Studio News from John, Part 18: Life is But a Str

Production continues on Signe’s new feature “My Love Affair With Marriage” - with a target completion date in early 2021. But what will the distribution market look like once the film is finished? Someday we’ll all be telling our grandchildren about how we survived the Great Streaming War of the early 2000’s - and really, right now it’s just getting started.

In Part 8 of my Studio News, I talked about internet spammers and scammers, comparing the internet to a modern version of the Wild West, where everything goes and there are no rules. Well, if the internet is the Wild West, then the streaming war is like a giant battle in outer space, with one side of the galaxy fighting against the other - and a small, independent feature is like a tiny planet in the outer rim that doesn’t want any trouble, and certainly doesn’t want to get blown up by either side in the galactic war. If that planet is smart it will sign an allegiance with one side or the other, or if it’s lucky it won’t get noticed at all. But the point of making a film is to get it noticed, so that people will watch it, right?

As you probably know, things have changed dramatically in the distribution arena since Signe completed “Rocks in My Pockets” in 2014. Back then, the only real places to show your movie electronically were iTunes and YouTube, and Signe was doing everything possible to keep her films OFF of YouTube. One of my first recurring tasks for her was to patrol YouTube for unauthorized postings of her films, and file DMCA complaints to get them taken down, even if they led to scam sites that didn’t feature her film, and were just trying to drive up their web traffic. I think 2014 was so far back in the rearview that Netflix was still sending out DVDs by mail then, having only recently killed off Blockbuster video, more or less. (There’s one Blockbuster store left now, in Bend, Oregon, and I wonder if movie fans make pilgrimages there to see what renting movies in the 1980’s felt like…)

But before long Netflix realized it would be much cheaper to stop buying physical DVDs and mailing them out and instead just stream movies straight to their customers’ TVs and computers. And somehow they managed to convince the majority of their customers that this was a better system, too - and this was really the opening salvo in the streaming wars. After just a couple of years, we had Hulu and Amazon Prime competing for the same customers, and this year we added Disney Plus and Apple Plus TV, also now there’s Tubi and DailyMotion and Crackle and Yidio and Kanopy and CrunchyRoll and Shudder and Mubi (and I swear I didn’t make any of these names up, though it was certainly tempting to…)

Interestingly, “Rocks in My Pockets” ended up flying under Netflix’s radar. Why? Have you ever tried to CALL anyone at Netflix? Good luck with that. If you’re an independent filmmaker you’ve got exactly ZERO shot of pitching to them, you’ll probably end up going through an aggregator of some kind - that’s a sort of a go-between who will bundle a bunch of smaller movies together and pitch them to Netflix as a package, and then maybe your film will get to stream on Netflix for a 2-year term, but good luck trying to get your money that the aggregator promised you. What will probably happen is the aggregator will come up with a long list of promotional expenses they incurred when pitching your film, and those will get subtracted from the quarterly payments, and you’ll end up with nothing. But hey, at least your film got seen by a few thousand Netflix subscribers, that’s still good, right?

So it may even be a good thing that “Rocks” didn’t make it to Netflix, instead in January 2015 Signe signed an exclusive contract with Yekra for streaming, downloads and DVD sales. “Rocks” co-producer Sturgis has told me that Yekra sent sales reports and paid monthly, he and Signe had visited the Yekra office in L.A. and found it easy to get in touch with their sales agent. But in June of that year, Yekra lost their financing and suddenly closed down, giving their employees just three hours to clear out their offices. Filmmakers were left in shock as the streaming wars had claimed another victim.

After the fall of Yekra, Signe and Sturgis contacted Distribber, which is one of those aggregators I talked about earlier, to get the film on platforms like iTunes and Amazon, who don't deal directly with filmmakers. That experience turned in to a real nightmare, when quarterly payments didn't happen it often took half a dozen e-mails to get paid. And after a couple years, those payments were getting wiped out each quarter by a bunch of mysterious fees – eventually Distribber folded, too, owing hundreds of filmmakers money for the sales on iTunes and Amazon, plus the payments that were wiped out by “creative accounting” and jacked-up publicity fees. (Seriously, once the film is streaming, how much publicity needed to be done? Subscribers can just scroll through a list of films to find something they want to watch...)

Thankfully, “Rocks in My Pockets” found a new home on the VHX and Vimeo platforms, which offered great deals for filmmakers, who could earn 90% of the proceeds. Fans of the film were re-directed to the new platforms, and a year later, Vimeo took over VHX, leaving just one streaming platform screening “Rocks”.. That's been a positive working relationship, with Vimeo paying promptly each month and alerting filmmakers whenever a sale is made.

Signe was also able to get her adult animated series “Teat Beat of Sex” on Vimeo On Demand, and she thinks it's the best place for it. After four years, the rentals are still happening there, which brings in money every quarter. But because of my dealings with Vimeo at my other job, I have some doubts about how long they’ll be around as a viable source for distributing movies. I tried to renew a contract for another animator, and it was impossible to get a human Vimeo employee on the phone to get the ball rolling on a renewal (were they following the Netflix business model?). That’s a bad sign for a company you’re trying to do business with, and we ended up just taking that film down from Vimeo, because why allow THEM to keep making money for renting the film if they’re not obligated to share it with the filmmaker?

At some point, a year or two ago, Signe was also contacted by a service called Kanopy, which streams films to libraries around the world. It’s a bit of an odd system, because people used to be able to go into libraries and watch movies for free - one of my college jobs was working in the media room at the Bobst Library at NYU, putting tapes into the VCRs behind the service desk so students could watch artsy European films for class with bits of nudity in them. And for a few months back in 2016, Signe had put me in charge of e-mailing all the college libraries around the U.S. that had copies of “Persepolis” in their collections. “Hey, we noticed you have a copy of THIS film in your library, so we think your students would also enjoy watching “Rocks in My Pockets”. Why not purchase a DVD copy today?”

But I guess over time libraries also realized that it was expensive for each of them to maintain separate DVD collections, replacing all the worn-out copies of “A Clockwork Orange” each year, or paying someone else to keep all their DVD players functioning properly, so a lot of libraries also transitioned over to some form of streaming. Kanopy is a service that streams movies to public libraries and school libraries, and the rental fees come from the library’s budget, not the viewers. If enough people watch “Rocks” at the same library, the director gets a certain amount of money. Signe then considered sending me around the country to sneak into different libraries and watch her film over and over, but it turns out that wasn’t cost-effective. I'm half-joking here, but it's obvious that the travel costs would outweigh the royalties gained in the process.

But if you're one of the many people in the world who has a library card (at either a public library or university library), you may be able to enjoy watching “Rocks in My Pockets” for FREE. You just need to find out if your library participates in the Kanopy system – if so, you can watch the film on a computer at that library, or on your own device if you're at the library and sign in to their services. You can also visit Kanopy.com and search by zip code to find out if there's a participating library near you, or search by school to find out if they use that system. Then you just enter your library card information or university details to create an account, find “Rocks in My Pockets” on their system, and enjoy on your smartphone, laptop computer, or internet-compatible TV. (They also have a few thousand other films you can check out, like “My Dinner With Andre” and “Donnie Darko”...) The relationship with Kanopy has been very positive, they always make their quarterly payments on time, which is how legitimate business should be conducted.

