Giuseppe Laganà and Animation
in Italy: Rebuilding an Industry
by Russell Bekins
 |
| Sketch of Giuseppe Laganá by Russell Bekins. ©Russell Bekins. |
Giuseppe
Laganà began his career at the Italian state-owned Cartoon Film;
the studio that produced the animated shorts for the immortally weird Italian
television comedy variety series Carosello. He worked with such
industry legends as Harry Hess and Jimmy Teru Murakami. Later, he was a
background artist for Bruno Bozzetto on Allegro Non Troppo, the
classic surrealist Italian answer to Fantasia.
"From about 1980 to 1994, there was a huge crisis in Italian Animation,"
he lamented, "a blackout." He survived by doing titles for television,
videos, industrials and educational films.
A New Beginning
At his Milan-based company, Animation Band, the studio's thirty-odd
employees are enthusiastic about Laganà's leadership. "He's
been an assistant, a background artist, illustrator, and director,"
waxed background artist Giorgio Compierini. "He's done everything,
so when he offers a piece of advice, you know that he's coming at it from
experience."
 |
| Lupo Alberto. © Silver/McK 1998 |
Since 1995, when he produced and directed 26 six-minute
episodes of Laura's Sky--a fantasy series about the mysteries of
the universe from the perspective of a girl and her cat--Laganà
and his Animation Band have been going full tilt. They have also completed
another animation series based on the Italian comic strip Lupo Alberto,
which might be best described as a cross between Bloom County and
Road Runner.
Such intensive production has led the company away from more chaotic, illustrator-based
production methods. "It was always a struggle," recalled production
director Diego Lo Piccolo. "We were simply tilting at windmills."
In order to keep up with the demands of the new series, they had to adopt
industry standards in terms of scripting, storyboarding and animation.
"It was a change from this, to this," illustrated Lupicolo, flipping
his hand over to expose the palm--the Italian equivalent of `from day to
night.'
 |
| Corto Maltese. © Ellipse Programme/Imedia/ConG. All Rights Reserved. |
A Growing Future
The hard work and methodology is paying
off. Animation Band has been selected to do an important portion of the
production on the upcoming Corto
Maltese series, along with Ellipse in France.
Executive producer Robert Rea, confronted with the need to choose an Italian
production partner (a stipulation of Italian television network RAI), shrugged
that the decision was no contest. "They were simply the most reliable
studio."
"We [Europeans] have a long way to go to overcome the advantages you
have in the American market," Laganà asserted. "A single
language, for example." For Animation Band, the "new" methods
and developing a core of writers who know animation have been key.
"For a lot of years, we were continually losing talent to America,"
Laganà lamented, "now that an industry is developing, it appears
that people are returning."
Russell Bekins is a disgruntled expatriate of the film industry, now
living in Bologna, Italy. Serving his apprenticeship as story and multimedia
analyst for Creative Artists Agency, he went on to be a creative executive
for Tidewater Entertainment at Disney Studios, where he achieved his level
of incompetence in studio politics. He is now working on theme park attractions
and consulting on multi-media projects, as well as struggling with the
subjunctive tense in Italian.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.
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