The animation team put in about 50 weeks of work, about two-thirds the number that often goes into animated features.

The Journal hasn't gotten the memo, but a lot of recent features have been turned out in under a year. (Bolt is one recent example of which I have first-hand knowledge.)

But the phenomenon of a fast production schedule isn't exactly new. From start to finish, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs took twenty-six months to produce. Dumbo moved along even faster, costing all of 900,000ドル. (By contrast, Pinocchio cost 3ドル.75 million -- the most expensive film of its era on a per-minute basis.)

After the creative dust settles, what really pares the cost of movie-making is good decision-making. It strokes a lot of egos to have ten administrators in the room protecting turf, throwing out dime-store ideas and signing off on the latest story pitch, but what it mostly does is gum up the works. Nobody, in the end, cares if all the highly-placed bureaucrats had their say, of if a character's hair strands fluttered around just right or if the soft, ambient light in that nighttime exterior came from the correct source.

What audiences care about is having a a rollicking good time in a darkened auditorium. If Chris Meladandri, Jeffrey K. or John Lasseter can pull that magical feat off, it won't matter a whit how much the picture costs. (But if it occurs on a 69ドル million budget, so much the better.).

(Apologies to the folks who have badgered me in comments to 'fess up, but breaking out proprietary info isn't my job description.)

However, now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag ....

New Zealand offers production subsidies, but does anybody seriously believe that a government underwriting of a few million dollars makes up for lower labor costs and a weaker currency? I sure as hell don't.

The answer is the same as it's always been: It doesn't do a movie producer a damn bit of good to go to the provider with rock-bottom prices (with talent to match) and create an animated or live-action feature that nobody wants to see. They might not spend a lot of money, but they don't make any money.

Zero or minimal profits is not what the moving picture game is about. That's why there's a lot of vfx production in the higher-rent areas of California. That's why Illumination Entertainment went to Paris for production work on Despicable Me.

Cheap doesn't cut it. Quality does.

The 17% totals that the Animation Guild's statistics have shown in the recent past might be a little low compared to other parts of the business, but they're not very far out of the ordinary.

First off. There's been some skepticism about some of the listed wages. Speaking from anecdotal evidence I've picked up at the studios, the salary rates reflect what I hear many people are making. (One animator commented that the wages in the survey were no higher than the salary he was making in the 1990s. That's probably accurate. Animators in the '90s were making historically high levels of pay.)

We've been mailing survey forms out for a dozen years, changing questions and formats based on feedback. When we started the TAG survey, we got fairly high response rates. (We would have liked it to be even higher, but then we always want more data.) But over the years we've noticed a trend. Year by year, the response percentages have declined, usually something around 2% a year. This year, we had a total of 690 survey forms (22.9% of the total sent out. Last year, the percentage was 25%.)

Happily, some categories have seen pretty good returns, while other classifications have minimal data and are only marginally worth reporting. (We kept the pipeline open and encouraged people to return survey forms. Some folks did. Others said "I like to keep the wages I make to myself, even on an anonymous form." Still others didn't think it was all that important.)

My position is that the information is both important and useful, but that's me. Companies have plenty of wage information, it's only right to level the playing field a bit. However, we live in Freedom's Land, and people can do what they want. They choose to throw survey forms in the trash, nobody can stop them.

But enough of that. Without further ado, click here for the full and complete 2010 TAG Wage Survey.

Meantime, Winnie the Pooh is in the last couple of months of animation, after which:

"A new hand-drawn project called [X] has been greenlit for development. It's the only thing on the traditional side right now, so hopefully it will stay on track ..."

Hopefully.

A story person informed me that Richard Ross, the production honcho across Riverside Drive on the Main Lot, is looking at animated projects in early development as they progress and has said: "If I don't like something at its first stages, I usually don't start liking it more after more development ..."

(Now. How true the Ross quote is, or how accurate, I cannot say. But I know it sure as hell sounds like a studio head's words. But you can judge for yourself.)

** Wage Survey **

2010 wkly earnings -- 2009 wkly earnings

Stry Edtrs (weekly) -- 2500ドル -- 2312ドル.50

Writers (weekly) -- 2500ドル -- 2,572ドル.50

Directors (f) -- 3,054ドル.55 -- 3,284ドル.14

Directors (tv) -- 2,500ドル -- 2,500ドル

Timng Dirctrs -- 1,830ドル -- 1,900ドル

Stry Artst (f) -- 2,273ドル.68 -- 2,500ドル

Prdctn Brd (tv) -- 1,900ドル -- 1,800ドル

Revsnsts -- 1,575ドル.09 -- 1,600ドル

Chrctr Layout -- 1,677ドル -- 1,811ドル

Bckgrnd layout -- 1,900ドル -- 1,750ドル

Viz Dvlpmnt -- 2,115ドル.38 -- 1,818ドル.18

Chrctr Dsgnrs -- 1,790ドル.14 -- 1,737ドル

Tech Drctrs -- 2,000ドル -- 1,790ドル

Riggers -- 2,120ドル -- 1,642ドル

Lighters -- 1,672ドル.73 -- 1,649ドル.09

Viz Effcts -- 2,152ドル -- 2,500ドル

3D Cmpstrs -- 1,936ドル.84 -- 2,000ドル

3D Anmtrs -- 1,565ドル.82 -- 1,700ドル

Effx Anmntrs -- 1,818ドル.18 -- 1,640ドル.05

For those of you new to the party, we initiated the TAG wage survey back in the 1990s after a background artist suggested it, and have mailed out yearly survey forms to members ever since.

