Canadian TV is Dying. Does Animation Know it?

Over the last year, Rogers and Shaw, the two largest cable TV suppliers in Canada, have lost a total of 200,000 subscribers.  That has enormous repercussions for TV producers, including animation studios.

YTV is one of the major outlets for Canadian TV animation.  It is part of the basic cable package, which means that everyone who has cable TV in Canada automatically receives YTV.  YTV receives money for each cable TV subscriber, and it has lost the fee from 200,000 people in the last year.  In addition, it earns money from advertising and its ratings must have suffered by some amount, as some of those 200,000 people must have watched YTV.

Teletoon is part of a cable bundle, but surely some of those 200,000 people were paying for Teletoon.  As Teletoon also sells advertising, the smaller audience has cost Teletoon income on two fronts.

The cable companies are rapidly diversifying away from TV.  Rogers and Shaw have partnered in Shomi, a Netflix-like service that makes content available on demand.  Rogers has now partnered with Vice, which will produce content for them.  The money quote that justifies the deal is that there is a “dramatic shift in Canada’s media landscape which sees young people increasingly consuming news and entertainment from their mobile and digital devices.”

Bell Media is creating its own streaming service.

What are the repercussions for Canadian animation?  It means that broadcasters such as YTV, Teletoon, and Family Channel will have less money to spend on new programming.  Either they will buy less or buy the same amount but provide less money for each.  Either way, the TV market for Canadian animation is going to get tougher.  The future is online and the cable companies know it.  The animation studios that grasp this are the ones most likely to survive.

Book Review: The Webcomics Handbook

While comics are not animation, there is a great deal of overlap, both in terms of artists as well as how artists are marketing their work these days.  In this way, animation artists who are interested in using the web as a revenue source, or are interested in self publishing or exhibiting at conventions can find a wealth of advice from Brad Guigar's The Webcomics Handbook.

Guigar has been doing webcomics since 2000 and is the founder of Webcomics.com, an online site dedicated to sharing knowledge with artists who are marketing and selling their work online.  He is the co-author of How to Make Webcomics, a book I plugged earlier.

The value of Guigar's latest book is how incredibly specific it is.  If you're looking to create a website with earning potential, Guigar will talk about various hosting sites and their relative advantages and disadvantages.  He lists the various approaches to securing advertising for sites.  He even has tips for speeding up page loading.

Guigar talks about the pitfalls of collaborating and how to avoid them.  He has a chapter devoted to self-publishing, including information on print-on-demand vs offset.  He has a chapter devoted to conventions and how to best present yourself at them as well as the economics of attending shows.

Other topics include copyright, contracts, insurance, search engine optimization, collectives, merchandise, and booth barnacles (fans who hang around your table at cons and monopolize your time without buying anything).

I have never seen a book about artists using the online world with as much practical advice.  My only complaint is that the book lacks an index.  However, that is a small complaint.  If you have ever considered using the web as a revenue source, there is something in this book that will help you. 

A Challenge to Studios Taking Pitches

The Ottawa International Animation Festival starts on September 17 and studios will be there to recruit.  As well, Nickelodeon will be there soliciting pitches for preschool shows.  I'd like to issue a challenge to Nickelodeon and any studio that takes pitches, though I'm confident that this challenge will be completely ignored.

I'd like studios that are looking for pitches to make their minimum deal public.  How much of the copyright, if any, will the creator get to keep?  What screen credit will the creator be guaranteed?  How much will the creator get per episode that's produced?  What guaranteed employment will the creator get on the project?  What percentage of online, merchandising, publishing and home video revenues will the creator get?

While I have no confidence that companies like Viacom, Disney, Warner Bros. or Fox will take this challenge, it presents an enormous opportunity for smaller studios looking to own intellectual property.  Imagine a studio that offers to let the creator keep half of the copyright and half the profits from all revenue streams.  Creators with confidence in their ideas would be fools not to take their work to that studio first.  Imagine if a studio agreed that if the project wasn't viable after a limited time, the creator could recover 100% of the copyright in exchange for reimbursing the studio for it's production and marketing costs.

We're in a transitional period.  What we think of as TV is shrinking and the online world of Netflix-like and YouTube-like entities are expanding.  Before the online world solidifies, as it inevitably will, a studio able to attract the best content because it offers the best deal would have a competitive advantage.

It would obviously benefit creators, but the point is that it would be good business all around.

Media companies hate bidding wars.  As early as 1909, Biograph was trying to suppress the names of their performers, afraid that they would ask for more money.  However, Carl Laemmle hired Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford away from Biograph and publicized them in order to increase demand for his films.  As much as media companies would prefer it otherwise, the business is based on talent.  If a studio is taking pitches, what will it publicly guarantee to the talent?

And if you're a creator, do you have the nerve to demand to know the deal before you make the pitch?

Goodbye Canadian Content?

UPDATE: Those of you interested in what's happening to TV in Canada should read this article in The Globe and Mail.  It's a good summary of all the potential changes that are coming and how it might change the production landscape.  The reader comments show the level of animosity towards the cable companies and broadcasters.  You can't hold an audience with regulations, only by giving them something they want to watch.

There's an alternate TV universe developing in Canada.  It looks a lot like the old TV universe.  In fact the majority of the programming comes from the old TV universe, but there's an important difference: it comes via the internet and not cable channels.

So what?  Well, you can impose Canadian content quotas on cable, because no service gets on cable unless the Canadian Radio and Television Commission approves it.  And the CRTC always imposes conditions on any license it grants.

However, the CRTC has decided to keep its hands off the internet, precisely because it can't stop anyone from using the internet to distribute content.

There are huge repercussions from this.  First, when there were limited channels available and they had to run Canadian content, there was a demand (even it if was mandated demand and not audience demand) that had to be filled.  Second, when the public paid for cable TV and when the cable channels earned money from advertising, a percentage of the money was put into the Canadian Media Fund, which provided money for the production of Canadian content, including animation.

