.  However, the deal has to be approved by the court and Jam Filled will be doing additional due diligence before the deal is concluded.

One part of the deal is that enough of Arc's former employees are willing to return to the projects they were working on.  The hope is that the deal can be finalized within the next two weeks.

As of now, there are many questions.  I assume that the work will stay in Toronto.  If they're looking to rehire Arc employees, it's going to be easier to do this without asking them to move to Ottawa.

While the deal obviously includes contracts for the work and the files created so far, does it include the hardware that the files are sitting on?  Will they occupy Arc's former space or move to another location?  Software licenses are not always transferrable.  Will Jam Filled get rights to the licenses as part of the deal or will they have to purchase new ones?  Which clients will be willing to continue their projects with Jam Filled and which will prefer to move them elsewhere?

Will there be pay cuts for returning employees?  How much?  Will they be across the board, meaning that everyone rehired gets the same percentage of their former salary, or will salaries be negotiated from scratch?

Who will be managing all this?  As Jam Filled is located in Ottawa, will they be sending a management team to Toronto?  Will they be hiring local management talent?  As management was the source of Arc's problems, hiring the right team will be critical to the success of the salvage operation.

Will Jam Filled continue the facility, assuming it is in Toronto, once the existing contracts are completed?  That may not be decided until projects are delivered and the balance sheet is scrutinized.

While Jam Filled's acquisition, assuming it goes through, is certainly good news, much more will have to be answered before this can be called a success or failure.  Good luck to everyone.

More on the Arc Situation

The Globe and Mail has an article behind their paywall about the Thursday court proceedings relating to Arc.  I can't quote from it extensively due to copyright, but I can summarize it.

While I was quick to say that without knowing specifics, it was not fair to blame Arc's management for the shutdown, it's now clear that the management was aware of the situation for at least five months and did not do enough, if anything, to fix it.

In December of last year, Arc made an agreement with Grosvenor Park Media Fund LP giving Arc access to up to $45.3 million.  $17.5 million of that went to repay Callidus Capital Corp, a previous lender.

On Feb. 8, 2016, Arc defaulted on payments to Grosvenor.  Grosvenor twice signed waiver agreements allowing Arc to pay later and extended another $4.6 million in credit.  At this point, Arc convinced the producers of Blazing Samurai to make their $1.05 million payment due to Arc to Grosvenor instead.

Arc again defaulted on payments to Grosvenor in May and July.  In the first six months of 2016, Arc ran a $9.2 million dollar loss.  It was also behind $250,000 in rent, $2 million for office renovations and $1 million in payroll.

On July 26, Guy Collins of GFM Films, international rights holders to Blazing Samurai, sent an email to Grosvenor saying he was concerned that Arc had stopped production on the feature.  Arc was trying to get an early payment for moneys due in August from GFM.  GFM indicated that they would not be paying any more money.  With no promise of revenue for Arc, Grosvenor called their loan and forced Arc into receivership.

This does not make Arc's management look good.  Defaulting on loan payments while continuing to hire and increasing expenses is not the route to success.  While I only know what was in the article, the logical thing to do would have been to cut expenses to the bone, eliminating anything not directly related to completing paying projects.  Had they been seen to do that, Grosvenor might have been even more forgiving than they were.  Arc's management had 5 months to fix things and didn't.  What's worse, it doesn't appear that they tried all that hard.

ARC and the Hazards of Animation

The news that ARC, one of Toronto’s largest animation studios, has gone into receivership spread in record time thanks to social media.  I’ve been dismayed at many of the comments I’ve read in various places online.  Many are ignorant; some are accusatory.  I have no inside information, but anyone with experience in the animation business knows that a bankruptcy is always a possibility, especially for studios doing service work.

Everyone in animation has probably worked on a project that’s gone bad.  It could be due to demanding or ignorant clients.  It could be due to unforeseen technical challenges.  It could be due to an inadequate schedule.  If a job goes over budget, the costs have to be covered from the next job.  With luck, the profits from that job are enough to cover the loss, which leaves the studio in a break-even position.  But if the profits are not enough, or the next job goes bad as well, the debt begins to pile up.  This puts a studio in the position of using income from current jobs to pay off old jobs, and it becomes necessary to keep new jobs coming in so as to service old debts.

Every budget and schedule (really two sides of the same coin) contains unknowns.  Studios try to build contingencies into budgets to cover the unknowns, but in the competitive market that service studios face, budgets are lean and sometimes intentionally lower than the job requires.

