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LOCAL TRADE NEWS
SELICK, MIRAMAX BOW OUT OF PRODUCTION PACT was the headline of an article in the July issue of Film-Tape World. Selick's new company Twitching Image is busy pitching projects to other releasing companies including Toots and the Upside Down House, the film he had planned to make for Miramax.
The article quoted an unnamed source as saying "It was a mutual decision... Miramax has not been involved with an animation company before. They didn't understand where we were coming from, so we decided not to work together anymore."
Last year Miramax signing a three picture deal with Selick. The article said Miramax "will continue to fund Twitching Image through mid-to-late July." Selick has used this time to keep his crew busy developing samples for projects he would like to make. Hopefully there will be good new soon about their next project.
Gary Meyer, who organized the tribute to Selick at the U.C. Theatre in August, informed us that James and the Giant Peach is going out of theatrical distribution "forever" in the US and that Nightmare Before Christmas is out of distribution and was shown through special arrangements with Disney Studios.
As for James and the Giant Peach, late word is the film is doing better in Europe than it did in the US in terms of box office. It will be out on home video in the US on Oct. 15. Another fine article on the making of it appeared in the June issue of Film and Video.
PIXAR TO CEASE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION The July issue of Film/Tape World announced that although the division was busy and had been doing "phenomenally well" according to Darla Anderson, executive producer, other divisions are more important and need the staff. At present the company does need more people - about 50 job openings are available at the moment! (see Employment section in this newsletter) They have added another building to their workspace, about 25,000 square feet.
Although the company remains vague about one project being directed by Ash Brannan and written by Pete Docter, they are saying they are doing a second CD Rom based on Toy Story and a feature called Bugs for Disney that is slated for release in November, 1998. As for the project the company is vague about, Ralph Guggenheim did tell Film/Tape World that "a related home video comes out at the end of October." He was referring to something related to the Toy Story CD-ROMs.
PIXAR TO PRODUCE TWO IN-HOUSE SHORTS A YEAR written and directed by staff members. Their past projects, directed by John Lasseter, Luxo Jr., Tin Toy, Red's Dream and KnickKnack, won 2 Oscar nominations and 1 Oscar. Now members of the staff will get a chance to submit ideas for projects and continue with the tradition of the company doing in-house shorts.
PIXAR DOES TV AD FOR ROSARITTA Among the final ads completed by Pixar's commercial division is a spoof of a "spaghetti western." Director Andrew Schmidt created a computer-animated town where tortilla chip inhabitants are taking their afternoon siestas. "Suddenly they are awakened by a gang of wild frijoles, bringing excitement to dinner with a new flavor."
The ad features intricate pulled focus work to match the live-action camera work. Working with Schmidt on the spot were Alan Sperling, Warren Trezevant, David Tart, Jimmy Hayward, senior producer Richard Quan and executive producers Darla Anderson and Susan Hamana. Table-top photography in the ad was by Peter Elliott Productions in Chicago. The ad was made for Ketchum.
WILD BRAIN IS DOING THEIR FIRST FEATURE - 'FERN GULLY II' Phil Robinson is directing. The animation will be done overseas. The film will include some CGI work.
The company is also doing 13 seven minute sections of I An Weasel for the half-hour animated TV show Cow and Chicken created by David Feiss from Sacramento, CA. Their sections star a weasel.
ILM DOES SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR NOVAMAX, the large format (70mm) division of Nova, the people who do the great science shows on PBS. The project is a show on special effect for Imax theaters.
If you are interested in knowing more about ILM's work on Twister, see the June issue of Millimeter. They ran a long detailed story on the project.
PDI DOES WORK FOR KRAFT, PENGUINS FOR HALLS AND DIGITAL EFFECTS FOR THE PEACEMAKER AND THE ARRIVAL For Kraft salad dressings they did two ads that were done completely with computer graphics. One shows a salad transforming into a garlic-loving peacock and the other has a salad turning into a butterfly. Cliff Boule directed and George Bruder was the technical director. Animators included Don Venhaus, Tim Cheung and Dave Rader.
For Halls lozenges they created ice-skating penguins and matted them into live action footage. It was made for foreign TV. Eric Strand directed and Cassidy Curtis was the technical director.
The Peacemaker is a high-tension suspense thriller from DreamWorks SKG slated for a 1997 release. PDI is doing extensive screen graphics in the film's war room "and a number of challenging 3D effects, digital compositing and scene enhancement."
The Arrival is a science fiction thriller by David Twohy. It features alien creatures and digital effects created by PDI.
WESTERN CREATED A COUPLE OF PORTOFINO ITALIAN ICE CREAM SPOTS that use some nice simple, but effective effects to make these nice looking ads. They used Morphing, color enhancement, keying, displacement matting, rotoscoping and other cool things.
REALTIME VIDEO DID GRAPHICS FOR A CALIFORNIA MILK AUTHORITY BOARD AD Quantel Henry was used on the ad along with graphics by Sean McLean.
SFPG DOES LOTTERY SPOT AND SIX ANIMATED ADS FOR GM GOODWRENCH The current Super Lotto Promo game ads were animated by Brett Miller using Softimage and Wavefront Composer, plus SFPG's SGI system. Dave Mackie was the art director and Ellen Ludwig was the Flame artist.
For GM Goodwrench they used more than 30 layers of 3-D animation and 2-D graphics to create the projects. They also used Flame effects. The ads show a reliable car withstanding a brutal weather beating.
SFPG WINS A GOLD BDA AWARD Their top prize was in the "On-Air Open" category and the piece was a collage of live-action, titles, animation and special effects. The work was for a TV show called Hype.
Other news from SFPG includes Brent Herrington joining their staff. He is a commercial editor and had been with Rock Paper Scissors in LA before moving to SFPG. His credits include projects for VW, Levis, B of A, Cheetos, Snapple, etc.
WESTERN IMAGES completed 10 3-minute segments for Nickelodeon's primetime series Ka-Bam! They used stop-motion, puppetry, live action and miniatures on the project. Mark Sorenson was the effects editor and Danielle Ciccarelli the digital artist.
LOCAL HIGH-TECH STOCKS HAVE GONE DOWN IN VALUE The stock market is a strange roller coaster ride and the July 10th Chronicle ran an article about Macromedia which had a high of 62.5 last December. When the article was written by Herb Greenberg the stock was just under 16. Pixar has gone up and down with a low around 12 this year and a high around 50 the day the stock came out. Autodesk had a high of 50 and a low of 18.5. Spectrum Holobyte had a high of 19 and a low of 3 3/4.
Going public can raise a lot of money for some companies, but back in 1941 a company called Disney was in dire straights because their stock wasn't selling well and was undervalued. The low price of the stock was one of several reasons Disney laid people off and ended up with a colossal strike on his hands. Of course there were other problems. Snow White made money for the company, but the features after that hadn't yet turned a profit. Also, Disney's foreign income from his films was down due to the coming war.