The problem started when Netflix came to Canada.  It allowed viewers to pay a flat monthly subscription rate to watch anything on the service.   As Netflix arrives via the internet, it has no legal obligation to put money into the Canadian Media Fund or to use Canadian content.  When a generation of young adults who have declined to have cable TV combines with disgruntled viewers who cut their cable to lower their bills, the cable companies panic.  Their billing is dropping and the shrinking audience will force advertising revenues downwards as well.  That's a one-two punch aimed at Canadian content.

Shaw and Rogers, the two largest cable TV providers, are fighting back.  They're collaborating to create Shomi (pronounced "show me") to compete with Netflix.  That's like Coke and Pepsi collaborating on a new soft drink, a move that could only be driven by desperation.  Bell Media has just purchased a library of older shows from HBO for their own version of video on demand.  Suddenly, the cable TV business has the cooties and everyone is running away from it.  Because these new services are on the internet, there's no obligation to run Canadian content and none of the subscription money goes to the Canadian Media Fund.

This will make it harder to produce original animation in Canada.  With lower ad rates, less money in the Canadian Media Fund and the audience abandoning cable, there will be less demand for Canadian content and it will be harder to finance.  For better or worse, studios interested in creating shows will have to compete with the rest of the world, without the government carving out a protected space for them.

There will still be service work, but that doesn't bode well for the future of Canadian animation.  Service work is sensitive to currency fluctuations.  The Canadian dollar has ranged as low as 63 cents and as high as 1.03 compared to the U.S. dollar over the last decade or so.  In addition, there is the volatility of tax credits and government subsidies.  The new government in Quebec has cut their tax credits due to their deficit.  Any deficit-ridden government (which is all of them at the moment) will be looking hard at expenditures.  Service work is great for cash flow, but the flow stops when the job is delivered.  There are no residuals and no money from merchandising.  Studios doing service work are always just a few months away from a potential bankruptcy.

This could be a great opportunity for Canadian studios, forcing them to cut the government's apron strings and grow up, but I'm doubtful.  History hasn't demonstrated that Canadian studios are eager for that challenge.  In the last 35 years, no studio has walked away from government protection or money to stand on its own.

While Canadian animation is booming right now, the future is uncertain at best.  The entire notion of Canadian content quotas may disappear quickly, not through government decree, but through cable TV erosion.  While Canadian studios have worked hard to satisfy the regulations, now it's time for them to focus on satisfying the audience if they want a healthy future.

Is Canadian TV Animation Heading for a Cliff?

The TV animation business in Canada is on a roll right now.  There's a lot of work out there, as a glance at the job board at Canadian Animation Resources confirms.  While animation in Canada includes visual effects, features and videogames, TV still makes up the greatest proportion of production in terms of employment and the amount of material produced.

However, there are trends in several areas that make TV animation vulnerable.  The ground is already shifting and there are more shifts to come.

Television in Canada is regulated by the Canadian Radio and Television Commission.  This government body determines which new channels will be allowed to exist, sets quotas for Canadian content and determines how much money from cable fees will be set aside for Canadian production.

The CRTC is aware of the effect that the internet and internet TV providers such as Netflix are having on the market and have been holding hearings to determine how regulations should change.  There are several possibilities being considered.  One is unbundling. 

The CRTC has declared that certain channels such as YTV, a major Canadian animation market, are part of the basic cable package.  In other words, everyone who has cable is forced to pay money towards YTV.  Other channels featuring animation, such as Teletoon and Family Channel, are part of packages.  You cannot buy these channels on their own.  There are customers who don't care at all about animation who are contributing money towards these channels by purchasing the package they're included in.

Should the CRTC unbundle, allowing viewers to purchase only those channels they want, no one can predict how this might effect the demand for animation channels.  The number of cable channels using animation has expanded to include Nickelodeon, Teletoon Retro, Cartoon Network Canada, Disney XD, Disney Junior and Treehouse.  Can the Canadian market support all of these channels in an a la carte world?  Can studios survive if the number of Canadian buyers goes down?

There is an entire generation that has replaced TV with the internet.  The term "cord cutting" is used to describe people who give up cable TV, but there are many young adults who haven't had cable TV since leaving their parents' homes.  Walking in Toronto, I see children in strollers playing with iPads.  In a world of on-demand entertainment, does the concept of a broadcast schedule have a hope of surviving?

The shrinking audience is affecting even mainstream programming.  W5, a 60 Minutes-like news show has just cut production on the number of episodes for the coming season and laid off staff due to shrinking ad revenues. 

Many in Canada subscribe to Netflix instead of cable.  No money spent on Netflix is re-routed towards Canadian production as it is with cable bills.  This means that the Canada Media Fund, which funnels money towards various productions, has less to work with.

Finally, there is the issue of tax credits.  Ontario just had a provincial election, so the government will be stable for the next four years, but it is trying to eliminate a deficit. No poll of the general public has ever put tax credits for media production high on the list of priorities.  As a result, I would not be surprised to see the tax credits frozen at best and I anticipate some amount of claw back.  Certainly, they won't increase, which means that if another jurisdiction surpasses Ontario's tax credits, work will leave Ontario.

While content quotas, bundling and tax credits have their place, especially for new enterprises, they turn into an addiction.  Ultimately, animation has to please the public if it is to survive.  Instead, too many studios have focused on satisfying regulations that generate money rather than on creating viable entertainment.  I fear that they have built their enterprises on a foundation of sand.  I have seen contractions in the Canadian animation industry in the past and they're not pretty.  I hope that studios are preparing for changes that may destroy their current business model.

To learn more about this, read Michael Geist and listen to this Canadaland podcast.

Profits Over Product

A couple of business stories have come to my attention that point up the conflict between those who value profits over product and those who value product over profits.  Neither is an absolute.  Those who value profit need something that customers are willing to buy and those who value product need to make enough money to keep going.  But there is usually a clear emphasis in most companies.

Cartoon Brew reports a story that YouTube is changing the rules on how they pay contributors money from advertising.  If I read things correctly, it was previously based on views.  Now, it's being based on the amount of time viewers spend watching a contributor's video and frequency of uploads.  This puts animators at a disadvantage as animation takes more time than live action to produce, so animated films are shorter and contributors upload less frequently than live action producers.

