Kijé: the Long Path of a Co- Produced Animated Short Film
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Animation Studies The Peer-reviewed Open Access Online Journal for Animation History and Theory - ISSN 1930-1928 Adriana Navarro-Álvarez - Kijé: The Long Path of a Co- Produced Animated Short Film Date : 17-05-2019 The aim of this paper is to study the trajectory of a self-produced animated short film wherein the director herself takes on all the tasks of communication, administration, financing of production, and distribution. This is a handcrafted and alternative model of production in response to the post-Fordist theory. This system was born during the 1970s and emphasizes the idea of flexibility, geographical proximity, and innovation. This model is characterized by an international division of tasks, which consists in the spatial decentralization of different labour processes in various countries thanks to the advance of information and communication technology inputs and their subsequent distribution. Some authors have pointed out the importance of this theory based on the flexible schedules, non-standardized consumption (Jessop 1992) together with the reconciliation between the interests of capital —high rates of productivity— and the values of the working class —fulfillment at work with rising levels of income— (Clarke 1990). In the context of the animation industry, such factors have promoted the transformation from mass production located in a few-large-key companies to the spread of the regional industrial development, through the cooperation among small and medium-sized suburban studios (Hook, 2016, p.8). These factors have given rise to an extraordinary diversity in the production framework (Álvarez-Sarrat, 2014, p.78) including co-production between countries for the development of non-commercial low-budget films such as Michaela Pavlatova’s, Tram (2012), a Czech-French-co-production, Decorado (2016), by Alberto Vázquez, with a Spanish and French company, or Mr Hublot (2013) by Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares, of Luxembourg-French nationality. Moreover, there are cases of freelance animators participating in experimental short-film collections produced by private TV channels. The Italian filmmaker Donato Sansone, for example, took part in the collection Dessine Toujours!, which is a selected compilation of animated short films released by the TV channel Canal+France, in which the production and the distribution themselves were extensively promoted on this platform. There are several aspects that turn the sector of animated short films into a professional one. Those factors are: the co-production situation described above, Nisi Masa —the European network of young cinema associations (2015, p. 49) —the thematic compilations, the Informational Revolution, the major technological phenomenon, beyond the Industrial Revolution, in which the internet changed the way people communicate among themselves. This revolution took place between 1986 and 2007, which began the appearance of specialised distributors and regional catalogs promoting short films, the emergence of elite European animation schools such as La Poudrière, Gobelins or The Animation Workshop, and the continuous contact of sales agents in various territories and markets. However, this number of agents involved can hinder the development of films born outside the institutional, academic and business systems. The weight of the already mentioned schools, along with long-term studies and producers who defend their editorial Animation Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Animation Studies The Peer-reviewed Open Access Online Journal for Animation History and Theory - ISSN 1930-1928 line and their own network of artists and graduates, can be a tough competition for independent filmmakers who seek their niche market (De la Rosa 2016, p. 152). This situation forces filmmakers to use different resources, such as financial, promotional and distributional tools, without a guaranteed success. This article examines the path of a contemporary independent animated short film, made and promoted by a solo filmmaker. The aim is to identify the key concepts that frame the long journey of the independent animated short film, to analyze the roles of filmmaker- entrepreneurs, to determine the reasons for this artistic-industrial mix and to examine its consequences, in order to establish some conclusions about the long process of the promotion and distribution of an independent animated short film. Some film scholars such as Sébastien Roffat (2015), who studied the internationalisation and industrial practices of French feature animation films, or Cécile Noesser (2016), who analysed the progressive acceptance of French animation cinema from the 1950 to 2010, carried out studies on the economics of French animated cinema. Although such studies are valuable, the analysis of the production system of the contemporary French independent animated short film is barely dealt with in research. In the animation context, the production is placed in multiple audiences despite the cliché of this cinema in the form of children’s entertainment. According to the producer Jean-Pierre Lemouland in an interview carried out by the lecturer Isabelle Le Corff, animation might be able to communicate more than entertainment, transmitting “essentials, deeper, more adult, riskier” emotions but these aspects “[...] n’intéressent pas nécessairement les financeurs. [...] Le cinéma d’animation a toujours été un ghetto, qui ne côtoie qu’assez peu l’industrie de la récréation” (quoted in Floquet 2007, p. 94)[1] Along with this issue, it is not possible to discuss the production of an animated film of a certain size without acknowledging the role of monetary terms. In the present decade, financial partnerships permitted the cinema to increase its production volume and spread films in the cinematographic circuit (mainly festivals), taking them to a greater extend, in VOD platforms. Referring to more modest productions, the self-produced animated short film is a practical method of production as long as the director is linked to market strategies such as co-productions, institutional aids and the possibilities of digital distribution on the Net. These strategies, which will be explored further below, take into account not only the artistic talent of the filmmaker but the economic potential of his/her filmworks. In fact, the solo director’s possibilities of creation of an animated short film, depend on the external environment conditions in which such film is involved: market scope, cinema laws, and national or regional economy. All these factors determine the human, material, or financial resources implied in the production of an animated short film. However, there is another regard which is essential in case the director wants to carry out all the responsibilities of his/her work: the dual creative and administrative roles as an artist and entrepreneur. Thus, in order to carry out a self-produced animated short film efficiently, independent directors must combine their roles of entrepreneurs and creators. It is therefore important to examine and discuss the processes of funding and distribution animated short films to understand the ephemeral commercial tour experienced by many other creators of these films who have designed, produced and distributed from a self-production perspective. Animation Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Animation Studies The Peer-reviewed Open Access Online Journal for Animation History and Theory - ISSN 1930-1928 The advertising theory can help to understand the tension between these functions —creative and administrative— through film promotion and distribution. In the first place, the promotion in digital media makes emotional and persuasive communication pass at the speed of information (cited in De Salas 2002, p. 10). It also warns that the internet is used as the first means of promotion for independent filmmakers. In this context, the promotional coverage of the short films and their mediatic impulse usually falls to the filmmaker/producer himself/herself, with few resources. Also known as “guerrilla marketing,” the cruciality of online independent film promotion is increasingly widespread. For example, creating excitement on the Net from the beginning of the production around the short film, laying the foundations of the appeal of the film —called packaging— with a series of advertising materials to obtain financing and arouse interest in the market (Levinson 2009; Bravo 2013; Marich 2013). Likewise, the profitability of interactivity is preached as a characteristic of the medium, through which the possibility of refining the quality of the impact is offered. For example, the search can be associated with tags of the short film, generate data about the viewings controlling the frequency of visits or avoid the repetitive impacts of the same image on the Net. Furthermore, persuasive communication continues with the idea of ??product positioning and digital brand in a world-socially interconnected, multi-platform, cloud-based, customized, selective and abundant, where it is sold, retransmitted and shared (Holt, Sanson 2014). Further, in relation to film distribution, the proliferation of festivals specialized in animation have played a crucial role in both the promotion and in the prizes of their palmareses, considering themselves a fundamental support in the commercial career of the short films. However, the digital revolution has meant that festivals have