There are valid reasons for under-budgeting.   The studio wants to work with a client that commissions a lot of work and the studio has to land a project in order to establish a relationship.  Or the studio has a crew that will finish a project shortly and needs something to keep the crew on the payroll.  Finally, there’s the need to keep money coming in to meet overhead and maybe service debt.  Every day that the studio stays alive is another chance for the studio to find the profitable job that will solve its problems.

There is also the issue of cash flow.  A studio can be profitable on paper, but if the money isn’t flowing in at a rate fast enough to meet the studio’s expenses, the studio is forced to borrow to bridge the gap.  That borrowing has costs attached to it: legal fees and interest to name just two.  If the cash flow can’t be straightened out, the interest piles up and the studio may be forced to seek other bridge financing.  The end result once again is debt that is paid by diverting money from current jobs.  This just pushes the debt forward.

Either of the above cases can drive a studio into receivership.  It’s important to understand that studios are forced into receivership by creditors.  It’s not something they would choose to do.  So when a studio shuts suddenly, it’s because the creditors have forced it to happen, not because management was trying to screw over artists.  Undoubtedly, management was negotiating with the creditors, hoping to reschedule debt payments or restructure the debt.  If the creditors decide that they’ve had enough, meaning they have no confidence that the studio can meet its obligations, they force receivership, capping their losses and hoping to recoup something from the bankruptcy.

No one – the creditors or the management – wants that to happen.  The creditors would prefer to be paid in full, something that rarely happens in a bankruptcy and won’t happen when a studio’s only assets are computers and furniture.  Management prefers to run a profitable company.  It puts more money in their pockets and makes their resumes look better.  Having a bankruptcy on a resume is not the greatest job reference.  It is possible that ARC’s management made bad decisions.  It’s equally possible that clients, competition and bad luck forced them into decisions they did not want to make.

There is no question that the closing of the studio is a tragedy for all concerned.  But without inside knowledge, no one can assume to know what went wrong.  Bankruptcies are common in all industries because sales, overhead, production and cash flow are difficult to get right.  Attributing malicious motives to this bankruptcy is wrong.  Attributing it to gross mismanagement may also be wrong. 

More than any other studio, ARC (under a series of owners) got Canada farther into the animated feature game than any other studio to date.  While the studio had an unhappy ending, it provided lots of jobs and opportunity while it lasted.  If the management is going to be criticized for the bankruptcy, the least we can do is give it credit for what it accomplished.

More Thoughts on VR

I attended a one day conference on VR & Film, sponsored by SIRT and ETV Film Inc in mid-June.  There were hardware and software demonstrations, but I was particularly interested in the talks, where people involved in creating virtual reality explained the storytelling issues they encountered.

Having worked in cgi in the early years, I'm confident that the technical problems of VR will be solved over time.  My personal interest runs more towards how VR is going to communicate with audiences as a narrative medium.

Pretty much everyone agrees that VR has a resemblance to theatre in that the audience is free to look where they wish.  The stage has various techniques for directing the audience's attention, lighting being a major one.  If only one part of the stage is lit, the audience will naturally look there.  Jeff Preyra of 360 Storylabs pointed out that with a 360 degree camera, it was impossible to place lights, as they would always be visible.  For this reason, he felt that the future of VR storytelling would be motion capture avatars in cgi environments.  The virtual lights in cgi are invisible to the camera, so in a cgi environment, directors could still control lighting.

Preya felt that establishing shots would have to be longer as the audience would naturally want to look around an environment and take stock of who is present before watching whatever dramatic action is going to unfold.  This makes sense, though when returning to established locations it shouldn't be necessary and if you want to surprise the characters and the audience, you could start the action of a scene immediately to prevent the audience from knowing everything that was present.

Preyra also felt that musical scoring didn't work in VR.  As the viewer was in the scene, any music needed to have a visible source.  I'm not sure about this.  In the early years of talkies, there was music under the opening and closing titles, but none during the film unless there was a onscreen source such as a radio, phonograph or visible musicians.  However, by 1933, just a few years after talkies became the dominant form of movies, King Kong had dramatic scoring by Max Steiner throughout the film.  By the late 1930s, composers like Steiner, Newman, Korngold, Waxman, Hageman and Tiomkin were hard at work scoring films throughout their run times.