This is the same situation that faced J.R. Bray and Max Fleischer in the 1910s and '20s.  At the time, distributors paid film producers by the foot.  Film was treated like bolts of cloth or lumber.  It didn't matter what was on the film, simply how long it was.  While it might take as much time and money (or more) to do a 1000 foot animated film than a 2000 foot live action comedy, the animated film was only going to get paid half as much.  The distributors were looking to fill up screen time.  With fixed admission prices, the cost of a show had to be less than the box office take for that show, or there was no profit.  A clear case of profit over product.

Like the distributors of the past, YouTube is not creating the content, only distributing it.  Unlike the distributors, their customers are not the public.  YouTube's customers are the advertisers.  Therefore, they have to keep the advertisers happy and buying ads in order to pay for all the bandwidth and servers that keep YouTube running.

YouTube is blind to content.  It doesn't care what is uploaded in terms of subject or quality.  There's so much content there, that there is no question that there is material that advertisers will be interested in.  YouTube's only interest is matching advertisers to videos in the most efficient way possible, because that's where the money is.  Advertisers want viewers who spend a lot of time looking at something and who return on a regular basis, so that's what YouTube favours.

While this looks like bad news for animators, there are options.  I don't know if it's against YouTube's terms of service, but animators could go out and find their own sponsors and put 10 second ads at the head of their films.  Or they could super "sponsored by..." over their films.  Or they could seek out product placement.  There are also competing video hosting sites.  Animators are free to note their audience sizes and incomes and approach rival sites to see if they can get a better deal.  If enough animators try this, maybe one of the rival sites will realize that there's a way to boost their audience size while hurting YouTube at the same time.  Would YouTube react if suddenly their animation content dropped significantly?

Comics are not animation and the story of Kitchen Sink Press is different than YouTube, but it exposes the same tension between profits and product.  Denis Kitchen, publisher of Kitchen Sink, gave a long interview to John Cooke, editor of Comic Book Creator.  A large portion of that interview is available in a free .pdf download.

Kitchen started out as an underground comics publisher who eventually branched out into other comics related work, such as The Crow, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and reprinting Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Al Capp.  At one point, he was approached by Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Ninja Turtles, to have Kitchen Sink take over Eastman's publishing company Tundra.  In exchange for his financial investment, Eastman got 51% of Kitchen Sink.

Eastman, like Kitchen, valued product over profit.  The problem was that Eastman was a poor businessman who was losing money on several fronts, which threatened the existence of Kitchen Sink.  Eastman brought in Ocean Capital, an investment group, which took 90% ownership in exchange for supplying the money to keep the company going.  Ocean Capital's plan was to grow the company and take it public.  While Kitchen's focus had always been on product, Ocean Capital's focus was on getting profits high enough to launch the public offering.  Unfortunately, the comics business underwent one of it's periodic declines and after two years of falling profits, Ocean Capital wanted to sell Kitchen Sink or liquidate it to get out from under.

Enter Fred Seibert, known to the animation community from his association with Hanna Barbera and now shows like Adventure Time and Bee and Puppycat.  Seibert bought the company in a fire sale from Ocean Capital, but a turf war broke out between Kitchen and a consultant named Don Todrin.  Both tried to convince Seibert of the right way forward and Seibert, worried about his investment, sided with Todrin.  Kitchen was fired from the company he created in much the same way that animators Will Vinton and Phil Roman were.  A year later, Kitchen's former company was bankrupt.

Denis Kitchen valued product over profit, but some business decisions that backfired put the company he created into the hands of people who valued profit over product.  It's a familiar story.  Walt Disney valued product but Robert Iger values profit.  Iger ignored the enormous concentration of talent within the Disney company and instead spent money to acquire Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.  The emphasis on profit has contaminated Pixar, which now produces more sequels than originals and watches Disney rip it off with the Planes franchise.

Surviving in business is difficult, but when the emphasis shifts from product to profit, it rarely shifts back.  Investors, as a rule, are more interested in a return than how the return is achieved.  People who value product have to remain vigilant.  YouTube will change its policies to suit itself and investors will demand control in exchange for their money.  If somebody else controls your work, either through ownership or distribution, you're at their mercy.

Pixar's Pivotal Moment?

In my experience, the hardest thing to cultivate in a studio and the easiest thing to destroy is enthusiasm.  When the staff feels that the studio is dedicated to turning out good films and is providing the crew with opportunities to do their best work, the employees give extra effort.  When management says one thing while doing another, cynicism quickly sets in and every move or statement by management is viewed with suspicion.

The recent revelations that Ed Catmull was a willing conspirator to hold down wages and limit employment opportunities destroys his credibility as a manager.  While his contributions to the development of computer animation technology are untouched by this, his leadership credentials now lie in ruins.  While his book Creativity, Inc. has been praised by reviewers, my friend James Caswell says that it should be shelved in the fiction section.

Pixar has been very effective in keeping their internal workings from the public.  There aren't Pixar employees contributing to message boards or commenting on blogs.  Even those people with reason to complain, like Jan Pinkava and Brenda Chapman, have been circumspect.  Perhaps that's because the field is so small they didn't wish to burn bridges or perhaps there were settlements paid with silence as a condition.

But within Pixar, what's the mood?  Can any statement or policy from Catmull be treated as genuine now when the staff knows that he has been picking their pockets and limiting their prospects?  Has his authority been neutered?  Will Robert Iger ease him out as a way of reassuring the staff, or worse, leave him where he is and act as if nothing is wrong?

And what about John Lasseter?  What did he know and when did he know it?  Are there emails that implicate him as well?  Did he ever disagree with the policy or did he just accept it?  Regardless, he has profited from it.  Pixar's profits have increased the dividends and the price of Disney stock, making Lasseter richer.  Pixar's employees have paid for a portion of his winery.

Will this hasten people to leave the company?  Will it cause animation artists and students to think twice before applying to Pixar or the other studios involved in the conspiracy?  Will this push some employees or former employees to go public with their grievances?

