Friday,
October 26, 2007
Italian Animation Industry on Upswing
The
ANNOTICO Report
Co-Production Italian Style
How a new crop of international
co-productions is changing the Italian animation industry. Russell Bekins lays down the rules for success.
Animation
Magazine
By
Russell Bekins
October
25, 2007
Obeying the Rules
Those in the know recognize that
Rule
1: Stare reality in the face.
"Co-production is a necessity. The costs are high, and one country cannot
absorb them all," veteran producer Giovanna Milano
asserts bluntly, assessing the European market.
Rule 2: Drop your
stereotypes by the door.
When one speaks of Italian cartoon co-productions, impish wags from the left
side of the ditch are prone to giggle over the image of perhaps a Joe Pesci cartoon goombah
making an offer you can't refuse. The fact that most Americans retain a view of
"It's better to junk
your stereotypes from the start. If you are doing co-productions you have to be
open-minded," shrugs Milano, who produces the
Italian-French TV series Rahan, now completing
preproduction. An Italian working in
Based on a French comic
strip, Rahan recounts the adventures of a
virtuous boy growing up in a prehistoric period of tension between Neanderthals
and Homo sapiens. She brought the Xilam project to
Rule
3: Find out what the broadcasters are looking for.
"The market has made giant steps," enthuses Luca Milano,
head of marketing at RAI Fiction. "The level of artistic talent is now
impressive." As to the stereotype that Italian companies have
"artistic delays," Milano rolls his
eyes. "Ninety-five percent of our projects arrive on time or, if late, the
delay is minimal. Sometimes delivery occurs even before the due date."
The Italian cartoon
market has been nurtured principally by the decision by RAI to begin
investing in animation in the 1990s. "We contribute around an average
of 35 percent of the budget for new productions, leaving the producer to find
other investors," explains Milano. This offers a
strong incentive for companies from other countries to bring their projects to
Ah, but here's the rub:
RAI will often ask for Italian artistic participation, including a co-director
to go with the Italian co-producer, even for their minority stake. While this
often rankles, most figure it is worth the price. "Because of the long
relationship with Italian studios, sharing copyright and profits is worth
it," shrugs Ellipsanime producer Robert Rea.
Rule 4: Take it to the
market.
The standard path to success has been to bring a project to RAI, get their
blessing, and take it on to Cartoon Forum, MIPCOM and other venues, where one
tries to catch the eye of a broadcaster or production partner in another
country. Along the way, Italian companies began to learn about how other
countries did business.
"The first time I
took a project to Cartoon Forum, I pitched to an empty room," laughs
director Giuseppe Lagan`, whose Moose! project
with British Cosgrove Hall is now finishing its pilot phase. "The next
year I took two projects. Nothing. Finally the third
year I had learned: I took Lupo Alberto
and we had a series." Lesson: For European co-productions, it helps to
have a popular product already in print.
The
confrontation with the market allows for a healthy development of the project
itself. Luca de Crescenza, head of Florence-based Stranemani, just returned from pitching his preschool
project Glu Glu
to a packed house at Cartoon Forum. He found a lot of enthusiasm, but also a
series of demands he had not considered, such as stretching the five-minute
show to seven minutes to suit the British market.
This process of mixing it up leads to relationships that cross borders
and form the first level of trust essential for co-productions. "We look for partners with
whom we have worked before, or with a spirit similar to ours," says Stefania Raimondi, President of Turin-based Enanimation. Raimondi is co-producing Me, Myself and the Others, a fantasy series about a jumpy
group of problematic jungle animals confronting decidedly human situations, loosely
based on the artwork of legendary Italian illustrator Andrea Pazienza. Their partner is
Rule 5: Spend more
time in preproduction ironing out the details.
Producers stress the importance of such things as production schedules and
responsibility for deliverables. French producer Robert Rea is also a
fanatic for a "big" preproduction, stressing the importance of
the modelization setup. "But after that you save
time," he affirms. This is seconded by Giovanna Milano,
who underlines the importance of finishing the literary and graphic bible and
at least six screenplays before moving on. "You need your railways well
aligned from the start," she says, evoking a train metaphor. Street
Football producer Giorgio Welter of French Teleimages
is even more emphatic: "You need at least a year before you can begin
production."
"The
hardest part is the very beginning," agrees Gianluca Bellomo,
whose Rome-based Cartoon One is now finishing work on the horror
Cartoon One has 36
percent of the production, including model pack, storyboard, animation, and
music by Angelo Poggi. Gerhard Hahn has been quick to
praise their work. "In a situation where everybody is complaining, I found
Gianluca Bellomo's no-problem attitude very
encouraging," he asserts. "Cartoon One was
definitely the right choice." Bellomo is quick
to return the compliment. "We have learned a great deal from them,"
he affirms. "Cartoon One has grown, thanks to Hahn
Film."
Well, that proves that
co-production partners can like each other.
Rule 6: Know your
partner.
Pisa-based Toposodo/Fulmini & Leopardi worked
first with Ellipsanime as an animation service for Potlatch.
"This started our relationship of co-production, which has become closer
over time," states Topisodo partner Marco Bigliazzi. Ellipsanime producer
Roberto Rea was also enthusiastic. "They have a good culture of the
cartoon," he says, adding that their artistic contributions on Potlatch
helped immeasurably to improve the series.
Toposodo then took their project Birds
Band to Rea and Ellipsanime and they began to
develop it together, with RAI's blessing and
contributions. The series relates the adventures of a group of feathered
friends who live on a dirigible and scour the globe in search of animals in
crisis. "The project evolved, characters were refined," Bigliazzi relates. "Peggy the Penguin was added, even
though flightless, as was Nat the Bat, who is decidedly a mammal."
