keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

The Directors Rights Collective of Canada is an organization that collects residuals that accrue from foreign screenings of Canadian film and television.  I've received several hundred dollars for work I directed on Monster By Mistake .  The DRCC has money they have not been able to distribute as they cannot locate the directors. The list is below.  Click on the images to enlarge.  I see the names of several animation directors from the NFB on the list as well as animation directors of TV series. If you're on the list or know someone who is, contact the DRCC.  For the record, I have alerted Kaj Pindal, whose name is on the list. Here's the email that accompanied the list: The Directors Rights Collective of Canada (DRCC)  is currently holding royalties for the attached list of directors derived from foreign broadcasts of their work. We have been unable to make contact with them in order to send them these funds. The attached list is compre...

Since May, 2006, I have now posted 1000 times to this blog.  It's hard to believe.  I'd be the first to admit that the quality of the postings is variable.  There are some that are simply announcements or were tossed off quickly just to keep the blog from going stale.  However, there are entries I'm proud of, even if they're becoming fewer and farther between. I once asked on this blog, " Where's our Brando? "  That discussion was about how characters in animation are conceived and executed.  I'm now going to ask, "Where's our Clint Eastwood?" I mistakenly wrote Eastwood off years ago during his Dirty Harry period.  I had no interest in movies about right wing vigilantes.  This summer, I have watched a large number of films that Eastwood directed, and I have to say that I was very impressed and embarrassed by my earlier response to him. What does Eastwood have to do with animation?  Unfortunately, nothing.  However, Eastwood's streng...

Animation festivals are proliferating in Ontario these days.  In addition to the Ottawa International Animation Festival and TAAFI , there is now an animation festival in Burlington, located down the Queen Elizabeth Way from Toronto. The Burlington Animation Festival will take place on Saturday, September 29.  The inaugural festival is starting out very modestly, with a single screening at the Encore Upper Canada Place Cinemas located at 460 Brant Street  in Burlington, ON.  A list of the films to be screened can be found here and tickets can be purchased here .  The festival also has a Facebook page and is on Twitter .

Animator Tissa David has died at the age of 91.  Michael Sporn has more at his site.  Michael was associated with Tissa professional and personally for more than 35 years. Tissa drew exquisitely well.  Her animation was very sensitive but could also be vigorous and raucous.  After working in Europe and coming to the U.S. after the second world war, she worked with Grim Natwick for years.  She animated for John Hubley, R.O. Blechman, Richard Williams and Michael Sporn.  She animated the whole of Sporn's TV special The Marzipan Pig . Because she was located in New York, she didn't get to work on projects that had the visibility of features made in California.  It's unfortunate that her name isn't associated with the kinds of animation projects that an average person would be familiar with.  However, she was unquestionably one of the best animators the field has ever seen. Tissa's roughs from the 1977 feature Raggedy Ann and Andy.  She was a fi...

Update : Canadian Animation Resources has links to stories with more information. This may only be of interest to those working in the Canadian animated TV field, but DHX has bought Cookie Jar .  While consolidation makes it easier for the two studios to compete internationally, it also makes it harder for independent producers to get their work on Canadian TV. Michael Hirsh, CEO of Cookie Jar, was one of the founders of Nelvana.  Cookie Jar rose out of the ashes of Cinar, a Montreal company that was plagued by scandals over fraud with regard to government tax credits and suffered from the untimely death of co-owner Micheline Charest.  Hirsh reorganized Cinar into Cookie Jar and bought DIC in 2008.  There was speculation from the beginning that he intended to take the company public.  While that hasn't happened, there's still a large payday for Cookie Jar's owners. DHX is the result of the 2006 merger of Decode and the Halifax Film Company.  The merged en...

Several recent events have reminded me of the risks involved in animation. Brenda Chapman's dismissal as director of Pixar's Brave is old news, but she recently spoke out   about being fired. Henry Selick's untitled film with Disney was cancelled , forcing the layoff of over a hundred artists at the Cinderbiter studio in the San Francisco area. Finally, and this won't be as well known, the CEO of the Go Go Gorillas operation, Christopher Turner, is under investigation for fraud .  Further details here .  I've written about John Celestri in the past.  John's a friend and former co-worker who was looking for an alternate financial model for animation and connected with Christopher Turner.  The company was attempting to use a restaurant/arcade to fund animation.  That's the reverse of the typical approach where popular cartoon characters are used to brand other enterprises like theme parks.  In any case, it is doubtful that the company will be able to mo...

348,000 people in the U.S. cancelled their cable in three months time.  Why?  This article suggests that the use of OTT (which stands for over-the-top) boxes, used to access Netflix and Hulu, are responsible for the drop. To date, the majority of what's available on Netflix and Hulu is pre-existing material.  In other words, the production of this content was paid for under the existing TV model, where broadcasters pay a license fee and producers sell to multiple markets in order to finance their shows. But if the number of cable subscribers continues to drop, subscription fees and advertising revenues will also drop, making it even more difficult to finance original programming. TV's evolution from a business standpoint has been very interesting.  Initially, when there were limited choices over the air, every program got a substantial audience.  A show didn't have to be the best, it only had to be the best in it's time slot, and the competition was less than h...

And many more!

  Update : Jerry Beck, who will be co-hosting with TCM's Robert Osborne, has more details at Cartoon Brew . Sunday, October 21 is still a distance away, but Turner Classic Movies will be devoting their evening block to animation.  It starts with the two Fleischer features, Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town .  That's followed by six UPA cartoons (all available on the Jolly Frolics DVD set).  Sundays at midnight, TCM regularly schedules silent films, and for this day they're showing 11 silent cartoons, including The Artist's Dream (an early J.R. Bray), Trip to Mars (with Koko the Clown), Bobby Bumps Goes to School , and Fireman Save My Child (with Mutt and Jeff).  The next slot is for foreign films, and their animated example is Lotte Reineger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed . The schedule can be accessed here , and I'll be reminding everyone as the date approaches.