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Bay Area Animation by Karl Cohen
The door to the fantastic Pixar campus, where over a dozen massive hits have been created, in Emeryville, CA. photo: courtesy Pixar
US's Largest Wage-Fixing Scandal Continues
“Techtopus,” the Silicon Valley wage-fixing scandal reported in last July's CineSource is far from over, despite the fact that the companies concerned settled round one by paying millions in fines.
In early September Variety, Cartoon Brew and other trade publications reported a new class action lawsuit has been filed in San Jose, California against DreamWorks, Pixar, Disney, Lucas, Digital Domain, Image Movers Digital, Sony Pictures and Sony ImageWorks.
Despite a mountain of evidence that was uncovered in the first lawsuit a spokesperson for Disney said, “We believe this complaint is utterly without merit and intend to defend against it vigorously.”
Although most of the history of the lawsuit was described in the last issue of Cinesource, what wasn’t discussed was how human resource people at several of the companies met annually to discuss job titles to be included in an industry compensation survey.
They also took part in other meetings and events to exchange information that allowed them to “fix the salaries and wages of their workers within narrow ranges for the ensuing year.” Allegedly, the HR people from different companies exchanged this information to suppress wages.
Naturally, that conspiracy was kept secret from the creative employees who are responsible for creating the enormous profits that pay the outrageous wages that are being paid to the top officers of each company.
“All of the defendants kept the agreements secret from their employees," the new suit contends.
"Only their top executives and human resources and recruiting personnel involved in the conspiracy communicated about the agreements orally or in emails among themselves, and they almost always insisted that the agreements not be committed to writing.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Robert Nitsch, who was a senior character effects artist at DreamWorks Animation from 2007 to 2011.
I was recently informed that employee morale at one of the companies involved in the suit was quite low. It would be nice if this suit is settled quickly, but it will most likely drag on for years—such are the wages of sin.
Dreamworks Animation SKG Studios in Glendale, Cali. photo: courtesy Dreamworks
Japan's SoftBank Tries to Buy DreamWorks Animation
SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate that owns Sprint and other telecom companies, was “in talks” to acquire DreamWorks Animation in late September. The firm reportedly offered DreamWorks $32 a share for the company, suggesting the firm was worth $3.4 billion. The stock was selling around $20 a share at the time so it shot up in price.
The business press said DreamWorks was considering the offer, but a few days later it was announced not only had negotiations broken down but Nikesh Arora, a former Google executive who joined SoftBanks in July, was trying to buy a stake in Legendary Pictures, another Hollywood Studio.
The next week the press announced Arora had closed a deal to invest $250 million in Legendary. SoftBanks needs them to create programming content so they can expand their services to mobile subscription. Arora was the executive trying to buy DreamWorks. It appears Arora, who recently formed a media and Internet division within SoftBanks, is anxious to buy content providers.
Indeed, the business press suggests he may make another offer to buy DreamWorks a month or two from now. SoftBanks was in the news earlier this year when it purchased an interest in China’s Internet giant Alibaba for $20 million. SoftBanks is owned by Masayoshi Son, Japan’s richest billionaire.
Apparently Katzenberg has been interested in selling the studio for some time, but the value of the company has been hard to determine. It fluctuated from about $20 a share recently from almost $40 a share earlier this year. The company’s stock has a history of going up and down based on how well or poorly their latest feature is doing, while Disney stock is more stable in its value.
The value of Disney’s stock is based on the performance of a diversified number of divisions (features, theme parks, hotels, cruise ships, theatrical shows, merchandise, etc.). Katzenberg has been working on making his company diversified, but those departments are not yet a major source of income for his corporation.
DreamWorks, which runs large animation studios in LA and Redwood City, also made business news in September when a class action suit was filed against it.
The complaint alleges that DreamWorks and certain of its executives “violated federal securities laws by: a) failing to take a timely write-down for “Turbo,” a feature that performed poorly at the box office; b) materially overstated the Company's net income for the fiscal year of 2013; c) lacking adequate internal controls over financial reporting; and d) disclosing materially false financial statements throughout the period of the class action suit.”
Vince Collins Just Posted His New Psycho City on YouTube
It includes a homage or two to some of our nation’s film classics. If you survive your trip to "Psycho City" you might be fascinated with his trip to Oz where you can journey down a very strange brick road. Some of his other surreal mindbenders are also posted including his "Animation School Dropout." Vince is a local animator who drives a 1930 Plymouth with a V8 under the hood.
Bay Area Student Film Festival at SF State
On Wednesday, October 8th, the Bay Area Student Film Festival came to the Pacific Film Archives, featuring works from SFSU, SFAI, UC Berkeley, CCA, Stanford and UC Santa Cruz. It includes two animated shorts from SF State. Some of the filmmakers will be present.