But really, the streaming wars are just getting started. Signe recently got contacted by some other streaming services that are starting up, one of them was Xerb.tv. Actually, she was contacted by representatives of the Santa Fe Film Festival, who were looking for material for their channel on Xerb.tv. The SFFF screened Signe's “Teat Beat of Sex” shorts back in the day (2008 or so) and they must have combed back through their old programs, looking for films that did well at their festival that could be streamed on their channel. So they e-mailed us the details about how to upload this set of 15 shorts to Xerb, and once they were uploaded and added to the festival's channel, the filmmaker would be eligible to share in a portion of the revenue that would come in the future from that channel's subscribers. And hey, anything that brings in new revenue from previous films is a good thing, right?

Signe was also recently contacted by another service, Filmocracy – this streaming site is in Beta testing right now, but they were similarly interested in the “Teat Beat of Sex” series, plus her short film “Birth”, and also “Rocks in My Pockets”. What's really great about these smaller services is that the contracts are non-exclusive, so you can submit the same films for consideration at several different channels, and as long as they're not really fighting for the same audience, it's possible to earn royalties from several venues and channels at the same time. I think once you get a film on Netflix or Amazon Prime, those contracts are exclusive, so you have to drop it from all the other services, except maybe iTunes. But at least when a film's Netflix term is over, you can shop it to other streaming sites – I noticed that a lot of films that I didn't get to on Netflix in time disappeared, and popped up on Hulu.

I've been tracking my own use of streaming sites, and of the 300 movies I watched in 2019, I figured out that over half were viewed on cable, and I watched another third (100) on streaming sites – by contrast, I went to the movie theater 9 times in the same calendar year, so there's no question that it's become an integral part of my viewing process. For me over half (58) of those streamed films were on Netflix, but I also watched 18 on iTunes, 9 on Hulu, 9 on Amazon Prime, and 6 on YouTube (where the films are often cheaper, or sometimes even free...).

There are still things about the streaming services I don't understand – like, why do the prices vary so much? I've seen films available on iTunes for $5.99 that are also on Amazon Prime for $3.99 and on YouTube for $2.99. Why would I pay the higher price if I don't have to? It can't be a conscious effort to overcharge Apple computer owners, because iTunes is cross-platform now, and Mac users can also get to those other services via the web. Wouldn't it make sense to lower the price on iTunes once a film is available on YouTube? Why would anyone pay more than they have to, just to watch a film in a particular way? It's the sort of reasoning that drove Blockbuster out of business in the first place.

That's partially why it's still so hard to predict what the streaming landscape is going to look like in 2021, after “My Love Affair With Marriage” is finished and ready for some form of distribution. At the moment, the Academy rules about screening films theatrically before any kind of internet release are still holding, so that's why you may notice films popping up in cinemas for a week or two, before becoming available on Netflix or Amazon Prime. As long a movie plays in theaters for a week first, it can qualify for the Oscars, and that just raises that film's profile when it's streaming to millions. You might notice that films that go directly to streaming are sort of passively admitting that they've got no chance at landing any nominations.

For the moment, everyone seems happy – people who want to pay movie theater prices and see “The Irishman” on the big screen can do that, and then a week later the people who want to see it on their home TV, or even on their phone, can do that too. The Academy members are still getting their DVDs in the mail, and I haven't heard lately about any films that wanted to qualify for the Oscars being turned down because they didn't follow the rules. But added to the process this year was the Academy Screening Room (aka the Academy Streaming Room), which allowed members to stream many of the nomination-eligible movies, so perhaps in the next year or two the physical DVD screeners will also fall by the wayside, like Blockbuster did.

More people are seeing more movies in more ways, and the bottom line is, that’s good for the industry. Perhaps there's a sort of fragile peace right now in the streaming wars, but I have a hunch that it will only last until someone creates the next big streaming site, or maybe a way for people to inject movies directly into their brains.

Studio News from John, Part 17: Turning a Negative into a Positive

I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at you - since September 2018, but we’ve all been busy here at the studio, with “My Love Affair with Marriage” in production. I’ve been occupied by entering the first completed segment of the film, “Mother’s Song” into various festivals since its premiere in May at the Stuttgart International Animated Film Festival - while also learning how to make proper exposure sheets for our Latvian compositors, and, in some cases, fixing the sheets made by previous interns that are hard to decipher.

But I’ve also managed to follow up on a task that’s been on my “to do” list for quite some time, since I started working for Signe in 2015, in fact - and that task was to track down her old missing negatives from Technicolor. Let me back up a bit, for anyone who may not be familiar with how films were made, back before the Digital Age. We used to shoot animation on a thin plastic light-sensitive substance known as “film”, which was sort of named after the substance that used to spool through “projectors”, because I guess it left a film-y residue behind? OK, nobody really knows why it was called “film” except that it just WAS film-like. Right? (Jeez, that’s better than calling it a “movie”, just because it, you know, moves. What genius came up with that?)

Anyway, back in the yesteryear of the 1980’s and 1990’s, if you were a NYC pre-digital filmmaker you would shoot your film, then take it to a lab, such as Technicolor, for developing and processing. This original film, the substance that moved through your camera and got exposed to light, one frame at a time, became what we called a negative. And then using your negative, the lab could print a positive image on film, which could then be screened by “projecting” light through it on a “projector”. (First you had to take the negative OUT of the developing lab and bring to ANOTHER lab to have the negative cut into pieces and spliced back together by a “negative cutter”, but that’s a whole other process.)

But once the negative was edited together, and you printed your positive for screening, then you had another problem: WHERE were you going to store the negative? This then became the master copy of your film, from which all of your future copies could be created, and it needed to be properly stored. Thankfully, Technicolor would usually store the film for you in their climate-controlled vault, and if you needed, say, 5 new positive prints for upcoming screenings on the festival circuit, you could call up Charlie at Technicolor, give him the details, then go pick up your new fantastic-smelling prints a few days later.

The problem then became that over the years, the Technicolor vaults filled up with everybody’s negatives, and eventually they ran out of room. Or maybe they just wanted to get out of the film storage business, because it was 2010 and fewer people were shooting on film, thanks to high-definition video cameras, and also everybody was walking around with a video camera on their phone in their back pocket. There were still a few stalwarts shooting on film, but they were becoming few and far-between.

So, in 2011 or so, the notices started going out to Technicolor’s clients - all materials had to be cleared out of their vaults by such-and-such a date, or the materials could be destroyed. (I don’t think they really intended on destroying any film, but a point needed to be made.) This was a big project for us over at the Bill Plympton Studio, because Bill made so many short films (at least one a year) and features (every three years or so). He may have been one of Technicolor’s biggest clients. But even Bill had started the process of transitioning to digital filmmaking with the 2006 short “Guide Dog” and the 2008 feature “Idiots and Angels”, thanks to the efforts of producer Biljana Labovic.

But since Bill had so much material in the Technicolor vault, removing it all created a massive storage problem - where would it all GO? The short-term solution, storing it in Bill’s apartment, was no good because he only had one small air conditioner, so the next typically hot NYC summer could permanently damage the negatives. We knew there were climate-controlled storage facilities in places like Ft. Lee, New Jersey, but then there could be a massive monthly storage fee, and we’d have to trek over to NJ every time we needed to access a negative.