"The
French animation industry is far more developed than that of
Well, I guess they like
each other too.
Rule 7: Make a mutual
decision about the tools you are going to use.
"While everything is so new for each production, the basic process is
always the same," Rea insists, but in the same breath is adamant about the
need for partners to sit down and agree on their tools beforehand.
"Do we need a new release of this software? Sometimes you don't need
it."
Evelina Poggi, director of production for DeMas
Partners, is now collaborating on the second series of Street Football
with Teleimages of France. The series, in which
orphan kids win the world cup of street soccer, was a smash hit especially in
Teleimages producer Giorgio Welter agrees
that there were perplexities in preproduction. "It was tough at
first," he admits, "but now we love each other."
Ahem.
Rule
8: Make sure you are selling the same project.
"Every producer has to sell the same product," insists Giovana Milano. Partners in
different countries need to agree on how to present their project to the
broadcasters. "You can get in trouble sometimes if you have two
broadcasters who have a different vision of the show," adds Robert
Rea. Horror stories abound of networks demanding changes in order to sell
the show to a demographic for which it was never intended. "It
sometimes happens that there is tension [between broadcasters] in
Rule
9: The contract should be balanced so that the partners will be able to sustain
the effort over the period of the production.
While the businessman seeks to make the best deal possible for the good of his
company, the artists working under him (or her) need the reassurance that their
partners will be motivated to keep up the pace and deliver quality product.
"There is a myth that the contract is a thing you negotiate, throw in a
drawer and forget about," laughs Richard Trigona,
intellectual property lawyer and producer of the British-Italian production of Moose.
"You have to be careful to define the respective roles of management and
artistic direction."
"From the middle of
the project onwards, there is always a fatigue that sets in," Enanimation's Stefania Raimondi
reminds us, implying that the quality of the work will suffer if there is
not sufficient motivation for one party or the other to keep digging down and
churning it out.
Rule 10: Find a
language in common.
Rea says the common language of productions is "animated pidgin"
English. It helps to be bilingual, if not trilingual. Rea, Giovanna Milano and Giorgio Welter are at a distinct advantage
because they slip easily from one language to the other. Scripts, by the way,
are written in English, French, Italian and whatever language the partner
speaks.
Rule 11: Work with a
company that is equivalent in size to your own.
This rule comes from Stefania Raimondi. Her company
of 40 may be small by American standards, but it is an exception in the Italian
market because they made a choice to hire all of their employees full-time
instead of outsourcing their work (see the next rule). "It is important
for us to work with companies of similar size because our problems will be
similar," she asserts. Their partner, Motion Works, is indeed about
that size.
Rule 12: Know your own
team.
See above.
Rule
13: Seek the solution, not the guilty parties.
"For us," Raimondi asserts, "it is always important to seek the
result when we are working, to find the solution. There are always problems,
but it is important not to automatically seek out who is wrong when there is
work to be done."
Rule 14: Travel often
and spend time at each other's facilities.
"I spent most of my life on planes going to
Rea is clear that one of
the most important factors in a relationship is frequent meetings in each
other's studios. "[Topsodo] came once a month to
Rule
15: One partner must always have final say.
Both contract law and good business practice reaffirm the fact that the
partner who has the majority stake has the final say. This is often moot,
however, when artists get together and feel passionately about their product.
"You have to look at the budget," says Giorgio Welter. "The
majority partner must guide the project, and this must be understood from the
beginning." This said, Welter is a still a great
supporter of the "right of the word." "The real rule is to
talk, talk, talk," he smiles. "When one is in the middle of a free
creative process, it's normal to argue."
Rule
16: Seek opportunities in the changing landscape.
Rainbow Entertainment is the first international success story to emerge
from
There is also a new
division of labor in the Italian market. Production companies such as Atlantyca Entertainment are driven more by the literary
properties and licenses they control than the need to keep a cartoon studio
running. With the fantastic success of their children's book series Geronimo
Stilton, Atlantyca is now starting work on a TV
series, and is looking across the pond for top-level name directors in order to
assure a ready market in the states. This is good news for Italian studios,
which can continue to supplement their income with services to these production
companies and the projects they generate. Indeed, leading producer Enarmonia has divided its work now between its studio,
which continues to do service work, and its production company Enanimazione, as has production company Toposodo
with its studio Fulmini e Leopardi.
There are also signs
that Italian companies are poaching in domains where they never would have gone
previously. Trigona found Moose sitting on a shelf in
development at Collingswood-Hall and brought the project to life. The upcoming Spike
Girls, based on the world of volleyball, may well be a co-production involving
partners from
On a
corporate level, the climate is also changing. Martin Mystery was
an Italian comic that Marathon produced in
Street Football producer Giorgio Welter, an
expatriate Italian working in
Rule 17:And, above all, listen to mamma RAI.
Each of the production teams has universal praise for RAI's
leadership team of Luca Milano, Anita Romanelli at RAI Fiction, and Claudia Sasso
at RAI 2. Aiming at quality, they have not shied away from financing projects
that have no Italian partners, as is the case with the Spanish TV series of The
Invisible
Giorgio Welter recounts
that the second season of their very successful Street Football was held
up when Rai Fiction's Anita Romanelli
insisted that they make changes. After their orphan heroes won the world
championship of street football (soccer) in the first season, the new season
was supposed to be based on the same premise. Romanelli
insisted that they instead focus on a strong antagonist who puts their
sportsmanship to the test. "At the time I was not happy at all,"
Welter recounts. In time, he acknowledged that this was the right choice.
"Now I'm happy," he smiles. "That's co-production."
Russell Bekins has served time in story and project development for
Creative Artists Agency and Disney. He now lives in
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