New Info on Traveling Mattes

The most interesting part of my posting on Traveling Mattes is the Comments section. I received a very interesting new comment that
I would like to draw your attention toward. It's in the very bottom...

A bit more early Børge Ring

Here are a few images of my old mentor, the now 88 year young Børge Ring, whom I visited on New Year's Day, left photo.
The clip in yesterday's posting was recorded with the band that can be seen on the center photo, with a close-up of Børge on the right.How do you pronounce Børge? Take the English word "bird," but do not pronounce the "d" and very little of the "r". Follow this with "wuh," in a way where it all melts into one word. Don't use your lips!
What can I say... Hans Christian Andersen's parents were clever not giving their son any of the "special" Danish characters, Æ, Ø or Å...

I want to remind my readers that I have made corrections to the last couple of postings, especially in the story of A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm (based on new info from Børge and indirectly from the late Arne Rønde via his son-in-law) and in the posting on the Ring & Rønde film Party in the Forest (as Børge sent me a list on who animated what).

Ring pre-Ring & Rønde

If you say the name Børge Ring in Denmark, you have a greater chance of finding that folks know him as 1940s jazz musician than as Academy Award®-winning filmmaker. Before devoting himself to the art of animation, Børge played guitar with the famous Danish band of Niels Foss (1916- ) in 1941 and Leo "The Lion" Mathisen (1906-1969) in 1941-42, and guitar and bass with the even more famous Svend Asmussen (1916- ) from ca. 1942 to ca. 1947. I fear I'm not to clear about those dates. (I'll see if I can find a picture tomorrow.)

Here was a short clip of Børge playing rhythm guitar for Leo Mathisen. I did not think it did Børge justice, so I took it off.
I will see if I can put up something soon that puts a brighter light on Børge's musical talent!

Of course, Børge did not stop playing after going so wholeheartedly into animation - he played a lot, even, and you can hear him play guitar and bass in his own "Oh, My Darling" and "Anna & Bella."
(Both can be found on YouTube).

Party in the Forest - by Ring & Rønde 1950

The last two days were all about A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm, mainly because their old premises are just outside my window. I also spoke of Ring & Rønde studios, which were situated first in Arne Rønde's apartment on Vesterbrogade 63 (where we also had our studio just before we started A. Film in 1988, it being the apartment of my business partner Karsten Kiilerich who's father-in-law was Arne Rønde), then finally at Fredensvej 3 in Vedbæk.

I thought it would be nice to see an example of Ring & Rønde's production, so here is the 1950 commercial "Fest i Skoven" (Party in the Forest). Animation by my old mentor Børge Ring, Bjørn Frank Jensen and "grand old man of Danish animation" (sadly more old than grand) Jørgen Myller, who was asked to design the characters, set the colors and paint the backgrounds. Ring and Jensen later went to Toonder in Holland, remember? Here is the film, which I blatantly ripped from a 2007 Danish DVD that everyone should own anyway (though I do not right now recall its title), and color-corrected quite a bit - the original was badly interlaced, so my excuses for the quality.



The rhyme tells of a party in the forest that Mr. Eagle throws to please his children. Carpenter Mr. Woodpecker has to build a house. The original song has a fox and a starling as priest and parish clerk, and it ends with a drunk Mrs. Owl complaining that her days are numbered, but though we see her getting tipsy, we instead focus on Miss Field Mouse (who is not in the original song) who has to do - the dishes. "But who would complain if they could use Imi?" she says.

You will notice several things: first, the quality of animation, timing and general entertainment is much more advanced that done for Allan Johnsen's 1946 film Fyrtøjet (The Magic Tinderbox). Clearly the stork-cook was animated by Ring. The characters around the table were animated quite stiffly by Myller.

[Børge Ring adds: "I animated from the beginning of the film with the eagle at his dressing table until the sequence with the woodpecker building the house, which was animated by Bjørn. Then I drew the stork, the horn orchestra and the dansing couples except a scene with two yellow chickens, which was Per Lygum's debut in Vedbæk.
I also animated the Miss Field Mouse.