As we don't know what's going on in Pixar, this may be a tipping point or the staff may just ignore it and keep working.  However, in the 1930s when the world was celebrating Walt Disney, conditions in his studio were deteriorating, eventually resulting in the strike that changed the company forever.

We may have to wait years until some Pixar employees retire or leave the field before we get a sense of how this was received within the company, but eventually the truth will come out.  The media love to build people up and then tear them down.  I'm guessing that it's just a matter of time before Pixar is in their sights.  Certainly the company has given them ample reason to take aim.

The Contradictions of Copyright

The success of Disney's Frozen highlights the contradictions of copyright.  Salon has an article called, "How Disney Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Copyright Infringement."  YouTube is full of covers of Frozen's "Let it Go."  While I haven't bothered to wade through them all, searching for "Let it Go" on YouTube turns up 2.5 million videos.

As Salon reports, Disney is turning a blind eye to this as they have determined that it's free advertising.  The problem for me is how arbitrary Disney is with regard to copyright infringement.

This 1990 article from the Gainesville Sun in Florida details that Disney sued over a thousand people for copyright infringement over a four year period.  Yet now, people who could be charged with infringing the copyright on Frozen are being ignored.

The whole point of law is to establish clear rules for what is permitted and what is not.  The government's legal monopoly on force is used as a deterrent to discourage lawbreakers and punish, by fine or imprisonment, those who do break the law.

When laws are sometimes ignored, it leads to injustice.  The current drug laws are a perfect example.  Those who are poor and members of minority groups are more likely to spend time in prison than those with money or white skin who commit the same offense.

The enforcement of copyright laws are not based on economic status or ethnicity; they are based on economic advantage to the copyright holder.  If the copyright owner deems something to be economically beneficial, it is ignored.  If it is seen as economically detrimental, either by doing damage to the copyrighted item or by siphoning profits from the copyright holder, the violator will be prosecuted.  The problem is that it is impossible to know how a copyright owner will view a "tribute" or "fan fiction" at any given moment.

Andrew Wallenstein writes in Variety,

If it chose, Disney, or any other studio for that matter, could scrub YouTube clean of any content that didn’t come from the company. YouTube’s own Content ID system, and firms that specialize in online content monetization like Zefr, empower copyright holders to monitor any unauthorized appropriation of its content, and to collect audience data. A content owner has the choice of removing what it doesn’t like, letting it remain, or taking the next step — imposing ads on it that yield revenue.

...

The balancing act that content owners have to do with regard to YouTube — as well as other fan-friendly platforms like Tumblr — is a tough one. On the one hand, corporations must loosen their grip on their own product for their promotional benefit. On the other hand, ceding control can be a scary thing.

But erring on the side of a long leash is the right call. The DIY ethos of YouTube means allowing a mashup culture to blossom even if that impinges on fair use and brand values. The tight rein that studios typically keep on their intellectual property simply doesn’t fly here.

The copyright laws, as written, don't work.  Copyright holders are simultaneously loosening their hold and tightening it through secretly negotiated trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership.  Maybe this loosening will force the current laws to crumble, but the potential for a corporate backlash is there.  Rather than have it both ways,  it would be in everyone's interest for the law to be reworked so that it can be applied consistently.  Instead, it encourages fans to create based on their favorite copyrighted works, until such time as it doesn't.

The Rise and Fall of Will Vinton

A very interesting article on Will Vinton's career, including how he lost his company to Phil and Travis Knight.

Book Review: Creativity, Inc.

Most managers have holes in their knowledge.  Some people are promoted to management based on their skills.  They're the best at what they do in the company, so they are put in charge of other people.  The problem is that these managers have no training in how to handle people.  This is as true of assembly line managers as it is of college presidents.

Other people study management in school, but are ignorant of the processes they are managing.  They are in charge of people who know more than they do, though sometimes they won't admit it.  The world is full of MBAs who are incapable of producing any part of their company's product or service.

This is why there are so many books on business management.  The usual approach is to list things that should be done: Do this and you'll be successful.  Business books often differ in their recommendations, but the authors are convinced that their advice is sound.

Ed Catmull, one of the founders of Pixar and now President of Pixar and Disney Animation, takes a different approach in Creativity, Inc.  As he started out in computer science writing software, he is analytical about solving problems.  However, rather than declare the right way to do things, Catmull instead writes about things to beware of, including things that are unknowable.

Don't measure people by their current skills, but by how much they can grow.  Don't be afraid to hire people smarter than you are.  Understand the reasons behind a disagreement rather than focusing on the disagreement itself.  Try to find the causes of fear in an organization and root them out.  Don't believe you can prevent all errors by planning.   Don't punish failure or no one will try anything new.  Don't measure people by their mistakes, but by their ability to fix their mistakes.  Don't let the organizational structure prevent communication between departments and people.  Don't let one department's agenda override other agendas.  Don't confuse the process with the goal.

Catmull writes about the above using examples from his own career and from Pixar.  On the surface, it reads as if Pixar has managed to overcome problems common to large organizations and has found ways to encourage the staff to focus on the success of the company.   But while Catmull is not shy about Pixar's failures and close calls, I think that there's a gap between the Pixar of this book and the Pixar of reality.

For instance, Catmull talks about having to keep product moving through the pipeline in order to use the staff efficiently, but the need to "feed the beast" in his words often results in going with the tried and true rather than taking chances on new ideas.  As an example, he mentions The Lion King 1 1/2.  "This kind of thinking yields predictable, unoriginal fare because it prevents the kind of organic ferment that fuels true inspiration."  However, Pixar is as invested in sequels these days as any other animation studio.

At times, Catmull is disingenuous.  He implies that Pixar's influence was responsible for the crew of The Princess and the Frog taking a research trip to Louisiana, when in fact Disney had been making research trips for earlier films like The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  He gives credit to a Pixar developer for giving his crew time to pursue personal projects at work, while Google was widely reported to have been doing this for years.

