Animation industry booms
Business booming in Vancouver despite tax credit decrease, Stuart Derdeyn writes
While animator Christopher Auchter describes the business as a ‘slugfest,’ big money is being made within Vancouver’s surging digital-media sector.
Marv Newland is regarded by many as the Godfather of Vancouver animation. His features Bambi Meets Godzilla and Sing Beast Sing are considered two of the most important animated films in history. Yet the Vancouver Film School instructor describes his business this way:
“It’s a stupid art, making movies one frame at a time. You have to be a bit crazy.”
Christopher Auchter might concur. On a studio wall at the Woodward’s Block offices of the National Film Board B.C. and Yukon Centre in Gastown, multi-coloured Postit notes arranged in successive rows list every frame number and director’s note for Auchter’s The Mountain of SGaana, a 10-minute-long film currently in production. It’s a reframing of a traditional Haida folk tale about a hero’s quest to reclaim her lover stolen away to the spirit world, a story told without dialogue. The images must be evocative, the characters fully developed, the narrative seamless for it all to work.
For now, that vision is mapped out in the Post-it array, thousands of notes for a 10-minute-long film — one big gust of wind could spell catastrophe. Or at least make the animator’s head explode.
“It has been more than two years since the initial idea and I didn’t have any grey hairs when it started,” he says. “But I was also working at Electronic Arts and doing other contracts such as illustrations for children’s books. It’s a slugfest at times, but I love it.”
Suffice to say, the animation business in Vancouver has never been more, well, animated.
More than 60 digital media companies make up the local VFX (visual effects) and animation industry, representing the highest concentration of domestic and foreign-owned studios in the world, according to the Vancouver Economic Commission. Even with the provincial government poised to trim to 16 per cent from 17.5 per cent the tax credits for visual effects and animation studios come October, production at studios is booming all over town.
Creative B.C.’s annual activity report for 2013-14 reported the dollar value of salaries and wages resulting from digital animation and visual effects at $270 million. This figure doesn’t include video games and interactive media. Film and TV production is separated out as well with a $1.611-billion value in 2013-14 (Profile 2014: An Economic Report on the Screen-based Media Production Industry in Canada).
Shirley Vercruysse, executive producer Pacific and Yukon Centre for the NFB, says the studio’s goal is to bring animation back up to about 25 per cent of its overall productions. Put in perspective, Auchter’s 10-minute-long film costs more than $200,000. Feature-length productions cost considerably more.
“We currently have 19 projects in various stages of production and development,” says Vercruysse. “Of these, five are animation, which is slightly over 25 per cent.”
Presently in release from the local NFB is director Ann Marie Fleming’s theatrical feature Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming, which will have its North American premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Irish director Eoin Duffy’s five-minute-long I Am Here, featuring the voice of Da Vinci’s Inquest star Nicholas Campbell. The Mountain of SGaana and Hart Snider’s seven-minute Shop Class are in production, while Julia Kwan’s five-minute piece titled The Zoo and Bahram Javahry’s Two Apples are in development. That’s good news for independent creators.
But big money is made on proprietary series and service/contract work at local studios, not art-house offerings. Producing a hit series like My Little Pony for Hasbro or the box office-smashing, R-rated animated feature Sausage Party requires economies of scale. Whether it’s your own creation or someone else’s, the workload is huge — and Vancouver is overloaded.
“Right now, the Vancouver industry is very hot and that means various things and varying responses to it,” says Delna Bhesania, CEO of Bardel Entertainment. “One of the reasons that we pushed into the Kelowna region in 2011 was to grow the industry in another part of B.C. and develop an additional talent base for specific jobs in the industry such as compositing.”
Opened in 1987, Bardel produces such hot properties as Adult Swim’s Rick & Morty, Teen Titans Go! and the multiple Daytime Emmy Award-winning All Hail King Julien as well as major features for DreamWorks (Puss in Boots), Warner Brothers (Space Jam) and more. In 2015, the studio was purchased by Europe’s largest animation studio, Italy-based Rainbow, in a deal potentially worth up to US$50 million.
Global amalgamation in the animation world is a trend and Vancouver has seen its share of sales, mergers and acquisitions. In 2007, DHX Media acquired both Studio B and later Nerdcorps. In 2015, Canadian heavyweight Thunderbird Films purchased Atomic Cartoons. There is little doubt that this will continue as the business keeps growing exponentially.
Next week: A look at the differences between bringing proprietary work to broadcast as opposed to service/ contract business, five big hits being made in town right now and comments from industry players.