Producing Animation by Catherine Winder & Zahra Dowlatabadi

Author:Catherine Winder & Zahra Dowlatabadi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Focal Press

When setting up a deal with a subcontractor, it is important to provide yourself with an option to withdraw the contract should the subcontractor not perform up to par. A few years ago, I (Zahra) worked on a feature film where approximately 600 feet (or almost 7 minutes) were set aside for special effects work by a subcontracting studio. We had selected this particular group since they had done an excellent job on another production and came highly recommended. In order to acquaint the subcontracting studio with the show, we flew in the studio head and the production manager to our studio for a handout meeting. Right from the start, however, we ran into problems. The first order of business was to set up a meeting for the director and the studio head to meet and go through the artwork. Though we had specifically organized the trip for this purpose, the subcontractor’s studio head showed up to the meeting very late. Without any apologies for keeping everyone waiting, he sat back in his chair and promptly nodded off. I had been warned that he was not the easiest person to work with, but that his work was worth all the hassle. Attributing his behavior to jet lag, we decided to set up another meeting for the handout. At the following meeting, the director discussed her specific needs for the sequence and the subcontractor’s studio head listened without asking any questions. Again, his lack of response was alarming, but we decided to move forward anyway since we had gone this far and were assured this studio was worth the effort. I next met with the production manager and informed him of the weekly quotas expected from his studio. I also reviewed with him our required weekly progress chart so that we could track the status of the scenes. The production manager seemed to understand what I was requesting and was eager to fulfill his new responsibilities.

For a number of weeks, I contacted the studio production manager to follow up on the status of production. Every time we spoke, however, there was a new excuse as to why the work was not ready. To be fair, it should be noted that we had made revisions on some of the material they had received and asked them to hold off on working on those specific sections. Yet there were plenty of other scenes they could have started on. Nevertheless, weeks went by and they were not producing any footage. Finally, scenes started trickling in one by one, but the work was substandard. I contacted the studio head to find out what could be done to speed up and improve their output and fix the problematic scenes. His response was that he was a far superior director to the director on the project and that he was fulfilling his promise to work on the show only as a favor to our production executive. Clearly, they did not have any interest in producing their best work on our show.

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