Catmull praises Steve Jobs' design of Pixar's building, saying that it was constructed to force people from different departments to interact with each other.  Yet he also discusses a 2013 internal event called Notes Day, and one of the emails Catmull received after it was over said, "I met new people, got completely new points of view, and learned what other departments struggle with and succeed with."  Clearly, the geography of Pixar's building was not enough to fulfill Jobs' intention.

There is also a bit of a Pollyanna attitude.  While there are undoubtedly personal and legal reasons to avoid speaking about some staffing issues in specific terms, the pain and disruption of firings and layoffs is glossed over.  With one exception, the fate of the crew of Circle 7, the studio Disney created to do its own Pixar sequels, goes unmentioned.  There's nothing about the opening and closing of Pixar's Vancouver studio, either.

Catmull implies that directors are only replaced when stories are not progressing or when a director loses the confidence of the crew.  While no replaced directors are mentioned by name, it leaves a shadow over the heads of Jan Pinkava, Brenda Chapman and others who are criticized by implication, but without specifics and without the ability to refute the charges.

Catmull talks about personally delivering bonus cheques to each crew member on Tangled, talking about how important it was to acknowledge each person's contribution to the film.  And yet, after Frozen, now the most financially successful animated film in Disney history, those people laid off after completion have been denied bonus cheques though they contributed as much to the film as the people who were retained.  Disney will undoubtedly rehire some of these people in the future, and their commitment to future projects will be tempered by a knowing cynicism.  So much for team building.

There is much that is valuable in this book.  However, the contradictions in this book underline that no company is perfect and no matter how hard managers try to avoid or eliminate problems, there will always be some.  Catmull is to be praised for acknowledging this, but like everyone else, he's unaware of some of his own mistakes and blind spots.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Addendum 2

Courtesy of student Luke Coleman, here is a series of articles by Disney character designer Chris Oatley entitled "Will Your Personal Project Make Money?"  The articles describe a variety of motivations for doing personal work besides income, and all of them are great reasons for taking your work directly to the audience.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Addendum

I'd like to thank a commenter named Raff who pointed me to this Patton Oswalt speech given at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal in 2012.

I envy stand-up comedians for two reasons.  First, they get to deliver their work in real time, as opposed to animators who work for weeks, months or years before it reaches an audience.  Second, there is nothing separating a comedian and the audience.  Artists who work on features can sit in a theatre and view their work with an audience, but artists who work in TV or games don't get that chance.  They only get an abstracted version of the audience in for form of ratings or financial grosses.  Those are pretty cold compared to seeing and feeling people respond in person.

Oswalt's speech covers many of the same points as this series of articles.  As Oswalt is better known and more successful than me, maybe his words will carry more weight than mine.  The point is that creative people in many fields are realizing that the old structure is obsolete and that there are opportunities out there for anyone who chooses to pursue them.


(And there's one more addendum.)

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Six

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.  Part 3 is here.  Part 4 is here.  Part 5 is here.

What do you love more, your idea or animation?  This is not an idle question.  When it comes to producing something fast and cheap, animation isn't high on the list.  It takes time, and in the current media environment, the audience wants a steady stream of new material or it will lose interest and move on.

The skills used to make animated films -- the ability to write, design, draw and stage situations -- can be applied to other things.  When animation professionals do personal work, it is often in some other medium.

When Bob Clampett left Warner Bros. animation to work in television in the early years, he knew that he could not produce animation fast and cheap enough to keep up with a television schedule.  Instead, he took his sensibility and gave it to the audience in the form of a puppet show, Time for Beany.

Animator Mike Kunkel took his ideas and turned them into a comic book series called Herobear and the Kid.

Storyboard artist Katie Rice does a webcomic called Camp Weedonwantcha.  Her site is a good example of how to interact with fans and earn money. 

Storyboard artist Vera Brosgal created a graphic novel called Anya's Ghost.

Chris Sanders and Dean Yeagle, both directors and animators, have published sketchbooks of their work.

Character designer and animator Tony Fucile does children's books.

Designers Bobby Chiu and Kay Acedera sell prints and have also created a motion comic called Niko and the Sword of Light.

Should an idea prove successful, it can always be done as animation at a later date.  Former Disney animator Cyril Pedrosa just sold the film rights to his graphic novel Three Shadows.  There's also Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

There are more opportunities available now to reach an audience and generate income than have ever existed.  That's not to say it is easy.  Creating work that is popular is hard.  Most creations simply don't generate much interest.

However, having experienced pitching to business people and having sold a series that lasted for 52 episodes, I felt that my vision for Monster By Mistake was compromised.  Having lost ownership in exchange for getting the show produced, my connection to my creation was severed.  While Monster By Mistake is probably still running somewhere in the world, the story for me and the characters is over.

Some may feel that my experience has put too much of a negative outlook on pitching to studios or broadcasters.  If there's someone out there who sold a show, got it to an audience, and still feels creatively and financially satisfied, I'd be happy to give them space here to provide an alternate viewpoint.

I'm not naive enough (or egotistical enough) to think that this series of articles will change anything.  People will still continue to pitch.  However, if you are someone with ideas that you'd like to bring to audiences, think about my advice.

Keep ownership of your work.  Nobody will care about it as much as you, so you're the only one who can protect the heart and soul of your idea.  Get it to an audience as quickly and cheaply as possible and take audience feedback seriously, even if the feedback is negative or indifferent.  Like it or not, success depends on the audience.

If you can satisfy an audience, monetize it.  Even if you can't earn enough to live on, it's a nice supplement to your day job and will prevent your income from ever dropping to zero if you are unemployed.

Until an audience has passed judgment on your work, the value of your idea is unknown.  If you choose to do business with a larger company without proof of value, that puts you at a great disadvantage.  You never want to be negotiating from a position of weakness.  That will lead to creative and financial unhappiness.

The history of film, animation, comics and music are littered with stories of creators who were taken advantage of.  It will continue to happen as long as creators let it happen.  If you are a creator, educate yourself.  If you're going to pitch to companies, get yourself a good entertainment lawyer and don't let your desire for a sale blind you to what's in your long-term interest.

