The next step

[pasithea]

I've always been a person who believes you can do ANYTHING if you set your mind to it. So far, this belief has never once lead me astray.

So now I'm going toto take a desire I've heard many people express and attempt to breathe life into it, and I even have something like a plan for pulling it off.

Many times I've heard fans express the desire to see the people of the fandom work together and pull off an animated film collaboration. Pipe dream?

No. Anima-jam. What is an anima-jam? Heavy Metal, Fantasia, the Animatrix, Robot Carnival, Allegro Non Troppa A series of shorts bound together by a common theme and often a simple binding shell story (The orchestra and Walt in Fantasia, the girl in the farmhouse in Heavy Metal) A few minutes times a few artists and suddenly you have something fairly impressive WITHOUT dealing with the flakiness of artists and the interpersonality quarrels and drama that exist in any group.

At the same time, an anima-jam opens doors. It gets people together, talking, thinking about working in their own way but within the confines of a project definition and deadline. It gives those people a tool to show what they are creating as well as some motivation and the ever-important connections.

So how do I go about pulling this off? It's a smaller idea than a finished feature-length film but it still needs a lot of planning. Here's what I see as some possible ideas in no possible order other than step 1 is definetely step 1.

• Step 1: Discuss idea with others and get their input.
• Figure out who controls this thing. Right now I'm looking towards AA&E. It's a good candidate for the overall management. Well established, trusted, and has a solid understanding of working as a non-profit system.
• On the way of getting people really interested in participating, I have several ideas.
  • Talk with convention boards and get screening times at their conventions. Chip hosted a first filmfest at FC last year and I feel certain other conventions would be more than happy to show a collection of films.
  • Offer a prize! This could be trickier. I would be willing to throw a hundred dollars into a kitty towards winner (and exclude my own work from competition, of course) but $100 really isn't much in terms of motivation for animation. I'd have to find additional ways to fund it, and I again don't know how this would all work in a legal sense, hence needing help from a more experienced group. Some ideas that come to mind:
    • Woo sponsors
    • Convince the aforementioned conventions to collect some small door fee from viewers to go into the prize pool or pay some small fee towards the pool to have the show at their convention
    • Collect a small entry fee from the animators (perhaps $5 per submission)
    • Merchandise about the program (not viable for a first-year endevour but maybe in the future)
  • So? What would it take to get animators interested? I dunno. $300 first, $100 second, $50 third would probably be enough to pull me in but I can't speak for anyone else.
  • Another idea I had was to go to the Ursula Major Awards and solicit them to add a 'fan animation' category. They have some name recognition and would give some credibility and recognition to the animation and carry the news of its existance in some directions. Second, animation being as popular as it is, this would draw attention to the Ursula and give it more attention as well. A mutual win. Plus the Ursula could be in addition to the Anima-jam, not internal to it.
  • Advertise! Newsgroups, BBSes, MU*s, ads in various fanzines, maybe even publish a flyer online that anyone feeling helpful could print out and post at their local comic book shop or at the animation lab at their school.
• Of course one wonders how to do the judging and topic selection as well as who create a shell narration for the entries to fit in (if there was such a component)? At least for the first one, I'd be willing to do the animation for a shell narration and I have the focus and dilligence to work from someone else's story and see it through, or I could put together the theme as well (though I feel strongly that more diversity in the core creators will result in a better end product) I think I also have a few connections that I could convince to work with me on a core story to make a better wrapper to the individual animations.
• Another possibility is to take a home convention and use their annual theme for the theme of the animajam this year. Since I'm looking at AA&E, FC would be the natural choice and 'Ancient Egypt' is an easily workable central story! A runaway goes down a dark hallway in an ancient temple and while hiding, finds an ancient mural. Different piece of the mural or texts come to life and then cut into the animation for an individual segment, or something of that nature would be insanely simple to do.
  • The downside of this, of course is that it reduces some of the attractiveness it has for other conventions and possibly gets back into the group dynamics conflicts.

I guess that's all I can think of on this topic right this moment, I may add some more later, but on the whole... What do you guys think? I'm thinking I could realistically pull it off.

Comments

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

I think this is a great idea, actually! Not sure if it should be based on any particular con theme. Ancient Egypt is cool (and I even have a story idea that relates to it that I've been kicking around for about a year now), but as I'm sure you can attest, one year to finish any major animation undertaking can be nerve-wracking.

One idea I tossed to Flint, and he seemed enthused about though I haven't pursued it any since then, was build up a bona-fide animation festival with FC as the primary showing. It's along the same track as your idea, but admittedly a different train. Get a variety of interests that all related to anthropomorphics, can include prizes, and can get some notarity and distribution worked out with it too, especially with independent theaters (such as the local Camera Cinemas.)

That said, a unified film with a common theme would be spectacular if you ask me! Count me in.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

You might be right actually. Thanks to Chip we had our first sort of mini-animation festival last year and it might actually make more sense to expand upon this first and move towards an Anima-jam anthology type piece at a later date. The festival is an even smaller step and thus even more likely to come off successfully. I really like the anthology idea though and the Egypt theme is so easy to work with that I think I'll even go ahead and put together some concept art.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

This sounds cool! I would love to see something come of this.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Please, please, please talk with AAE about this idea. Running something like this would be a Very Good Thing: I'd love to make the animation festival into a yearly thing, and they can and would contribute money to such a thing.

(You can reach all of AAE at 'staff at anthroarts dot org'.)

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

An animation festival also goes beyond the bounds where it's originally shown. Festival doesn't so much refer to the event as much as the compilation. So arranging it so that you can receive submissions, offer an award or two, and do a small distribution around to independent theaters, that would be a good thing(tm) and heavily increase exposure of anthropomorphic arts.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Re-iteration of the above. After sleeping on it, I agree. A festival is an even better place to start. So how do we get rolling from here? I will definetely have work to submit by FC.

-Samantha

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

Someone needs to organize it, since it would involve a fair bit of outside pre-con work. For instance, contacting Animation Magazine, AWN, and other sources to post the notification of a festival accepting submissions. The ball would have to get rolling on this pretty quick.

Of course, AAE would have to have some sort of legal waiver to sign saying it can be shown, distributed, etc. etc.

Then of course, there's the assembling them all to show at the con. Someone needs to arrange an actual screen this year. ;)

Umm, more as I think on it.

[voidheart.livejournal.com]

If anyone can do it, its you :)

Figures, you are part of a big space thing to launch a probe into orbit and not two days later want to get a major film animation project rolling. You are simply amazing, lol.