Michael Sporn Animation - Splog

- Time for me to promote me.

If you’d like to see some of my 1/2 hr. shows on HBO, you can go HERE for the schedule. They play weekly and the schedule changes every month.
Note this month on Saturday, Aug 22nd, HBO is screening a bunch of them back to back.
However if you’d like to buy the DVD’s here’s some info:

Here are the cheapest prices I found on line for buying some of the films I’ve done:

Amazon is selling the boxed set of my films for $44.99. You’d be better off go directly to the distributor, First Run Features. They’re selling it for $37.46.
However some of Amazon’s sellers offer it for $29.72 on up thru $49.95 for a “collectible” edition (whatever that is.) There’s about 6 hours of program on this collection, not counting the Extras.



Scholastic/Weston Woods charges the outrageous price of $59.95 for a dvd of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. However, I believe that’s the teachers’ price. You can get it for as low as $8.13 from Amazon.

As it turns out, this exorbitant price is what Scholastic charges for all of my films. The only good bit about their website is that you can watch video clips of some of the films I did for them.
The Man WHo Walked Between the Towers
Doctor DeSoto
Jazztime
Max’s Christmas
Leo the Late Bloomer
What’s Under My Bed
Yo? Yes!

YouTube has a number of my shorter flms available for viewing. The quality of all of these available is pathetic.

The music video I did for the group Liquid Liquid is there. It was an experiment in video editing.
I financed it and got it on a couple of national programs at the time. I was trying to use the music to say something about the little bits of random violence we all go through on a day-to-day basis.
I did this in 1983.

Designer Richard McGuire was the bass player for the group. He seemed to be the only one in the group who was interested in the video. The group broke up shortly thereafter, though their devotees stayed loyal following everything about them.

A number of Sesame Street spots are there. Maxine Fisher wrote them all. I did about forty spots for them:
Crocodile Smiles - an operatic spoof on dental care
The Curious Cat features music by Jeremy Steig, son of William. We had a great relationship until his wife and he started writing obscene letters threatening me. They wanted more money for Abel’s Island’s score, though they agreed on a price I paid them. Ultimately, I left them behind and hired a new composer.
Plan Plan Plan features a great song with music by Ernest Troost. He and I did many of my early films together.
Chicken Crossing was one of my earliest Sesame Street spots. It’s also one of my favorites. Harrison Fisher did the great score.
I did a number of Bellhop bits for Sesame Street. Steve Dovas did the animation for all 20 of them. Some of them are viewable here:
#2, #8, #10, #12, #14, #16, #18, #20

- Recently on the DVD market is the high quality version of Banjo, the Woodpile Cat. This film merits some attention as being a link from the stasis of animation in the 70s to the somewhat Golden period in the early 80s.

A small group of people, who were employed in the Disney animation system, began meeting after hours and weekends to develop their own talents to a greater extent than they felt they were achieving within the confines of the Disney system.

Led by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, this small ever-mutating group connected with animation exercises for a film called “The Piper” based on a poem. However, the story for this piece kept growing, and they knew they’d never complete it unless it were a feature.

Changing course they came upon the story of Banjo, the Woodpile Cat, and the film slowly entered its development going into production in 1975. As this production started developing it became evident that the trio - Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy - would have to move off the Disney lot, and they quit. Immediately thereafter, a larger group joined them including animators: Lorna Pomeroy, Heidi Guedel, Linda Miller, Emily Juliano; assistant animators: Frank Jones, Dave Spafford, Vera Law and Sally Voorhees and Diane Landau.

This staff started working as a close knit team in the garage behind Don Bluth’s home. Interest was ignited by a group called Aurora, composed of ex-Disney executives, in working together with the Bluth team. They also presold the forthcoming film to ABC, and there was talk of a feature.

They were a tight group working in cramped corners, but they used every resource they could. Without seeking outside help, they were able to add a number of key people who would help complete the project. It took almost five years for them to finish Banjo.

- This attention certainly caught the eye of those of us in New York. Animation back in the 70s was something of a wasteland. In New York there was Ralph Bakshi who had done a couple of features, ran into trouble with Coonskin and took off for LA to continue a spotty career. There was also the Hubley Studio doing their annual, stunning shorts and not much that grabbed widespread attention in the market. Disney was producing vapid charmless films.