A few notes re the above: Response rates range from 14% (errgh) to 40% (much better.) Although the survey mostly takes in signator studios, there are a number of non-union shops included because a number of members work for those places.

Last point: We will be putting up the complete survey results in a few days, including unit rates for board artists and writers. So stay tuned.

Ray Patterson began his career at Charles Mintz in the late 1920s. (You can view some of Ray's Mintz-era artwork here, courtesy of ASIFA.) In 1940, he went to work at Disney, where he animated on Fantasia, Dumbo and a clutch of shorts.

In 1941, Ray departed Disney after a job action that unionized the studio. He spent the next twenty years working at M-G-M, then another thirty animating and directing television cartoons. He retired as a Hanna-Barbera Vice-President in 1993.

(Ordinarily we would crop and tweak the images above, but ordinarily our Photoshop software works. Apologies for the raw pictures, but the hungry blog must be servied.)

So we got that, everybody? Alex doesn't run a studio where Gnomon students work for free, except for when he does. If the work, you know, drops into his lap.

(Frankly, this long-winded explanation of how Mr. Alvarez is not in the business of "doing this kind of thing" while confessing that he does indeed do this kind of thing, is bewildering.

You can't say "I don't rob banks!" if at the same time you're admitting that you knocked off a small Wells Fargo branch in Panorama City because it was A) just kind of there and B) was really just a "happy accident."

Where we come from, that still counts as a bank heist. Or are we missing something?)

But it's certainly good to know that Gnomon Studios doesn't exploit student labor.

Much.

(Add On: Alex says students won't be doing any more production work. Let's hope that's correct.)

I'm sorry, but these people aren't going to get anywhere if they behave like 19th-century Republicans*. Because owning a trillion dollars of our bonds might not be enough. They'll need to open their borders and ports to the bracing winds of international commerce.

* 1857 -- Democrats lowered tariffs further. An economic panic hit soon thereafter, precipitating a fall-off in imports in the wake of the recession that followed. Government revenues plummeted by 30 percent. In response, the nascent Republican Party called for higher tariffs ...

When in doubt, hitch your wagon to Pixar. (Genius, I tells ya. Pure genius.)

Added to which, thick-witted news outlets were calling Despicable Me "the new Disney feature." That was probably useful ....

Then there's that other 3-D animated film currently making the rounds.

... "Toy Story 3" ... took the weekend's third spot with 39ドル.1 million derived from 6,992 venues in 39 territories. Overseas gross total for the animation threequel stands at 213ドル.1 million extracted from a bit more than half of the international marketplace. ...

It would seem to be a foregone conclusion that both of these features are going to gross north of 500ドル million each from the planet's far-flung theatres.

Comic-Con 2010 reveals its monster schedule.

Friday July 23rd

10:00-11:00 Marvel X-Men— Following Second Coming, Marvel's merry mutants are unable to catch a quick breather. As Curse of the Mutants begins, there's no telling what the vampires have in store for the X-Men...or is there? You've got questions & these people have answers! [... etcetera ...]

The Washington Post tosses out a little animation snark.

... [T]he Pixar wizards are so good they've managed to obscure the fact they've been making the same movie over and over again for the last 15 years.

To reveal this secret, I have obtained a copy of the top-secret Pixar plot generator ...

The San Francisco Chronicle offers a digital photo album of the Gods who reside up there at the crest of the American Olympus. They were all, it seems, at an extra-special annual event in the piney woods a few days ago:

Investment bank Allen & Co. is once again hosting its rich white guy media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Attendees include Google cofounder Larry Page, News Corp king Rupert Murdoch, Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, and whole bunch of other people who flew in on their own jets. ...

London's Cartoon Museum wants to remind Brits of their teevee cartoon heritage:

... [It] has just launched a show that celebrates classic British children’s animation. "Toy Tales" showcases some of Britain’s favourite animations over the last fifty years – from the Clangers, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog and Bagpuss through Roobarb and Custard, Morph, Basil the Brush, the Snowman and Father Christmas to Wallace and Gromit, Fireman Sam and Peppa Pig. ...

Last of all, the L.A. Times pointed out a few days ago that though Shrek Forever After has been a bit of an under-achiever at home, the story is considerably different overseas:

... In France, it had the biggest ever opening for a DreamWorks film, slightly ahead of “Shrek the Third,” with 11ドル.7 million. In Great Britain, it took in a healthy 13ドル.1 million and it also had good starts in South Korea, Hong Kong and Austria. ...

