Sheridan Industry Day 2012

It's that time of year again. The Sheridan class of 2012 met the industry on April 26.

Industry and faculty line up to register

Sheridan President Jeff Zabudsky addresses the industry prior to the screening

The students set up their areas in the Learning Commons prior to the industry's arrival.

After the films are screened, the industry mixes with the students.

L to R: Omar Al-Hafidh, Tony Song (way in the background) and Jeremy Bondy.  Omar's film, Out of Bounds, is a cautionary tale of child safety.  Tony's film, Just Remember Me, features a girl trying to download her late father's essence into a robot.  Jeremy's film, Pollen, is a chase with a twist ending.

Victor Preto's film, Theft, uses Flash in a very sophisticated way.

Evee Fex-chriszt's film, The Terrible Bandit, shows off her masterful drawing and animation skills.

Garth Laidlaw's film, Finally, anticipates the zombie apocalypse.

Kirsten Whitely animated the opening for her TV pitch, Spectra.

Leigh Ann Frostad's film, Origin Story, is about the conflict between the sun and the moon and shows off her distinctive designs.

L to R: Dean Heezen, Shen Ramu and character design instructor Peter Emslie.  Dean's film, Sax, was an audience favourite showing off superb animation and choreography.  Shen's film, Bygone Bounce, is a clever look at the aging process.

Justin Hartley receives an award for his film, Murder on the Docks, from Judy Leung of Nelvana.  The film is a film noir pastiche made in stereoscopic 3D.

Hai Wei Hou receives an award for her film, Vernal Equinox, from Associate Dean Angela Stukator.  Haiwei's film shows off her remarkable draftsmanship and design sense.

Last and not least is Tony Tarantini, who teaches layout and art direction to third year students and is the organizer of industry day.  Tony pulls together this large and successful event every year, giving both students and industry the chance to connect for their mutual benefit.  Tony appeared on Canada A.M. that morning to talk about the event.

The Moon and the Son

I find that many of the most interesting animated films these days are being made in the genre of animated documentaries.  Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, The Rauch Brothers, and Marjane Satrapi ground their films in every day life, rather than fantasy.  This isn't to say that their films don't take advantage of animation's ability to use exaggeration, symbol and metaphor.  It's just that their films illuminate real life instead of providing the audience with an escape from it.

I am late in getting to John Canemaker's The Moon and the Son.  I never saw it in its original release and have only now caught up to it on DVD.  The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2005 and it deals with the relationship between John Canemaker and his father.

There's been no shortage of father-son relationship issues in recent animated features.  Finding Nemo, Chicken Little, Ratatouille, and How to Train Your Dragon come to mind.  In each of these films, though, it is the child who is misunderstood and the parent has to come around to understanding and accepting the child.  In The Moon and the Son, both father and son are misunderstood by each other and as the film is Canemaker's attempt to understand the relationship after his father's death, no real resolution is possible.  That's the difference between a film for children and a film for adults.  Canemaker doesn't privilege his own point of view over his father's and paint himself as the victim.  Both he and his father are victims due to circumstances beyond their control.  The question is not who is right and who is wrong.  That's too simplistic.  The question is how do people deal with what life throws at them and how does it affect their relationships with others?  The older I get, the more I think about Jean Renoir's line in his film The Rules of the Game. "The horrible thing about life is that everyone has his reasons."

Canemaker's father had anger issues.  Whether that anger was due to his personality or his circumstances is left to the viewer.  He had a hardscrabble life, typical of working class immigrants and he kept his old world values.  Canemaker was embarrassed by his father's jail time and intimidated by his temper.  While Canemaker escaped the family as an adult, his relationship with his father could be reduced but not resolved.

The history and conflicts in the film are portrayed through animation as well as still photographs, home movies and newspaper clippings.  This allows the film to move freely between emotion and fact and that's what gives the film its power.  This isn't an abstract history but something that had real consequences for the film maker.

The voices in the film are Eli Wallach, portraying Canemaker's father, and John Turturro, portraying Canemaker himself.  Based on the story reel that is an extra on the DVD,  I'm guessing that Wallach and Turturro did not record together.  That's a pity.  Wallach's reading is excellent, though Turturro's is a bit stiff.  I'm sure that if they had the opportunity to work off each other, Turturro's performance would have been fuller.  In many ways, I prefer Canemaker's own reading in the story reel to Turturro's.

