At first glance, the incendiary comments about free labor by Digital Domain CEO John Textor may appear to be an isolated issue, but many artists working in the visual effects industry see it as emblematic of the type of abuses they’ve been suffering for years. These labor violations have simply become more public thanks to a vocal online community and watchdog sites like VFX Soldier. The growing awareness is also part of the maturing of the vfx industry, which is still a relatively young art form compared to feature animation. In the past decade, most of the highest-grossing films at the global box office have been visual effects-driven, yet there has been no trickle-down benefit to the artists who have helped these media conglomerates make hundreds of millions of dollars.

A group of artists at Sony Pictures Imageworks is leading a push for change at their studio that could have big ramifications for the rest of the vfx industry in Los Angeles. Their goal is to unionize Imageworks, and they are promoting their cause publicly through the SpiUnion blog, as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts.

What makes the plight of Sony’s artists particularly urgent is that there are different standards of treatment for LA-based artists working on the same films: Sony Pictures Animation artists enjoy union benefits, whereas Sony Pictures Imageworks artists don’t. In other words, if you’re storyboarding and designing films like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania, you get treated better than if you animate on those same films in Los Angeles. This divide-and-conquer tactic that Sony uses is distinct from other Los Angeles feature animation studios like DreamWorks and Disney Feature Animation that extend union benefits to all their artists, including the animators.

To learn more about the situation, Cartoon Brew conducted an interview with the Imageworks artists who are leading the effort to unionize the studio. For obvious reasons (i.e. not being fired), they have chosen to remain anonymous.

CARTOON BREW: As an outsider, I struggle to understand the mindset of the vfx industry and why it’s so difficult to organize those within it. Can you shed some light into why the vfx field has been so reluctant to organize in LA, especially considering the working conditions, which involve ridiculously long hours. It seems that union representation like your counterparts in CG feature animation would be a benefit.

Artists of SpiUnion: Yes, you would think so right? It’s just as difficult for us to understand as well. We can’t speak to the economics of other companies, but we feel Sony is in a unique situation as opposed to other purely vfx facilties. We produce our own content (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Smurfs), we produce the 3D content our parent company depends on to sell 3D Blu-ray players and televisions, we’re partially unionized (SPA) already, we produce vfx for other studios, we have offices in multiple countries, and we’re owned by one of the major studios.

The LA vfx industry seems to based on FUD (Fear , Uncertainty, and Doubt). There is the prevailing opinion that if any artist dares to stand up and make any noise, the entire company/industry will closeup shop and leave town. Companies are not in LA out of the kindness of their hearts, they are here because there is a large talent base here. (See VFX Soldier’s post on the Animation Guild’s membership and agglomeration.)

People need to ask why are the directors, producers, actors, cameramen, grips, best boys, are all union, but not us? We certainly don’t dare stand up and say anything for fear of angering the mothership right? In the last year we have made multiple projects that either our parent company is making (Men in Black 3,  The Amazing Spider-man) or projects where we are outright the content owners of (Hotel Transylvania, Smurfs 2). How are we not a feature animation company these days?

CARTOON BREW: Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) isn’t union while Sony Pictures Animation (SPA) is. There may be some people confused as to the distinctions between these two arms of Sony so can you explain what films you work on versus what the unionized SPA works on.

The 38 union employees of SPA do all the “pre-production” work for Sony animated features. Storyboards, concept art, character design, etc. Once the movie is ready to start going into the actual shot production process, the “client” (SPA) will then give the project to the “vendor” (SPI) who will then make the finished project. It’s similar to our relationship with the late ImageMovers. It’s an odd distinction, since we are right next to each other, and in some cases work in the same building. So we work on the same films. Five percent of the residual revenue from the movies we make goes to the unionized part of the company to pay their pension benefits. The rest of us get nothing. This is seen as not only fair, but essential to the business of the company. This is not an attack on SPA in any way; they were the smart ones, and voted to unionize when they had the chance.

CARTOON BREW: By going union, what benefits do artists at Sony Pictures Imageworks stand to gain which aren’t currently provided by the company itself?

