File 0814: Motor Accident Commission, “Reality”

Driving in a car turns into a hallucinating experience. Sounds like a familiar concept? In this case it’s not the promo we did for the Mitsubishi Lancer, but a TV Commercial we’ve just finished for the South Australian Motor Accident Commission that warns of the dangers of driving under the influence of drugs.

Helping us direct this TVC in the early stages was our good friend and mentor, Deane Taylor, who is best known for his work as production designer on A Nightmare Before Christmas and Happily N’ever After. We started early development with the agency, Clemenger BBDO Adelaide while still finishing off the Rundle Mall TVC with them.

There’s always great creative “by-product” that doesn’t get used in final animation, so I thought I’d show some of the ideas that we came up with before we arrived at the final concept that was used. Even though things don’t get used, it all adds to the value of the final work we do.

[Beatboard of the final treatment]

[Early concept by Ari Gibson]

[Sketch by Deane Taylor. Colour by Danica Wells-Heitmann]

[Various creatures designed by Eddie White]

Work Experience

It’s that time of the year again when we get inundated with requests from high school students to spend a week working for us.

One of the weirdest things they do in Australia is make high school students spend a week doing “Work Experience” in an industry they’re interested in. I’ve often questioned the wisdom of this: do a lot 16-year-olds have the vaguest idea about what they want to do when they leave school? What can you give a 16-year-old with limited skills and experience to do in your workplace?

[A 16-year-old high school student, Milo brought this in to show us last year and we were so impressed with it that we offered him work experience]

Back in my day…

As it turns out, an animation studio is a pretty attractive place to do work experience. Eddie, James, Brodie and I were all extremely fortunate to all get the chance to do work experience at Anifex. I think I spent a week hand-sculpting blades of grass out of plasticine for a Mitsubishi commercial. It was a lot of fun and I got a buzz when I finally saw the TVC months later.

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for us to take on students for work experience for a number of reasons:

• If we’re operating at full capacity, we can’t really fit them in. In fact, at full capacity, my workstation gets commandeered and I end up working from home via VPN.
• If it’s quiet and we’re not at full capacity, then there probably isn’t much to do, and we have a whole different set of problems to worry about - like how we can get back up to full capacity.
• Who do we get to supervise them? We really don’t have people here who have spades of spare time.
• What can we get them to do? The work we do is challenging enough with our best and most experienced people on it. There’s not a lot of other things that need doing round here. we don’t really believe in getting people to come in and make coffee and photocopies.
• Unfortunately, the ideal times for us to accommodate work experience doesn’t always coincide with when work experience week or school holidays are on.

So we usually have to politely say no when someone asks us. But there are exceptions to every rule and we have on occasion taken on students.

University Students

We’ve always hired talented people straight out of universities and colleges without industry experience. If we are impressed with their talents and are serious about giving them some work, we’ll usually give them a day’s work experience just to see what they are like to work with. Without previous experience and a personal referral it’s always bit of a risk taking them on, so getting them in for a day before we put them on a job prevents a lot of headaches. “Tests” and “trials” are not uncommon in our business but should be kept to a minimum.

Some tips

Besides that, we sometimes take on high school students for a day or two if they are exceptional. In which case they’re accomplished enough to work on something that will see the light of day. But it is easier for us to say no than it is to say yes. So what can help you maximise your chances of getting work experience here if you’re in high school?

1. Don’t get your mum to ask us (unless she actually knows us, or is the CEO of Dreamworks). Initiative is definitely something that impresses us. It’s important to sell your personality as much as your talent.
2. Show that you really want to do this. People who do work experience here do it because they see it as an opportunity to get closer to doing what they are truly passionate about. Not because it’s something that seems more interesting than spending a week doing photocopying in dad’s office. We really have better things to do with our work week than find stuff for someone to do who doesn’t really want to be here.
3. Be talented. Otherwise, what else can we get you to do around here besides write stuff for our blog?
4. Be persistent. Some of the people that got to do work experience here, and even some of the people that eventually got jobs here had to keep sending us stuff until we saw something special in it.
5. Be flexible. A lot of our projects have short lead up times, so we don’t always know what we’ll have on several months in advance, and things can change quickly in our line of work. We may have to change or reduce days.
6. Be prepared for maybe only 1 or 2 days, and having to find a “Second job” to fill out the week. And besides, it’s not that far off of what starting out as a freelancer is like!

[For his work experience, Milo ended up making our Christmas card video]

Cable news story on Sweet & Sour

Managing Director Sam White and Creative Director Eddie White talk to Bloomberg about Sweet & Sour and the Chinese film industry.