Jørgen Myller was irritated that the camera was so close to the mouse when she sang. "The scene with the big rat" he called it.
I learned my lesson on that one.
Jørgen drew all layouts and chose the colors, but he also animated the soap bubbles on the packshot using a template with circular holes in many sizes; he also animated the water circles around a pole of the landing.

I had at first animated the dance sequence as a jazzy jitterbug thing like The Cotton Club in Harlem NYC, where young dancers swing the girls around in the air above them. I liked it, but Persil got afraid when they saw the line test."]

Furthermore, it only becomes apparent that this is a commercial for the Persil detergent product imi "Foaming with Energy!" in the end of the film. This is how things used to be, folks. The beautiful Philips films that George Pal made in Holland in the late 1930s are in my opinion the best examples of this. The reason was, as explained to me, that advertising budgets for films were higher, since there were no TV ads to be produced. When TV came, the budgets were basically cut in two, and everyone suffered.

More on Walt at Nordisk Film

Nordisk Film's Ove Sevel (1922-2006) wrote his memoires in the book "Nordisk Film ...set indefra" ("...seen from within"). Sevel started at Nordisk in 1946 as assistant director, became head of Nordisk Film Junior, then CEO of Nordisk Film from 1971 to 1982, and was chairman of the holding company Nordisk Film Fund until 1990. His book is interesting, though maybe not always completely accurate. In any case it does have some items in it that are worth noting, the following image, on page 74, being one of these:We see Sevel with Walt during Walt's visit to Nordisk Film - for the date dilemma and a link to more images of Walt during this visit, see yesterday's posting. What is Walt scrutinizing? It is a relief map of the Nordisk Film premises. It is still there, too, as witnessed by this picture I took today:If you want to "Be Like Walt" and scrutinize it for yourself, here it is, and next to it a version with A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm's location outlined and an arrow pointing to where the map itself is located. The map was repainted even since it was pictured in the 100 year anniversary book for Nordisk Film of 2006, for there it is pictured in quite a dilapidated state. Also, no mention of its date!If you look at Nordisk Film from above now, using Google Maps or the Danish Krak, you will find that a lot has changed. Stage 3 was demolished and rebuilt much larger in 1971 - it is now Nordisk Film's largest stage, and stage 5 has disappeared in 2005 to make room for the multi-story "Media House" that houses executive offices, and, more importantly, a new commissary.

I originally thought it was a pity that these ancient wooden buildings, so important in film history, were destroyed, but it turns out that both original stages were already rebuilt completely after the war, as the original buildings from 1912 and 1915 were totaled in explosions in 1944 by the Schalburg corps, a group of Nazi-friendly Danes that destroyed many other famous landmarks in Denmark, like the Tivoli Concert Hall and the then famous Langelinie Pavilion close to the statue of the Little Mermaid.

Other differences: the Nordisk Kortfilm (Shorts) building is no longer there, the "magasiner" (storage) buildings top right have made way for new editing and sound recording facilities, and outside of the map, top right is a new fascility called the Post House, housing Nordisk Film Post Production, as well as most of Egmont IT. The top "Regi Afd." (Direction dept.) is not there anymore either, it must have seen its ending when stage 3 was rebuilt.

A small building, much like a normal little house, was also removed from the area that the new stage 3 covered. As I understand it, it housed the script writers for the feature films, in the beginning including the writer I wrote about earlier, Fleming Lynge.

Currently, only stages 3 and 4 are in use, mainly for TV productions, while feature films and commercials are shot at Nordisk Film's other location in Risby, about 20 minutes away. Nordisk Film acquired Risby studios in 1982. Corporate info about all stages (like rental info etc.) can be found here...

Please note that I have made several additions and corrections to yesterday's posting, so if you are needing this info for your school paper, you had better check it out again!
Also please remember that the picture of Walt and Sevel is Copyright Nordisk Film, so don't go spreading it, now!

Walt Disney at Nordisk Film

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the photo I had taken of our new studio location as Christmas card, which you can see in my previous posting, was taken on the stairs leading to the personnel entrance of A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm (meaning Nordic Animation, Inc.), visited by Walt Disney in 1959!

