Book Review: Directing for Animation

There are many books that describe the jobs in animation in a bloodless manner.  They lay out the procedures but do it as a mechanical process, devoid of human influence.  The truth is that the human element is embedded in every part of the process, and managing it is often the toughest part of the job.

Tony Bancroft is the co-director of Disney's Mulan and has also worked as a feature animator and animation supervisor.  His book, Directing for Animation, confronts the messiness that comes with the role of director.  While the public might think that the director is the one in charge, the truth is that the director is in charge of keeping everyone else happy.  Caught between the financiers and production managers on one side and the crew of artists and technicians on the other, the director has to keep all parties satisfied while trying to establish a vision for the film and keep it on schedule.

Bancroft takes the reader through the process of directing a feature, dealing with each stage of the production and the pitfalls to look out for.  In addition to his own experiences, he interviews other directors, most with feature experience: Dean DeBlois, Pete Docter, Eric Goldberg, Tim Miller, John Musker, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Nick Park and Chris Wedge.  Bancroft is a good interviewer and it helps that he knows what questions to ask.  The interview subjects are forthright in talking about their experiences.  As they are talking to a fellow director, they don't sugar-coating their stories as they might for an interviewer from outside the field. 

These interviews add considerably to the range of experiences a director might face.  The interviews with Goldberg and Miller are particularly insightful, as their experiences are not limited to features.  Goldberg directed commercials for years and Miller, a founder of Blur Studios, has done commercials and game cinematics.  As they have worked on shorter projects, they have confronted a greater variety of artistic, technical, financial and political challenges.

This book is a good companion to David Levy's Directing Animation.  Bancroft's experiences are west coast, Levy's are east coast.  While Bancroft focuses on features, Levy talks more about television and independent films.  Between the two books, a prospective director has a wealth of information to draw on and a list of problems to watch out for.

Neither book, however, gets to the nitty gritty of how directors make their creative choices.  Those choices include story, casting, voice direction, art direction, staging, animation, lighting, editing, musical scoring, sound effects and mixing.  I hope that someday a feature director publishes a diary of a production or allows a writer to shadow the director so as to provide the thinking behind each  decision as it arises. 

Until that time, this book will give readers with the ambition to direct a feature a good grounding in the challenges that they will face.  Even casual fans of the medium will learn more about how the films they enjoy come together.

Who Will Succeed Robert Iger at Disney?

The names Jay Rasulo and Thomas Staggs don't mean much to animation professionals or fans right now, but the Los Angeles Times speculates that one of them may be Robert Iger's successor when he retires in 2016.

I wonder if they would consider Jeffrey Katzenberg.  I'm not joking about that.  While Robert Iger has been using Disney's money to buy everything in sight, Katzenberg has been building an organization from scratch and diversifying it so that it is stable enough to survive any problems.  Katzenberg also has his own record of success at Disney.  There are many worse candidates out there.

With the exceptional profitability of animated features, combining Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks makes sense from a business standpoint, if not an artistic one.  Who knows?  Since Robert Iger is running out of things to buy, maybe DreamWorks and Katzenberg are already on his list.

Phil Tippett on Mad God and Crowd Funding

"When working with material objects they look at you and demand attention. They tell you things and maybe you wouldn’t otherwise be so perceptive. It is about the process and listening to the things around you, hearing and what they can tell you. That takes time."

Friend and fellow Sheridan instructor Chris Walsh interviews stop motion and effects wizard Phil Tippett about his independent production Mad God.  Tippet talks about his influences, the nature of physical objects and the opportunities from crowd funding.

Raymond Chandler Hates the Oscars

"The head of a large studio once said privately that in his candid opinion the motion picture business was 25 per cent honest business and the other 75 per cent pure conniving. He didn't say anything about art, although he may have heard of it. But that is the real point, isn't it?—whether these annual Awards, regardless of the grotesque ritual which accompanies them, really represent anything at all of artistic importance to the motion picture medium, anything clear and honest that remains after the lights are dimmed, the minks are put away, and the aspirin is swallowed? I don't think they do. I think they are just theater and not even good theater. As for the personal prestige that goes with winning an Oscar, it may with luck last long enough for your agent to get your contract rewritten and your price jacked up another notch. But over the years and in the hearts of men of good will? I hardly think so."

The Oscars are this weekend.  I stopped watching the ceremony years ago as the results are completely irrelevant to me.  I would never say I hate the Oscars, as that would require more energy than I'm willing to devote to them.