Josh Bowman on “Justice League of Australia”

From one of our freelance animators…

——————

Josh Bowman Says:
June 20, 2008 at 7:05 am edit

I think it’s great that you guys are doing “The PRA Dec.”

It seems to me that the people responsible for the deduction want to finance movies that are “Australian” and I find that extremely short sighted and pompous. As if in some way they think that if it’s not Australian then it’s not worth it because it doesn’t do anything to promote “Australia”.

This is all based on my view of these events, if someone has more information on the situation or if there’s anything in what I’ve said that’s incorrect let me know.

The fact is that in the next 6 - 8 months there’s a very real possibility of me having to look overseas to find animation work just so I can survive. There are so few places in Australia being used for animation in movies and if there aren’t any incentives for overseas movies to be produced here then we’re all just going to have to leave.

—————————

Josh is one of the very real people affected by how this legislation works. There is some confusion over how these incentives work, which has not been helped by some of the selective reporting we’ve seen about Justice League Mortal.

Essentially, a number of rebates were announced as part of the Australian Screen Production Incentive. There were:

• Producer offset - 40% rebate on “Australian” Films (minimum budget on 1M)
• Producer offset - 20% rebate on “Australian” TV series
• PDV offset - 15% rebate on post, digital and visual effects (Minimum spend of 5M)
• Location offset - 15% location rebate for overseas productions shooting in Australia (Between 15-50M spend, > 70% of total expenditure to be in Australia)

Generally speaking, the new producer offset leaves Australian producers better off, so long as they’re producing features with budgets over $1M. For ultra-low budget filmmakers, they’re neither better or worse off. For visual effects and production crews servicing foreign production, there’s definitely an improvement as we didn’t have these sort of incentives at all before. 15% is not as generous as the 40%, but when the government is footing the bill, there should definitely be some “Australian-ness” to it - whether it is cultural or where the profits go.

The 40% offset is designed so that Producers can borrow against it and assume a high equity position in their projects and make more out of their films, so they can keep making more films. I think it is the second issue is more important here. The previous system often left producers worse off after after finishing their films.

By giving them a high equity position in their films they can achieve more sustainability in their businesses and increase the output of production in Australia. Would Warner brothers have given George Miller a high equity position (around 30% as the regulations won’t quite give you a full 40%) in a film based on one of their most lucrative franchises? The Producer Offset isn’t intended to just give the major studios a discount. The producer has to gain more out of it in exchange.

So the real question with Justice League Mortal wasn’t about whether it was Australian or not, but whether it would qualify for the 15% location/pdv offsets, or the 40% offset.

In the end, Justice League didn’t qualify for the Producer’s offset because it wasn’t deemed “Australian” enough. If it did, it might have broken the bank! I’m not sure if it would  have qualified for the 15% location offset either as the budget was over 70M. Regardless, according to The Australian, Miller insisted that “Justice League Mortal would not [have] be[en] viable in Australia if it attract[ed] only the 15per cent rebate”.

It is truly unfortunate that Australia lost out on a mega project that would have changed the whole lanscape here. It could have done for us what Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand. And if (big if) Warner Brothers would have allowed Miller to keep the rebate and take a high equity position in Justice League Mortal, who knows what great things he could have done with the money as possibly the most powerful Australian producer ever.

BUT, in spite of all this, we shouldn’t forget that we still have a location and PDV offset that is an big improvement on what we had before. These industries should still be able to attract more work from overseas than they did before and make us more competitive globally.

Now if only we could do something about that high Aussie dollar right now!

Completed Work: Rundle Mall TVC

This is our latest TV Commercial, which we made for Rundle Mall, Adelaide’s (Australia) premier fresco-styled shopping district in the heart of the city. The TV Commercial was produced with advertising agency, Clemenger BBDO Adelaide.

more about “Completed Work: Rundle Mall TVC“, posted with vodpod

According to James Calvert, who directed the TVC:

Recreating the Adelaide institution that is Rundle Mall turned out to be one of the most challenging yet rewarding jobs I have had to do as an animation director. Our main character “Ginger” had to walk down the Mall in one continuous shot, while around her the seasons changed. Ginger had to change costumes and so did each of our 100 background characters.

The trees drop their leaves in Autumn, the flowers bloom in Spring. Normally something of this magnitude would be reserved for a feature film! I guess thats the point of difference with this commercial, is that we’ve packed all these elements and a bit of magic into a 30 second spot.

The biggest artistic inspiration for us was the Japanese artist Tadahiro Uesugi [Below]. Tadahiro’s work captures the colours and light quality of each season and this was something we wanted to replicate in the commercial. We made the ad in a way that if you were to pause on any frame it would look like a piece of artwork in it’s own right.