Here is that building photographed today:The concise history of A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm for the interested:
Former Disney producer/director Dave Hand worked at the Ring, Frank & Rønde studio in Vedbæk in Denmark for a few months starting in January 1950, after the closure of the Rank animation studios at Cookham in England where he produced the Animaland series. He had sent a letter to Ring and the guys in which he wrote
"If you want to know more, it must be now, as I leave England in three weeks." Producer Arne Rønde, who went to school with Børge Ring, suggested that Ring go and ask him to come to Denmark, which he did. The plan was to make a feature, directed by Hand and paid for by Nordisk Film. From the Rank closing sale, Hand had had Ring buy an animation camera stand with Mitchell camera, as well as a 9-head synchronizer/moviola, which cost, including shipping, Nordisk Film credited to Ring, Frank & Rønde. "I bought a camera!" said Ring - "Did you sign for it?" asked Arne Rønde - "Yes" - "Then we are now bancrupt." Hand himself had bought several animation desks, as his agenda was to start a studio in England with Ed Radage, Stan Pearsal and Ralph Ayres "and I wanted Ring and the guys [Bjørn Frank Jensen and Kjeld Simonsen] to come over.")

Hand not only wanted his cost of living reimbursed in cash but wanted a considerable sum for future use, which he then offered to invest in the project. Nordisk Film's revered and feared general manager Holger Brøndum finally decided that he would be too expensive - and he would only deal with "real people money" which sank the investment idea - shelved the project, then offered help to Ring, Frank & Rønde in the shape of 49% of the shares in the new company, A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm against their own company as repayment of their equipment loan, an offer they had to take. As Ring puts it, Brøndum's motive was that he also wanted the animation studio's lab business for all time. The board of the new company existed of Brøndum, lab head Bernhard Petersen and, it seems, Børge Ring. Then, after a year without much success, Nordisk Film took over the entire company, assets and crew (minus Arne Rønde Kristensen - our very own Karsten Kiilerich's late father-in-law - for they did not need another producer) and their own producer Jørgen Bagger demanded the cheapest possible product. In 1952, after demanding and not getting better conditions while the studio was negotiating a production for an American company in Paris, Børge Ring and Bjørn Frank Jensen left Vedbæk for Marten Toonder Studios in Holland, leaving Nordisk Tegnefilm as a paper company until Ib Steinaa and Kaj Pinal took up animation at Nordisk Film Junior in 1954, at the mentioned premises from July 1957, after which the company returned to its paper state at the end of December 1966 when Steinaa decided to leave and start for himself, taking almost all of the staff with him - the remainder went freelance. Pindal had left Nordisk Tegnefilm for the second time in 1958, when he went to Canada to work for The National Film Board.

I presume Nordisk Tegnefilm disappeared with some restructuring, maybe as late as the Egmont merger in 1991, but probably earlier, because I suspect that we would have heard about that after the collapse of Swan Film in 1987 when Nordisk Film Commercial hired a staff of artists who used to be our assistants to produce commercials for the newly started Danish TV2, not long before we ourselves started A. Film, but I admit that I am guessing here. (Around 1990 the Nordisk Film Commercial animation dept. was closed, as well.)

By the way, Hand's camera was housed in a low "temporary" building onto which a turret was built to accommodate its columns. The camera is long gone - some say it followed filmmaker Per Holst, producer of our own Jungle Jack/Jungo/Hugo films, but its turret still exists, as witnessed by this picture I shot out of my window and which fits somewhat to the right of the earlier photo of the 1910 "Stage 2." Also, the ceiling is lowered and windows were added, so inside it's just an office - there is no trace of the camera stand.From April 1st 1959 until the end of December 1966, Danish animator Harry Rasmussen worked at Nordisk Tegnefilm, and there he met Walt Disney. It was through Harry that I realized that I had taken the Christmas card photo from Nordisk Tegnefilm's stairs. Much of the info above I found on the now 80 year old Harry's fine (but Danish) homepage on Danish animation history found here, where one can also find the details of Ib Steinaa's crew at Nordisk Tegnefilm.
Then, if you go nearly halfway down THIS page, you can see some previously not known photos of Walt visiting Nordisk Tegnefilm! Two-thirds down THIS page, we see Walt signing the Nordisk Tegnefilm guest book. I wonder if that still exists...?