Companies don't create hits, people do.  Don't ever forget that, even if many companies have.

(Thanks to readers, there's an addendum.  And another addendum.)

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Five

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.  Part 3 is here.  Part 4 is here.

Simon's Cat was an accident.  Simon Tofield created the initial short as a way of learning a software package.  When he was done, he put it on his reel.  Somebody saw it on his reel and uploaded it to YouTube.  While it is a horrible thing to use an artist's work without permission, in this case it turned into a blessing.

After six years, that initial short has now been viewed more than 48 million times.  The Simon's Cat channel on YouTube has almost 3 million subscribers.   There are now dozens of Simon's Cat shorts available for free.  How is Tofield making money from this?

First, there is advertising.  YouTube is owned by Google and Google places ads and splits the revenue with Tofield.  Then there is merchandise.  Simonscat.com has a shop where you will find all sorts of merchandise for sale, including books, calendars, cat products, T-shirts, fine art prints, ceramics and kitchen items.  There are mobile games available through the iTunes app store.  The books are also available through Amazon.  The site has room for fans to upload pictures of their own cats, so there's user generated content helping to keep the site fresh.

Simon Tofield is doing many of the things mentioned in these articles.  He's built the films around a continuing character.  The shorts are comparatively fast and cheap to produce.  There is no colour.  There is no dialogue, so the films can be understood internationally without subtitles or dubbing.  There is no music except over the main title and that gets re-used.  The films are short, usually less than three minutes and sometimes less than two.

He uses Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest to stay connected to his audience and let them know when something new is available.

Tofield has taken advantage of another thing: an existing community.  Millions of people have cats as pets.  They are a ready-made audience for these cartoons.  It is far easier to aim a work at an already existing audience than it is to try to build an audience from scratch.  Creators should examine their own lives and see if they are part of some community besides art and animation.  Does a creator play a sport, collect something, have worked in a particular business, etc?  If so, the knowledge and experience in this area makes a creator qualified to talk to an audience of people with similar experiences.  That audience may be large enough to provide a living.

These articles conclude here.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Four

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.  Part 3 is here.

Younger people don't realize what an opportunity the internet represents.  Yes, everyone is using Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, etc. to share things with friends, but the internet is the largest audience ever assembled.  It dwarfs network television at its peak.

Before the internet, there were many gatekeepers between creators and the audience.  Those gatekeepers controlled infrastructures that were necessary to get work to the public.  Because those infrastructures were expensive and because they had limited bandwidth, the gatekeepers were picky.  Only ideas that would appeal to a wide audience and had the largest profit potential were accepted.

If you wanted the world to read your writing, you had to find somebody to publish it.  That meant printing copies and distributing them to retail outlets, which required presses, trucks, and affiliations with retailers who were willing to take your product.

If you wanted the world to see your movie, assuming you had the money to produce it, you needed a distributor to make prints, ship them to theatres, collect the money and return the prints when the screenings were over. 

If you wanted the world to see your TV show, you had to find a network with millions of dollars of equipment willing to broadcast your work nationally or a distributor who would sell your show to individual TV stations.

Those things are no longer necessary.  This week, my blog has been read in over 15 countries and it cost me nothing.  The internet infrastructure is more far-reaching than any that's existed in history and is also less expensive.  There's never been an easier time to get your work in front of the audience.

Of course, the audience has to know about it.  Marketing and monetizing your work are the great challenges, but the distribution challenge no longer exists.  Computers and software have also greatly reduced production costs.  No one can stop you from making your work public.  That wasn't true 20 years ago.

It takes time to build an audience, but everyone with internet access has a network of friends, no matter how small, and that's a starting point.  Building that audience takes patience and persistence, but you'll need those two qualities even if you're pitching to buyers.

From the first day you bring your work to the audience, you should have something to sell.  The difference between a hobby and a business is income.  There's nothing wrong with hobbies; they bring great satisfaction.  However, if you've considered pitching, then you've been looking for income and you might as well be looking for income on the net.

Maybe you'll charge for your work.  Maybe you'll finance by selling advertising.  Maybe you'll give the work away and sell merchandise based on the work.  Maybe you'll charge for special access to you or to your work in progress.  There are multiple potential revenue streams.

The internet is full of companies looking to service creators.  Topatoco.com serves successful webcomics creators by taking care of their merchandise creation and sales.  There are suppliers that will make custom T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, etc. in small quantities for you.  There are online stores like etsy or ebay that will host your merchandise.

Here's a Frazetta image on a phone cover.  It sells for $18 U.S.  The image is over 40 years old but is still generating revenue for the Frazetta estate.  That's the benefit of retaining ownership.

There are fundraising sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or Patreon that are places to raise money for specific projects or for ongoing support.  These sites are best used to monetize an existing audience rather than build an audience.  For example, Dick Figures, an existing animated web series, raised $313,412 on Kickstarter to make a longer version.

 Just as there are companies that will create merchandise and sell it for you, there are now companies that will help to service Kickstarter pitches.

Building and monetizing an audience are not simple things and they have no instant solutions.  Two books that I would recommend are The $100 Startup and How to Make Webcomics.  While neither applies directly to animation, both books are very practical about how to get started with limited resources.  The webcomics book is an excellent guide to using the web for marketing, distribution and sales and is written by four cartoonists who are making their living from their creations.

Their webcomics model is being used in animation.  I'll cover that when this is continued.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Three

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.

If the audience is the only thing that can create a success, creators have to pitch to the audience.  That means taking risks.

Seth Godin is a best selling author who writes and blogs about marketing.  He asks, "But what if I fail?"  His response is, "You will.  The answer to the what if question is you will. A better question might be 'after I fail, what then?'  Well, if you've chosen well, after you fail you will be one step closer to succeeding and you will be wiser and stronger and you almost certainly will be more respected by all of those that are afraid to try."

Aza Raskin, a designer at Firefox says, "Your first try will be wrong.  Budget and design for it."  That quote comes from a book called Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure.