The above quote is from a long piece by Raymond Chandler that appeared in The Atlantic in 1948 and you can read it in its entirety here.  Chandler was the creator of the private eye Philip Marlowe in the novels The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely, both of which have been turned into movies several times.  He was also a screenwriter who contributed to Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train.  Chandler had an inside view of the Oscars and he hated them.  In this age of Twitter, I don't know how many people will bother to read his entire article, but it is a good counterpoint to all the hype that will wash over us in the next few days.

Working Conditions for Board Artists

"It would be good to have audio, designs and b.g.'s BEFORE we start a board."

"Somebody who's never done the work has created the schedule.  [Storyboard]  artists never have input on the time that's realistic. Writers should use a stop watch when writing their scripts. They write (overlong) 16 page scripts for 11 minute segments."

The Animation Guild in Los Angeles recently had a meeting about the conditions facing storyboard artists and published several comments on its blog.  As there was discussion in Canada recently about studios asking storyboard artists to cut animatics (for no additional pay), I thought it was interesting that even in a union situation, board artists are being squeezed for time, handed scripts that are unquestionably too long and being asked to work overtime for free.

Ed Hooks on Hollywood Animation

Ed Hooks is an actor and acting teacher who has run workshops for animators.  He has a monthly newsletter where he talks about animated acting and comments on animated films.  This is from his latest:

"Even a cursory glance at the evolution of feature animation in the United States reveals a lack of thematic diversity. Walt Disney started out making movies for children, and that is still pretty much the situation today. For one brief moment in history, it looked like John Lasseter and his Pixar crew were  going to break the mold. "Toy Story" was for adults, as was "Monsters Incorporated", "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille".  These movies worked for the kids in the audience, but they had adult themes and featured characters with adult wisdom. Pixar gave Hollywood animation a real Camelot moment. But then Disney bought Pixar, and we are back where we started, with movies for kids. The stories invariably are about  good vs. evil, virginal first love or non-life-threatening bravery. There is definitely sufficient talent in Hollywood to handle tough adult-world issues, but there is more money to be made with kids' movies and their tentpole merchandising opportunities."

Fuzzy Job Boundaries

Canadian Animation Resources points out the changing demands on storyboard artists.  Where once a board artist's job was to visualize the script through drawings, studios are now often requesting that board artists also time the boards or cut animatics including dialogue and sound effects.  It should be noted that studios are offering no additional money for these tasks.

Software is what makes this possible.  When boards were done on paper, the board artist didn't have the tools to create an animatic.  Now, with applications like Storyboard Pro, the same software that a board artist draws into can also output a finished animatic.  While there is no question that this is convenient, it also allows studios to make requests that were logistically impossible in the past.

Just because board artists can create full animatics, should they?

Television animation is a strange beast.  The person who is the director really isn't the director if you compare the job to the one Chuck Jones had.  Jones would have input into the story and design.  He would design the characters himself, do all the character layouts, time the animation, supervise the voice recording, work with the composer and have approval of everyone's efforts.  This is why a Jones cartoon (and the cartoons of his contemporaries like Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Cannon, John Hubley, and Hanna & Barbera) are so instantly recognizeable.  Their personal stamp is on every frame of the film.

A director of an animated TV series may have approval over everything, but has no time to do any of the jobs that Jones did.  Maybe the director supervises the voice recording, but beyond that, it's mostly giving notes on other people's work.

In many ways, the board artist is the de facto director.  The board artist is choosing the camera angles and the cutting continuity, two of the main jobs of a live action director.  These days, board artists are asked to provide more poses for each shot, so in effect, they are doing the character layouts.  If a board artist is also timing the cartoon and placing the dialogue and the sound effects, so far as I can see, that makes the board artist the director of the show.  What's left for the director to do except for passing judgment?

While the current studio perspective is that editors can be eliminated, why not go a step farther and eliminate the director as well?  Doubling the board artist's fee would probably still be cheaper than paying the editor and director.  It might also lead to work that has more individuality. Most episodes of an animated series rival the monotony of McDonald's hamburgers.

If studios thought more about the content of the work they produce rather than the cost, this might happen.  Instead, the focus is on saving money and the place to save it isn't on producer's fees or middle management, it's on the backs of freelancers.  In the Canadian industry, with no union and where the sellers (meaning animation artists) vastly outnumber the buyers (the studios), the leverage is all on the side of the studios.  There's no agreement as to what a board artist's duties are exactly.  The studios are free to ask for anything, and artists are aware that with a limited number of places to work, they don't dare be uncooperative if they hope to keep earning a living.