Suddenly, there was this insurrection, and a new studio was born in love of the medium. I can’t exaggerate the excitement this caused in the “young” animatorsat the time - even 3000 miles way. We couldn’t have asked for more to watch in our gossip pipe lines.

We’d heard and read about Banjo the Woodpile Cat, but before too long, they were talking about Mrs. Frisby and the Secret of Nimh. I think I read every bit of PR I could find. Mind you, I had no interest in going to LA, so the studio wasn’t a place where I might work; it was the hope that something, anything would put some pepper into the laconic industry.

I remember having just finished Morris’s Disappearing Bag for Weston Woods and starting Doctor DeSoto when I had a conversation with my composer, Ernest Troost, about a publicity puff piece I’d read about all the methods the Bluth people were using to revitalize a dying medium.

It was exciting. Change was in the air.

To be concluded tomorrow.
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All images come from the dvd and are
copyright © 2009 Don Bluth Films, All Rights Reserved.

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- I noticed only one new Network Christmas special this year, Dreamworks’ Shrek the Halls which aired last Wednesday. It’s interesting that I also noticed few blogs talking about it. Animated News reported its airing and positive ratings but not much more than that. Jim Hill also gave it a positive review; the comments were mostly negative. The animation blogs were silent, though. The show did get good reviews, but so did those three movies. I missed the program completely. I went out that night, but truthfully I wouldn’t have ________________Turkey, anyone?
watched it if I were home. I’m not a fan of Shrek.

Will Finn did comment on the Tom & Jerry Nutcracker Tale which aired on Cartoon Network. I saw more of that than I did of Shrek. After coming in on T&J Nutcracker already in progress and after watching a minute of it, wondering, at first, whether it was one of those Gene Deitch cartoons then realizing there was a lot of digital composition and movement, I knew it had to be more recent. I figured out what it was and decided I’d seen enough. By the way, when was the last time T&J were animated in the U.S.? Maybe Chuck Jones?

I did turn on the Charlie Brown Christmas show on ABC this past Tuesday. It took me a full five minutes to realize it wasn’t the original one - I wasn’t really paying attention, but the voices were too theatrical. It was Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales done in 2002. It was too slick, and I lost patience.

Not much “Special” for me anymore in these Christmas Specials. I’m getting to feel like a grinch about animation anymore. At least with dvd we can pull out one of the golden oldies. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, anyone?

- My good friend, the excellent composer and musician, Ernest Troost, has a film he scored premiering on Sunday night. If you’re looking for something enter-taining to watch, this is undoubtedly it.

The Pictures of Hollis Woods is a film adaptation of the Newbury honor book by author, Patricia Reilly Giff, who also coauthored the script. Tony Bill directed the film.

I’ve written about Ernest’s music in the past (see here and here); he and I did quite a bit of film together, and the work was enormously rewarding.

Ernest moved to LA and feature films years ago. He’s won an Emmy and been nominated for several more. We’ve continued to work together on a couple of Weston Woods shorts long distance.

As for me, all you have to do is tell me that Sissy Spacek and Alfre Woodard are together in a film, and I’m there. Ernest is a plus for me. I’m looking forward to the show.
The Pictures of Hollis Woods
Sunday, CBS, 9pm ET/PT

Program I: Last night, Friday, was the start of the MOMA series. Heidi Stallings, Matt Clinton and I met up with Josh Siegel of the Museum in the lobby. Heidi and Matt left to grab seats while Josh and I stood in the rear waiting for the start. He’d introduce me and I’d said hello. We also decided that I answer a Q&A at the end.

The audience was close to full - I saw a few empty seats. From the animation community I saw a handful of people (at least, of those I knew). They were all people who had worked with me in getting the films made. Masako Kanayama, Ray Kosarin, Patty Stren, John Canemaker. This sort of pleased me in that there was a big audience of people who didn’t know me or the films. They were interested.