Most ideas fail.  Most books are not best sellers.  Most movies don't gross $100 million.  Most TV shows don't last beyond one season.  With odds like this, what's the best way forward?  The answer is to fail fast and cheap.

If you spend years on something and the audience doesn't like it, you've wasted years.  If you spend a lot of money on something and the audience doesn't like it, it's cost you a lot.  The faster and cheaper you can get your idea in front of an audience, the more likely you are to survive the failure and come back with something better.  It may be a revision of your original idea or it may be something wholly new, but it will be closer to what the audience wants.

This goes against the grain of our fantasies.  The dream is that the idea is hailed as brilliant and is embraced by the audience, catapulting the creator to fame and fortune.  While that's a lovely thought, the reality is different.

Everyone reading this has heard of Walt Disney, Jim Henson and Steve Jobs.

Compare the quality of the Laugh-O-Grams, Disney's earliest work, to his acknowledged classics.

Jim Henson began on local TV and did 10 second commercials for coffee that were primitive compared to The Muppet Show or The Dark Crystal.

The Apple II computer was large and slow.  Certainly it could not compete with the smart phone that you may be using to read this.

In each case, these creators started with something basic and kept tuning it and improving it through audience feedback.  Each of them had failures along the way and their best work took decades to develop. It would not have been possible without satisfying an audience from the start and growing their audience as their work became more sophisticated.

None of us may ever equal Disney, Henson or Jobs, but their path is far more typical than the overnight success.  The fact is that creating something that an audience likes is hard.  Sustaining it while you grow a business around it is at least as hard and is going to take time.

Pitching to a buyer also takes time.  Companies are famously slow for making decisions.  Even with a sale, it sometimes takes years to complete financing for a film or TV series.   While you wait for the money, there is still no proof that the audience will like your idea.  Furthermore, in selling the idea, you've lost control of your creation and each additional investor may push the idea farther from what you want.

Neither path is simple or easy, but only one of them leaves you in charge.

To be continued.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part Two

Part 1 is here.

Screenwriter and novelist William Goldman says, "In Hollywood, nobody knows anything."  By this he means that nobody knows what's good until the audience has its say.  Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says, "Audiences will teach you what's funny about you."

While business people will judge your ideas, their judgment is just a guess until the audience gets a look.  While a creator may feel strongly about an idea, that feeling is no better than a guess as well.  The success or failure of an idea rests with the audience and until its judgment is known, the outcome is just speculation.

Creators should  focus on pleasing audiences rather than focus on pleasing buyers.  If you want to date someone, approach the person you want to date.  Why spend time romancing the person's parents?  They may love you, but they can't force their son or daughter to love you.

What engages the audience and what do they remember?  Characters.  People are still creating stories about Hercules and Robin Hood.  Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan are now more than a hundred years old, yet they still have name value and are the basis for movies and TV shows.  Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, Homer Simpson, and Spongebob Squarepants are characters created for animation that are recognizable to the average person.

Chris Meledandri, producer of Ice Age and the Despicable Me films says, "We start with strong characters and build the movie from there."

At the talk I gave at Animatic T.O, I showed stills from four films that won Best Animated Short at the Oscars since the year 2000.  Nobody in an audience made up of animation professionals and students recognized all four films.  There's no chance that a person on the street would.  While these films tell engaging stories, none of them create characters that are meant to live beyond the film.  Characters are more memorable than stories.  (For the record, the films were Father and Daughter, The Moon and the Son, The House of Small Cubes and The Lost Thing.)

It's important to understand that just as creators and business people see the world differently, so do artists and the average audience.  Artists love looking at art.  Every artist has a shelf full of books whose images serve as inspiration and that provide hours of browsing pleasure.  It's a hard truth, but audiences don't care about art or animation.  They want characters that entertain them.  Want proof?

Even beginning artists can draw and animate as well as South Park.  The majority of professionals can draw and animate better.  But audiences are not interested in a high level of craft unless it is accompanied by something that entertains them.  Given a choice between art and entertainment, entertainment wins.

To be continued.

Don't Pitch to Buyers, Pitch to the Audience - Part One

In March, I gave a talk at Animatic T.O, a monthly lecture series about animation started by Barry Sanders and now continued by Andrew Murray as Barry has moved to Halifax.  What follows is an expansion of that talk with the opportunity to offer links.

The whole notion of pitching is an odd one that only exists due to economic circumstances.  People working in media that are inexpensive can go straight to the finished product.  A painter doesn't have to describe the colour palette and the composition of a work, he or she just paints it and shows the final image.  A singer doesn't describe how a song will sound, he or she just sings it.  Animation and other film creators are stuck pitching because creating the finished work is too expensive and time consuming to allow a person to make it without help.

Unfortunately, a pitch is a poor substitute for the finished product for a variety of reasons.  The ability to pitch is a wholly separate skill from the creation of ideas.  Extraverts have an advantage in pitching over introverts, but either type of person can have good ideas.  Furthermore, there are so many variables between an idea and the finished product that a great idea can result in disappointment.  Too much depends on the budget, the schedule, the crew, input from investors and chance.  We are all familiar with movies that look like they will be great before they're released but end up as failures.

There is another odd aspect to pitching.  The person with the ideas doesn't get paid to pitch, but the person without ideas gets paid to listen.  Yet without people willing to pitch for free, the listener has no job.  It's sort of backwards.

Often, the people taking pitches have no history of creating anything.  They have never written, drawn, performed or directed anything for an audience, yet they are the ones sitting in judgment of someone who most likely has.  If the people taking pitches were genuinely creative, they would be creating their own projects for the company and would not have to listen to ideas from anyone else.

Most ideas never reach an audience because the potential buyer says no.   Anyone who has pitched knows that rejections vastly outnumber positive responses.  Should an idea be accepted, it rarely goes into full production.  Usually there is the interim step of development, where the buyer pays the creator a small sum to refine the project further.  The money is not enough to live on, so the creator has to split his or her attention between a day job to pay the bills and refining the idea.

Should an idea go into production, the creator will most likely lose ownership of it and will have to negotiate screen credit, a role in the production, and financial compensation.  This is all complicated by what's known as Hollywood accounting, where projects that are earning money never seem to make a profit.

