Posted on 12/02/2006 11:04:03 AM PST by abb
Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it would dismiss about 160 of the 800 employees in its feature animation unit as the company slowed production at what once was its crown jewel.
The 20% cutback comes nearly a year after Disney purchased Pixar Animation Studios, maker of such computer-animated hits as "Cars" and "The Incredibles." Pixar executives including creative guru John Lasseter took control of the Disney group, aiming to revive an operation that was a crucial profit center before it lost ground to other studios.
"With John Lasseter from Pixar being put over the division, and the much brighter track record they've had, he's going to keep his guys and his projects first," said David Koenig, an author of books on Disney.
The number of artists, technologists and production managers in Burbank will be reduced. A separate TV animation unit is unaffected.
Employees said they were told that because the average production time for the Burbank company's animated films was expanding from 12 months to 18 months, fewer staffers could handle the workload.
"The management team at Walt Disney Animation has determined that each film will dictate its own appropriate production schedule," Disney Studios spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said. "The result of this necessitated a reduction of staff."
Hundreds of the division's employees are members of the local animators guild and are covered under a collective-bargaining contract. But management can choose whom to fire based on skill level instead of seniority, guild business representative Steve Hulett said. Notification of those affected is to begin the week of Dec. 11.
"Everybody's wondering who's going to be getting the ax," Hulett said.
Tempering the news about the layoffs is the healthy job market for computer animation.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Rethink and rework. Grade: C-.
I will seriously take your criticism under advisement and give it proper consideration.
Meanwhile back to our regular programming...
Well, I was still a kid when it came out, so it was pretty damn cool at the time. I'd be embarrassed to watch it now, but hey, memories.
I don't think Disney has anything to worry about as long as I keep paying our Disney Vacation Club dues. That's enough to keep a few annimators going.
.....ABC is just a little something they picked up along the way......
Perhaps there is a little more to it than that.
There is synergy between the content providers and the content purveyors. Disney was always by ABC for content. When it became fashionable for the purveyors to ally with the providers the Disney/ABC matchup was a natural.
....I think this qualifies as DeathWatch™ reporting....
In the immediate sense this is a Dino event. It is a classic buggy whip segment attempting to hang on. We don't know the breakeven between digital and hand drawn, but if digital develops a cost and quality advantage, hand drawn will wither.
In the larger sense, ABC/Disney may be in the downward spiral of network TV but that is not the cause of the problem under discussion.
could not agree more....animation was great until PC shi-ite ruined it!!!!
.....Rethink and rework. Grade: C-......
Please take a wider view of ABB's efforts.
He is performing a historical service by collecting and recording the day by day decline of the American Dino media. His medium is Free Republic. The servers and his profile are an important historical document that can be used by future resesrchers to learn and understand what really happened.
On that basis, the man deserves a much higher grade.
Several large advertisers have forecast their advertising budgets for '07. Budweiser and P&G come to mind. Without exception, advertisers have signaled their intent to curtail buying on broadcast tv and concentrate on cable and internet which is narrowcast. The implication of this decision by advertisers is quite obvious
I can remember times when we chose which movie to attend based on these characters. In other words often times these were better than the movies they were billed with.<(•¿•)>
A senior advisor to the Kerry campaign in 2004 writes:
Mainstream Media can thumb its nose at citizen journalists who post on blogs. Joe Klein can dismiss bloggers going to Las Vegas for YearlyKos with a curt "can't we just stop this crap?"
But Joe, why would we? Our traffic is skyrocketing. We can raise awareness, and money. We work together and guess what? What you're writing about next week, I read about last week on mydd.com, or crooksandliars.com or rawstory.com.
The facts are clear. Voter are getting their news from where they want, when they want.
And increasingly, they don't want to read the Globe today.
Eisner wrecked Disney.
For animation fans, I would recommend almost any of the productions of Studio Ghibli, some of which have been picked up by Disney. The best ones are by Hayao Miyazaki. He seems to be both a pacifist (having suffered in WW II as a child) and an environmentalist, but frankly that doesn't matter, his stuff is so extremely good.
"Spirited Away" may be his most famous, but I strongly recommend "Porco Rosso," "Castle in the Sky," "Totoro," or any of his other films. Great stuff for the family. Brilliant animation and story telling.
You can find the details at the Studio Ghibli web site, or look up Miyazaki at Amazon and check the reviews.
Life After Television
Released from the restrictions of mass media, American culture could attain new levels in both the visual arts and literature. p 48
The very nature of broadcasting, however, means that television cannot cater to the special interests of audiences dispersed across the country. Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar, it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns. All of world industry is moving increasingly toward more segmented markets. But in a broadcast medium, such a move would be a commercial disaster. In a broadcast medium, artists and writers cannot appeal to the highest aspirations and sensibilities of individuals. Instead, manipulative masters rule over huge masses of people. pp 48-49
Television is a tool of tyrants. Its overthrow will be a major force for freedom and individuality, culture and morality. That overthrow is at hand. p 49
Bugs Bunny is the crown prince of the Universe. I cannot remember a single Disney Cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse that I even sort of liked, and that includes Fantasia.
Tom and Jerry I can take or leave but Foghorn Leghorn is for the win (Boy, I say Boy, you are about as sharp as a sackful of wet mice)
And I doubt seriously this belongs in a death watch.
As to laying off some animators, I think that's probably because of the greater time for production, and the fact that even traditional animation is largely done on computer now, eliminating the need for much of the labor.
Reposting. A must read that accurately (imo) depicts the whys of the current media creative destruction now underway...
http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/2006/10/media_2uhoh_in_.html#more
Media 2.Uh-Oh in a single file
Disney is toast. Walt must be saddened to see his once great family-oriented empire turned into a politically-correct leftist cesspool.
Basically, Disney resurged in the late-80s, early-90s starting with "The Little Mermaid".... But that isn't the entire story. Actually, the push to make new cartoons after doing nothing for too long, started with "Oliver & Co.", which was a miserable disappointment.
"Mermaid" had better animation and a better story and a better hook for the adults (so they'd enjoy it, too). It also had Howard Ashman writing song lyrics. When he died, Disney started to decline again. Alan Menchin's other work since Ashman died has been horrible.
There are some exceptions, of course. "A Whole New World" wasn't Ashman, but the "fun" songs of Aladdin were. Elton John's work on "The Lion King" was great (no Menkin). And the "Tarzan" soundtrack took a different approach by making the music the background rather than having a musical.
Disney's last few attempts (w/o Pixar) have been kind of silly to say the least. Nothing anyone would want to go see. Might as well make a film about a rat that gets flushed down a toilet with realistic graphics of the rat and the toilet and all the sewage beyond. Yeah! That's the ticket.
Walt Disney Co. will price themselves out of the market soon and all that will be left is the queer day.
I saw a commercial for the Little Mermaid DVD....boy, what was state of the art now looked old and tired.
The animation layoffs are payback by the Pixar people...a lot of animosity between the two groups (Disney Animation v Pixar)
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