Although it has a steep hill to climb to hit the 479ドル million and 476ドル million international grosses of the last two “Shrek” movies, “Forever After” still has a shot, particularly with potentially lucrative markets such as Italy, Japan, Mexico and Spain left to launch ...

Have a restful Sunday.

Add On: The Hollywood Reporter speculates about a Katzenberg-Murdoch meetup in Sun Valley:

... DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeff Katzenberg and Rupert Murdoch: We also spotted those two walking through Sun Valley together on Wednesday afternoon. Maybe just a friendly catch-up chat among moguls, but Wall Street has long wondered whether DWA may leave its current distribution deal with Paramount early. It runs through 2012, but DWA can end it with six months notice in 2011 -- meaning starting right around now. News Corp.'s Fox has its Blue Sky Studio, which currently turns out about one animated movie per year ("Ice Age," the upcoming "Rio"). Arguably, it could get a little crowded to add in a potential two DWA movies per year, but not undoable. Of course, Katzenberg has said he is happy with the Paramount relationship. So, maybe DWA just enjoys being popular and having us mention a public flirt with other distributors. And hey, looking popular could also help DWA get better terms with Paramount if they re-up ...

Universal's last animated feature Curious George ran up a total gross of 60ドル million after several weeks in the marketplace. DM appears to be doing almost as well in its opening weekend, and gives Hollywood its fourth cartoon hit in six months: Two from DreamWorks Animation, one from Pixar, and now one from Illumination Entertainment-Universal. ...

Add On: The Reporter weighs in with figures for Friday:

Universal's 3D animated feature "Despicable Me" -- a potential boxoffice champ this weekend -- proved pretty lovable for moviegoers in its first day of release on Friday.

The family comedy rung up a nifty 21ドル.7 million during its first day in release. That topped the daily rankings and put "Despicable" on track for a much better than expected three-day opening of more than 50ドル million, with Saturday and Sunday matinees certain to bolster its weekend success. ...

Add On Too: Wowee yowee. For its opening weekend, Despicable Me collects way more than originally anticipated:

1) Despicable Me -- 60ドル.1 million

2) Twilight: Eclipse -- 33ドル.4 million

3) Predators -- 25ドル.3 million

4) Toy Story 3 -- 22ドル million (-27.3%; second best hold in Top Ten)

5) The Last Airbender -- 17ドル.1 million.

And while we're at it, there are two DreamWorks Animation Features still in release -- Shrek Forever After at 233ドル.7 million, and How to Train Your Dragon at 216ドル.9 million.

More than I expected, I hear something like this from visual effects artists:

The Animation Guild will represent us? But, I'm not an animator. I am [modeler, rigger, texture artist, lighter, insert other vfx labor category here] Is there a VFX Guild?

Many people I've talked to also don't realize that our Guild changed its name from Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists back in 2002 for the same reason. As the title of the post implies, I agree with W. Shakespeare on this topic. However, I do see the advantage of a proper moniker. It helps identify our organization to the parties that should know of its existence. So, in the interest of better exposure to visual effects artists while not alienating our traditional animation artist brothers and sisters, what would be a good addition to our name? The Animation and Computer Graphics Guild (TACGC)? The Animation and Visual Effects Guild (TAVEG)? I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments.

Because the vast majority of Academy voters are tied to the Live Action Village, and they tend to vote (as do many) in favor of fellow villagers.

It used to be worse, screenwriter/producer Niven Busch once told me in the heyday of the Studio System.

"Management expected you to vote for your studio's films. And if you didn't, you weren't a good studio employee ..."

There's probably less of that kind of bloc voting than there once was, but to the larger question of animation features getting "more respect?" don't hold your breath, Mike.

The only difference during my lifetime has been that animation now makes the conglomerates piles of money, to the point where some big live-action players (Spielberg, Jackson, Verbinkski) dabble in it.

This has meant that the genre formerly known as "cartoons" is now allowed to sit at the adults' table, but really. Animation getting more of those little gold men in the mainstream movie categories?

Won't be happening. Because 'toons are still, at the end of the awards' season, the bastard step-children of the movie industry.

... [W]atching "Despicable Me" can be something of a chore, especially when you factor in a penchant for what the MPAA ratings board characterizes as "rude humor." ....

The trailers I've seen of the movie have all been amusing. But whether DM takes off in the DreamWorks or Pixar manner with its European-flavored animation will be answered by the end of its opening weekend.

My friend the Wise Old Animation Producer told me two weeks ago, "If it takes in thirty-five or forty million, Universal and Meladandri will be ecstatic ..."

Mr. Wise might turn out to be quite prescient:

..."Despicable Me" looks like it will perform well compared with other recent animated films that aren't sequels and don't come from established studios like DreamWorks Animation or Pixar. "The Princess and the Frog" from Disney Animation Studios, which has been in a box office slump, opened to 24ドル million in December, while Sony Pictures Animation's "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" opened to 30ドル million in September. ...

... "DM" is set to open to about 35ドル million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada, according to people who have seen pre-release audience polling ...

Mr. Katzenberg has his detractors (many of them often showing up here), but when you pull off the hat trick of having two animated features in the Top Ten during the same week, you must be doing something right.