The biggest gains are portable benefits that travel with you. Many artists will work a short term (five months or less) on a show, and then be unemployed. Many longer term artists will also be let go with no warning at all by the whim of company management.

(Our apologies to your foreign readers, but some of the following is very US specific.) If the project you are on ends on a Friday, if you want health insurance, you need to pay the $1000+ for COBRA benefits in the following 30 days, and then every month thereafter. Dropping COBRA is not advised, since then you will have to try to find individual coverage as opposed to being under the group COBRA coverage. This excludes anyone with a pre-existing health condition.  Under the TAG plan, when you lose your job,  you now have six months of health insurance (and up to 18 months depending on your hours worked in the previous year) for yourself, your partner, and your dependents. You can go work on a non-union commercial for 4 weeks, while you wait for Sony to call you back.

There are also several retirement and pension plans offered. This is in addition to guaranteed paid overtime (the amounts of “free”, “voluntary”, and off-the-books OT worked is unbelievable), vacation days, sick days, guaranteed wage minimums, and a voice in the contract that we all work under. Many staff hires receive zero benefits beyond an HMO that ends as soon as you are layed off. No retirement plan, no sick days, no vacation days.

It’s absolutely puzzling why an artist wouldn’t want these benefits, and will vocally campaign that they don’t want them. The public sees movies for the hard work the vfx artists put into the films, but we receive less benefits than nearly everyone else on the film. This is seen as not only equitable but essential to the business of the film industry. At what point do people wake up? Our work provides billions of dollars in profit to Hollywood.

How sad a statement is it about ourselves that portable health insurance and a retirement pension is seen as some kind of major extravagance that we don’t deserve?

CARTOON BREW: SPI tried to organize a union drive in 2003 and the employees at the time voted overwhelmingly against that proposal. What has changed at SPI in the past ten years, and why do you feel the employees today will be more receptive to the union proposal.

Staff employees at the time received a nice benefits package, it had profit sharing amongst other things. No one seemed to want to admit that those benefits could all be taken away at a moments notice, and they all eventually were. A matching 401k, and poor health insurance are about the only major benefits they have left, and this could be removed at any time as well. Since that time there has been a steady erosion of benefits for all employees.

Imageworks employees have lost 10 years of pension and benefit contributions that they could have been earning. We should all ask ourselves: Have we seen our workplace conditions improve or degrade in the last ten years? How many of those conditions did we have any say in at all?

People that were here for 15 years were summarily dismissed, everyone feels like their jobs could be gone at any moment, and many are afraid to “rock the boat” and feel lucky “to just have a job at all”. The makeup of the company is now mostly people that are hired for one show, and then immediately let go when its over. This is exactly the group of people that needs portable benefits most. We have many ex-Disney, Dreamworks, and ImageMovers artists working here still enjoying their medical benefits they earned while working at those union companies.

Ten years ago we didn’t have a central resource for information and people felt TAG was not involved enough at the time. We have a resource now at spiunion.wordpress.com. Steve Kaplan, the Animation Guild organizer, has been great helping us answer people’s questions. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, where we post people’s questions anonymously if they don’t want to be identified.

CARTOON BREW: My understanding is that in the past, Imageworks’ treatment of permanent staff was much more generous than production hires who received little health/retirement benefits. Is this still the case? Also, approximately how many of SPI staff are “permanent” and how many are short-term production hires?

Yes, it is still the case that “staff” artists receive more benefits than production artists. But, to the best of our knowledge, no one is “staff” anymore, just who is more or less likely to be laid off the instant your last shot is done on a show. The failed union vote of ten years ago actually caused show/production hires to get more benefits. There has been a serious erosion in benefits from the meager benefits the company once provided to people. Many show hires receive zero benefits beyond an HMO that ends as soon as you are laid off. No retirement plan, no sick days, no vacation days. This is occurring as the company rakes in Smurf money that we helped make.

The exact employee numbers are always in a state of flux. According to the Animation Guild, there are 38 SPA employees. There are somewhere between 400-500 Imageworks artists in LA, and another 100+ in Vancouver, soon to be 250+. There are 30-40 artists in Albuquerque, with an unknown number of those to be relocated between LA and Vancouver.