After the opening pleasantries, the show started with Mona Mon Amour. This is a film that I always thought was funny. But in the few screenings I’ve seen of it, the audience of animators didn’t even sound like they were even smiling. It always confused me. Well, this screening got big laughs. It really made me perk up. I’m glad Patty and here husband were there to hear them laugh with her film. Champagne was politely quiet, as the audience stayed involved in this difficult film. It’s always been a tad heavyhanded for me, and it was so again last night. The Man Who Walked Between The Towers was the best received. The audience was completely into it. They laughed when they should have, and gasped when I didn’t realize it was coming. Lyle Lyle Crocodile looked beautiful. The music score seemed a touch loud, but it worked well with the stereo screening. How off character the characters are for so much of the film, but it somehow works. The film was pleasant to see again. The Little Match Girl was a completely different film than the one I remembered. It’s a long story, but the film went through a long hard making, and I removed myself from it after completing it in 1990. Many of the voices were those of animators, and it was great hearing them again. Theresa Smythe did an absolutely brilliant job as Angela, and she got a lot of laughs. The film moved slowly for me and was the most problematic, but it looked great, and I was glad to have seen it again.

The Q&A afterward was about 15 mins. long and the audience asked good questions. One woman asked if creativity had changed over the 26 years in the history of my studio. I answered that the creativity came from within me and the people who worked with me, so it hadn’t really changed because of time but had because of influences and finances.

All in all it was a great evening for me. I had a lot of fun. A fine start.

Program II:Fables at the Museum of Modern Art will be screened today at 3:30PM and tomorrow at 2:45. The films to be screened include: Doctor DeSoto, Abel’s Island, The Red Shoes and The Hunting of the Snark.

Abel witnesses the first thaw of the season in Abel’s Island.

I’d like to take this moment to thank all the artists who were involved in the production of these films. I couldn’t have made these films as beautifully without their help. They include:

__________Isabella Bannerman ______Betsy Bauer ______Gary Becker
__________Charlotte Booth__________Laura Bryson______Mark Bykov
__________Diana Sara Cherkas______Devon Collins______Doug Compton
__________Lisa Crafts______________Tim Curry________ Arthur Custer
__________Tissa David_____________Ossie Davis_______ John R. Dilworth
__________Steven Dovas___________Daniel Esterman___ Madeline Fan
__________Wolf Ferro______________Maxine Fisher______Kathryn Gradner
__________Simi Gulati_____________ Kit Hawkins_______ Matthew Jacobson
__________Lionel Jeffries___________James Earl Jones___ Perry Kiefer
__________Carol Kilbanks__________Sophie Kittredge____Ray Kosarin
__________Terry Waxman Koshel____Sono Kuwayama____Stephen MacQuignon
__________Robert Marianetti________Mark Mayerson_____George McClements
__________Jason McDonald_________Giuliana Nicodemi___Christine O’Neill
__________Edwin O’Neill___________ Gregory Perler_____.Thomas Repasky
__________Caleb Sampson_________Morton Schindel_____Elizabeth Seidman
__________Theresa Smythe________ Heidi Stallings______William Steig
__________Bridget Thorne__________Mary Thorne_______ Ernest Troost
__________Larry White____________Michael Wisniewski

The crew listens to the Bellman speak in The Hunting of the Snark.

A dance in the deep dark woods with non-stop dancing red shoes.

___=(Click any image to enlarge.)

Program III: A Peaceable Kingdom will screen today at 5:30 and tomorrow at 4:45. I’ll focus on it tomorrow.

- The Mysterious Tadpole was another of the films I’ve done for Weston Woods which was also scored by Ernest Troost.

In 1984 Doctor DeSoto was nominated for the Oscar. For a full year from the date of the announcement I was without work except for one job from Weston.

The Mysterious Tadpole had a budget which totaled about $15000. That was it for the year. So much for the glory. The budget was such that I had to do the entire film with help from only Bridget Thorne, who helped render the artwork and prepare it all for camera.

As a result, I got particularly close to this film. When it came time for the music, I had formed a lot of specific ideas. I’d thought about it a bit too much. This made the job for Ernest particularly difficult; I was going to be hard to please.