Unfortunately, this is a race to the bottom.  How much more will board artists be asked to do for the same old fee?  The only possible way for board artists to stem this tide is to say "No."  That's a definite risk, but the studios have shown that so long as they are hearing "Yes," they will keep asking for more.  If board artists are bleeding now, at what point does it become fatal?  Each board artist will have to make that decision, but that decision will affect all board artists.  If a few decide to go along and create full animatics, the job of board artist will be redefined.  If board artists don't get paid more for doing it, then that becomes the new normal.  Proceed with caution.

Pixar Canada and Money

I don't for a minute buy the official reason for shutting Pixar Canada down.  No other part of the Disney empire is concerned about having everything under one roof.  Certainly, Disney TV animation had no problem having Planes produced overseas, and if Pixar was having problems with the Vancouver facility, there are people within Disney who could easily troubleshoot any problems.

There are several potential reasons why the facility is shutting down, and they all relate to money.  As Disney is a public company, it reports its earnings quarterly.  It always makes a profit, the only question is how much?  If there are money losers for a quarter, the only way to compensate for that is to be making profits elsewhere in the company or to cut costs.

It's possible that the failure of The Lone Ranger, forcing Disney to write off up to $190 million,  may be one of the things motivating Pixar Canada's closure.  That money has to be made up somewhere, and closing a studio will certainly cut costs.

Another possibility is the delay of The Good Dinosaur.  Having replaced the director, the film is now delayed from it's original release date.  That means that Pixar's revenues will be less than expected due to the delay.  Again, a way to compensate for that is to cut costs.

Variety claims that that British Columbia's tax credits are not as lucrative as those offered by Ontario and Quebec.  While British Columbia may no longer seem lucrative enough to warrant Disney's presence, their tax credits have not changed so far as I know.  Whatever discount Disney was receiving before is still in place, so I doubt that tax credits were a big part of the decision.

Finally, there is the difficulty of putting a revenue figure on the short films that Pixar's Canadian studio made.  If a short is in front of a feature, how much of the box office can be attributed to the presence of the short?  If a short is an extra on a Blu-ray, how many more units are sold due to the inclusion of the short?  When the short shows up on TV, what part of the ratings can be credited to the short?  What percentage of sales of Toy Story merchandise can be attributed directly to the existence of the shorts?

When costs can be figured precisely but revenue cannot,  the costs carry more weight on a balance sheet. 

Note that none of the above reasons have anything to do with the work produced by the studio or the competence of the staff.  That's the tragedy of it.  A bean counter, charged with projecting profits for the quarter, decided that closing the studio was a good way to goose the numbers.  The layoffs are just collateral damage.  Robert Iger's job is to maintain the profits and the stock price.  Animation is just a means to that end and not necessarily the best one either.  A hundred artists are a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of people who work for Disney, and their livelihoods pale beside the needs of shareholders and executives. 

Disney marches on.  Just don't get in the way.

Pixar Canada Shuts Down

Adios, Amigos

The Province is reporting that Pixar Canada has shut its doors and laid off its staff.

 Close to 100 employees at Pixar Canada’s Gastown animation studio lost their jobs Tuesday as the company decided to pack up the three-year-old operation and concentrate its operations in Emeryville, California.

 “A decision was made to refocus operations and resources under the one roof,” Barb Matheson, a spokesman for Pixar parent company Disney, said from Toronto. “Staff were just told today. Not great news, obviously. It was just a refocussing of efforts and resources to the one facility.”

The facility opened in the Spring of 2010.  This is the third studio that Disney has opened and closed in Canada and the second in Vancouver.  As recently as August 20, Pixar Canada was advertising for a layout artist and animators, so it appears that this decision was fairly sudden.

 It is important for animation artists and students to realize that while companies like Disney/Pixar appeal to a person's love for their characters and the status of joining a winning team, that branch plants are nothing more than economic calculations.  At the time it opened, Pixar Vancouver made economic sense; now, for some reason, it doesn't.  The Pixar dust that was liberally spread throughout Canada was a marketing opportunity to gain the company good will and bait for prospective employees.

It wouldn't surprise me if in five or ten years Disney/Pixar opens yet another studio in Canada.  I hope that people wake up to the fact that a job in a branch plant is just a job.  It might be a good job in terms of pay or opportunity, but in fundamental ways, it is no different than any other kind of job.  If they no longer want you, you're gone.

(If anyone from Pixar Canada would care to comment, I'd be interested in an employee's view of the shut down.  Did employees receive notice or severance?  What happens to projects that are still in progress?)