My Animateducated tour of the UK

It has only been two weeks since we landed in Dublin, Ireland to begin our trip to the UK. I dragged my laptop and small video/still camera and a lot of cords, plugs and a hand held mini tripod to see if I could make this a working vacation.

I had contacted 3 people throughout our visit, starting with Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny. I was planning to meet Tomm Moore, however as the trip drew near, he had to cancel the meeting, but I could talk to Fabian Erlinghauser, a director who created "Dorg Van Dango" for Nickelodeon.

After Ireland, we would fly up to Edinbough, Scotland to experience the Fringe as well as meet with Iain Gardner, the creator of a new 2d film called," A Bear named Wojtek. To my surprise, I was able to make two more future episodes featuring some Fringe work which I will share later.

Then we would fly to London to meet Comic book artist Alison Sampson, who has some of her work at the Heroes exhibit at the Cartoon Museum in London. I was hopping to be able to interview her in person and see the museum's archives. It turned out, I was shown a small storage room full of boxes, but they didn't show me what was inside them.

While in London, I found a few more things to make future Animateducated episodes, including this one featuring the BFI's Stop Motion series. A month long celebration on Stop Motion films and filmmakers. I have just finished this posting of a Q&A of the directors of ParaNorman, Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Enjoy...

If you enjoyed this blog and the above episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or like on the Animateducated YouTube channel. As I said, I have one more week of traveling England to see if I can find some more interesting people or places to share with you.

The Crime Story incident Part 1

In May of 1986, I graduated from Columbia College in Chicago and during my first Summer out of school I was looking for freelance and full time work of any kind. I was also working on finishing an animated film I had started during my final year at Columbia.

I was looking for both animation and live action work and began finding short gigs on various small projects. I remember working as a PA on a music video where a large group of extras gathered in a dark bar. While this was all happening, a make up person was putting the last bits of details on several Zombie characters to be shot after the Bar scene.

A new NBC TV series began shooting in Chicago and my roommate, Mike had managed to get a job as a PA. "Crime Story" was a new TV show produced by Michael Mann, set in Chicago during the early sixties, about a group of Chicago cops and the bad guys they were trying to catch. It only ran for 2 seasons and featured actor Dennis Farina, who served 18 years in the Chicago Police Department (1967 to 1985), during which he advanced from patrolman to detective, now in his first starring role on a TV series.

At one point of the production, my roommate got me a job as a PA and my first taste of TV series production work had begun. Some of these events are a little blurry since I wasn't on the show for very long and most of the work hours were long night shoots.

My first day on the job was to help get the craft services table set up for the shoot. Mike had more experience then I did and so he showed me what to do. While we were buying snacks and drinks for the crew, the crew was shooting at a location not too far away. Mike thought it would best to meet the crew at the next location and have the snacks set up there.

Mike had a car and we drove to the next location, got everything set up and waited for the crew to show up. As things turned out, we should have went to the first location to set up the tables because the film shoot took longer than expected.

The next thing I know, a bunch of angry looking crew members are walking towards us and somehow they all know my name. A few start yelling and asking why we didn't show up at the location. Mike was trying to calm them down and keep them from ripping my head off. The term "Hangry" had not been invented yet.

All I know, is that my first day on the job had not turned out to be a pleasent experience. Over the next few days and mostly nights, I would have to work harder to be seen as being more dependable. I also learned all about Union rules throughout my time on the job.

When the Assistant Director (AD) asks you to tell the driver of the large truck to move slightly forward, the driver will not listen to you. You must then find his boss, the head teamster on the crew. Then the boss tells the driver and he does the task.

Also, when it came time for lunch or dinner, the crew would be watching the clock, any sign of delay and the crew could call a penality if they were not fed at the right time. Also the crew would eat first before the talent or extras. These were the laws of the jungle I was learning about on the job.

I remember I was given a walkie talkie and told to block off the street so no modern day cars would drive through the background of the shot. I did and had to turn a few drivers around until another PA ran up and needed to take my walkie talkie away to do something else. Now, I was just some weirdo who tried to stop traffic without any proof of authority or a walkie talkie.

And so, this was my week of learning about being a PA, from blocking areas from traffic to picking up a pack of cigarettes for the director to finally deciding that I didn't want to do this for a living. That was on Friday, Sept 5th 1988 when the accident occured.

BTW, I recent found out that I had worked Six  12 hour days back in September 1986 on Crime Story. 1) 12 hour day = $69.07!!!!  Was it worth it? What was the big event that changed my mind from working in live action and working in animation production? Find out soon in Part 2.

Walking on Clouds

A lot of the time I find someone who I would like to interview and spend a good amount of time researching what they have done and contact them through email. This recent interview with Paul Demeyer was the result of a good friend of ours who recommended us to met each other through email.

And so, I contacted Paul and we discovered that we had a lot in common. For one, we both had won a Student Film Awards when we were in College. Paul has been working on his illustrated book about his life called "Walking on Clouds" and he includes a few pages about winning the award in 1977.

Then 10 years later, I won my Student Film Award for my animated film called "Cat & Rat" back in 1988 and I remember getting to see a screening with the crew of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". I had a long week and cannot recall how I got a ticket to the screening, I only remember I was in a seat on the first row looking straight up at the screen. I was one of the first people at Columbia College to see the film, but the worse viewing although I was so excited I didn't care.

So I contacted Paul and we can up with this interview which took me a while to edit together since we taked about so much. Anyway, here's the interview which I hope was worth the wait.

This year was the 50th anniversary of the Student Film Awards which I took Paul with me to see it in person. We had a great time and were amazed that most of the winners had a small crew which shared the award. We remember how awkward we had felt getting up on stage alone to accept our awards. We were impressed by how these new winners were all very confident and professionals at accepting their awards as well.

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