Several months later, a solution presented itself when Bill was contacted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was interested in obtaining a 35mm copy of his Oscar-nominated shorts “Your Face” and “Guard Dog”. We inquired about establishing an entire negative archive there, which would include the proper climate-controlled storage, and setting this up as a donation also had potential tax benefits. At the same time, we would be able to borrow any negatives in the future from the AMPAS archive, and there was also the chance that the Academy might be able to clean and restore any negatives that might have spent too much time in Bill’s non-climate-controlled apartment. This seemed like a win-win.

At the same time, the studio was attempting to complete its transition to digital filmmaking, and stop the expensive practice of shipping 35mm prints around the world for festival screenings. This would encourage the transition to digital, and we could ultimately create digital versions of any Plympton films that hadn’t yet been digitally transferred, once the Academy had restored the negatives. For years I’d been shipping out boxes of films to festivals around the world, and it was my nightmare. It turns out film is very heavy and expensive to ship - PLUS there’s always the chance that boxes can be lost in transit, or damaged, or some film could get broken in a festival’s projector and a projectionist could just ship it back to us and not mention the damage. In the coming digital age, everything would be easier, and lighter. After a year or so, we finally got all of the negatives shipped to the Academy and we got to enjoy a little extra elbow room at the studio. Now we just needed to get good quality digital copies of each film made, and we could be part of the revolution. (Umm, yeah, this process is sort of still ongoing…)

Like Bill, Signe was also a client of Technicolor for years, and she was also contacted by Technicolor in 2011, and was similarly told that she had to clear her negatives out of their vaults before the deadline, or bad things would happen. Only when she called back to inquire about picking up her films, she was told that there was no material of hers being stored there. What? Where did her films go? Were they lost, destroyed or just misplaced? When I started working for her in 2015, she asked me to try and track them down, when I had some time between other projects. (“My Love Affair With Marriage” was still being written then.)

I made some inquiries, but kept hitting one dead end after another. Finally after two years of trying, I had to abandon the search, and Signe had to reconcile the fact that she might never see some of her negatives again. She was also interested in making good digital copies of her films, but she needed those original negatives in order to make the best digital copies. Scanning anything else would produce an inferior digital copy, it’s always best to go back to your master recordings, the negatives in this case, to get the best quality.

Fast-forward to 2019, when a distributor became interested in Bill Plympton’s 2004 feature, “Hair High” - a film which Signe and I both worked on, I was an associate producer and Signe was an art director. We found out, to our astonishment, that it had not been included in the shipments to the AMPAS archive. I’ll admit here that I messed up, I never thought to cross-reference the inventory from Technicolor with Bill’s filmography, to see if there were any films missing. Mea culpa. But if “Hair High” wasn’t at the Academy, and it wasn’t in the studio, and it wasn’t at Technicolor, then where WAS it?

I made one last desperation call to Technicolor’s NYC office to ask about it, since I knew for a fact that it had once been stored there. I was given the number of Technicolor’s Los Angeles branch, and someone told me that there was a vault somewhere in California where all the unclaimed films had been sent. AHA! We still didn’t know WHY it wasn’t included in the material picked up from Technicolor’s NYC office, but at least we knew where the negative might have been sent! After we successfully tracked down the original negative and sound reels from “Hair High”, I mentioned to the staff at the vault that I also worked for another animator, and she was also missing some negative reels that had been stored at Technicolor NY. Would they be willing to do a search on those film titles, to see if anything popped up?

Now, there’s so much material in this vault that a search for anything takes several weeks. But right now there are people in Technicolor’s employ who are tasked with figuring out who all these lost reels belong to, and over the next few years, they hope to get as many films as possible back to their original owners, or at this point, perhaps those filmmakers’ estates. There are probably treasures galore within that vault, but it’s an incredibly time-consuming process to check each single reel, out of THOUSANDS, and look for clues to establish ownership, and then do some kind of web search to find that person’s contact info.

Now, if it were me, I’d consider that there must be paperwork somewhere on all of Technicolor’s transactions over the years - I have no idea to what extent their systems were computerized, maybe all the client information is on outdated MS-Dos computers or stored on floppy disks or something.

To make a long story short, after a few weeks, the vault staff got back to me and told me that they HAD located material from several of Signe Baumane’s films. They had them under the name “Simone Baumane”, so that may be the reason why the initial search in 2011 didn’t turn up any materials stored in her name. Some version of auto-correct may be to blame, or perhaps it was just bad handwriting. But they had tracked down the negatives for Signe’s short films “Love Story”, “Natasha”, “The Dentist”, “Five F*cking Fables” and “The Threatened One”.

We had to go through a short process of proving Signe’s rightful ownership of these films, but that was easy enough. (Thankfully, Simone Baumane didn’t also try to prove ownership…) And Signe had to sign some paperwork to authorize the removal of these films from their vaults, and arrange shipping to her Brooklyn studio. So there were a few hoops to jump through, but the good news is that the films have been found and are leaving California this week to be shipped home.

It’s still a little galling that mistakes were made back in 2011, but at least we’ve solved the mystery and after four years, I’ll finally get to cross this off my “to do” list. As I write this, the films are in a box and are being shipped across the country by UPS, with luck Signe will have them by the end of this week. Now the saga isn’t over, because we’re back to the initial storage problem: WHERE are we going to store them? She doesn’t have any air conditioning in her Brooklyn studio, and her refrigerator can only hold so many reels and still have room for food. Luckily, SIgne’s Latvian co-producer of “My Love Affair with Marriage” has connections with Latvian film archives, and is now also in the business of restoring old 35mm films. So there’s a place for Signe’s negatives in Latvia, we just have to figure out how to get them there - but compared to not knowing where these negatives are, it’s a nice problem to have.

If you were also a client of Technicolor NY before 2011, and you’re also missing some of your original film negatives that were stored there, you can contact me using the form on this web-site or through Signe’s Brooklyn studio, and I’ll let you know how to get in touch with the vault staff in California. Let’s help get as many of these lost films as possible back to their rightful owners!

Studio News from John, Part 16: Festival Strategies for 2021

I’ve been working with film festivals, in one form or another, for the better part of the last 25 years. They’re an integral part of the film distribution process, the final step on the journey of production, once you finish your beloved short film or feature it’s like a baby bird, and screening it at a film festival is the equivalent of pushing that bird out of the nest to see if it can figure out how to fly. Yep, that analogy works, because if you kick it out of the nest too soon, the film is like an egg and it will plummet to the ground and shatter on the earth below.

It’s September, so right now all eyes are on the Toronto International Film Festival, which over the last decade has become the breeding ground for all sorts of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-eligible movies. Last year’s TIFF line-up included “I, Tonya”, “Call Me By Your Name”, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, “The Disaster Artist”, “Darkest Hour”, “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”, “The Mountain Between Us”, “Stronger”, “Battle of the Sexes”, “The Breadwinner”, “Downsizing”, “The Florida Project”, “Hostiles”, “Lady Bird”, “Mother!”, “Molly’s Game”, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”, “Faces Places, and “The Shape of Water”, among many others. These were just the ones that got a lot of traction during awards season. So if you want to get an advance peek at the Academy Awards nominations for 2018, or an idea about what’s going to be in your Netflix queue at this time next year, TIFF seems like it’s the place to be. So far, people are buzzing about Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” and Ryan Gosling in “First Man”, but I have a feeling those represent just the tip of the old iceberg.