The other extras on the DVD are two galleries of artwork and an on-camera interview with John Canemaker and producer Peggy Stern.

There's no shortage of animated films that are trifles, something to amuse or distract and then be quickly forgotten.  The Moon and the Son is not that kind of film.  It's more proof of the emotional richness that animation is capable of when it sticks to the truth.

Stripped Bare

The above animation is by Ron Zorman, who did it with TVPaint.

I'm including it here because it is a clear reminder of the expressive power of motion. These days, motion is either limited and cliched or buried under textures and effects. Animation also veers between stylization with no resemblance to human behaviour or a leaden attempt at realism that fails to achieve the complexity of live acting.

The above is stripped bare: no sound, no colour, no texture, no face, few details. Just line. Yet the way the four sack moves presents us with a character that is indisputably alive. We can read the character's mind. We can empathize with the character's experiences. All of that is accomplished purely through motion.

The principles of animation are all here. Anticipation, stretch and squash, overshoot and recoil, line of action, follow through, overlapping action, drag, staggers, slow ins and slow outs, contrast in timing, etc. While an animator can pick them out, they're invisible to the audience because all of them are based on motions we've experienced in life. The motion is, in terms used by Chuck Jones, believable as opposed to realistic.

This is the core of what animation is. Everything else is elaboration.

Ham and Hattie are Ho-hum

I've been working my way through the UPA Jolly Frolics DVD collection. I had never seen any of the Ham and Hattie shorts, so I was naturally curious about them. They are bad, but specifically bad in ways that illuminate what went wrong with UPA.

These films show all the things that UPA didn't care about, personality, humour and animation being three of the most prominent. Having lost key personnel such as John Hubley, Phil Eastman and Bill Scott, the studio was left with little more than design in these cartoons. While the design is sometimes attractive, it's not enough to sustain interest for seven minutes.

Hattie is a little girl whose personality can only be described as bland. We get no sense of who she is, what she values, or how she could be expected to respond. The cartoons are free of conflict relating to her and the humour is so soft that the cartoons might be turned down by Sesame Street as too boring. Even pre-school shows have more bite than Hattie.

The animation is severely limited, akin to what was being done on TV at roughly the same time, even though the UPA theatricals presumably had better budgets. In Trees, a cat is riding on an out-of-control wagon and it's just a held cel panning across several backgrounds.

Ham is even worse. He takes on a different persona in each of his four cartoons: a Jamaican, a dog, a Japanese and an Italian. Why create a character if he is going to be different in appearance in every cartoon? His ethnic adventures are accompanied by a narrator with the appropriate accent, making it clear that the later UPA Dick Tracy TV cartoons starring Joe Jitsu and Go Go Gomez were completely in line with UPA's sensibilities. So much for the studio being politically progressive.

Like Hattie, the Ham stories are dull with few gags and little conflict. The most they aspire to is a smile. The stories are simplistic, the characters have no psychological depth, let alone complexity, and the motion in the Ham cartoons is sloppy. Either the assistant animators had no clue how to maintain shapes and volumes or nobody cared at that point. Inbetweens were seen as a luxury. The design is also unpleasant, tending towards lumpiness.

There's no question that by the time these cartoons were made, UPA was a spent force. They might rally for the TV special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol or the features 1001 Arabian Nights or Gay Purr-ee, but even these films can't compare to the work being done at the studio's birth. Whatever one's view of Stephen Busustow, he was not a guiding sensibility. Without the right people around him, he was no better than Walter Lantz, another weak producer whose quality level was all over the map.

The Hollywood blacklist, the result of the House Un-American Activities Committee, was terrible for UPA. Conformist hysteria gripped mainstream society to the point where any deviation from political orthodoxy was seen as a threat to the nation. The irony is that the artists attracted to left wing politics in the '30s and '40s were reacting to a world that had gone off the rails and one they wished to fix. In short, they were not aesthetes, only interested in creating beauty; they were engaged with the larger world and had opinions about more than the way an image should look.

