Cartoons on the Bay: Is This the End of Cappuccino Fusion?

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Nice digs. Cool four-star hotel room with a huge bath by European standards. Let's just open the doors to this terrace that looks out over the Bay of Salerno and... The industrial port?

Toto, I don't think we're in Positano anymore...

This year the festival was moved to Salerno, a city at the base of the Amalfitano peninsula, which, as one local politician ruefully admitted, "needs to develop its tourism market." Wags were wont to claim that the choice was driven by politics, and others shrugged that the logistics of constructing the glad-bag theatre on the beach at Positano and dragging the Rai troupe back and fourth along the winding roads that led to the tourist haven were just too much.

"Salerno could be the Cannes of the Amalfi Coast," waxed Rai Trade md Niccola Cona in the catalogue of the festival.

Ay, there's the rub. Cartoons on the Bay has always been the intimate setting in Positano, where you could relax and have a coffee with a German producer from Bavaria when the head of animation production of Canal+ sits down at your table, you begin spinning this project you're developing, and voilà, another European co-production is born. The intimate setting among the steep slopes of the Amalfitano peninsula meant that practically everyone hung around the beach cafes all day. Business got done, but the pace was much more relaxed and friendly in that inimitable Italian style. This year, the attendance was said to be up from 850 to 1,100 delegates.

Would the new version offer these laid back opportunities for cappuccino fusion?

We've All Come for a Pulcinella

This year there was a change in format, allowing artists and production companies nominated for a Pulcinella award to present their work in a "backstage" format, a sort of press conference allowing the creators in each category to wax eloquent. And come they did, from Toronto and Tokyo, Sidney and Zagreb, Burbank and... the other side of Burbank, in search of recognition and to rub elbows. The artists seized this "trailer and talk" format to strut their stuff in front of colleagues and familiarize buyers and media with the titles. In this competitive and collegial atmosphere, the industrial port tended to blur into nothingness, the personalities of the protagonists shine, and everyone gets down to business.

"The quality of the films in nomination was stunning," said festival judge and animation director Maurizio Forestieri, who interrupted his duties on an animation series to view the films in competition (he missed the press presentation of the jury because he was downloading composites from China for his latest series). "It was a great jury. Despite the fact that we were from very different backgrounds, we were unanimous in almost all of our decisions. The job was made easy because what we were judging was of great value."

Where the Action Is -- Creativity?

The strongest category of all was that of the TV series of action and adventure. Everyone had a compelling story production to tell and seemed really happy to have the chance to share it before their peers.

Ayakashi astonished everyone in the room with its startling combination of colorful Japanese rice paper scroll painting and CG techniques to tell a traditional style, kabuki horror stories of demon possession. "Since the classic painting is still, we had to confront difficulties turning it into an animation," recited series producer Hiroaki Shibata from his prepared statement, translated by Kanji Kazahaya of Toei Animation. "We use 3D CG animation to create the castle, then added a paint layer over the top. The overall objective was to raise the quality of the background. We used between 150 to 200 backgrounds for each episode."

Even at that, they possessed the ability to combine elements of the background, using up to 30 pieces for one scenic element. To get the effect they were looking for, they used a number of different techniques, including shadows and a paper texture effect. Apart from the obvious aesthetic advantages, there is a psychological impact as well. "The viewer feels the same horror as the characters when they confront a closed door," Shibata concluded.

For those who are carrying around their projects for years like a seagull on a lanyard around their neck, Savain Yeatman-Eiffel, the French director/scriptwriter of Oban Star-Racers, recounted his inspirational story. He struggled for six years to get his anime series financed about a girl looking for her father while she competes in an intergalactic race. "I created the project in 1987, and the response was overwhelmingly negative. "People were scared of Japanese projects, and the theme of a girl tomboy was scary for investors." He created a squad of "passionate young designers" and went back to the broadcasters.

In the end, he took his international team to Japan to get just the right look, and even that was a challenge. "Japanese studios are very careful about their image. They will not take a project that their artists will not be happy to work on." Once there, however, it was no bed of roses. "International co-productions are quite hard the first few months," he sighed, but, "the response from kids and anime fans as well has made it all worth while."

Rounding out the panel of inspirational speakers was Tom Warburton and Tony Knapp, presenting Codename: Kids Next Door from Cartoon Network and Curious Pictures. "I was very fortunate because I was able to hand pick some great people to work with me," effused Warburton, crediting Carton Network for giving the creative team the freedom to do their job. "We decided that the creativity would not stop when the script was closed," he continued. "Traditionally the ideas come from the writer and the director, but on our show everybody had a hand in it." He credited open story meetings and constantly shaking things up, like doing one episode in five different styles. "We had artists with years of experience pushing to outdo themselves."