Justice League of Australia

The 730 report did one of those inconclusive “things are great but they’re not really” stories last week on Australian film. Included was an interview with George Miller on his decision to not shoot his US$200M Justice League (of America) project in Australia because it does not qualify for the 40% production offset…

Without a successful film (or any film for that matter) made under the new rebate scheme, this has become the most visible story in the Australian media regarding the new film offset legislation. I’m sure this is not the sort of publicity the bureaucrats who have come up with this bold new scheme wanted.

Essentially, George Miller isn’t happy that his Justice League Mortal project is not eligible for the 40% producer offset and has decided to take it elsewhere. We’re falling behind the Kiwis, Europeans, Asians etc he says. We’re denying the industry of millions in jobs and letting skilled people go overseas. All because a bunch of bureaucrats have decided that this project isn’t Australian enough.

Much of the spin on this has come down to (1) what should culturally qualify for this generous incentive; and (2) how do we attract and keep skilled people in Australia.

Culturally, the project is based on the DC Comics (does anyone else think this brand name is retarded? It’s essentially “Detective Comics Comics”) franchise “Justice League of America”.

Does dropping the “of America” for “Mortal” in the title might make it Australian enough? You decide.

As a comic book property whose marquee characters are Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, it has an air of inevitability of being made into a blockbuster feature. If not Miller, it would have eventually been made by a Michael Bay, Brett Rattner, Bryan Singer et al. Given this, the creative Australian impetus behind the decision to make this project is open to interpretation.

In terms of depriving Australians of a $200M blockbuster being made here, what I’m wondering is why the other aspects of the new rebate scheme haven’t been discussed as much in the media? Alongside the 40% producer offset the Federal government is also offering a generous 15% location rebate an incentive to attract and keep the very people Miller is talking about losing.

On top of that, the Australian rebates are claimable on expenditure, whereas many others like Canada’s is based on the spend on labour. You’d have to be going to some pretty obscure places in the world to get a better offer.

So if Justice League Mortal is still eligible for some very competitive incentives here, why not shoot it here? It might not be that much cheaper elsewhere.

So I think it’s a bit unfair to apportion the blame of losing this $200M project to the Australian Government. However, as reported in The Australian (the one local newspaper that seems to have gotten it right), Miller reckons that contrary to industry rumour, the location rebate isn’t enough to make shooting the film here viable, and only the 40% would have been enough to get the project up.

The only other question for me is how the rebate would have worked with Warner Brothers. The rebate comes back to the producer – ie Miller, who would usually use it to take a high equity position in the film. But I can’t see WB giving Miller a 30% ownership in their Justice League film!

If they did, then that’s a lot of money Miller could be getting, and using to make more potentially Australian films. And isn’t that what we want after all?

Sweet & Sour: ABC Radio National Interview (3 of 3)

Part 3 (of 3) of Sweet & Sour Director Eddie White and Executive Producer Barry Plew’ interview on ABC Radio National’s Artworks programme. In today’s post, Barry talks about the difficulties in getting a distribution license to screen Sweet & Sour throughout China in cinemas and on television.

Part 3 (of 3) - Barry Plews (Download m4a)

Sweet & Sour: ABC Radio National Interview (2 of 3)

Part 2 (of 3) of Sweet & Sour Director Eddie White and Executive Producer Barry Plew’ interview on ABC Radio National’s Artworks programme. In today’s post, Barry talks about the role of the artist in Chinese society and the challenges westerners face in seeking their fortunes in the modern Middle Kingdom

Part 2 (of 3) - Barry Plews (Download m4a)

Sweet & Sour: ABC Radio National Interview (1 of 3)

Part 1 (of 3) of Sweet & Sour Director Eddie White and Executive Producer Barry Plew’ interview on ABC Radio National’s Artworks programme. In today’s post, Eddie talks about how to pitch a movie about dog-eating to a Chinese studio… among other things.

Part 1 (of 3) - Eddie White (Download m4a)

Master the Fundamentals

With 3D film making becoming more and more accessible to anyone with access to a decent PC (or Mac for that matter), it pays to have an understanding of some of the fundamentals of the craft such as lighting, character and camera. A good understanding and use of these elements can really help your work to go from average to outstanding in an ever increasing pool of content.

Kirk Gibbons and Adam Myhill from Pandemic Studios, a Brisbane based games developer, have some great advice from their presentation at GCAP last November. Adam and Kirk really know their stuff and their tips will be highly relevant to anyone working with 3D cinematography.

See the full presentation here.

Thanks to Tsumea for the video recording.