When UPA lost Hubley and Eastman to the blacklist (as well as the unpersecuted Bill Scott), they lost their mainspring. These men understood personality (see Scott's work for Jay Ward, Hubley's independent films and Eastman's books), they understood how to create stories and in Hubley's case, valued the expressive quality of movement. Without them, UPA was full of artists who wanted to create pretty pictures but had no idea what those pictures should be about. Like Hubley, Bob Cannon's cartoons at UPA also valued expressive movement, but once he got past Christopher Crumpet, his cartoons became a little too precious. Cannon's animation is like Ham and Hattie's design: window dressing with nothing much to sell.

Thad Komorowski has also commented on the DVD set. He feels that only the first disk is worth watching. I'd be willing to dip into the second. However, regardless of your opinion, this set finally allows viewers to put UPA in perspective for the first time since the cartoons were originally released. Eleven years of cartoons show the quick rise and the prolonged fall of the studio. The Ham and Hattie cartoons rank with the worst theatricals of the era and by the time that UPA moved into TV production, the body was already cold.

Book Review: When Magoo Flew

The only way this book could be better is if the artists who worked at UPA were all still alive to be interviewed. Thankfully, many were interviewed before their deaths by animation historians such as John Canemaker, Michael Barrier, Leonard Maltin and Karl Cohen and author Adam Abraham has accessed this information as well as trade publications, studio records, letters, etc. to write the most detailed history of UPA to date.

What struck me most while reading this book was how continually precarious UPA's existence was. There were, of course, the early days when finding any work was a life or death situation for the company. However, even when they got a contract to do theatrical shorts for Columbia, the first two contracts were only for two cartoons apiece.

Other threats to the studio's existence had to do with the various partners. While some studios were owned by individuals, such as Leon Schesinger, or partnerships such as the Disney brothers or Harman and Ising, UPA started with three partners and often had more. The inevitable artistic and business conflicts that developed due to the many owners and ownership changes meant that the studio never had a genuinely steady hand on the till. Producer Steve Busustow was only nominally in control, always having to deal with competing partners.

UPA also had the problem of being born at the same time that television was changing the entertainment landscape. It had less time than other studios to solidify it's sensibility and to create characters popular with audiences.

Finally, UPA was the animation studio hit hardest by the 1950s witch hunt for Communists in the film industry. It forced out John Hubley, arguably the studio's heart and soul, as well as Phil Eastman, a top story man. Writer Bill Scott was collateral damage, as he was laid off at the same time as Eastman to disguise that the move was political.

With all these problems, the studio managed to create interesting films. Its peak years were brief; the most memorable films were released from 1949 to 1952. Yet the studio changed the look of animation in North America and inspired foreign studios like Zagreb as well.

Abraham's book covers it all: the budgets, the personnel, the satellite studios, the sponsored films and the many sales of the company to corporate interests. There are interesting tidbits about individuals here, such as director Bobe Cannon's bathing habits and animator Pat Matthews' brain surgery.

The studio was controlled by artists, but those artists had trouble staying on budget and often were so in love with their imagery that they forgot about the audiences they were trying to please. Abraham's book tells the story of UPA's triumphs and tragedies in a way that's both enlightening and cautionary. The book is valuable beyond the historical facts for anyone who dreams of running a studio or who hopes to break out of a commercial straitjacket. UPA solidified a graphical revolution in animation, but didn't have the organization or luck to profit from it for more than a short time.

Michael Sporn's Poe Project

The clock is ticking on Michael Sporn's Kickstarter campaign to help finance his feature based on the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe. Donations as low as $5 are possible. If you are someone who supports drawn animation, independent films or just intelligent animated features, this is a worthy project.

Michael has been nominated for an Oscar, won several Cable ACE awards and been making films for decades. He is not a newbie who thought it would be fun to make an animated film, but a veteran director who is bucking commercial constraints in order to tackle subject matter that is common for live action film but all too rare in animation.

Below are art samples from the project's website. If the art suggests that this is a film you'd like to see, help it come into existence by making a donation.