CARTOON BREW: Besides its LA studio, SPI also has facilities in New Mexico and Vancouver. It was recently announced that the New Mexico studio would close (after less than five years of operation) and the Vancouver studio would expand. What is there that prevents Sony from moving its entire operation to Vancouver? Do you fear that unionization in LA would make Sony push more of its production up north?

This is the argument that is most repeated and makes no sense to us. If the company were capable of moving all the work to Vancouver (or anywhere else in the world), they absolutely 100% would. The agglomeration of people in LA is the why the company is still here. If you look at it from a different point of view, if the company gets a 30% rebate on its work, why in the world would they have ANY artists at all in another location? The answer is that there are key people and departments who won’t move. This is leverage in action. By all accounts, Albuquerque was a profitable division.

Someplace else offered more incentives, so the company is chasing the free government handouts. Don’t be surprised in the future to see Vancouver divisions shutting down and opening up in other locations as every company chases incentives to the next hot location. Our opinion has always been that as an individual artist you have no control over what another country decides to do economically. You have no control over any other business decision that happens way over your head. What you can control is that you will accrue pension and health benefits while you are working. These will continue after you are unemployed for yourself and your family.

We are not trailblazing a new idea and fighting to set up a new organization. TAG has existed for every seventy years, and has served the employees of Disney, Dreamworks, Nickelodeon, SPA and many others.  Why would anyone not want to have the same benefits? All anyone at any studio in the US or Canada need to do is sign and mail a rep card to get the process started.

Today we learned that some animation executives believe, “Free labor is much better than cheap labor.” Cartoon Brew commenter Jody Morgan pointed out though that it’s not just megamillionaire businessmen who like free stuff:

“And seeing a movie for free is better than paying the matinee price.”

See, now you can enjoy Digital Domain’s first animated feature The Legend of Tembo, while still respecting John Textor’s business philosophies.

Outrage over comments by Digital Domain CEO John Textor continues to grow and has now spread across all corners of the animation community, from Motionographer to Canadian Animation Resources.

Textor’s comments, which were made last November but leaked online last week, center around Textor telling investors that 30% of Digital Domain’s workforce would be comprised of “student labor that’s actually paying us for the privilege of working on our films.” Artist Scott Benson dubbed it the Reverse Paid Internship. Today the story gained renewed momentum when the LA Times published a story about the controversy surrounding Digital Domain’s plans.

In the LA Times, Textor claims that his earlier comments were taken out of context and says, “Find me another visual effects company that is as committed to growing jobs in North America as Digital Domain. If this is taking advantage of kids, I wish somebody would have taken advantage of me when I was in school…. For $28,000 a year, you get an FSU degree and get to work at one of the leading visual effects companies in the world.”

The anonymous blogger at VFX Soldier rebutted those statements, pointing out that plenty of other vfx houses are building jobs in North America: “Sony, Rhythm & Hues, Zoic Studios, Image Engine, and many other companies have opened shop in Vancouver where there has been a huge growth in VFX jobs.” Furthermore, even with $132 million in cash, land, tax credits and financing from the state and the cities of Port St. Lucie and West Palm Beach, Digital Domain is still aggressively pushing forward on building studios in India and China. So much for North America.

Textor is clearly on the defensive, going so far as posting a comment on VFX Soldier, the site that initially broke the news about his comments. His rambling and combative commentary (“I was probably a 3D programmer before you were born.”) doesn’t address the ethical and legal issues raised by his pay-to-work idea. Instead, Textor claims that, “The VFX business model, as a pure services model, is broken,” and somehow that justifies students paying him to work at Digital Domain. Textor also states, “I cannot fix the VFX industry. I am definitely not smart enough for that.” That is something becoming increasingly clear to anybody who’s been following the story.

(Photo of Debbie and John Trextor via TCPalm.com)

As a counterbalance to Digital Domain and its dunderheaded business strategy of making one-third of its staff pay them to work on its films, the video above features DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg speaking about he importance of honoring his studio’s employees. Katzenberg says in the interview:

The thing that I have learned, and I only wish that I knew it twenty-five or thirty years ago, which is to honor and celebrate, recognize and reward your employees and their work—is a fantastic business strategy. If they love their work, they love coming to work, they will strive to do great work and you’ll succeed.