Ian Tuason of CFC Media Lab said that cameras could only move in straight lines, as any change in the camera's direction might clash with head movements of someone wearing a VR headset.  This makes sense on the face of it, but again a look at film history leads me to believe that it can be done.  Films in the 1930s and '40s routinely shot in ways where the camera's position operated separately from the camera's view.  In other words, the camera's location would physically move while the camera itself would change what it was pointing at.  What was standard, however, was someone moving on screen that gave the audience a focus.  So if a camera was tracking through a restaurant before stopping at a table where the main action was to take place, the camera would follow a waiter while it was moving.  In a VR situation, if there is an obvious center of interest on screen, like a character, the camera could move, changing it's spatial and angular relationship so long as the audience has a reason to stay focused on that character.

I feel the same way about cutting to a closer view.  If the audience is looking at a speaking character, cutting to a closer shot should not disorient the audience any more than it does in a conventional film.


The next five to ten years are going to be very interesting with regard to VR.  No doubt gaming will be a leader, as it's a natural for putting a player inside the game.  But just as games have evolved cut scenes to provide the player with narrative information, VR is going to evolve storytelling grammar in order to do the same.  Once that grammar exists, we'll find out if VR is going to be successful with audiences as a storytelling medium or if it's just a fad like stereoscopic 3D.

For my earlier thoughts on VR, go here.

Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, has a new book called Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t.  It's a quick read and a master course in story construction.  Until June 30, 2016, it's free in a variety of digital formats, including .pdf.  You're not required to leave any personal information in order to get a copy.

Here are two quotes that jumped out at me that will give you the flavour of the book.

"Nobody wants to read your shit.

"What's the answer?

"1) Streamline your message.  Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.

"2) Make its expression fun.  Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative.  Make it so compelling that a person would have to be crazy NOT to read it.

"3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.

"When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated.  You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction.  The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities.  In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.

"When you understand that nobody wants to read our shit, you develop empathy.

"You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs -- the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer.  You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting?  Is it fun or challenging or inventive?  Am I giving the reader enough?  Is she bored?  Is she following where I want to lead her?"

And this:

"A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give.  She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to  be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.

"A fake writer (or artist or entrepreneur) is just trying to draw attention to himself.  The word "fake" may be too unkind.  Let's say "young" or "evolving."
...
"To get over it, the candidate must grow up."

Muhammad Ali and Darwyn Cooke

No doubt you're wondering what these two have in common and why I am writing about them in an animation blog.  I'll get to that.

2016 has been a tough year for celebrity deaths.  Two that have hit me hard are the recent deaths of boxer Muhammad Ali and comic book creator Darwyn Cooke.  Both of these men widened the frame of reference for their respective fields through their work and their words.

I have no idea when Ali became politically aware, though he may have been from birth.  In any case, after defeating Sonny Liston and winning the heavyweight championship, he changed his name from Cassius Clay, telling reporters, “I don’t have to be what you want me to be,  I’m free to be who I want.”  Later, he resisted induction into the U.S. military, refusing to fight in the Viet Nam war.

While there were certainly great African-American athletes before Ali -- Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson come to mind -- the times forced them to tolerate the racism they experienced and they confined themselves in word and action to their respective sports where they avoided controversy.  Ali refused to just be a boxer and with his religion, politics, and taking his bouts to other continents, was an example of how a person could define himself regardless of how a dominant society attempted to keep him in his place.  Ali was an outstanding athlete, but his impact owes as much to his life outside the ring as in it.

Darwyn Cooke grew up loving comics and managed at a young age to get a story published by DC.  In those days, before Fedex and the internet, the fact that he didn't live in New York City pretty much ended his comics career right there.  While he was no doubt disappointed, it ended up enriching his work.

Cooke spent time art directing music and fashion magazines as well as running a design studio.  In doing this, he gained experience in the commercial art field, dealing with clients and absorbing aesthetics from fields other than comics.  He then went into TV animation, working with Bruce Timm on the influential Batman: The Animated Series, a show that also brought in artistic influences from outside comics.  It was at this point, after a decade and a half outside the field, that Cooke finally made it into the comics world.

Like Ali, Cooke was determined to define himself.  He did so in terms of the design of his work and his treatment of the subject matter.  Too many of the people in comics had graduated from being fans directly into the industry, and had a very constricted view of what comics were supposed to be.  They had little to no experience in the wider business world.  Comics art of the period was overly detailed and fussy.  Fan-favourite art had a lot of lines in it.  Cooke had a cleaner, more direct style that was counter to what comics were doing artistically and he was comfortable with incorporating modern graphic design.  In terms of content, as former fans-turned-writers aged, they continued to write comics for themselves, taking characters intended for children into questionable areas of sex and violence.  Having worked in the real world where he did business with women, Cooke treated his female characters with far more respect than those in other comics from DC.  He also insisted on heroes being heroes, not psychopaths.

