Wednesday, August 27, 2008

So I got a nice invite

The Cartoon Forum is on in September. It's held in a different country every year but basically it's a place where animation production companies across Europe show presentations of their shows and try to drum up broadcaster and distributor interest.

If I can get internet access there, I'll let you know what I've seen and what looked good or, more likely, what bored me to death. The only times I've been at the forum before, I saw a serious amount of cack. I saw some great stuff too - that never got made. I saw a presentation for an animated cookery show from Passion Pictures that looked good. I wonder what happened with that?

So, yes, if I'm still alive and don't have to drop out for some reason, I'll report from the Cartoon Forum (somewhere in Germany this year) and let you know what's going on.

Actually, it was in Germany last time I was there too - in 2001, just after the Trade Tower attack. The only radio station in English I could pick up was one for a local US Army base. They had a news story saying that the US Government had found definitive proof that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attack. I came home wondering why nobody at home seemed to be reporting this - the Army radio seemed so sure. They weren't reporting it as speculation. It was fact.

It was only years later that I realised the Army radio station was priming their troops for an attack as far back as then. They had always just been waiting for their excuse to put the invasion in motion. And they found it.

I wonder if I'll hear anything juicy from the radio stations this time...

Oh, I added a few more links I like. Check them out and tell 'em a grumpy old animator sent you.

2 comments:

Mr. Trombley said...

Dear Sir, I read this about the Cartoon Forum:

"The purpose of the Cartoon Forum is to foster co-productions and accelerate financial arrangements. The Cartoon Forum allows co-productions to be finalised, pre-buys agreed, negotiation of distribution agreements, options discussed on every type of right, and licensing of secondary rights.

Over 300 projects, with a total budget of more than 1.000 million EUR, presented at the Cartoon Forum have secured their financing and are now in production or already broadcasted worldwide."

That is an incredible amount of money for cartoons. It reminds me of Feynman's crack about "Economically Large Numbers".

Mr. Trombley said...

PS. By "incredibly large amount of money for cartoons" I mean in comparison to how people in seem to live.

It just doesn't make sense to me that there are single movie less than two hours long that cost more than a hundred million dollars. Obviously then, I must not know how much money it actually takes to make a cartoon.