Harry's Danish text explains that Walt was shown around Nordisk Film by Nordisk Film Junior's managing director Ove Sevel (who also corresponded on a personal level with Disney Foreign head Jack Cutting) and by Jørgen Jørgensen, at that time head of the Copenhagen "Metropol" theater (that had shown a Disney Christmas compilation since 1933 and now houses a H&M clothing store) and manager of the Danish "Walt Disney Mickey Mouse Co." Harry tells about Walt greeting all in the room, making some small talk, then when he seemed to get too interested in the current storyboard for a proposed feature film starring a ping-pong ball come alive, Ove Sevel insisted the company move to the next location. But before he left Nordisk Tegnefilm, Disney signed the guest book in the management office in the other end of the building.
Ove Sevel in his memoires tells that when Walt visited Nordisk Film, he found out there was an animation department and spent the rest of the day there. Personally, I am inclined to believe Harry, who tells me that Walt, who looked very tired, spend at most only about half an hour at NT.

I still need to get a good precise date on Walt's visit, though, as Harry in his website tells us it was June 1960, while the late Ove Sevel, who eventually became managing director of the entire Nordisk Film, in his memoires says it was July 1959. I myself previously found that Walt was in Denmark in July 1961, and based on his appearance I would venture to guess that this also was when he visited Nordisk Film...

Oh, while it is still allowed: Happy New Year!

---

Notes:

I write "Ring, Frank & Rønde" though the studio was actually called "Ring & Rønde." It was soon known to friends as "Ring, Frank & Rønde," because the late Bjørn Frank Jensen quickly became an important partner in the studio, alongside my old mentor Børge Ring and Arne Rønde Kristensen. Also at the studio were Dave Hand's favorite artist the late Kjeld Simonsen ("Simon"), in Denmark now mainly known for his intro to the children's TV program "Bamse's Billedbog" and Kaj Pindal, who is widely known for his work at the National Film Board of Canada and as teacher at Sheridan College.

The feature film that Ring, Frank & Rønde wanted to make with Dave Hand through Nordisk Film was "Klods-Hans" (Jack the Dullard) based on Hans Christian Andersen's story, a story that Allan Johnsen, the producer of the very successful "Fyrtøjet" (The Magic Tinderbox, 1946) had intended as its follow-up. The Klods-Hans (non-)production story is a complicated one, found on Harry Rasmussen's site in Danish. It seems that a lot of work had been done on it before Nordisk Film contacted Ring, Frank & Rønde about the picture.

Furthermore, Ove Sevel in his memoires "Nordisk Film ...set indefra" ("...seen from within") mentions that putting Jørgen Bagger in charge of A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm was one of the few mistakes made by Holger Brøndum. Bagger later became equally unloved as stage head of a small film department owned by the publishing house Gutenberghus (that later became Egmont, which merged with Nordisk Film in 1991 and bought 50% in our very own A. Film in 1995!) and he then started his own company, Jørgen Bagger Film, mainly producing slide films with sound.

Finally, one could ask "don't you fear that Nordisk Film will do a similar trick with your own company A. Film as with Ring & Rønde?" to which I answer that Nordisk Film has a vested interest in the continued growth of A. Film. Through Egmont, it represents 50% of the shares in the company - while it owned 51% of Ring & Rønde. Nordisk Film, now an international conglomerate, must have learned from past experience: they would not want another paper company on their hands. Also, with productions like "Terkel in Trouble" and "Journey to Saturn," Nordisk has seen first-hand what we can do together, and is, as we are, proud of being part of A. Film!

Merry Christmas!

From our new quarters on the Nordisk Film lot!

My View...

This is the view out of my window while at A. Film in Denmark at our new location on the Nordisk Film lot in Valby (Copenhagen). At least it was a few days ago, before it started snowing!

So what is it we see here? We see two of the oldest film stages in the world. On the left "Stage 2," built in 1909 and in use since 1910, and still usable as stage, with glass walls and roof. The inside is currently used as exhibition space of a few of Nordisk Film's most notable productions, with props and costumes. In the 50's and 60's it was used as the costume warehouse.