The Cartoon Grows Up

TV Ontario ran two animated features, Perspepolis and Mary and Max, on Saturday Night at the Movies on March 17. As usual, between features, they ran interview footage relating to the films. This segment features Oscar winner Chris Landreth (Ryan), Director and animator Robin Budd (Producing Parker, Ruby Gloom) and me.

Sheridan Industry Day Promo

It's almost that time of year again, where the students graduating from Sheridan's animation program screen their films for industry guests. The above is a taste of what's coming.

Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton

I never saw Brad Bird's Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and I won't be seeing Andrew Stanton's John Carter. The analyst in me is still interested in the contrast between the two.

Brad Bird
Made a sequel to a successful franchise
The film starred one of the few actors who can still "open" a film
Made a film that had similarities to his animated film The Incredibles

Andrew Stanton
Made a film based on a 100-year-old book with no preceding movie
The film starred someone who has never before received top billing in a feature
Made a film that was not similar to his animated films Finding Nemo and Wall-E.

John Carter is being touted as a flop that may not hit $30 million for its opening weekend. While Bird emerged from Mission Impossible as somebody who is bankable in both animation and live action, Stanton is already being declared a live action failure. I found this paragraph from Deadline Hollywood interesting. I have no idea how valid it is, but the fact that this is the perception in at least part of Hollywood doesn't bode well for Stanton's future in live action. The ellipses are in the original; the paragraph is quoted verbatim.

"To summarize: this flop is the result of a studio trying to indulge Pixar… Of an arrogant director who ignored everybody’s warnings that he was making a film too faithful to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel in the Barsoom series “A Princess of Mars”… Of the failure of Dick Cook, and Rich Ross, and Bob Iger to rein in Stanton’s excessive ego or pull the plug on the movie’s bloated budget … Of really rotten marketing that failed to explain the significant or scope of the film’s Civil War-to-Mars story and character arcs and instead made the 3D movie look way as generic as its eventual title… Disagree all you want, but Hollywood is telling me that competent marketing could have drawn in women with the love story, or attracted younger males who weren’t fanboys of the source material. Instead the campaign was as rigid and confusing as the movie itself, not to mention that ’Before Star Wars, Before Avatar‘ tag line should have come at the start and not at the finish. But even more I think John Carter is a product of mogul wuss-ism as much as it is misplaced talent worship. More detail to come."

Deadline Hollywood is not the only one examining John Carter's box office failure. The N.Y. Times wades in as well.

Michael Sporn, Poe and Kickstarter

Michael Sporn has been developing an animated feature about author Edgar Allan Poe and has decided to use Kickstarter to finance the project.

One of the most encouraging things about the increased number of animated features in the last several decades is the content that is not aimed at children or the family audience. Films like Persepolis, Mary and Max, Waltz with Bashir, etc. use animation to deal with adult themes.

Michael Sporn is no stranger to those themes. Even his films that appear to be aimed at children, such as Abel's Island, are really about adult concerns.

As the cost of mainstream animated features continues to go higher, the films take fewer risks. There are more sequels, more adaptations and just more of the same. Even Pixar seems to be falling into established patterns.

Directors like Michael Sporn, working on a shoestring, take more chances than Hollywood. Their continued existence is essential for the health of the animated art form. The only way pop culture changes is by absorbing influences from existing work, but the big studios are all so similar that they've got nothing to absorb that they're not already doing. It's the outliers, people committed to their vision in the face of high odds, that break new ground. When their work comes into being, it affects the creative conversation.

Michael Sporn has been fighting the good fight for decades. He's gravitated towards thoughtful, original films when he could have surrendered to service work. He's consistently given opportunities to artists starting their careers. He's worked with top voice and music talent who are not the usual suspects. And he can do more with a dollar than any producer I know. Large animation studios spend more on catering than Michael gets to make whole films.

I hope that this Kickstarter campaign succeeds and I get to see the completed feature. I have made my financial pledge to make this film a reality and I hope that anyone interested in the artistic growth of animation will throw a few dollars in the direction of this project.

A Canadian Wimp

Apparently, somebody complained about the above clip from Family Guy, and

"The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled on Thursday that the broadcaster did a good job warning viewers about sexual content and bad language in the show, but didn’t provide a heads up about violence. To make amends, Global [the broadcaster] must tell its viewers it violated the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Violence code during prime time viewing hours, and then repeat the message once more time at any time."

