A. Film L.A. test

In the middle of the Christmas hustle I finally found the ratings for the airing of our film "The Flight before Christmas" on December 12th: of the 98 primetime shows in the week from December 8th to 14th, it came in as number 36, just below Law and Order but just above 30 Rock! It rated 2.5, which is as close to the average as you can get, and it means 7,390,000 people were tuned in to it! Mike Sporn points out that it aired again locally in New York yesterday, which I find simply amazing. As to the film itself, I do find that the cutting of the 29 minutes helps it along, though there are a few places one seems to be missing a bit of info. Not at all bad, though. Over all, I think the film looks pretty nice for an about $9m project. I only personally was a little shocked about the casualness with with Niko was conceived, but then again, these are reindeer... Excuse my erratic posting these days, folks! These are crazy times! I am thinking of what to post next, and consider

Here is a strange coincidence! My company, A. Film has co-produced a film originally called Niko & the Way to the Stars, and it has its theatrical premiere today Friday in Denmark! Well - tonight at 9 pm PST it is shown (in a 1-hour slot) on CBS! It is domestically distributed by the Weinstein Co. as "The Flight Before Christmas." The film was originated at the Finnish CG animation studio Anima Vitae, where the original story was produced and the basic designs of the characters was developed. A. Film has contributed with the film's director and a large part of the actual film: planning, animation, lighting, rigging, rendering etc. How CBS fits the film within the 1-hour timeslot, I do not know (yet). But for those of you who want to see the entire thing, it's available at Amazon - and I saw it for sale at Fry's Electronics just this afternoon! Here are the US cover and a Danish banner ad (click to unsqueeze). Imagine what we could do with a REAL budget!

This item stands alone - here are notes for a talk held by animator Bob McCrea on Tuesday evening 9/4/56 at the Disney studios. It shows us that there was an interest in creating an interest for the history of animation in 1956. It may be a bit simplistic, and not always correct (there is no D in Bill Nolan), but it was well-meant and they screened a few highlights that I guess may otherwise have been hard to get to see... Why Bob McCrea today? Well, I just revisited Wall-E (my this-year-favorite film) on BluRay, and the following image ran by: On the The Animation Guild blog, we read (and check it out, as there is more info and a drawing): "Bob spent forty years at the House of Mouse, starting with Snow White in 1937 through The Rescuers in 1977. Afterwards he was an animation instructor at CalArts from 1977 until 1986, the last four years as the head of the School of Character Animation. He passed away in 1995." AHA! Bob McCrea was the "captain" of CalArts! Ok, t