(via @supersternio)

Digital Domain CEO John Textor (pictured above with his wife) envisions big things for his company’s new feature animation studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida called Tradition Studios. While we’ve written about the studio’s ambitious feature film plans, what wasn’t known until recently is how Textor intends to create the films. His plan is to convince students to pay Digital Domain to work on its films for free.

The blog VFX Soldier has obtained a speech that Textor gave last November to investors in which he revealed how the company’s new animation school Digital Domain Institute will be integrated with the Tradition studio. Textor told the audience:

Classes starting in the education space, what’s interesting is the relationship between the digital studio and the college.  Not only is this a first in a number of ways that we’ve talked about, but 30% of the workforce at our digital studio down in Florida, is not only going to be free, with student labor, it’s going to be labor that’s actually paying us for the privilege of working on our films.

Now this was the controversial element of this and the first discussions with the Department of Education, ’cause it sounds like you’re taking advantage of the students.  But we were able to persuade even the academic community, if we don’t do something to dramatically reduce costs in our industry, not only ours but many other industries in this country, then we’re going to lose these industries .. we’re going to lose these jobs.  And our industry was going very quickly to India and China.

Students, in other words, will pay up to $105,000 for the “privilege” of working on Digital Domain’s features, the first of which will be The Legend of Tembo. As VFX Soldier points out, “It’s one thing to work for low pay, it’s another thing to work for free, but it’s unfathomable to be expected to pay to work for free.

If all of this sounds a little fishy, that’s because it is. The Animation Guild in Los Angeles is exploring whether Digital Domain might be in violation of state and federal labor laws. They’ve tried to communicate with multiple Florida government agencies, including the state’s Department of Education, with no luck yet. Federal labor laws, however, would appear to be in favor of artists as they clearly stipulate that interns cannot “perform productive work” (i.e. work on the production of a film) without being compensated with at least minimum wage and overtime pay. (Minimum wage, by the way, is $7.67 per hour in Florida.)

As animation education programs proliferate around the United States and competition intensifies for a finite number of jobs, studios find themselves in a position to exploit young artists more aggressively than ever before. Whether it’s Titmouse relocating its studio nearly 3,000 miles away to avoid paying its employees union wages or Digital Domain making people pay to work on its films, there are plenty of legal loopholes that studios can exploit to save a buck on the backs of their production crews. And some studio CEOs are so proud of themselves that they’ll publicly boast about how they’re getting away with it.

UPDATE: John Textor’s “Free Student Labor” Comments Have Staying Power

UPDATE #2: John Textor Made $16 Million In 2011 While Digital Domain’s Revenue Dropped

UPDATE #3: Digital Domain CEO John Textor Caught On Video: “Free Labor is Much Better Than Cheap Labor”

(Photo of Debbie and John Trextor via TCPalm.com)

Dear Glen,

Since last Friday’s news that you’re leaving Disney, you’ve launched a new parlour game What Will Glen Keane Do? Everyone is wondering: Will he jump to another studio? Will he work on his personal artwork? Will he attempt to create a feature film independently as Richard Williams is currently doing? This letter humbly offers my suggestion for what you should consider doing.

If the outpouring of sentiment surrounding your departure is any indication, you’re one of the few verifiable superstars in animation. Over five thousand people reblogged the news of your resignation on Tumblr alone. You’re riding a wave of decades of built-up goodwill, and fans are invested in your career as they are in the work of few other animators.

Animation and Disney lovers are clamoring to see what you do next, and more than anything, it seems they want to see you make a personal animated film. It doesn’t seem to matter what that film is, or whether it’s a feature or short subject—just so long as you’re directing it. This is your moment to blow our minds. You can reset the animation world with the most stunning animated film we’ve ever seen, a no-holds-barred work of pure artistry without restrictions or interference.