The idea that anybody watching Family Guy would find this shocking is shocking to me. In fact, the idea that anybody watches Family Guy is shocking to me. However, I do sleep better at night knowing that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council won't allow Bugs Bunny to die unless viewers are warned in advance.

Oscar Thoughts

Today is traditionally the day when everyone complains how boring the telecast was, how awful the fashions were and how out of touch the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is.

I've stopped watching the Oscar telecast, finding it much more efficient to read the list of awards the next day in 5 minutes or less.

My take on the Oscars has always been that it's just a fancy marketing tool. A film that wins or loses is the same as film it was before the win or loss. Perception may change, but not the actual film. And as perceptions keep changing over time anyway, an win or a loss is just a blip in the how the world judges a film or the people who made it.

While La Luna lost for best animated short, it will have the last laugh. Being paired with Brave this coming summer, it will be seen by more people than the winning film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

Rango's win will probably allow ILM to make another feature, but the film's influence will be slight for the immediate future. This year's releases are essentially done, so it will be next year at the earliest that any Rango qualities deemed attractive will be filtered through other studios' animated features. Personally, I found the film's tone wildly inconsistent and its references to other films distracting.

I called the probable Rango win last November (though Tintin was the wild card and it didn't even get a nomination). It wasn't difficult as the field was so weak last year. Admittedly, I got the nominations very wrong. However, the nominations were better than I expected. I'd much rather see drawn features like A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita get nominations than The Winnie the Pooh Film.

Let's hope that this year will be a better year.

Jolly Frolics

The DVD collection of UPA Jolly Frolics is now available for pre-order through both the TCM website as well as Movies Unlimited. The pre-release price is $34.99 U.S. For those of you ordering in Canada, Movies Unlimited offers the better deal in that they're charging $8 for postage, where TCM wants $20.

The importance of these cartoons has probably been dulled by time, but when they were released, they shook the foundations of American animation and were widely influential around the world. Prior to UPA, the bulk of American animation was built on the Disney design model, where characters were drawn to be dimensional. While American animation had progressed beyond the circle and hosepipe design approach, it was still based on rounded forms that could be turned in space and that had definite volume. There was also a discontinuity between characters who were painted in flat colours and backgrounds that were rendered to give the impression of light hitting rounded forms. Each American studio had a house style that was a variation on the above.

UPA embraced a flatter graphical approach in their backgrounds, which made the overall design of their films more consistent. In addition, they varied their design approach in each cartoon. While the artists there shared a design sensibility, they worked to avoid developing a house style.

Their films also differed in content. By the time UPA arrived on the theatrical cartoon scene in the late 1940s, American animation had hardened into formula. Slapstick conflict was the norm, whether it was Donald Duck vs. Chip and Dale, Bugs vs. Elmer, Tom vs. Jerry, Popeye vs. Bluto, Woody Woodpecker vs. Buzz Buzzard, or Mighty Mouse vs. Oil Can Harry. UPA returned to stories similar to Disney's Silly Symphonies of the 1930s, albeit with their own sense of design.

The cartoons in this set include Gerald McBoing Boing (written by Dr. Seuss), The Unicorn in the Garden (based on the story by James Thurber), The Tell Tale Heart (based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe) and Madeline (based on the book by Ludwig Bemelmans). In the case of the Thurber and Bemelmans shorts, the films are designed based on the art of the authors.

In addition, there are original cartoons directed by John Hubley (Rooty Toot Toot), Bobe Cannon (Christopher Crumpet) and Art Babbitt (The Family Circus). Hubley, of course, went on to create many independent films such as Moonbird after leaving UPA. Cannon is, in my opinion, an animator and director who deserves much more attention than he's been given. While he animated for Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, his films are very different in tone and subject matter than his animation.

While there are still studios that are underrepresented on DVD such as Terrytoons and Mintz/Columbia, this is one of the most important DVD releases of the last several years. Based on the influence these films had on everything that came after them and the high quality of many of these cartoons, it's about time that they are available. They fill a large hole in American animation history.