When the music arrived it sounded completely different from what I’d expected. This was in the days before synthesized music, so the only way I’d heard it played was on a piano. It was a complete surprise to hear those final tapes. The orchestration was not what I’d heard in my head, and I’m afraid my disappointment was obvious.

After spending a bit of time placing the music into the film with Paul Gagne, who was co-producing the film and editing it, I started to warm to the score. By the time I’d heard it in place and watched the film with its score two or three more times, I’d fallen in love with what Ernest had done. My ideas were so simple, and he had done something complex.

That was a lesson to learn. When you’re working with someone whose talent you respect, trust that person. So often when hearing music for my films or when hearing an actor reading the script, I’ve had a surprise jolt getting something completely unanticipated. I have to say 90% of the time I’ve immediately recognized it’s positive. That other 10% of the time it’s often just an attitude adjustment I’ve had to make.

That’s not to say that there aren’t those times when I know it doesn’t work as well as it might have, but that doesn’t happen too often if I’m working with people whose talent I respect.

- Continuing to look at a couple of Sesame Street spots Ernest Troost scored for me, my favorite, by far, is Crocodile Smiles. This was done in 1981. Edith Zornow was the producer of animation at Sesame Street, and I saw her as my guardian angel. (I’ve said that before.) She always seemed to show up just when things seemed bleakest. The first three spots I did for her included this film and it really sold me on Ernest’s work.
I wanted opera, and he gave me more - cartoon opera. It really feels like this group would be playing in some 30’s cartoon. Again, the budgets for Sesame Street was always low. These two films had about $5000 total for everything from script/board to completion.

This film is available on YouTube, but I don’t like the resolution of that copy, so I’ve put it up here as a QT movie.

The Stranger was done a couple of years later. This is from one of the last films we did for Edith Zornow. She died soon after of Parkinson’s Disease. Since my father was also suffering from the disease at the same time, I was comfortable with it, though she seemed obviously uncomfortable. It didn’t stop her from going on right to the end.

- I think music is as important to animation as any of the drawing. (Even the lack of music, to me, is a musical choice in film.)

I’ve been very lucky to have worked with some incredibly fine composers in the films I’ve done. To that end I’ve come back to work again and again with the same few composers.

The first of those who seemed indispensible to the films we did together was Ernest Troost. We met way back on my first short film for Weston Woods. Ernest was on staff there, and we quickly became good friends.

That first score he did for me was the delicate Rosemary Wells Morris’ Disappearing Bag. This quiet little film was successful, but it wasn’t until our second collaboration that things took off - Doctor DeSoto.

Doctor DeSoto was an Oscar nominee in 1984, and I think it was as much for the music as it was the William Steig story, or Ian Thompson’s droll reading, or any of our artwork. The film was a hit and won a lot of awards and, to this day, still gets a lot of exposure.

As we were about to go into this film, Ernest had to write a score for an slide version of the book which Weston Woods was going to distribute. I suggested he listen to Stephen Sondheim’s score for the film, Stavisky. It was built around an infectious waltz and had a peculiar arrangement.

Ernest came up with something that took me by surprise. It was built off Stavisky but was so totally original in its sound that I had the first little shock that I’ve always gotten when music I didn’t expect but was excited and challenged with comes into my hands. This moment is always a great surprise and one of the pure delights, for me, of filmmaking. The only other experience it resembles is when an actor gives you a line reading that is totally unexpected, one you never would hear in your own head when reading the line. This is usually the best possible reading because it indicates pure character.

Ernest’s orchestral arrangements for this music reminded me of some small cartoon cabaret in Vienna in the early 1920’s. It worked perfectly for the cartoon Brooklyn in my mind for the film’s setting.

This is the pure character of a good composer scoring your piece.

Having the luxury of this original score prior ot the animation isn’t always a luxury an Independent filmmaker is given. It costs too much. But Weston had their score for the slide film, and I saw that this was going to be a great score for my animation. I worked with that waltz tempo.

When the fox was off screen, the camera moved in time with the waltz tempo and the limited animation also hit those beats. When the villain was onscreen, there was little to no camera movement cutting the picture to the tempos. Paul Gagne, editing, certainly helped out here.

The music not only was allowed to dominate the overall film, it was enhanced by this decision.