So what's this got to do with animation?  From my perspective (and you're free to disagree), animation in theatres and on TV has gone stale.  Too much of it is the same.  The insularity is due to producers who imitate successes to line their pockets and artists who immerse themselves in animation while growing up and then graduate into the field.  Ali and Cooke each brought some of the wider world into their professions.  They enlarged their fields with their life experience.  Animation needs that.  Though the cost of production discourages it, animation needs to open up to more points of view.  It's not just a question of a more diverse workforce or adding characters of colour or varying sexual orientations to the films.  Animation needs to challenge what the audience thinks an animated film or TV show is supposed to be, the same way that Ali challenged how people looked at athletes and Cooke challenged how comics should be done.

In 2016, giants are passing on and leaving holes in our lives.  While celebrating their accomplishments is appropriate, we should build on their lessons to create accomplishments of our own.

Startoon

The greatest danger in pitching ideas is not rejection.  While rejection is common, the one benefit to rejection is that your idea remains your property.  The greatest danger is finding a buyer, and that's dangerous because in exchange for getting your idea produced, you will generally lose ownership and control of the very thing you created.

Mike Valiquette of Canadian Animation Resources is now associated with Startoon, a competition to find an animated property worth producing.  This competition is different, because they make no claim to your ideas if you don't win.  This is in direct contrast to most other competitions, where the contest runners have the right to use your work forever in any medium simply because you entered.

It's too soon to know if this will result in a successful project or if the winning creator will feel satisfied at how he or she is treated, but it is encouraging that someone is willing to do business in a more creator-friendly way.  Watch Mike's pitch below and find the complete details here.

Canadian Content, Regulations, and Audiences

Canada's federal government is interested in revisiting rules and funding regarding Canadian culture.  In the TV business, broadcasters and cable channels are required to play a certain percentage of Canadian content daily in order to guarantee local producers access to audiences and give audiences access to local content.

As broadcast and cable were the only ways to get a show into homes, the old regulations focused on distribution.  A producer needed a letter from a broadcaster or cable channel in order to qualify for money from various funding bodies.

These days, broadcast and cable have become less relevant with streaming and torrents.  In effect, the audience has left the building and advertisers are going with them, leaving the broadcasters and cable channels with shrinking markets and dubious futures.

The question is whether the government will be smart enough to understand this and resist vested interests who will fight to preserve their positions. 

With distribution available to everyone now, through Netlix, YouTube, etc, the focus should turn to creators.  The problems creators face are financing production, earning enough to live on, and making the audience aware of their work.

While I am obviously biased in favour of creators, I'd be the first to say that those who can successfully engage the audience are a rare breed.  Many can write, draw, direct or act, but only a few can hold an audience's attention. 

Everybody can sing.  No doubt with lessons and practice, everybody could sing better.  But only some people sing well enough to sell tickets.  I teach around 150 animation students a year.  While there are usually a dozen who are genuinely good animators, there are rarely more than one or two with the ability to engage an audience.

The challenge for the government is setting up a system where those creators with the ability to engage an audience can survive economically, and the audience can be made aware of their work.

If creators succeed, government support should be withdrawn and the money and resources put towards discovering other people.  If people fail, they should be barred from reapplying for a period of time.  Too often in the past, people succeeded by working the government's system rather than creating successful products.   That ends up being a wealth transfer from tax payers to mediocrities.  Avoiding that and discovering new talent should be the focus of any revised set of cultural regulations.  It's a big challenge and I hope that the government gets it right.

New Ghibli Commercial

Details here.

TAAFI - The Toronto Animated Arts Festival International

 After a one year hiatus, the Toronto Animated Arts Festival International (TAAFI) will resume on April 22 and run through April 24.  The Friday and Monday will feature workshops with industry veterans such as Eric Goldberg, Samantha Youssef, Michel Gagné and others.  The weekend is dedicated to screenings from around the world, including the world premieres of the features Spark and Nova Seed.  Other guests include Marv Newland, Audu Paden, Michael Rianda, Stevie Vallance, Willie Ito, Jerry Eisenberg and Tony Benedict.

Early Bird discount passes are available until March 22.  The website, with more complete details, is here.

Irish Animation in Toronto

As part of the sixth annual Toronto Irish Film Festival, there will be a program of Irish animation on Sunday, March 6 at 1 p.m.  at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.  Some of the most interesting animation being done today is coming from Europe, and the program includes films from Cartoon Saloon, maker of Song of the Sea, and Brown Bag films.  There are also some student animated films.

The list of films for all programs can be found here.