Animation Development by David B. Levy

Author:David B. Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781581157307
Publisher: Allworth Press

You Did It!

At the conclusion of this pitch, in which I’d summarized the story in less than two minutes, Fred’s eyebrows raised. “You did it! You did it!” he exclaimed. “This is terrific. I’m going to send it to Eric Homan in L.A. for him to check out.” Fred runs his company out of an office in New York City, but the main production leg is in Los Angeles and is overseen by Frederator’s vice president of development, Eric Homan. Many weeks went by, and I didn’t hear any news from Mr. Homan. In the meantime, I scheduled another meeting with Fred, this time to show him a film I had just made with animator Dale Clowdis. Our film, Scout Says, was an outgrowth of a pitch project called Hard to Swallow, and detailed the misadventures of a trio of unlikely backyard animal friends: a bossy bird, a dim-witted cat, and a spineless (get it?) worm. Fred enjoyed the film and encouraged us to show it to Eric Homan after we mentioned that we would be in L.A. the following month, pitching some ideas to networks. Fred told me that while I was in L.A., I should be sure to ask Eric Homan about my Owl and Rabbitpitch. Fred runs his own company, but he was asking me to talk to someone else about the fate of a project for which he had professed love. I prepared myself for bad news.

Once in L.A., Dale and I were delighted to discover that Eric Homan was a swell guy. He spent two hours giving us a full tour of Nickelodeon studios (where Frederator is encamped) and also took the time to look at Scout Says. At the time, Frederator was not yet ready to embark on its next round of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. We were only hoping to plant a seed and to entice the Frederator execs to want to work with us when they were ready.

Eric then turned to my Owl and Rabbit Play Checkerspitch. “This is great. And a couple of months ago, we would have done this, but now we’re looking for stuff that doesn’t skew quite this young,” he explained. I felt like Bart in The Simpsonswhen the Hollywood director says, “Congratulations, Bart Simpson: you’re our new Fallout Boy! That’s what I’d be saying to you if you weren’t an inch too short. . . . Next!”

I was euphoric a few months earlier when Fred had seemed to love this pitch, and I had walked out of the meeting believing I’d made a sale. Positive feedback on a pitch can be intoxicating. It’s hard not to let hubris settle in and induce us to build a case for how it can’t possibly go anywhere but up. In my case the evidence was my reputation as a director on the number one preschool series, my history illustrating children’s books, the brilliance of my project, the fact that Frederator needed to make dozens of books to fulfill its requirements to Nick Jr.

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