The eventual winner of the category was the spy spoof Secret Show, defined by its creators as Monty Python meets Get Smart. Andrea Tran, the co-director of the series, was extremely concerned with the look. "We looked at Sir Ken Adam, designer of the Bond sets, for our background look," he affirmed. "On the other side, however, for graphic identity, I looked at the Hitchcock posters of Saul Bass." The working method favored by Tran and co-director Tony Collingwood emphasized a creative flow between actors, writers and animators. Shows were written, recorded and then re-recorded after the storyboard stage, to include the gags that the animators suggested. The result is a very stylish and rigorously 2D series with strong dialogue in the classic British comedy tradition.

Gruesome Children

In the category of TV Series for Children, a surprising four of five nominees were in the genre horror-comedy. What can you say about cultural trends when School for Vampires is up against

Deadly! and Growing up Creepie? All of the series have strong concepts and art direction, but their real common denominator is their ability to "sdramitizzare" (de-dramatise) as the Italians would say. They undermine the daily traumas of growing up by placing the protagonist in an absurd and inherently comic situation, where the hero navigates a grotesque world.

The winner was Nelvana's Ruby Gloom, whose combination of dark irony, daft situations, doll-like characters and Tim Burton-inspired sets seemed well-suited to a pre-teen audience. Strong scripting and musical elements also came into play. "We worked very hard to fine-tune the character of Ruby," said Kevin Micallef, the animation director for Nelvana. "We wanted a very graphic style with strong art direction, placing particular attention on the silhouettes of the characters."

The TV series for general audiences was perhaps the most varied of the categories. In the running was Starveillance, the follow-up series to Celebrity Death Match, where the satire follows the tabloid stories of stars into their limousines, boudoirs and restaurants, exaggerating only slightly their muddle-headed logic and situations. Adam Shaheen of Cuppa Coffee studios presented a documentary which shows the techniques of creating the mouth-less characters out of clay and casting them in liquid silicon, then adding the lips in post-production. The phenomenal growth of this stop-motion production house has turned them from a cottage industry into a full-fledged studio -- in miniature.

In How to Cook Italian by Arturo e Kiwi, Bulldog Arturo presents a full and valid Italian recipe in a fast-paced four minutes with his sous-chef Kiwi (the New Zealand bird hung around the studio after an error in a recipe calling for kiwi fruit) who executes the recipe and most of the gags. They had high expectations because its creator, Andrea Zingoni, was the creative force behind the highly acclaimed (and highly downloaded) Gino the Chicken series. "I arrive in the studio with an outline," admits Zingoni, who also does the voices. "Most of the actual dialogue is improvised." The new series does not disappoint. The improvisation gives the episodes an unpredictable rhythm, meaning that the gags and dialogue feel fresh and move quickly.

The winner of the category was Miniscule, a combination of live-action footage over which are imposed a series of very goofy looking 3D insects. This co-production between France 2 and the Disney Channel surprised everyone because it is character-driven -- the bug protagonists follow their own idiosyncratic logic instead of an anthropogenic narrative. "The stories move like Japanese haiku," laughed creator and director Thomas Szabo. "It's like a combination between Tex Avery and National Geographic."

Another outstanding product at the festival that won the TV special category was Peter and the Wolf, a stop-motion version of the popular story set to Prokofiev's music. This British and Polish co-production boasted extraordinary scenery, production values and lighting. "It seemed to be set in Kosovo or ex-Yugoslavia, an area beset by war," said Forestieri. "It was a completely original way to tell the very familiar story and Prokofiev score."

Charlie and Lola Take All

When the judging was done, the winner of winners was Charlie and Lola, which won its category of TV series for infants, as well as the overall Pulcinella for Best TV series overall, and a prize from the jury of children who viewed the same list of nominees. The convincing factor for the judges was the fact that the situations and voices were so close to the real lived experience of children. "We refused to use children who couldn't be tickled for the voices," smiled Kitty Taylor, the animation director. A children's book illustration style, scanned objects and simple animation give the series a very original look to go with its theme and voices.

Feeling the Pulse of Italian Animation

Cartoons on the Bay is organized by Rai Trade, which distributes and handles worldwide product distribution for the three public Rai networks. You cannot turn around without bumping into a Rai exec at Cartoons on the Bay, and the festival is first and foremost a display window for Italian animation.

Can one say this was a breakthrough year for animation in Italy? The quantity and quality of product would seem to indicate that a virtue of mass has been achieved and that the European market seems to be holding its own against the American juggernaut. The Italian market, in particular is showing signs of life.

"Animation in Italy is in its adolescence," shrugs Giuseppe Maurizio Lagana, independent animation director currently working on Sandokan and Kim for Rai. "It's full of positive instability." The evidence is plain to see in the quantity of new production companies cropping up -- and sometimes withering under the blistering sun of economic reality.

Among the important developments, ironically, is the phenomenon of exportable animation product, which has no definable Italian identity. No feature animation films have been made in Italy since 2003, yet this year two groups are taking film projects into the international market. Atlantyca is moving ahead with a Geronimo Stilton movie project and Rainbow Ent. is now working on the upcoming Winx Club movie.

