Two films you should see this Summer

Here are a couple of new documentaries that you might not know about, but will enjoy watching.

Friends of mine made this documentary about Albert Ruddy, who was the producer of "The Godfather". Directors are usually more well known than Producers by the general public and the result of only two meetings, Smith and Bradley discovered they had enough footage to make "Tough Ain't Enough: Conversation with Albert S. Ruddy".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2831378/

The film was released to the film festival circuit in 2013, however only recently has the film been distributed by Indie Rights. 

Tough Ain't Enough is a very inspiring and fun documentary told by Al Ruddy himself about his adventures in the film industry as a producer. 

And finally, everyone can see and hear his story which is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Youtube.

"Dear Ike: Lost Letters to a Teen Idol" is a personal documentary about young Dion Labriola's quest to contact with the young actor Ike Eisenmann through writing many letters to him to star in an animated science-fiction epic he was developing in middle school. 

After an exhaustive string of failed attempts, a magical turn of events points Dion directly toward his goal in the most unexpected of ways - 40 years later.

Here's the Animateducated interview with Dion Labriola and link to watch "Dear Ike" for free through PBS SoCal.

Hope you get a chance to see these films and leave a comment below if you watched them. 

Character Designing by Torsten Schrank

 

Torsten Schrank was learning to be an animator while in University, but eventually got more into character designing. Below is a recent interview of him explaining how he designs characters.

Here are some of his concept art and character designs.

Here are a collection of model sheets of caharacter designs from "Klaus".

 

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"I'm Hip" with John Musker

 I first found out about this film when I did an interview with John Musker and Ron Clements when Covid was on the rise. Here's the interview, feel free to watch the whole thing. 

I just realised the above video was labelled Part 1, in Part 2, John mentioned he was starting to work on his own animated short film and was trying to figure out how he was going to do it.

Four years later, "I'm Hip" premiered at Annecy, one of the most well known animation festivals in Europe and the film managed to make the Short List for this year's Oscars. Unfortunately, the film was not nominated.

I caught up with John Musker at an ASIFA screening of "I'm Hip" and here is the interview below along with some stills from the film.. Enjoy!

This is Dan Dinello and John's sister Mimi, Dan Dinello was my Film Tech 2 teacher at Columbia College in 1983-1984.

A movie theater of famous hip movie goers.

The beginning of the film so Musker and his wife walking under the Live Jazz sign...

Can you name these two Hip guys? Add your answer to the comments below.

That's Marlon West on drums and the head of effects at Disney, I went to school with him at Columbia College and he was hip even back then.

The guy snipping coffee is John's son.

"I'm Hip" will be coming to a theater near you as part of the 23rd Animation Show of Show. Contact www.animationshowofshows.com to find out when and where.

If you enjoyed this post, leave a comment below or on the YouTube channel Animateducated.