A. Film L.A. test

The studio is moving! In an effort to consolidate functions, A. Film will have this new address from next week: A. Film A/S Mosedalvej 14 2500 Valby Denmark [We are still in Copenhagen, but in a part that has its own name...] Some of you may recognize the address: for a hundred years it has been the address of the Film Studio Nordisk Film . Arguably the oldest constantly-producing film studio in the world, Nordisk Film was started November 6th, 1906 . Yes, Pathé is ten years older, but it has not had the same continuity... This Friday afternoon, after the main move, we will have a "House Cooling Party" in our old address on Tagensvej, for which this invite was made (in Danish!): By the way, we keep our telephone numbers! Our scanners have already moved, so that settled it - no new posts until sometime next week!

Our third own hand-drawn feature film was also the most expensive film to have been put into production in Denmark in the last millenium. Originally released theatrically on October 6th, 2000 as " Help! I'm a Fish ," it was released on DVD in the US as " A Fish Tale " some four years later, with a CG cover, to make it look like "Shark Tale" which came out four years later (again, the choice of the distributor, out of our hands). I just noticed that it is available again in the UK . It started as an animation test for our assistants during our time at Swan Film in Copenhagen in 1986, two years before we founded A. Film. The test was "draw poses with different personalities for a fish, a starfish and a jellyfish." That was all. One of the first ideas we had for a feature film - see my previous post - was a film with these three characters basically commenting on the state of pollution under the sea. A few years later we cooked up the bit about ...

After having animated on several films for Don Bluth, and having animated sixteen minutes of FernGully: the Last Rainforest, we felt it was our turn to produce our own feature film, and Denmark being a small country, we found that this was only possible through co-operation with a well-known Danish author. We contacted Flemming Quist Møller who had written a little good-night story for his son, and it was this story that became our first feature film "Jungledyret Hugo" ("Hugo the Jungle Animal," in English called "Jungle Jack" and later "Jungo") which was released in 1993. At the time, I had myself rented out to work on a project called "The History of Our Wonderful World" which I co-directed with Anders Sørensen - more about this later. I got to edit the animatic of "Jungle Jack" and animate only two scenes, as well as program the production software at night while working on the World History in the daytime. In the mean tim...

Hans Christian Andersen lived from 1805 to 1875. His first volume of fairy tales was published in 1835, and ever since, his name has been an indelible part of Danish history. His remains were interred at Assistens Kirkegård in Copenhagen, where one can also find Søren Kierkegaard, H.C. Ørsted, Lauritz Melchior and Niels Bohr, painters Abildgaard, Eckersberg, Købke, Skovgaard and Heerup, as well as Basie-trombone player Richard Boone (from Little Rock, AR) who came to Copenhagen with jazz greats Ben Webster and Kenny Drew who also are interred here. In the summer this is also a nice park. In the year 2005, which was the 200th anniversary of his birth, my studio A. Film produced a series of television programs called Hans Christian Andersen: The Fairy Tales . Actually, the original name of the series is "The Fairytaler," which admittedly is rather constructed. We received the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2005 for this series, for “re-interpretation of H.C. Anders...

Mr. Mouse is 81 today! Let's see if I can find something worth posting today... ...erh - maybe you like this one? It was originally also part of the " Kentucky Stash ," the box of papers that Burt Gillett gave to the daughter of a family he befriended after being hired by Van Beuren in New York in 1934. It seems to have been made as a gag drawing, to show a few things that you were not expected to do with Mr. Mouse.

Last year, we co-produced with Anima Vitae, Cinemaker and Magma Films an originally Finnish project "Niko - Lentäjän poika," internationally released as "Niko and the Way to the Stars," in the US as " Flight Before Christmas ." We did most all of the animation and a whole lot more, and are pretty pleased with the film. It was seen by 9.35 million viewers when it aired last December on CBS and CW domestically, and is currently in release in theaters in Germany as "Niko - Ein Rentier hebt ab" where it runs in nearly 400 cinemas and has been seen by over 200,000 in the past two weeks, which is a lot! Here are the US and Dutch covers! Have a look up close - they are actually similar yet completely different! I wonder why this is - I guess it is a rights issue between the distributors. I can only hope that everyone buys the film, if only to see what they missed by the cutting of 27 minutes for the US airing!

The last one of this type for now, it is a short one - not for a short cake but shortning for an upside-down cake. Also from the Babbitt/Hubley reel, this is so controlled, it MUST be Art Babbitt's animation! I wish someone would make a DVD with all these wonderful commercials!