While we’re in production on “My Love Affair With Marriage”, screening the film at a festival seems like it’s a long way off. But it’s not too early to start thinking about strategy. And I often hear filmmakers who are just starting out, all asking the same questions: “What film festivals should I enter?” “Which are the best ones?” “Which festival screenings will be the most important?” “Which festival screenings will increase the film’s chances for distribution?”

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Some filmmakers seem to adopt a “dartboard” sort of strategy, or they enter every film festival they can think of and hope for the best. But every festival has different rules, and sometimes you have to think about geography or the calendar in order to develop the best strategy for your film. Also, there are some specialized festivals for animation, or documentaries, or LGBTQ films, or countless other subjects. Is it better to narrow the focus and target one of these festivals, or take a broader approach and hope for the best?

Obviously, there’s a top tier of festivals, and that basically includes the Toronto International Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Venice International Film Festival. If you can get your film accepted into any of these, you’d be foolish not to follow through by screening it there. If you’ve got an animated film, then the Annecy International Animation Festival, Anima Mundi, Zagreb and the Hiroshima Animation Festival are probably in the top tier also. But they all have extensive rules to follow, forms to fill out, and a lot of metaphorical hoops to jump through.

Any of these top-tier festivals are so prestigious that they probably have rules regarding premiere status, meaning that they could choose to ONLY screen films that have never screened at another festival. So that means that a filmmaker has to pay attention to not only what month the festival takes place, but also what month their DEADLINE is. The Toronto festival takes place in September, but submissions open in February, and the deadline is in May. So if you’ve got your heart set on premiering at this festival, you’ve got to finish your film by late winter or in spring to have a serious shot at it. If your production drags into summer, then you’d have to either find another festival to premiere at, or wait 8 or 9 months until the next February. At that point it might be worth entering the Berlinale, with its October deadline, so you could be screening your film in February instead of just entering Toronto - that way if it doesn’t get into Berlin, you can still enter Toronto later.

One of the quirks of the rules is that the Sundance Film Festival only requires a U.S. premiere, not a world premiere, so your film could screen at one of those other big festivals outside the U.S. and still get screened in Park City. The last Sundance deadline is in September for their festival in January, so that’s another thing to factor into your calendar-based calculations. Signe and I worked together on the production of Bill Plympton’s film “I Married a Strange Person” and that film played in Toronto in September 1997, then it was in the Dramatic Competition in Sundance in January 1998. I remember driving up there with some of the crew (Bill, John Donnelly, Jen Senko) and staying at a cheap hotel, then meeting Trey Parker at a screening of his film “Orgazmo”. That was probably my first time at a big film festival, but Signe didn’t come along, because she was afraid that if she left the U.S. they wouldn’t let her back in. (You know they were very thorough at the Canadian border back then, with all the anti-Canadian sentiment in the late 1990’s - my, how things have changed…)

Then we went to Sundance twice - with “I Married a Strange Person” in 1998 and “Mutant Aliens” in 2001, then Slamdance for the U.S. premiere of “Hair High” in 2004. I remember that Bill Plympton had a habit of entering his films into both Sundance AND Slamdance, even though they take place in the same town at the same time. And of course, you can’t have a film in both of those festivals, but I think he figured if his film couldn’t get into one, then there was still a chance with the other. This is where things can get tricky, because one day the studio got a phone call from the Slamdance Festival, accepting his film - but they wanted to know RIGHT AWAY if we could confirm the film’s participation, and of course, Bill was out of town. In my mind I could just hear him saying, “But we haven’t heard back from Sundance yet…” even though Sundance had become tougher and tougher to get into, even over the course of just those five or six years. Slamdance was offering us the opening night slot, very prestigious, something that could generate a large amount of publicity, but this was a limited-time offer and time was running out. This decision couldn’t wait until Bill got back from his trip, so what could I do?

I decided to do something very unorthodox, I called up the Sundance Festival and spoke to a programmer. I knew that he couldn’t tell me whether Bill’s feature had been accepted, because doing that would be against the rules. But at this point in time I think someone had recently published an article which claimed that based on how many films get submitted to Sundance, and how few programmers they have to review the submissions, mathematically it was impossible for their programmers to even WATCH all of the tapes and DVDs they received. Thankfully, I didn’t mention this on the phone, I just explained that we had an offer on the table from Slamdance, and I knew Sundance wouldn’t tell me if the film was accepted for another week, but MAYBE he could give me an idea what our chances were. When the programmer heard that the Slamdance Festival was offering us the opening night event, he bluntly said, “You should take that offer.” OK, message received. Thanks for the hint. Bill came back in a few days and I was able to justify accepting Slamdance’s offer on his behalf.

In the animation world, as I mentioned, we have the Annecy Festival and the Ottawa Animation Festival. Annecy takes place in France in June, and doesn’t require features to be a world premiere, just a French premiere. (So even after screening “I Married a Strange Person” in Toronto and Sundance, we could still screen it at Annecy.) But their entry deadline is usually in March, so that’s something to consider when you’re close to finishing your animated masterpiece. It’s all about timing. The Ottawa Festival takes place in late September, with an entry deadline in May, so you can factor those dates into the mix as well.

But then you could set up another one of those Sundance/Slamdance situations, especially if you also want to enter the Toronto Festival, since you might not be able to screen your film in both Canadian festivals. And you don’t want to risk screening at NEITHER of them, which could happen if you take too long to accept the offer from one festival because you’re waiting to hear from the other. In that way, screening at festivals is a bit like dating, you can’t keep one potential mate on hold while you wait to hear from another one, that just isn’t fair. It’s better to move forward with one partner (or Canadian festival) even if you think the other one is smarter, prettier, funnier (or has more festival guests) because if you keep holding out too long for the perfect match, you could find yourself alone (or with no screening at all).

Signe told me that “Rocks in My Pockets” was completed in 2013, but the film didn’t get in to the Toronto Festival. Her next best option was the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. You may not have heard of this festival, but it is very well regarded in Europe - so she waited for nine months for this festival’s call for entries to come around again, and “Rocks” premiered at Karlovy Vary in June, 2014. But the film won the International Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI) when it screened there, so that long wait turned out to be a very smart decision in the end. Then the film screened at the ANIMATOR festival in Poland just a week later, and festivals in Switzerland and Greece just two months later, and this started a solid festival run of TWO YEARS that took it all around the world.

So sometimes even when a film is finished, it makes sense to wait for the right festival for the premiere screenings. That’s right, plural, because even though your film can have only one “World Premiere”, it can also have a European premiere, a North American premiere, a U.S. premiere (not to mention an Australian premiere, South American premiere, and so on…) Pretty much any time you can work the word “premiere” into your press release, it’s a good idea to do so. But by the time you find yourself promoting the “Central New Jersey premiere” it might be time to take a long hard look at what you’re celebrating. Still, that’s a nice problem to have.

Right now it looks like “My Love Affair With Marriage” could be completed some time in the year 2020. But the key question then becomes: during which month? Which film festival will it make the most sense to enter first? Believe me, it’s not too early to start thinking about this. Right now Signe has completed the animation for two segments of the film that could be released as individual shorts, which would then also function as sort of “teasers” for the entire feature. Would it make some sense to screen either of these in festivals, to try to get some advance attention or publicity for the feature? It’s one possible strategy. These shorts represent two of the songs in the film, and they’re called “Mother’s Song” and “Virginity Song”.