Christopher Crumpet

Rooty Toot Toot

The Unicorn in the Garden

2012 Annie Awards Streaming

This year the Annie Awards are being streamed live, starting at 7 p.m. Pacific (10 p.m. Eastern) time on various websites, including Cartoon Brew, A. Film L.A, Canadian Animation Resources, Animazing and the Animation Guild.

You can download a pdf of the program book, 68 pages long, here.

Ghibli Retrospective in Toronto

The schedule for the Studio Ghibli retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto is now available here. Tickets can be ordered in advance on the same page.

Børge Ring's Home Lost to Fire

UPDATED



Børge and his wife are unhurt, but they have suffered a major loss of their possessions and artwork due to a fire. Their daughter Anna-Mieke, has set up a website where the pictures above come from and that has information on how to donate. There are other pictures of the house prior to the fire, including artwork by Børge and his wife, Joanika, who sculpts.

I've made a donation and hope that the Rings are able to put their lives back together after this horrible event.

More Reasons Why Work-for-Hire Stinks

Another copyright case from the comics world, but one that has implications for people working in animation.

Writer Gary Friedrich created Marvel's version of Ghost Rider. He sued Marvel claiming that it was created and offered to them and was not done as work for hire. He lost the suit.

Previously, Friedrich commissioned artwork of the character which he sold at various comics conventions. Here's where it gets ugly:

"As per the courts instructions Friedrich has to account for any and all money that he has received, “...relating to the gross and net amount derived from Plaintiffs' sale of goods bearing the Ghost Rider image, likeness, or Marvel trademark.” This means that Friedrich has to account for every cent each and every time he sold a print at a convention or any other item to anyone, that has the Ghost Rider image or name on it, and he has to account to all of the defendants in the case, and there’s quite a few of those, including, but not limited to, Marvel Defendants, Movie Defendants, Hasbro, Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. If the defendants don’t like, or don't agree with, the numbers that Friedrich supplies then they can, and probably will, ask for a deposition whereby they can question him, under oath. It was no secret that Friedrich commissioned artists such as Herb Trimpe, Arthur Suydam and others to draw Ghost Rider images which were then sold as prints over the years. If you bought one thinking you were helping Gary, well, that cash will most likely end up in Marvels pockets. This amount will be factored into any damages that the defendants can claim from Friedrich, all of which will be bundled up neatly into a final judgement so the case can then proceed to the appeal stage."

So, if you work in animation and sit at conventions selling your drawings of characters that you've worked on (or not) but don't own, you are not only violating copyright, you may have to account for each and every sale if the copyright owner ever comes after you.

Cartoonist Dave Sim once said that no corporation will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them. He's certainly right in Friedrich's case. Friedrich is appealing the copyright decision, but is already broke. He owes his lawyers $100,000.

"If his appeal fails Friedrich will be a financially ruined man. He stands to lose everything he owns, and ever will own. Naturally the court doesn’t care for this, but Marvel might. With the imminent release of the second Ghost Rider movie, a franchise that draws heavily from the mythos that Friedrich helped create and has never been compensated for from Marvel (outside of payments for the comic books), Marvel is set to see another financial windfall of multiple millions of dollars. It’d be nice to think that, perhaps, someone at Marvel can see the logic that a settlement would have in this case, if only in the value of good publicity alone. As it is Marvel have done to Friedrich what DC did to Siegel, Shuster, Bill Finger and many others – ground him into the dirt, taken his creation, made more money in a week than the original creator will see in a lifetime and then keep on keeping on. Perhaps it’s time that a campaign designed to embarrass Marvel be undertaken – the sheer threat of such a campaign worked for Dave Cockrum. While Cockrum didn’t get millions, nor did Gene Colan when he approached and asked Marvel, they did get sizable amounts which, in Cockrum’s case alone, allowed him to live his remaining years out in relative comfort and ease. As it stands the people who’ll be making the most money from the Ghost Rider sequel will be people who had nothing to do with the character. As it stands, according to Box Office Mojo, the first Ghost Rider movie has grossed over $115,800,000 worldwide. The sequel should do similar amounts, meaning Marvel will clear a nice sum, again, while denying the creator a cent."

