First a quick description of the concept as it was “advertised” (in an “apartment-hunting” or “personals” style) by the NFB to attract a second wave of Hothouse applicants:

“Professional short animation film opportunity available. Are you new or relatively new to the animation game but eager to take that next step? Join us and complete a 30-second film in 12 weeks — start to finish. Almost everything provided except your idea, drive and ambition. Modest fee offered.”

A more conventional description reads thusly: “The National Film Board of Canada is looking for submissions for the second session of its Animation Hothouse workshop. The NFB Animation Studio has created the Hothouse intensive program to re-imagine ways of making animation that are faster, more flexible and that celebrate the shortest of short forms while maintaining creative and technical excellence, hallmarks of NFB animation. This is not ‘quick and dirty,’ but rather ‘intense and amazing.’ Think of horticultural hothouses where gardeners create optimal growing conditions to encourage the blossoming of exotic orchids and other blooms in weeks rather than months. This offer is to emerging creators with the imagination, vision, experience and enthusiasm to relish the Hothouse challenge, to flourish in the Hothouse environment and to accomplish the blossoming of a successful project within the Hothouse parameters.”

So, this first article is basically an introduction to the Hothouse project. There will be two more papers focusing, in chronological order, on each of the two groups of animators who have gone through the 12 weeks of intense Hothouse experience.

But first, here’s a quick introduction of Michael Fukushima: Michael is a producer in the Animation Studio of the NFB, based in Montreal. He has been an NFB producer since 1997 and before that he was a freelance director in the studio for seven years. In his pre-NFB life, he was an independent filmmaker and producer. He graduated from Sheridan College (Oakville) in 1985. He taught animation at Concordia University (Montreal) for a few years, and has been a community activist outside of animation for 18 years.

Michael Fukushima.

The Conversation:
Jean Detheux: Michael, you talk about the Hothouse as being an example of a “Third Way” in (NFB) animation. Can you define it, and while you are doing that can you define the other two ways as well?

Michael Fukushima: During my time at the NFB, I’ve mostly seen two ways of making animation films: 6-10 minute, well-financed films directed by established, accomplished filmmakers that take about 18 months to produce and have a 90%-plus success rate; and 5-8 minute, slightly less well-financed films directed by emerging, less-established and less-accomplished filmmakers that should take 18 months to produce, but sometimes take many months longer to make, and that have a 60-65% chance of success. So, although they are essentially the same processes, these two established paths are quite dissimilar in execution and in the ‘satisfaction of the experience,’ for both the filmmaker and the NFB.

The Hothouse is designed to be lower-risk (hence lower pressure) for both the filmmaker and the NFB; to be comprehensive in terms of experiencing the various costs and compromises (creative and otherwise) in making film that must stand up to high scrutiny; to work with professional contributors such as editors, composers, engineers, specialists and producers so as to experience truly collaborative film making; to make each Hothouser go through and understand every step of the process from proposal design to public release; to do it all in 12 weeks and not 20 months; to understand that sometimes process is just as important, if not more so, than product.

JD: You know as well as I do that there’s a real steamroller at work these days (in fact, since the Reagan era) that would demand that any art endeavor produce profits, or at least be self-supporting, and which posits that taxpayers’ money should not be “dumped” into supporting the arts. How do you ‘justify’ the cost of the Hothouse?

MF: In spite of the fact that I’m an NFB producer, I too am a taxpayer. One role of the NFB has always been to be an agent of social change, as well as being an incubator of the best, most innovative animation possible. As noted earlier, a key part of the Hothouse puzzle has been to give weight and credence to the process of animation filmmaking, thereby influencing young, emerging filmmakers to evolve and change their perceptions of creativity and ultimately change the small part of the world that touches them. That then changes the next small circle of the world and so on, and so on. The Hothouse is social activism in action. It opens up young minds to the world of creative possibilities around them, so that the next film they make is the one that benefits from all that is learned here.

JD: So you see the Hothouse (if not the NFB) as having a “teaching” component. How does it differ from schools then?