The films to be shown are "Lost Cities" by Kyle Wilhite, SF State University, which explores San Francisco; "Fragments" by Maria Theresa Barbist, SF Art Institute; "Dilemmas of the Day" by Scott Falkowski, SF State University, an animated version of Cold War nightmares,; "Mawtini (My Homeland) " by Zaineb Hadi, UC Berkeley, the story of one family’s emigration from Iraq, illustrating the emotional resonances of living in-between cultures; and "Bad Connection" by Talia Feder, SF State, an animated (collage) homage to the rotary telephone
It also includes "Counting the Dead" by Catharine Axley, Stanford University, which also explores San Francisco; "Ghost Syndrome" by Rita Piffer, SF State; "From the Snow" by Nathalie Brilliant, SF Art Institute, a portrait of a Moroccan lesbian living in the United States; "Heklina" by Brian Favorite, SF State, which again explores San Francisco; "Animals and a Monster" by Leah Dubuc, California College of the Arts; "2050: A Room of His Own" by Juhee Jane So, SF State; "The Password Was SNACKS" by Sean Draper, UC Santa Cruz, a depiction of our evolving digital identity and "Sleepless" by Emily Fraser, Stanford University.
Scene from 'My Depression' by David Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti and Elizabeth Swados. photo: courtesy the filmmakers
ASIFA-SF Previews Important Animated Doc: My Depression
"My Depression: The Up and Down and Up of It" by David Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti and Elizabeth Swados doesn’t premiere until March 2015 on HBO, but judging by comments from people who saw it, the film could play an important role in getting people to seek help for depression.
I certainly hope that once it is released it will be widely seen as it is a very positive work that encourages people to find the right solution for themselves to overcome their condition. It explores the symptoms and suggests things you can do to get control of it in a light, humorous, entertaining musical documentary.
The film is based on a picture book written and illustrated by black and white drawings by Swados who has suffered from depression for much of her life. It depicts her inner turmoil as she journeys though her ups and downs until finding her way out of it.
David and Robert made the film with a really low budget, but they gave their all, knowing this was a great opportunity to create an important, meaningful work. There devotion to the project shows on the screen. Based on the black and white drawing by Swados, her art is rather simple and whimsical. (One friend said the thing she loved the most was a dancing poodle.)
In the Q and A one of the animators said her illustrations are quite appealing and are clearly drawn so it wasn’t that difficult to animate them, but it took a lot of work to build a half-hour film when the book was a series of short illustrated moments without a strong coherent storyline. Working with the author, the team built a very appealing work and the end results are compelling as well as entertaining.
Wachtenheim and Marianetti first met and worked together as part of the team that animated the first season of Beavis and Butthead. They have also worked on numerous TV commercials and lanimated segments for Saturday Night Live at various New York studios.
In 1999 they formed W/M Animation where they have produced and directing award-winning animation for a long list of clients including NBC, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, Sesame Workshop, Fox, The WB, Coca-Cola, GE, KingWorld, Warner Brothers Records, ESPN, Wheel of Fortune, Acme Filmworks, Curious Pictures, Potion Design, Playboy Magazine, Random House, New York Magazine, and many more.
They have had a long history of working with Robert Smigel who created the Saturday Night Live series TV Funhouse (W/M directed about 50 of them) and other outrageous shows.
In the Q and A they were asked about their Funhouse episode "Journey to the Disney Vault", a virtuoso masterpiece, and if SNL or the network had heard from Disney’s legal department. Since the episode is clearly parody, Disney had no grounds to sue.
When asked how Vivian Leigh was connected to Disney, it turns out she wasn’t. Smigel liked her name so he decided to add her into "Journey to the Disney Vault" as part of the joke. While some Disney people may have hated the episode, we were told at least one family member wrote Smigel saying that they had really enjoyed the piece.
If you missed the program at SF State you can find the episode online.
Wachtenheim and Marianetti have been close friends since their Beavis and Butthead days and, because one does much of the animation while the other focuses on layout and design, they enjoy working together as a team.
At present they are working in LA at Sony Animation on "Hotel Transylvania 2" as Head of Story. When asked if the kinds of humor Smigel creates had to change for an international audience they said no, but Sony did request that things be added that people in foreign countries would identify with. As a result one minor character is Chinese, etc.
They are fascinated by and enjoy working at a major studio in the LA area, but have not left NYC behind just yet; their families and loved ones are all still back east. When the movie wraps and the dust finally settles David and Robert aren’t exactly sure where they'll wind up, either living and/or career wise, but they are positive it will have something to do with animation.