The timing could not be more ripe. Right now we are witnessing a paradigm shift in which artists increasingly receive their funding directly from fans, not business investors and corporations. Crowdfunding has taken off in the last year in all areas of creative culture. Video game designer Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) recently concluded a Kickstarter campaign to fund a “point-and-click” graphic adventure game. He aimed to raise $400,000 and ended up with $3.3 million. Comic artist Rich Burlew raised $1.25 million on Kickstarter to reprint his webcomic Order of the Stick. Comedian Louis CK self-produced his latest special and sold it online, reaping over $1 million in just a couple weeks. He ended up donating more than a quarter-million dollars to charity.

No animator has yet to pull in the kind of crowd-funding numbers as the examples above, but then again, no animator with your name recognition has attempted the feat. By forming a direct relationship with your fans, it’s a virtual guarantee that you can do whatever you want. That includes raising the money you need to create a personal animated film, and more than enough to pay for a healthy crew of assistants, clean-up artists, and others. And, if like, Louis CK, you already have enough money to produce the work independently, just know that there are many fans waiting to see your work.

Few Disney animation superstars, past or present, have created personal animation projects. Among the Nine Old Men, only Ward Kimball ever created an animated short on his own time, and that film was only a few minutes long. You have the unique opportunity to change that history. In your resignation letter, you wrote that, “I am convinced that animation really is the ultimate art form of our time with endless new territories to explore. I can’t resist its siren call to step out and discover them.”

Everyone supports you in your desire to discover the art form’s new vistas. I sincerely feel that your best opportunity for exploring that creative vision is to do it independently—with the backing of your thousands of fans and admirers.

Best of luck,
Amid Amidi
CartoonBrew.com

Thirty-seven years! That’s the length of time that Glen Keane worked at Disney Feature Animation and it’s the figure that stood out to me in yesterday’s surprise announcement that he was leaving Disney. How does that length of employment compare to the Nine Old Men and other famous Disney artists? The list below shows a cross-section of well known Disney artists, past and present, and how long each of them worked (or more appropriately, survived) at the studio.

LENGTH OF EMPLOYMENT FOR FAMOUS DISNEY ARTISTS

John Hench	64 years
Burny Mattinson	59 years
Eric Larson	52 years
Les Clark	49 years
Woolie Reitherman	48 years
Ken Anderson	44 years
Frank Thomas	43.5 years
Ollie Johnston	43 years
Marc Davis	43 years
Milt Kahl	42 years
Ward Kimball	40.5 years
John Lounsbery	40 years
Ron Clements	38 years
Ham Luske	37 years
GLEN KEANE	37 years
Mark Henn	31.5 years
Andreas Deja	30.5 years
Ruben Aquino	30 years
Joe Grant	28 years
Bill Peet	27 years
Fred Moore	20.5 years
Eric Goldberg	15 years
Art Babbitt	9 years
James Baxter	9 years
Bill Tytla	9 years

(Note: Many artists, like Keane himself, left the studio and returned. I’ve tried to take those departures into account while compiling the list, but if you find inaccuracies, please let me know.)

It’s the time of year when many of our student readers are finishing up their student films, and inevitably there will be lots of questions: Should I submit my film to festivals? Should I post my film online? Will posting my film online hurt my festival chances? Avner Geller, the co-director of the Student Academy Award-winning short Defective Detective, has shared his personal experiences dealing with these issues in this must-read blog post. He addresses the myth that festivals disqualify filmmakers if a film is posted online, however, Avner points out that both the Student Academy Awards and SIGGRRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival require filmmakers to keep their films off the Internet. Take heed of that advice if qualifying for either of those events is part of your gameplan.

Also, I shouldn’t let this moment pass without pointing out that Geller’s film debuted online last year as part of Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival. It has been the most viewed film in our festival with over 425,000 views to date. We’ll be launching the 2012 edition of the student animation festival shortly—stay tuned to Cartoon Brew for submission details.

* Oriental DreamWorks, the joint venture between DreamWorks and a consortium of Chinese investors, has announced that its first feature will be released in 2016. Katzenberg is in Shanghai this week reviewing at least seven different film proposals vying to be the studio’s first feature. The studio plans to “closely link elements of Chinese history, culture and literature in its various productions.” More details in this news article.

* Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends) is comign back to TV with a new TV series called Wander Over Yonder for the Disney Channel. The Disney TV Animation-produced show, scheduled for the 2012-13 season, is about:

Wander is an overly-optimistic intergalactic traveler who, along with his loyal but bullish steed, Sylvia, goes from planet to planet helping people to live free and have fun, all against the evil reign of Lord Hater and his army of Watchdogs.

* Composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) talked animation in the Wall Street Journal:

What do you think of the shift in animated film earnestness to irony?
Menken: Ironic is OK. You can have a Sebastian [the crab in The Little Mermaid], as you can have a Jiminy Cricket. They can be adult and smart. However, they can’t be culturally or morally subversive, in that Disney sensibility. Rango and things like that are edgier. In general, the animated medium lends itself to a sweetness.

Do you personally connect to that?
Menken: I first appreciated that medium back in the 1980s when the AIDS crisis had hit full force and everybody—my gay collaborators and friends—was dying. I was so scared for my daughter, Anna, and the only thing that could soothe me was those Disney animated films that were coming out on VHS. It was so safe.

* How did I miss the news that Glenn Beck’s online network GBTV is currently developing an animated comedy series with Icebox. Yes, that Icebox. A lot of readers may be too young to remember Icebox.com, but they were among the more notorious animation dot-com busts in the late-1990s and a punchline for jokes about what happens when sitcom writers try to make funny cartoons.

Read UPDATES at bottom of the piece.

When I speak to indie filmmakers, there’s always a lot of confusion about the potential money that can be earned by posting shorts on the Internet, especially by posting them onto YouTube. An article in last month’s Wall Street Journal shed some much needed light on the situation. The article said that those who join YouTube’s Partner Program receive between $1,500 and $4,500(US) for every million video views. The wide variance in price is attributed to the country and platform where the video is viewed.

According to YouTube, they had 30,000 partners in 2011, up from 20,000 in 2010. “Several hundred” of those partners made more than $100,000, which is an 80% increase from the “couple of hundred” partners who achieved the six-figure earnings mark in 2010. Using that data, I think it would be fair to guess that they have at least 350 people earning six-figures, or slightly over 1% of their YouTube Partners.

Using the numbers above, I decided to figure out what some of the most successful animators on YouTube are making. I’ve shared the numbers below, which are not yearly earnings, but based on the total number of views the filmmaker has received. Considering how difficult it is to make money with animated shorts, the numbers are fairly impressive, especially if viewed as a single revenue stream as part of a larger plan that includes broadcast sales to foreign TV channels, merchandising, dvd sales, digital downloads, and so forth.

It’s also impressive that many of the most successful animators on YouTube are young filmmakers whose reputations were established exclusively online. Another important point to consider is that all of these animators have dozens of films posted on their channel. There are no examples yet of people earning this kind of money from just a handful of films. Simon’s Cat has the least videos of any of the channels below, with only twenty.

Animation Filmmaker Earnings on YouTube

PES
29.3 million video views (as of Mar. 19, 2012)
Estimated total earnings based on views: $43,950 – $131,850

Lev Yilmaz
36.3 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $54,450 – $163,350

Cyriak
66.7 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $100,050 – $300,150

Harry Partridge
74.4 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $111,600 – $334,800

Egoraptor
102.4 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $153,600 – $460,800

FilmCow (aka Charlie the Unicorn)
227.3 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $340,950 – $1,022,850

Simon’s Cat
232.3 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $348,450 – $1,045,350

Daneboe (aka The Annoying Orange)
628.8 million video views
Estimated total earnings based on views: $943,200 – $2,829,600

UPDATE (9:53pm ET): Since this piece was published, I’ve been in contact with Harry Partridge, one of the filmmakers whose estimated earnings were posted above. He posted a comment on Twitter that said in part, “I don’t make anywhere near half of their lowest ballpark. Crazy.” When he posted that comment on Twitter, he assumed that I was talking about yearly earnings. We cleared up that I was referring to total earnings based on the number of pageviews listed above, NOT yearly earnings.