It’s still very early in the production process of “My Love Affair With Marriage”, but we are trying to keep good relationships with film festivals when they ask to screen some of Signe’s earlier films, because in just a couple of years, we’ll be filling out entry forms for this new feature and we hope that there will be some awareness and recognition, which could lead to acceptances. It’s impossible to predict what might happen, when or where the new film will screen, but I do like our chances.

Studio News from John, Part 15 - Oscar Rules are Meant to be Broken!

PART 1 - New Rules for 2019 and Beyond

There have been a few recent news stories about changes being made to the Academy Awards - something about a "Best Popular Film" category, which sounds like it needs something else to distinguish it from "Best Picture", in my opinion.  Isn't the film that receives the most votes for Best Picture therefore also the "most popular"?  It got the MOST VOTES, after all!  Or is this award going to reward the film with the highest box office, because if you ask me, that blockbuster, whatever it is, has probably been fairly well rewarded already.  So I'm not sure I understand yet where the Academy is going when it's trying to make a distinction between "Best" and "Best Popular", unless perhaps "Best" rewards the creative process and "Best Popular" rewards the connection made with the fans, but even this sounds like a problem, because it's sort of admitting the majority of movie fans aren't knowledgeable enough to spend their money on whatever "Best" really means.  

Then there's the other issue raised when the Academy announced it would be relegating some of the lesser awards to a presentation that would take place before the TV cameras started rolling, or perhaps during commercial breaks.  So, if you've enjoyed seeing who wins the Oscar for Best Animated Short, it's possible that in the future, you'll have to read about it in the news the next day and you'll no longer see that award given out during the televised ceremony.  As someone working in the animation industry, and as someone who occasionally has a vested interest in which film wins the Animation Oscars, I strongly oppose this plan, to relegate animation to the same status as the craft awards, such as visual effects and sound mixing, which are given out now on a different DAY, but hey, at least those nominees get a lunch out of the deal, and a visit from a sacrificial hot actress. 

Now, my personal suggestion would be that if the time allotted to giving out the awards on TV is no longer sufficient, there are other methods of creating more time.  They could cut, for example, the detailed explanation of "Film Editing for Dummies", because we all know by now what editing is, so there's no need to over-explain it, or some of the vapid dialogue that passes for "jokes" spoken by the presenters.  Or there's usually some interminably long montage that's suppose to pass as a "Look at Music in the Movies" from 1920-2018, with many more clips used than the number necessary to prove a point.  We get it already, the movies have music in them!

Other solutions are also possible - start the award telecast earlier, for example.  What's wrong with 7 pm E.S.T., who says that the show has to start at 8 pm?  I realize it's a ratings game, but come on, let's make an exception for these important awards.  Or instead of a "Red Carpet Arrival Special", which serves no purpose other than as a long-format advertisement for various fashion designers, try giving out the awards right away.  Let the E! channel run all the red carpet footage they want, they're going to do that anyway, right?  ABC should start the show at 7 pm and give out the first award (and it can be for animation, or visual effects) no later than 7:05.  Oh, yeah, I think we should dramatically cut the host's opening monologue too, if it will get more of the award presentations broadcast on television.  

Anyone who thinks that the Oscar telecast should be ONLY three hours long (which seems rather arbitrary, all things considered, plus it always runs longer anyway) could then just tune in at 8 pm and catch the major categories they don't want to miss.  I mean, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture, you know they're going to save those for the end.  Maybe they can hand out Best Supporting Actor and Actress at 8:05 or 8:10 this way.  And the hour between 7 pm and 8 pm would then be devoted to things like visual effects and sound mixing and, OK, Best Animated Short, so those would no longer slow things down in prime time.  See?  Problem solved, just cut the red carpet crap and start the whole program an hour earlier.  You're welcome.  

The reason that I've spent so much time over the past two decades studying the Oscars is that I've been through their submission process almost annually.  I'm always working for someone who has an animated short or feature that they want to qualify for a nomination.  After all, a film can't win an award without a nomination - but most people don't realize that a film also can't get a nomination unless it first qualifies.  And there are many ways to DISqualify a film, and only one way to qualify it.  On top of that, each year there are slight changes to the rules for eligibility, so I have to keep an eye on them every year, figure out what the changes are, and then make sure that all of the traps get avoided. 

There are even other reasons to qualify a film, beyond the possibility of getting an Oscar nomination and then maybe a statue.  In the animated feature category, for example, the number of nominations given out depends on the number of eligible films, so even if you represent an animated that has ZERO CHANCE, creatively speaking, of winning an Oscar, and I don't mean to be cruel here, but pick your favorite terrible kids movie, like "The Emoji Movie" or "Norm of the North" - if you make that film Oscar-eligible, it could be a big help to the animated feature community at large, because it could tip the scales and make five nomination slots available that year, instead of three.  At least that would be good karma, if you're the director of a terrible film, maybe you'd sleep better at night or something.  

But the best reason to make sure your film is Oscar-eligible is still the possibility of getting a nomination.  Signe's last feature "Rocks in My Pockets" didn't get a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category, but it was eligible.  So following all the rules and submitting paperwork to the Academy helped insure that in the Oscars given out in 2015 (for the films released in 2014) there were five nominations instead of three.  "Rocks in My Pockets" was also chosen to represent Latvia in the Best Foreign Language Film category, so there was also a chance that it could have received a nomination there.  It didn't, but it COULD have, and that's almost as good.  

And so we're taking steps now to make sure that "My Love Affair With Marriage" will qualify for the Academy Awards in either 2020 or 2021.  Yes, believe it or not, that work has to start now, especially where the Academy's rules are concerned.  If I've learned one thing over the years by submitting applications for qualification, it's that the preparations have to start well in advance, like during production of the film, and that waiting until a month before the submission is much too late. 

PART 2 - Tips for filmmakers on how to follow the rules (and maybe bend them a bit...)

The Academy has a lot of rules and regulations, and it's better when submitting any film to be aware of as many of them as possible.  The rules define what length a film has to be for consideration as a feature film instead of a short, for example.  Anything over 40 minutes is a feature, for their purposes, and anything under is a short. (Which sort of suggests the question about which category a 40-minute film would be able to qualify in...)  There are also rules about what constitutes an animated feature, or in the case of an animation/live-action mix, the film has to contain over a certain percentage of animation in order to qualify in that category. 

Another important rule is that the film has to be released, not necessarily nationwide, but at the very least it has to be exhibited publicly at a real theater within L.A. County, for at least 7 days, with at least three showings a day.  And along with the submission form, the Academy now requires proof of this screening, which used to be just a letter from the manager of the theater, but now they also require a copy of the theater's billing block, which is what gets sent to the local newspapers to announce the screenings to the public.  This means that over the years, some people probably tried to either forge letters from the theater, or tried to screen a film without telling the public about it.  

