Cinema Canada (Aug 1976)

Crowded rooms at the top of long flights of stairs, gay drawings pinned on the walls and bodies bent over light tables, miscellaneous people who come and go and sometimes actually work with a skeleton staff of five. There you have a composite picture of the functioning animation studios in Montreal. These studios — Michael Mills Productions, Boxcar Films, Kohill Productions, Disada and Les Films Quebec Love — share still another characteristic: strong feelings about the National Film Board of Canada. Michael Mills Productions Michael Mills Productions, like Boxcar, sprang from the ashes of Potterton Productions.* After seven years at the NFB, Mills had taken a leave of absence to direct, design and adapt Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince; Potterton held the overall producer’s contract with Reader’s Digest. The success of this TV special, following hard on the heels of his successful NFB short Evolution, prompted Mills to open his own studio rather than return to the Film Board. Being on his own, Mills says, is fantastic. ‘The Film Board drove me up the wall, to be honest. There’s a sense of freedom there but the pace is so damn slow. A lot of ideas took so long to get off the ground; all that red tape...’” Nevertheless, his prior training in England and his long association with the NFB have produced an animator who is devoted to experimentation and technology. About 85% of Mills’ work is in animation, the rest being in special-effects commercials using a combination of animation and live action. Currently he is working on packaging a _ halfhour special for TV, but the bulk of his contracts are for commercials and he is happy with the outlet they give him to work on experimental techniques. Generally, he says, clients want him to become involved in the initial concepts and, perhaps as a result, his commercial work is very satisfying. What does he like about Montreal? Ironically, it’s the presence of the Film Board. ‘“They’ve got lots of * Potterton Productions Inc. was founded in 1968 and went bankrupt in 1974. It had 20 permanent employees and hired freelancers — sometimes over 100 at a time — when work demanded. Besides producing five featurelength animated films, Potterton also produced three live-action features (Fleur bleue, The Rainbow Boys and Child Under aLeaf). It is generally thought that these last features, coupled with an exaggerated overhead, were responsible for the downfall of the company. Gerald Potterton is currently working — in California. Ed. A house catching cold for a Union Gas commercial: Michael Mills Productions lovely equipment. While I can’t use half of it, I can go up and prod it and poke it and find out how it all works. And I do actually hire it if I can’t find similar equipment elsewhere.” Just lately, for instance, he rented out the Board’s aerial-image camera which was bought when he was at the Board and which, as far as he knows, has to date only been used by him. Mills opened an office in Toronto and has a representative in New York. The motivation was partly defensive, in case Montreal proved lukewarm to an English animator. Now he states that 75°. of his work is in French and that he’s had to neglect the Toronto office for the time being. Recently he did get some work from a Toronto agency — when it went down to New York to find an animator and saw Mills’ show reel. The agency came back north and gave the job to Mills — the great Canadian way, n’est-ce pas? Boxcar Films Two young animators who worked along with Mills at Potterton, Julian Szuchopa and Paul Sabella, founded Boxcar Films two years ago. Paul had done some freelance work at the NFB, having been trained in fine arts in Egypt, but Julian just happened along when Potterton was starting out and was trained on the job. Again, it was Potterton’s demise that got them into business for themselves. Th2ir work is basically commercial, with about 10° coming from the educational field — mostly Sesame Street contracts straight from New York. They echo Mills’ feeling that commercials call for creativity and emphasize that agencies are always looking for fresh approaches, new effects. Boxcar is in good shape, according te the owners, because they offer more for the money. “We try to give something special, something the client wouldn’t get elsewhere.” As long as they can continue to produce good, creative work, Szuchopa and Sabella say, they are optimistic. Still they speak with surprise when they mention that their commercial for H. Salt Fish and Chips of Toronto won a prize at the Canadian TV Com mercial Festival. Boxcar is a lowkey, low-profile operation. Nevertheless, having tasted glamor once, they’ve entered a film in Ottawa 76. Business has recently started coming in from the Quebec government and Boxcar is now a very busy place. The future doesn’t worry them. “‘Potterton went under because it got too big and it made a few mistakes financially. When you have a company the size of Boxcar, you have control over it.” Having just bought an animation camera, Boxcar is still growing. Kohill Productions In the west end of Montreal, Kohill Productions has been operating for about two years. Koos Hillenaar founded the company after six years of freelance work, and now counts the CBC (Sesame Street) and ad agencies as his principal clients. Having been trained in Holland, and having worked in Germany and Sweden, Hillenaar specializes in 3-D or puppet animation, a genre less popular in Canada than in Europe. Over the years, his clientele has changed from being almost entirely educational to being commercial, a change which he is not sure he likes. August 1976/41