On the right we see another wooden structure. Now, keep in mind that founder Ole Olsen already shot his own films from January 1906, bought part of the area in the summer and was shooting at this location from September that year (though Nordisk film officially counts its starting date as November 6th 1906). But until 1908 all shoots were in the open air, even indoor locations, which means you often can see the walls blowing in the wind in those early films! Therefor they built "Stage 1," Nordisk Film's first stage built in 1907 and in use since 1908! The glass walls and roof were later replaced with wood when it became feasible to use artificial lighting. Stage 1 is currently called "Kinografen," and is used as the studio cinema.

In a corner in the back of Stage 1 is Valdemar Psilander's dressing room, with its original implements and many pictures of this famous actor of the silent screen, who, before he passed away of heart failure in 1917 was Nordisk Film's biggest star, together with Asta Nielsen who later became Germany's darling before WWII. Psilander was widely known over the entire world, though not everywhere under his own name. In Russia they called him Mr. Garrison, which they did not convey to the Danes, which resulted in confusion when a letter arrived at the studio inviting Mr. Garrison to a tour of Russia. They had no idea who this Garrison was, and Psilander did not get to go...

Of the other three original stages of the mid 1910's (3, 4 and 5), only Stage 4 is left. This was the dance stage at this year's Christmas party! The smaller Stage 3 was replaced by a much larger stage of the same name/number in the early 70's (our Christmas party's dining room and the stage of most of Nordisk Film's indoor shoots and TV shows of the last 40 years), while Stage 5 bit the dust only a few years ago when a new multistory Media building, which also includes the executive offices, was erected.

The face in the window reflected in the light of a Cintiq is mine...

For the curious, our move is nearly finished and we are already enjoying the Nordisk Film commissary food immensely! If you are disappointed because I am not posting Disney history, don't worry, I will return to that in a bit. For the moment, though, I am intrigued by the history of the new location of my own studio - please indulge me!

Moved (largely)

Today, we moved most of the studio to two buildings in the very heart of the Nordisk Film studio lot: my Danish Desk looks out over "Stage 2," built in 1910 as Nordisk's second stage (funny how that works) which is also one of the oldest still exsisting stages in the world. I was close to writing Sound Stage, but of course there was no sound film recording of note back then (though it seems to have started in Berlin in 1896). Still, this reminds me of the following:

When it comes to sound film, Nordisk was an early player. After the founder Ole Olsen's death, Nordisk Film's new owner Carl Bauder had procured the patent of the Danish inventors Poulsen and Petersen for a sound-on-film method and proceded to produce the film Eskimo in 1930 in four versions: a silent, a Norwegian, a German and a French version. Thus, the first true Danish "Tale- og Tonefilm" (Talk- and Soundfilm) was Præsten i Vejlby (The Priest of Vejlby) released May 1931, followed later that year by Hotel Paradis, and in 1932 by Kirke og Orgel (Church and Organ). These three films were based on heavy Danish literature, with a script by theater-writer Fleming Lynge (pronounced "lúh-nguh"). Actually, eight days before that last film, Nordisk released a light comedy called Skal Vi Vædde en Million? (Shall we bet a million?), also with a script by Lynge, who lived from 1896 to 1970 and basically wrote all of Nordisk Film's scripts during the 30's and early 40's, and still wrote for Nordisk up through the 50's.

I especially note Fleming Lynge, as I have started a little collection of films written by him. Why?, you may ask. Well - some twelve years ago, an antiquarian bookseller around the corner and four doors down from my apartment closed its doors, and in the one-day blow-out sale, everything had to go - and did, except that I noticed among the empty shelves a whole little bookcase with strange, uneven magazines and bound books - or so I thought. It turned out to be the remainder of Fleming Lynge's private collection of his own scripts, some with his own hand-written notes, and even a theater script all in his hand-writing. About seventy scripts, including seven film scripts done for Nordisk Film, the earliest being Skal Vi Vædde en Million? and Kirke og Orgel. Now - I did not know a lot about them -
I just carried them home for less than a dollar a piece!

I enjoyed reading the scripts - Lynge has a personal and free-floating writing style and he writes much like people talk, more so than how they write, which is a boon for a screen writer. Interesting also that, in the musicals, he writes dialog and then just notes "they sing a song," and it was thus up to the songwriters, which most often included noted composer Kai Normann Andersen [but also Svend Gyldmark, known domestically for a song called "Hi for You and Hi for Me" which was later bought by Disney for the original Mickey Mouse Club,] to write something that fit the spot in the script.