Professional training is starting to bear fruit as the animation department of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Turin won the Short film Pulcinella award for the retro-looking Wives Supermarket. This school announced applications for only 16 students who were accepted for the next year, establishing itself as an exclusive training ground.

International co-productions involving the American market remain tentative. Two short form trial balloons were announced at the festival.

Chissa' Perché (Who Knows Why) is a co-production between Demas Partners and Walt Disney Television Italia for preschoolers to be aired on the Italian version of Playhouse Disney. This effort at localizing Disney product has so far only five episodes of three minutes ordered. Another test series, Hiro (5x 1:50) proposed by Italian designer Alessandro Ferrari, was announced by Nickelodeon. This video game-inspired series, in which the snowboard-riding protagonist dodges a vicious park ranger and his dog sidekick, is the first Nickelodeon product produced entirely in Italy. Cartoon Network has indicated that it will soon be in the game, announcing that they will soon be opening a London office specializing in European productions.

"The world animation market is growing, and the Italian market is growing with it," says Pietro Campedelli, president of Cartoon Italia. "Keep in mind that the sector is also fragmenting, with lots of opportunities on satellite channels. While they don't have big budgets, they have need for product, which helps out the smaller production companies. In general, it also means more volume of work for everyone."

Maurizio Forestieri maintains that there is still much work to be done for Italian animation to rise to the international level. "Whenever you come back form one of these events, you have reality staring you in the face," he says. "I saw a lot of wonderful, original new American product, and have a fresh appreciation for the quality of their storytelling, their school of writing and editing. That is the base of it all."

And the Winner Is... Salerno

In the end, all of the worries about relocating the festival were lost in the orgy of meetings, screenings, press conferences and shows. "We spend most of our time in the dark," sighed Beth Gardner of Playhouse Disney, one of the judges of the festival. Their grueling screening schedule demanded that they not avail themselves of the famous southern Italian sun.

Despite the presence of a large room full of computers, it was nearly impossible to view the 40 cartoons nominated for the Pulcinellas, much less the 160 cartoons in showcase. It does tend to leave one breathless, always gazing wearily at a schedule or wincing at the announcements of the next meeting. One gets the feeling that the delegates went away satisfied, but wanting more time. But then, isn't that the sign of a good product -- one that leaves you hungering for more?

The move to Salerno was made largely through the graces of the Campania region, with the eye to developing Salerno as a tourist center. Beyond the physical needs for a real theater in which to hold the shows and a better-equipped convention center, there was a social element that crept into the logic of the move from Positano, whose reputation as a tourist haven is already well consolidated. Generally, when the politicians launch into this sort of rhetoric, people from the entertainment business roll their eyes. Isn't all this talk of economic and social development just a rationalization for an inevitable move in order to maintain funding for the festival?

Yet there is something that goes beyond exigencies or political correctness in the thinking of the Rai execs who insist that the toon world touch the real world at the Cartoons on the Bay festival. Much as one might giggle at cartoons being a cultural event which can transform lives, we are talking about the perennially poverty-stricken south of Italy, where often the most inspiring guy in the neighborhood is makes collections from the local merchants for his uncle Zitto. "There is so much creativity which remains unexpressed," stressed Nicola Cona, in the closing press conference, suggesting a laundry list of ideas to bring the city closer to the festival.

The attempt to popularize the festival by offering shows each day for local school children, workshops and a kids' jury seems to be quite successful, judging from the squirming masses of kids who packed the Augusteo Theater each day. The premieres in the same theater were also well attended, though the festival shows each night were more favored by the locals than the festival attendees. In fact, this division between locals and festival attendees led to a perceptual schism the final awards show.

The awards show was conducted entirely in Italian, and most of the guests didn't pick up translation headsets, so they sat for the entire three hours trying to follow the action from gestures and context. While many sat in despair as popular artists belted out love songs in Italian, the locals seemed to be lapping it up. A parade of politicians, whom the delegates had never heard of, handed over awards for excellence in cartoons. Perhaps it would have helped if someone had told the delegates that the current mayor of Salerno, Vincenzo De Luca, is something of a local hero, credited with cleaning up the historic center and waterfront.

While the absence of boutiques may bereft those with a hankering for Italian shoes, Salerno does have one important quality -- authenticity. In the winding streets of the old quarter, you can get a much better feel for the real south of Italy than in better trafficked highlights from the Fromers guide. You can follow narrow medieval alleys with crumbling buildings and drying laundry hanging proudly overhead to turn a corner and find a beautiful baroque fountain in front of a rustic trattoria. It's not Cannes, but those hoping to get away from the themed entertainment circuit, it feels refreshingly alive and real.

Cappucino, anyone?

Gotta go. Francois Deplanck of TPS Jeunesse just sat down at my table, and I got an idea I wanna pitch.

Russell Bekins has served time at in story and project development for Creative Artists Agency and Disney. He now lives in Bologna, Italy, where he specializes in concept design for theme park, aquarium and museum installations.