Harry also provided some ballpark figures for what he’s made from YouTube since 2009. The numbers turned out to be slightly more than half of the lowest estimated earning, which means he has been earning a more modest $750-800 per million pageviews instead of the $1,500-$4,500 claimed in the Wall Street Journal piece. More recently, he has joined with Channelflip, which he says pays him more annually than YouTube, but which is still a relatively modest sum. However, I should point out that I have confirmed with other filmmakers that they have earned the higher figures listed in the WSJ piece so there are apparently wide gaps between what different filmmakers earn. The lack of transparency in YouTube’s payments to its partners is a great reason to be having this discussion and leveling the playing field for filmmakers who are thinking of posting their work on that platform.

UPDATE #2: Harry pointed out that though the videos were posted beginning in 2006, YouTube started paying out in 2009. I’ve updated the above to reflect that the earning period has been the last three years. He also writes, “Overall I’m not bothered by the article now it states that these are total earnings, my concerns about it arose from the fact that I thought it was yearly.”

UPDATE #3: Filmmaker Cyriak wrote a comment below in which he says that he hasn’t monetized most of his video vieww as part of YouTube’s Partner Program. He says that his most recent earnings have been in the range of $600 per million video views.

There’s something to be said for running a cartoon studio in a place where animation production isn’t commonplace. To celebrate the Animated Short Oscar for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, the city of Shreveport, Louisiana threw an extravagant parade for Moonbot Studios and the film’s directors Bill Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. Here’s a few perks you get if you win an Oscar in Louisiana that you probably won’t get in other places:

A free ride in a banana-colored convertible

A marching band

A customized battle tank plus confetti

A decorated street-cleaning machine

Acknowledgment from celebrities like Randal Reeder

Custom-designed moon pies

Balloons with flying books

The adulation of children

And, of course, women

If you require more evidence for why it’s better to run an animation studio in a city few people have ever heard of, see the city of Shreveport’s Flickr page or this article in the Shreveport Times.

(via Big Screen Animation)

If you still haven’t had your fill of “Why John Carter Failed” articles, then don’t miss New York Magazine’s lengthy read “The Inside Story of How John Carter Was Doomed by Its First Trailer.” The piece goes to excruciating lengths to absolve Disney marketing of any wrongdoing over the film’s US box office performance, and lays the blame squarely at the feet of Andrew Stanton:

While this kind of implosion usually ends in a director simmering in rage at the studio marketing department that doomed his or her movie, Vulture has learned that it was in fact John Carter director Andrew Stanton — powerful enough from his Pixar hits that he could demand creative control over trailers — who commandeered the early campaign, overriding the Disney marketing execs who begged him to go in a different direction.

The article, juicy as it is, should be taken with a grain of salt. Much of the information in the article appears to be sourced from public statements by Stanton, and only one anonymous “Disney marketing insider” is identified as having been interviewed. There are factual errors too that made me question the piece’s accuracy—the writer claims that Disney marketing approached the New Yorker in September 2011 to profile Stanton, when in fact, if you read the New Yorker piece, the writer of that piece said he’d been working on it since April 2011. At best, NY Mag’s takedown offers one version of how the film’s marketing plan derailed. The real story is likely far more complex, and won’t be understood until some point in the future.

A more insightful piece is the aforementioned New Yorker profile of Andrew Stanton, which has finally been posted online. Unlike an earlier New Yorker piece about Pixar that left me unimpressed, this profile sheds much light on Stanton’s personality and his collaboration with the lauded Pixar “Braintrust.” In spite of the profile’s positive tone, Stanton comes off as overly self assertive and oblivious to the effect of his comments, like:

“We came on this movie so intimidated: ‘Wow, we’re at the adult table!’ Three months in, I said to my producers, ‘Is it just me, or do we actually know how to do this better than live-action crews do?’ The crew were shocked that they couldn’t overwhelm me, but at Pixar I got used to having to think about everyone else’s problems months before all their pieces would come together, and I learned that I’m just better at communicating and distilling than other people.”

(Illustration by Luis Grañena)