As to the success of the early films, Fleming Lynge himself wrote about this in the book 50 År i Dansk Film (50 years in Danish Film) published for Nordisk Film's 50th anniversary. He noted the first film (Præsten i Vejlby) was an experiment and made very cheaply, and was quite a success. The second film was more expensive to make (not only because Bauder doubled Lynge wages after the first film!), which was the reason they decided to produce comedies - lots of comedies, starting with "Shall we Bet a Million," and giving many of the luminaries of the Danish stage a chance to shine!

It is an intriguing thought that our studio now is situated in the very heart of the company that produced those monumental (for Denmark) films back then...

Mosedalvej directly translates to "SwampValleyRoad" but don't go looking for a swamp. Driving around, you don't notice where Copenhagen ends and Valby begins; Valby is just a part of Greater Copenhagen. [It WAS a swamp back in 1906 when founder Ole Olsen bought part of the current area...]

Moving Day...

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!

In the works since 1986

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 three kids meeting a professor and being inadvertently changed into fish, and in 1996 we produced a two-minute pilot with symphonic score that financially sealed the deal. Terry Jones voiced the professor, Alan Rickman a megalomaniac pilot fish, the bad guy.

Because of the scope of the film, it eventually was a European co-production between our studio A. Film, German Münich Animation and TerraGlyph in Ireland, where Münich did much of the cleanups and coloring and TerraGlyph did some layout and the sound. We kept control, direction and much of the animation and styling were done in-house. We also had a few other studios help us with animation, including our own A. Film Estonia.

For this production I devised a system where Amiga Take-2 line tests, sent to us from all over the world in emails, were automatically unpacked and converted to OMF files for import in an AVID system. For nearly two years, the converting computer, a little IBM Aptiva that the finance department did not want to use because it was too small and too old, converted the thousands of scenes in different versions perfectly, and two weeks after the last scene was processed it died, in a little white cloud of burned-up electronics.

Above drawing is again one I picked up in our storage, a more unusual view (click on it and see WHY!) I suspect it is a gag drawing, though I do not know who drew it (yet).

Our First Feature(s)

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 time, the studio animated on several other relatively well-known features, and a slew of commercials.

Since the first film turned out to be a success, at least locally, we began working on a sequel, "Jungledyret Hugo: den Store Filmstjerne" ("Jungle Jack the Movie Star"), with storyboard by Anders Sørensen and myself with Dan Harder and Stefan Fjeldmark who had directed the first film and would direct the second, again together with Flemming, the author. I also edited this film, and figured out how to work seamlessly with studios around the world who helped us animate it, including our own daughter company A. Film Estonia, and this resulted in my working full-time with computers.

In 2004 I happened to find a DVD called "Hugo the Movie Star" while browsing at Amoeba in Hollywood, and found that BOTH films were on it, with the first film, now called "Go Hugo Go," as a special feature to support the second one. More worryingly, I found that the soundtrack, originally produced professionally in 5.1, had been replaced by a rather awful and completely new stereo track, with actors "so good you can hear they are real actors" and music that made it sound like a cheap tv series. Then I found that, since Miramax had bought it before the Disney take-over, it had ended in the Disney library, and in a catalog for the Disney Movie Club it was on a page with "Classics" with Pocahontas and Mulan! My jaw dropped when I saw that! NONE of these things we had heard anything about before I happened upon them: when the distribution rights are sold to be able to produce the film, it is out of our hands completely.

Above sketch is a very small color painting that fell out of a box in our storage when I recently rummaged through it. I have no idea who painted it, or with which exact purpose...

The Fairytaler...

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. Andersen's stories for children through animation”, awarded by the H.C. Andersen Committee from Andersen's home town of Odense.

In our storage, I recently dug up a copy of above inspirational illustration which was painted by Serbian comic book author Rajko Milošević-Gera (or Guera) who is credited as storyboard artist; the series art director was Malene Laugesen with whom we have worked since the mid-80s. I like this painting, and hope you do, too...

Happy Birthday, Mickey!

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.