What's weird now is that for short films, the Academy now requires that they be advertised in the newspapers, just like feature films are.  For many years I've been able to help animated shorts get qualified by calling up certain theaters in L.A., and asking them if they'd be willing to screen a short before one of their features for a week.  99% of the time their answer would be a resounding "NO", but once in a while I could find some helpful theater manager, or one that might charge $50 or $100 for his trouble, but that's just the sort of entrepreneurial spirit I admire.  This sometimes led to odd pairings, like I remember that we screened a film called "Nosehair" in front of the James Bond film "Goldeneye".  And I remember one time where we paid a theater $50 to screen a short before a feature, but it went over so well, they sent the check back.  

Back then, all we really needed to submit to the Academy as proof was a letter from the theater manager to say that this screening took place, but now the Academy requires that the short film appears in the newspaper billing, right along with the name of the feature.  This is very easy for Disney or Dreamworks to arrange, especially if their short film is screening with one of their own features, like the way they screened "Bao" with "The Incredibles 2".  It's much harder at the independent level to get a short film both screened AND advertised.  Plus, who goes to the movie theater to see a short film?  I don't see why this requirement exists, because it's highly unlikely that anyone would read the newspaper to find out where a film like "Mission: Impossible" is playing, and then suddenly change their mind based on the fact that a short film is playing before another feature, like "Christopher Robin".  

In conjunction with the Academy's rules, the film also has to be kept off the internet before the L.A. screenings start - the rules do allow for festival screenings before the theatrical run, but nothing streaming on Netflix or airing on cable, or posted on YouTube or Vimeo or any other web-sites.  Many films these days are produced by Netflix or Amazon or even premium cable TV stations, so this is a rule that may change over the next few years, but right now everyone still has to follow this to the letter. Even a film made by Amazon can't be played on their web-site until after it screens in an L.A. theater for a week, or it won't be eligible. 

Back in the day, we used to have to ship a physical copy of the film, on 35mm no less.  This was because there was a small, select group of people who watched all of the animated features and decided which ones deserved to qualify.  The rumors were that these screenings took place at Tom Hanks' house, but I don't know for sure if that's true.  Anyway, the best thing about the new digital age of filmmaking is that we don't have to ship a big, heavy 35mm print of an animated feature out to Los Angeles for the Animated Feature Committee to view.  Once in a while, I might get lucky with the timing, and there would already be a 35mm copy in L.A., like maybe I could have the print that screened in the L.A. theater sent over to the Academy in Beverly Hills, and getting it shipped across town is much easier to arrange than getting it shipped across the country.  

These days, the submissions (and the screenings) are done with DCP's, which are hard drives that contain digital copies of feature films in HD formats.  Shipping a small hard drive from place to place, like from NY to LA, is much easier and cheaper.  (However, smaller hard drives are more likely to get lost...)  But now there are more rules about making and sending the DCPs that need to be followed.  For example, a DCP can have up to 7 channels of sound, and the minimum necessary for Academy submission is 3 channels, though they prefer 5.  A couple of times, I've been asked to submit animated shorts for qualification, but the filmmaker was still using basic stereo sound, which is only TWO channels.  What to do?  Well, a couple of times we shipped a stereo-mixed film to a company in L.A. that makes DCPs, and asked them to make a new DCP with 3 channels of sound, only the center one of them would be BLANK!  It was a quick fix done at the last minute, and I got the film qualified, though I admit this was a bit of a sneaky trick. 

(To be completely honest, this trick solved a problem, but also possibly violated a basic Academy rule, which states that the copy submitted for qualification must be exactly the same as the version that screened in the L.A. theater.  In this case, the copy that screened in the theater had 2-channel stereo sound, but the copy sent to the Academy had 3-channel sound.  But since one of the three channels was BLANK, in my opinion, the two versions of the film were the same.  That allows me to sleep soundly at night, anyway.)  

For "My Love Affair With Marriage", since Signe is already aware of the Academy's rules about sound, that makes my job a bit easier.  The sound mix for her film is already done, and it's already been made in 5-channel sound.  So when the time comes, all we'll need to do is to make a DCP with this mix, and we should be fine where the Academy's rules are concerned.  Unless, of course, the rules change between now and 2021, or any new technology forces new requirements to be met. 

There are a number of different deadlines to be aware of, also.  There's the date that everything has to be received at the Academy - the form, the film, and all the paperwork - which is usually October 31.  But before that, the Academy has to receive an OSF (Oscars Submission Form) and a complete version of the film's on-screen credits within 60 days of the end of the film's run at a commercial theater in Los Angeles County. This means that if you screen your film in L.A. in January, let's say, you have to do some of your Oscar paperwork in March, when the main deadline is in late October.  Who the heck is thinking about the Oscar submissions in February?  That's when the award ceremony for the PREVIOUS year is held, but if you're a filmmaker, you have to be thinking ahead here.  And if you screen in January and you forget to fill out the paperwork in February, that's it - you can't change your mind or suddenly remember to do this in September and still qualify.  This is probably why most studios release their best movies late in the year, because when they released good movies in January, somebody kept forgetting to fill out the Academy paperwork until it was too late. 

Finally, there's a new rule about submitting a digital copy of the film, along with 300 DVD copies to the Academy - Hmm, I've never seen that one before.  I bet those will be sent out to the voting members of the Animated Feature branch, for voting purposes.  Those DVDs have to be in paper sleeves with no artwork or contact information on them.  Wow, that's a lot of work, making 300 DVDs.  Or even if you hire a company to make those, that's an extra expense in order to qualify your film.  Sure, for a big company like Disney or Dreamworks, that cost is considered minimal compared to all their other production costs, but at the independent level, that's a big unexpected expense.  And it's a write-off, you can't sell those DVDs for a profit, or do anything with them to get that money back.  

Let's say you follow all of the Academy rules to the letter, and you manage to make your film Oscar-eligible.  That's great, but then you're only halfway there.  There's no guarantee the film will get nominated, but as I said before, it's got to be qualified in order to stand a chance of getting a nomination.  In the case of animated shorts, the Academy hosts branch screenings in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco for all the eligible shorts.  Any members that vote in this category can attend one of the branch screenings, watch all of the eligible films at once, and then vote for their favorites, which ideally narrows the list of Oscar-worthy shorts down to a list of then, which is known as the "Short List".  From this list, another round of voting picks the five shorts that get nominations.  

Ultimately, it's a long, complicated process that can be difficult for filmmakers to undertake, especially when new rules and requirements pop up that didn't exist before. The best we can do is pay attention each year and review the rules to see if anything is different, and then adjust our plans accordingly.  OK, so maybe I've never broken an Academy submission rule, but I've probably bent a few of them here and there. 

Studio News from John, Part 14: Anatomy of a Set - Jonas's Room

It's time to take a look at the next set that was constructed for "My Love Affair With Marriage".  This is the set for Jonas's room.  In the film, the character of Zelma, 17 years old, will take a train to another city and visit the art gallery, where she meets Jonas, an older man (33) who discusses art with her and then offers her some wine.  Zelma goes back to Jonas' room, and this marks a turning point in her search for a soulmate. 

But let's save the story details for when you see the film, OK?  Instead, let's take a look at how Jonas' room was put together.  Signe had the idea that there should be a large set of stairs, which could be a symbol for progress, climbing toward a goal that represents personal growth, or falling down, out of grace.  The stairs were made from the leftover curved pieces that were cut out to make the arches in the art gallery!  Sturgis doesn't waste any scraps of wood in the set shop.  The curved pieces were placed on top of each other to make a unique set of steps.  