With the exception of Hollywood accounting, which is a legal form of theft, there aren't any bad guys.  While a creator sees a work as polished and developed, the buyers see it as raw material to be shaped to their own needs.  Buyers have no reservations about changing a work in ways that they think will make it more successful.  As animation requires a hefty investment, they are simply trying to reduce their risk and increase their profits.  Unfortunately, this usually means bending a work towards something that is already successful, meaning that it imitates something else, and the changes are possibly ones that the creator disagrees with.

Steven Pressfield is the author of the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance.  He was hired to write the screenplay, but when Robert Redford got involved with the film, Pressfield was fired so that another screenwriter could be brought in.  Pressfield understood.  In his book, The Authentic Swing, he writes, "The original writer is a pain in the ass.  He has ideas.  He has a point of view.  And the worst part is he believes he possess the moral authority to give voice to these ideas.  You have to get rid of the original writer."

Furthermore, "The writer is not allowed to complain.  You made the deal, dude.  You cashed the check.  Be grateful and shut up."

The key phrase here is "moral authority."  Creators feel that they, more than anyone else, have the right to shape the material.  After all, they created it.  Business people, having taken ownership and invested money, feel that they should be in control.  By selling the rights, the seller has given up the legal right to have a say.  We may agree that the creator has "moral authority," but the owners and the legal system recognize no such thing.

Once a creator gives up ownership, there's more at stake than "moral authority."  When a project is finished, the creator can't continue to work with the characters or other elements without permission from the owners.  I heard an interview with Pete Williams, the creator of the animated MTV series Undergrads, on the Guys with Pencils podcast.  Williams is attempting to revive the series, but because MTV owns it, he has to negotiate to get permission.  Even though the show was his idea, MTV has the right to charge Williams a license fee for trying to revive something he created but they own.  It's strange when you need permission and have to pay to work on something that was your idea to begin with.

If the owners decide to revive a project in the future, they're under no obligation to get the creator involved.  While I don't know specifics, Van Partible, the creator of Johnny Bravo, was not involved with seasons 2 or 3 of the show he created.  In superhero comics, it's fairly standard for the creators of a series to be replaced by new writers and artists in order to maintain sales.

While a creator may have a good personal relationship with the buyer, there's no guarantee that the buyer will remain in place.  Company managements change, companies merge or get sold.  It's possible that nobody involved with the original purchase will be around by the time a project is completed.  This is why it is so important to negotiate a creator's legal relationship with the buyer.  As Sam Goldwyn said, a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Does pitching have an upside?  Yes it does.  Pitching gives you the opportunity to meet people in positions of authority.  While a creator is probably surrounded by a community of other writers or artists, they're less likely to have relationships with business people.  Enlarging your network is always a positive thing.  Pitching may lead to job opportunities if the people you are pitching to are impressed by you, even if they don't like your idea.

But if you really care about your idea, I believe you shouldn't pitch it to buyers.  If you get someone interested, it will be altered beyond your control and at best, you will have to share ownership and will most likely lose it completely,

To be continued.

Who Will Succeed Robert Iger at Disney?

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

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

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

Motion Capture for Home Use

I'm no expert when it comes to motion capture, but I'm aware of some of the technical challenges.  In the past, body suits with potentiometers at the joints sent angle information to rigged characters.  Later, multiple cameras were able to triangulate reference points pasted onto body suits to figure out where the points were in 3D space.  Facial capture usually meant wearing headgear with an attached camera pointed at the performer's face, which had dots drawn on it for reference points.

In each case, specialized hardware was necessary and somebody had to write software to translate the raw data into usable positions or angles that could drive a character.

All in all, not something the average person could do at home.

Technology has a habit of taking things that were once difficult and expensive and making them simple for anyone to use.  It's now happening to motion capture.

What you're seeing here is a home motion capture system to work with a webcam and allow a person to drive an animation-style character in real time.  I can't tell if the headphones are part of the necessary hardware or just headphones, but in any case, the system couldn't be much simpler for an average user.  Admittedly, it isn't perfect and the lip synch is probably the weakest part, but like all applications, it will improve in future versions.

This is being built by a team of Romanian software developers and they're raising money on Indiegogo.  The most basic package can be had for $5 U.S. and they've already reached their financial goal.

Technology has put a lot of people out of business and reduced the viability of various fields.  Good luck finding a typesetter and there are fewer graphic designers than there once were now that software has enabled anybody to do it.  True, a good designer brings experience and taste to a project that an amateur will not, but the tools are in reach for anyone who wants them.  And with templates available for blogs, websites, documents and presentations, the bread and butter work that used to cover a graphic designer's overhead has pretty much vanished.

I'm wondering if we're not witnessing something very similar happening to the role of the animator and possibly the role of the storyboard artist as well.

Motion capture isn't animation, but it can look like animation.  The general audience cares less about technique than about being entertained.  Knowing how to act for motion capture can be learned, the same way that comedians in silent films or mimes developed styles of movement that met their needs.  While undoubtedly there will be a lot of junk produced, the democratization of the tools will result in motion captured films that attempt to resemble animation from the major studios.

There's an indie film world where live action features are sometimes made for as little as $100,000.  The evolution of motion capture tools like FaceRig may make "animated" features possible at the same budget level.  Animators would not be necessary.

Possibly neither would storyboard artists.  The board exists to nail down the presentation of the visuals, but many live action directors don't use them.  If you can direct your characters in real time, boards are not as necessary.  In addition, once the performance exists in the virtual 3D world, you're free to direct the film after the performances are captured by placing the camera and deciding when to cut.  It will be easier than ever for people who know how to entertain an audience and communicate a story visually to create a film inexpensively.

Will this affect the animation industry as we know it or is it just a toy?  I don't know.  But I am amazed at how far motion capture has come technologically, when $5 can buy you a facial capture system and a bunch of avatars.  After seeing what happened to record companies and newspapers when technology upended them, the one thing I know is that we should not be complacent.