The above information is from 20th Century Danny Boy. Torsten Adair reflects on the situation as well.

And in case you've forgotten, Marvel is owned by Disney. So if you work (or have worked) for Disney, Pixar or Marvel, pay attention.

More on Those Dirty Tricks

This blog seems to be tipping more and more into the business, as opposed to the art, of animation, but it's hard to avoid when various media industries are conspiring against artists and the public.

I reported earlier (here and here) that Pixar was implicated in an illegal "no poaching" agreement with other high tech firms, meaning that if a Pixar employee applied for a job at Lucasfilm or Apple, those companies would refuse to hire the Pixar employee. Pixar returned the favour by refusing to hire applicants from Lucasfilm or Apple. That violates anti-trust laws. The damage is that it prevents employees from changing jobs or earning higher pay elsewhere. The case is about to go to trial and the Department of Justice has released some evidence that you can read below. For instance, on page 3 you can read that Lori McAdam of Pixar wrote in an internal email:

“I just got off the phone with Danielle Lambert [of Apple], and we agreed that effective now, we’ll follow a Gentleman’s agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement.”

TechCrunch - High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation Conference Statement 1/19/2012 - Analysis here: http:/...

(Link via TechCrunch)

The Trials of Superman

The character of Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, has a long and complicated legal history. Jerry Siegel's heirs have terminated their half of DC Comics' copyright of the character and are entitled to share in any revenues made since the copyright termination.

Warner Bros, the owner of DC Comics, has not exactly cooperated. The Siegel heirs have been forced to sue, claiming that the revenue they are owed is being underestimated. That was the subject of the above trial. In the words of Daniel Best, who compiled those transcripts,

"The argument was that DC Comics had undervalued Superman and licensed the rights to exploit the character in movies and television by dealing with their parent company, Warner Brothers. DC argued that it had always done the right thing, that the deals negotiated and that the payments received, going back to the Salkind era (the 1970/1980s Superman movies with Christopher Reeve) and extending through to the current deals, including the television series Lois and Clark and the highly successful Smallville, along with the most recent movies, were more than fair and indeed over market value. The argument to resolve this was taken to a ten day bench trial, at which time DC Comics would have to prove that it had not undersold Superman, and the Siegel’s would have to prove otherwise. The trial gave a great insight into the machinations of comic books and motion pictures along with the true value of Superman, as a multi-media concept"

You can download the entire trial transcript for free courtesy of Daniel Best here. It's over a thousand pages and this is not everyone's idea of fun reading. However, I keep banging the drum on creators' rights on this blog, and this transcript is an example of what happens in court if there is a dispute between a creator (or his heirs) and the company he has done business with. Even if you only read a dozen pages, you'll learn more about how a real trial works than any TV show can tell you.

Against SOPA and PIPA

UPDATED BELOW.

If I knew how to block out this site on Jan. 18 in protest against SOPA and PIPA, two bills currently in the U.S. Congress that claim to be against internet piracy, I would do it. I am not in favour of piracy, though I have major issues with what media conglomerates have done to distort copyright laws world wide.

The problem I have with these bills is that they are too vague and too broad. While they may become a U.S. law, it will affect internet users and site owners beyond U.S. borders. As a commenter on Boing Boing (dark for the day) said, in order to stop piracy, we're going to outlaw the sea.

There is a lot of rhetoric on both sides of the issue, but I recommend this article in The Globe and Mail for a clear-eyed look at what the internet community is upset about. There is also this comment to the article, which talks about the lack of due process:

"A website (of a corporation, individual, what-have-you) is considered guilty as soon as they are accused. Only once the site is shut down or made inaccessible can they try to defend themselves.

"Given that the whole concept of "fair use" is still, after 300 years, being refined, someone could use something fairly and still be shut down (see lack of due process above)."

If you are in the U.S, I urge you to contact your Congressman and Senators and register your opposition. You can do this easily by going to AmericanCensorship.org or the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

UPDATE: Clay Shirky is one of the smartest people in the room when it comes to talking about media. I've read his books and been lucky to hear him speak in Toronto. Watch the video below to get a "big picture" explanation of what SOPA and PIPA are actually about.