To hear the opening theme to Dr. DeSoto click here.

Ernest Troost also wrote about a dozen Sesame Street spots for me. Many of them were songs which he wrote with Maxine Fisher who did the lyrics. Two of these spots are featured on YouTube. I like the Crocodile Smiles spot which played at Annecy and is in the MOMA collection. Pirate Plan is a good song but my graphics don’t quite work.

Here’s another spot that is built around the music. For the very low budget, it was a big track for us, but Ernest pulled it off brilliantly. Obviously, he was parodying the John Williams’ scores for Indiana Jones.

- Yesterday I pointed to some Casper shorts on line. I was amused to find two of my old Sesame Street spots on YouTube.

Chicken Crossing here.
Crocodile Smiles here.

I did both of these after just starting my company. These are two of the first three spots I produced for Sesame Street. I think they were done in 1982. Edith Zornow was the genius at Sesame Street who did magnificent work with all the different animators. For the longest time, I considered her my guardian angel. Just when business had gotten at its worst, she would call out of the blue with a half dozen spots to do. I had lots of freedom in all of them and really learned my business doing them. She died in 1991, and I still miss her.

Maxine Fisher wrote lyrics and stories for both of these spots (and about 30 more.)

Chicken Crossing has a funny soundtrack that Harrison Fisher put together for me.

Crocodile Smiles has a great score by Ernest Troost. He mimicked grand opera as if it were recorded in 1936, and it’s hilarious. Ernest and I have teamed up many times; I’m a big fan.

- Animator, Larry Ruppel brought an interesting little find to me last week. When we met after the panel session at the Museum of the Moving Image, he showed me three dvd’s (one of them is pictured here.)

Apparently, some of the stores, called generically “99 cent stores,” have been selling some interesting video finds. I’m going to quote Larry who sent me a follow-up letter:

you have to be careful and only get either the “Cartoon Craze” series from Digiview Productions (these are the best - they have a great Superman series as well), or from East West Entertainment.

It’s quite a crappy minefield in the 99 cent DVD world, you really have to be careful. Felix and Popeye cartoons are most likely their 60’s TV incarnations - always check the titles.

I always treat my search as a treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll
find.

There are two links with information that Larry sent me, and they’re worth sharing. Accelerated Decripitude and Community Live Journal which gives titles.

If your local community doesn’t have a “99 cent store,” check out Walmart. Apparently a lot of these can also be found there.

Talk about Happy Feet. Here are some frame grabs from the first of the Van Buren shorts on this “Tom & Jerry” dvd:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- This blog stuff is amazing. History revealing itself.

Posted on the ASIFA Hollywood-Animation Archive site, today, is a most amazing document. Mark Kausler has loaned his set of bar sheets from the Rudy Ising directed short “Shuffle Off To Buffalo.” and Steven Worth has digitized them.

Bar sheets are the director’s work book used in breaking down a film musical note to musical note. Obviously, as depicted on these pages, found on the Animation Archive site, they were actually recorded on the sheet music, itself.

Over time things morphed, and there were actual bar sheets designed specifically for the director. These generally incorporated music, exposure/timing sheets and a place for action comments. Then, they seem to have dropped the musical notes.

Nowadays they seem to have dropped the workbook altogether. I try to work with them on most of my films. On Doctor DeSoto, for example, I actually built the camera moves on a waltz tempo musician, Ernest Troost, had written. I couldn’t have done this without bar sheets. They allow you to see the big picture - the movie - rather than the frames.

You can see what they look like in the Halas book Techniques of Film Animation to the left.

Here’s a set depicted in the Eli Levitan book Animation Art in the Commercial Film:

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

The bar sheets I’ve used in my studio look like the doc on the left. It allows me to see 400 frames in one glance. I can cut the track readings from the dope sheets and place them right onto the bar sheets.

The post on the Hollywood Animation Archive is a real find, especially for such an early document. Thank you Stephen Worth and Mark Kausler. Stephen’s also constructed a scene-by-scene visual breakdown and given a QT version of the cartoon to be able to better study the sheets.

What a fabulous chunk of animation history. One-stop-shopping for free.