The wooden pieces were then covered in paper-maché, and then given a base coat of black paint (though it looks blue here...) before the final pink color was added.  A little bit of the dark paint shows through the pink and this gave the stairs a different sort of texture created by the mix of colors. 

Then the room itself was constructed, with a window on one side.  In the script, Zelma lies in the bed in the morning with her head on the pillow and watches the curtains move as air comes in through the window.  Just like the stairs, the walls got covered with paper-maché and then painted pink.  In the next photo you can see where the platform is going to go that will hold the loft for the bed, and then the stairs will be placed in front, to lead up to that loft. 

And this piece will eventually become the bed that will be put at the top of the stairs.

Next, since Jonas is an award winning artist, and one who is not shy about it, he has all his awards hung on the wall.  The laurels on the awards fit in with the theme of plants and flowers, and even the ones that look like crowns also resemble the spreading leaves of plants.  So the flower design runs through the whole room, and this ties in to the story, based on what happens to Zelma in this room, get it? 

And the final element is a bridal veil, which I'm assuming will serve as the curtain for the room's window. 

When all of the pieces are put together - the walls, the stairs, the bed and the artwork on the walls - here is what Jonas's room looks like:

With some creative lighting, the room can take on an orange color, instead of pink, to reflect the look of a mid-day sun:

That's how Jonas' room came together, and next time we'll take a look at how another set is being built, so stay tuned!

Studio News from John, Part 13: Anatomy of a Set - Art Gallery

There's a new set in front of the camera here at the studio, ready to be shot, and it's an art gallery. Here's the step-by-step process of how it was created..   

First, it began as an idea. Signe says that "in the Soviet Union religion was banned and the Soviet government solved the problem of what to do with unused churches by converting them into atheist clubs or art galleries. There was an old orthodox church in Riga that was turned into a planetarium with an adjoining café where all kinds of bohemians hung out. The café's nickname in those circles was "Dieva Auss" which means "God's Ear". In the Latvian system of metaphors Gods Ear is a heavenly place to be - it's warm, fuzzy and your wishes are instantly heard."

In "My Love Affair With Marriage" the main character, Zelma, enters a gallery where she meets an older artist and she is instantly seduced by his aura of success and importance. Signe based the visual idea of this gallery on the converted church. The space of Art is sacred to young, inexperienced Zelma and people associated with it can do no wrong.  Since this gallery used to be a cathedral, it has some high arches and niches in the walls for art, where the religious statues used to be.

Before we take a peek at the finished set, let's go back two months to look at the set being built.  Ah, March, it was a simpler time, before the President was getting indicted and before the Avengers fought the Infinity War...

The whole set started with this sketch that Signe gave to Sturgis. From simple beginnings come very complex ideas! Sturgis used 3 kinds of saws to cut the shapes from wood found in a carpenter's trash bin.

The constructed set, with high arches and niches for the artworks, gets covered in paper-maché and with bricks made of cardboard.

Signe places a sample piece of art to show us how the gallery might look when it's finished.

Close-up of the right wall of the gallery with a hand sculpture in place. The paintings and sculptures exhibited in the gallery are created by the intern Joon Young Park. He did an amazing job!

By mid-May the whole gallery had been painted, bricks highlighted to bring out their texture, and all of the artworks were put in place.  

The finished set, placed in front of the camera and lit for dramatic effect.

The left side of the gallery, with artworks placed on the walls and sculptures placed in the niches. 

The right side of the gallery, with artwork on the walls and the finished hand sculpture. 

And here's a short video, showing a pan over the entire gallery set:

Studio News from John, Part 12: Finished props

I posted the first look at some props from "My Love Affair With Marriage" back in November, (Studio News Part 7) and since then many of them have been painted, so here's an update on how they look now.

Here's that big cat head, which turned out to be a cat-shaped room..  

Here's that bathtub shape, which evolved into a man with a bathtub-shaped body, and it's full of eyeballs. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for that. 

This is that character that I said looked like he had a "split personality".  I guess I was right, and two heads are better than one. 

And here is that figure carrying the suitcase and bag, he's got spiky hair and green skin now.  

Intriguing?  Of course!  It will be very interesting to see what roles all of these paper-maché figures play in the final film of "My Love Affair With Marriage".  

Studio News from John, Part 11: Noise complaints / Studio renovations

When you live and work in New York City, a certain amount of noise is to be expected.  After all, as Paul Simon once sang, "One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor."  I suspect Mr. Simon was using metaphor, but on a very practical level, he spoke the truth about people living together in close quarters.  (Why do they call them "apartments" if people are so close together?)  And by extension, almost every wall is someone else's wall, too - and on the other side of that wall, someone is probably learning to play a musical instrument.  

In Signe's building, her studio is right next to a recording studio, and this situation is just not conducive to a quiet, creative atmosphere.  Mostly this studio specializes in hip-hop music, which I personally don't listen to or appreciate, and this music is very focused on a driving, throbbing, shake-the-walls kind of beat.  Furthermore, it caters to a certain clientele that to fully appreciate the nuances of the music, has to engage in a certain herbal supplement.  (To me, if you have to get high to appreciate the music, there might be something wrong with the music, but hey, what do I know about it?)

So this has created a situation where the noise from next door is incessant, and the smell is often nauseating, and over the last few months has grown worse and worse, creating an interminable distraction that is simply not conducive to a creative atmosphere next door.  

There have been many conversations with the neighbor, ranging from friendly to combative, everything from the simple suggestion to use headphones to an attempt to coordinate schedules, so that the music (theoretically) wouldn't play during animating hours, or conversely so that animating hours could take place when the music isn't vibrating through the walls.  Then there were months of playing loops of forest noises:

rushing water:

and music found on YouTube that's designed to make us all smarter:

And happier:

in vain attempts to counteract, or at least overtake, the noise coming from next door.  Nothing has worked.  

The terms of the building's lease are, in my opinion, quite clear.  Every tenant in the building is responsible for controlling the noise AND odors coming from their space - and this applies to cooking odors as well as "baking" odors, legally there is no distinction between the smell of pots for cooking and pot for smoking.  Every single tenant has the right, according to the lease, to a peaceful working environment, and a responsibility to not interfere with the peaceful working environment of others.  But repeated calls to the landlord have not resulted in any punitive action, or change in the noise level.  Furthermore, it's the financial responsibility of a sound studio to employ proper sound-proofing, from a legal standpoint if not a neighborly one.  

The lease also forbids excess vibration caused by excessive noise - in the long term, this is much more potentially damaging to the building's structure than the noise itself.  

So, where does this lead?  Right now the solution seems to be to seal up all the gaps in the wall, to prevent any fumes from passing through (because apparently NOT smoking pot all day is unenforceable and therefore out of the question...) and to build another layer of wall on THIS side, with special sound-proofing panels that look terrible, but hopefully will cut down on the vibration passing over. 

The workers are here today installing them:

This meant removing EVERYTHING from this long wall - the shelving, the pictures, the art, and moving the desks and cabinets to the middle of the room, and then after we'll have to move everything back, then look at this industrial, brown/grey paneling going forward.  It's a terrible sacrifice to give up an entire wall of the studio just for soundproofing, and we're not entirely sure if the panels will even have the desired effect, to reduce the noise from next door.

It seems like this is the last resort, in order to get back to a situation where Signe can once again focus on her animation, and not have to blare the sounds of a forest environment all day, just to cancel out the music coming from next door.  For the sake of sanity and the creative process, this is what has to happen.  It's a point of fact, nobody ever complains about having a studio next door to an animator - you never hear anyone say, "Why is my neighbor always DRAWING so loudly?"  Plus I've found over the years that animators are usually very quiet people who tend to, or are forced to, keep largely to themselves.  

Studio News from John, Part 10: Zelma's Bedroom

Time for an another update on the production of "My Love Affair With Marriage".  

A new set is in front of the camera now, and it's Zelma's bedroom set.  A couple of months ago, here is what the set looked like: 

And now the walls have been painted, the wardrobe has been moved to the other side of the room, Zelma's bed has been added, and the room now has a window, which is great because it was getting a little stuffy in there, and the room really needed some more natural light.  Here's what the bedroom set looks like now:

Here are some details about the room.  The walls appear to have plant-like tendrils on them, this is in sharp contrast to the straight lines of the walls, and this symbolizes the struggle between Zelma's natural, organic emotions and the rigid constructs of society.  Zelma is a teenager at this point in the story, and she's not sure what to do with emotions like love, and where those emotions are going to lead her.  Will she follow the conventions of society, and follow a straight path, or will her emotions take her on a more roundabout journey?  

If you notice here, there is moonlight coming in the window and hitting Zelma's bed.  This is more symbolism, since Zelma's body has begun following a certain monthly cycle, and what else follows a monthly cycle?  That's right, the moon.  

And no, Signe didn't forget to clean up the set.  There are some clothes on the floor, and others in the wardrobe.  Again, a contrast between the order of society, with clothes on their hangers, and the free-spirited habit of leaving clothes on the floor.  (And here you thought your kids were just lazy - they're really just expressing their individuality!)  

Right now, Signe and Sturgis are doing some camera tests to shoot the background at several different angles and with different lighting (for different times of day).  

Stay tuned for more production updates from the set!  

Studio News from John, Part 9: Patient Zero

Our studio has been ravaged by the flu bug that's been going around - which came as a bit of a surprise, because although I was sick for the whole month of January, I had no idea that it was THE FLU - the one that is dominating the current news cycle.  And apparently, I'm the "Patient Zero" of the studio.

It's typical for me to catch at least one cold each winter, and it's also typical for that cold to get down deep into my lungs and live there for a month or so, giving me a hacking cough for a few weeks, even after I don't feel sick any more.  And I never had that "someone, just kill me" feeling that we often associate with the flu.  So the question I faced during January was "Do I go in to work, or not?"  Nobody wants to get their co-workers sick, so that's an argument for staying home.  But everybody also wants to be needed and productive, so that's an argument for going to work, especially since I manage two animation studios, both Signe's and Bill Plympton's.  That's a lot of people to contaminate.  

I think they recommend now that if you have the flu, you should stay home - and if it's just a cold, you should go to work (but take note of what you touch, try to sneeze into your inner elbow, all of this is good practical advice.).  But what should you do when you feel like you just have a cold, but it turns out you have THE FLU?  As you can probably guess, I felt all right after a few days, but I was probably still highly contagious.  

About a week after I got sick, my wife did too - this happens every winter, too, and she's so tired of it happening that I'm a little surprised she still puts up with me.  But I say that for a lot of reasons.  Then some interns at Bill Plympton's studio started sniffling, and I could feel that I'd be blamed soon for causing work to grind to a halt, since any animation studio is powered by interns.  And because Signe and I eat lunch together twice a week, I suppose it was inevitable that she'd start to show symptoms, too.  (She did...)

In my defense, I DID get a flu shot last year, though I usually don't.  But I'm at the age where the doctor is starting to insist on it, since the flu is particularly hard on the infants and the elderly.  (I'm getting close to the latter.)  But here's the thing about the flu shot - there are different strains of flu, and the CDC has to predict each year which strain is going to be prevalent a few months down the line, in order to produce enough flu shots to go around.  They are NOT always correct, which I suspect has led to the current outbreak.  Or perhaps they WERE correct, and keeping one strain of flu in check allowed another, more unpredictable or more resilient strain to ravage the U.S. population.  All actions on the viral level have consequences.

And then Signe went to visit Sturgis in Maine, where he's appearing in a stage production of "Babette's Feast" and of this writing, he's still dealing with the flu, and so are a couple other actors.  Sturgis went to see a doctor, and the tests confirmed he had the flu, and finally someone was given some medicine to start fighting this thing.  But if you're in the Portland area and your enjoyment of a stage production was spoiled by a lot of coughing and sneezing among the cast, I take full responsibility.  

After about a month with the cold (or flu, whichever) I didn't feel sick any more, but I still had a terrible sore throat that lasted for another two weeks. Then I started having trouble with my hearing - which makes sense, because a person's ear, nose and throat are all connected, so it seems that after a while one starts to affect the other.  I started to hear this low thumping sound that sounded like it was coming from outside, like if every car on the street ran over the same loose manhole cover, and it kept happening again and again.  When I sat in my living room and watched TV, it would sound like the neighbor next door was learning to play the bass guitar, only he was just playing the same note over and over.  It got worse until it became this constant low hum, like there was a big piece of machinery on the other side of the wall, and I thought maybe my house's heating system wasn't working right, and maybe the house was getting ready to explode.  

Now, Signe's studio has a problem with a noisy neighbor - there's a sound studio next door that doesn't have enough acoustic sound-proofing, so sometimes there's this loud vibration from hip-hop music, and of course they've always got the bass turned up very high.  (They're all about that bass, no treble...)  We hear that all day long sometimes, and on some level we get used to it, even though it NEVER STOPS.  But when I started hearing similar thumping vibrations at home, I first thought maybe my ears were still ringing from my time at the studio.  The funny thing was that my wife couldn't hear the thumping sound, or the loud hum, so I eventually figured out that it was coming from my own head.  That's when I finally dragged myself to my doctor to get checked out.  

I got my hearing checked, and it turned out that I have lost some hearing in my right ear, which explains why I'm always moving my phone over to my left ear to hear better.  But I can't hear some of the higher frequencies now, and that by itself doesn't explain why I was hearing loud low noises at home that nobody else can.  Tinnitus usually manifests itself as a high-pitched ringing in the ear, not a low thump or low hum.  So they put me on medicine to reduce my blood pressure, which has always been somewhat high, but never in the "danger zone".  The thumping I've been hearing could be related to blood pressure, or it could be a leftover from the month-long cold, I'm not sure yet.  

First the doctor gave me ear drops, just in case there's a whole bunch of wax build-up in there, but after putting in the drops, I was supposed to rinse my ear out a few minutes later with a rubber syringe.  I did that, and I managed to clog my ear even worse with water, so I had "swimmer's ear" for a few days last week.  That meant I couldn't hear well out of EITHER ear, and everything sounded like I was at the bottom of a pool.  Before enrolling in sign language class, though, I tried everything I could to unclog the left ear, and finally got it to pop open.  But there's still something not right with the pressure in my head, because the ear still feels like it wants to close up shop every night, and I have to get it to open up each morning.  

The news is still listing the casualties of this year's flu season, and I'm hoping heads will roll when everyone realizes how ineffective this year's flu shot was, but at least "Patient Zero" is on the road to recovery.