Back in February, Lineboil highlighted this traditionally animated short currently in production by Dean Kalman Lennert. 
I loved the little bit that I saw online, and because Dean is a fellow NY’er, as well as that fact that I have a soft spot for almost anything traditionally animated, I thought it would be great to interview him about the film and share it with all of you.
Also, recently, I had the unique opportunity to see a full WIP of the film without sound, and with some rough animation, and it’s all coming together very nicely and on it’s way to becoming a beautiful film.
As a bonus, Dean was kind enough to share 2 exclusive clips from the film including a completed rough shot that was done by Stewart Shaw. So check them out and then continue on to read more about Dean’s film, Dear Anna Olson.
Shot 15
Shot 28
DAN FORGIONE: First off, tell us a little about yourself, and how you originally got into animation.
DEAN KALMAN LENNERT: I started working professionally in 1986 when a fellow stop-motion animator recommended me as a model fabricator for a Diet Slice commercial. By the end of that project, I had moved onto the animation team doing both stop-motion and 2-D effects. But I first got bitten by the animation bug at the age of 9 when I watched a segment on the PBS show Zoom about how to create your own cartoons using paper cut-outs and the family home-movie camera. I substituted some model dinosaurs for the cut-outs, made that first film and have been hooked ever since.
DAN: Can you give us a brief synopsis of the film, Dear Anna Olson?
DEAN: Dear Anna Olson is a parable of how small, positive actions can have profound impact on peoples’ well-being. In this film, Anna Olson is living in a nursing home. Lonely, she sends out notes tied to balloons. One of these notes travels from person to person, each of who are moved to share their stories. When the note returns to Anna her world is positively changed.
DAN: With over 20 years in animation working in a variety of styles and mediums (stop motion, traditional, CG), what challenges have you faced in adapting from one medium to the next?
DEAN: Aside from getting used to the different tools and work practices that each medium requires, there really weren’t too many immediate challenges in moving from one technique to another. The challenges usually occurred after I was acclimated to the new working environment and, as Murphy’s Law dictates, popped-up in the midst of a production. But I feel, that for any animator, this is where the real learning begins.
I remember during my time at J.J. Sedelmaier Productions having to adapt to the wide variety of drawing styles and techniques of some very well known illustrators doing design work for the studio. Whether it’s the intricate cross-hatching techniques of David Levine, the bold graphic line of Douglas Frazer, or even the looser style of Gary Baseman, you had to be able to place your work next to theirs and have J.J. not be able to tell the difference. And I’m not talking about just copying each illustrator’s work. You had to understand how they thought about and approached their art. And usually had about a half a day to master each style and then the animation would begin. It was one of the most valuable learning experiences of my career and helped to make me a very flexible animator very quickly.
DAN: With a wide variety of animation experiences under your belt, what experience most influenced your production process for this short?
DEAN: While this doesn’t actually come under the heading of production process, per se, I would have to say that, stop-motion’s ability to move in and around a space inspired how I thought about and designed many of the shots in this film. I really like to explore the z-axis in my hand-drawn work. And while this can be easily achieved with a variety of computer software, I feel that doing the work by hand brings a little something extra to these shots. Maybe the imperfection makes it more human?
DAN: When you first started the film, did you have any idea it would lead to asking for donations and financial support?
DEAN: It had always been my intension to seek outside funding to cover the production costs for the film and expected this money would come from arts grants. And while the production has received some support from this quarter, the vast majority of our funding, thus far, has come from many very generous individual donors.
DAN FORGIONE: How and when did you finally realize you would need to take this route?
DEAN: About four years ago I decided that, if I was ever going to finish this film in any reasonable amount of time, I would need to have a proper budget in order to hire extra help, pay for the supplies and professional services and, perhaps most importantly, free up my own time. At that point I had a pretty regular stream of freelance coming in and that left very little time for the film.
DAN: Despite higher costs and delays in production, you have stuck to your guns with more traditional methods of production. What is your approach to creating an animation budget?
DEAN: Start by generating a list of everything you think you’ll need for the production: crew, equipment, supplies, services, studio space, travel, insurance, legal fees, etc. Then begin contacting vendors and getting price quotes. I would typically call several vendors offering the same service to get a price range and average these to get my final figures. I would also use these opportunities to discuss the project and find out how to best prepare my work prior to delivery so that things will go as smoothly as possible on their end. These conversations often yield information about items and/or services that may have been overlooked in the initial budget outline.
The crew salaries were based on what I was getting paid as a freelancer. I chose to go with a footage-rate (X number of dollars for every 16 frames) for the animation and a per-piece-rate for the final production art rather than with a day or hourly rate. This helps to control overages, especially when your crew is working off-site, as all of mine are.
Very important: don’t be afraid to pay yourself a living wage! In my case I just needed enough to supplement my pay from teaching. However, I get the impression that many independent artists feel a little guilty when it comes to paying themselves a reasonable rate for doing their own work. To that I ask this question, would you work at a studio that wasn’t paying you enough to at least cover your basic living expenses? Probably not as that kind of distraction, and the imminent need to take on a second job (if you had any extra time to do so), would be completely counterproductive. Then why should you have that stress when working on your own production? Your salary must be included in the budget.
Dear Anna Olson’s budget has the start-up costs for the distribution launch figured in. This includes prints, screeners, festival fees, postage, publicity materials, travel expenses, etc. I also added in a 5% contingency fee to the total, because you never know… And finally, on top of all that, the 6% fiscal sponsor’s administrative fee to maintain our not-for-profit status. And that’s the whole budget “soup to nuts!”
DAN: What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in raising the money and justifying the budget to potential donors, other than the troubled economy?
DEAN: I’d have to say that the first big challenge I faced was just to keep myself from throwing-up at the idea of directly approaching people for money. When I decided to pursue this film as a full-time endeavor my producer, Jennifer Kirby, and I sat down to discuss how to best go about raising the cash for the budget. She pointed out that I would be more effective than she at raising the funds simply because potential donors want to meet directly with the artist instead of the perceived businessperson on the production. It took a little time (I almost blacked-out in the middle of Broadway & 26th Street in NYC on my way to asking for my first major donation) but I eventually got used to (I won’t say comfortable with) this new title of ‘fund-raiser’.
As for the budget, I have never had to justify that to potential donors. If they ever had any questions about it I would simply let them see the complete itemized budget and that seemed to put the issue to rest. The main thing is selling them on the idea of the film and why it should be made. The story-reel and my natural enthusiasm for this project usually helped in this regard.
But, without a doubt, the biggest challenge currently hampering our fund-raising efforts is the troubled economy. And while we’re always keeping an eye out for those larger contributions, the new strategy is securing a lot of smaller donations. When my first television interview promoting the film cleared 1,000 views on YouTube I couldn’t help but post “If each of those people (watching the clip) just made a $40 donation I’d have the rest of the animation budget taken care of! Perhaps one of the toughest challenges I face as a fund-raiser isn’t so much trying to secure that large individual contribution but convincing the vast majority of people, whose gifts may be more modest, that their support is just as important.”
DAN: How has the above influenced the production in terms of getting animators to help out on the film?
DEAN: Having a budget and being able to pay people is a good incentive for getting them interested in the project. And now, with the economy so bad, I have more artists who are available and willing to work than the budget can handle.
DAN: In regards to the film’s style and design, what was your biggest source of inspiration when you started?
DEAN: When I started the project animators like Paul Driessen, Caroline Leaf, the Hubleys, Bill Plympton, Richard Condie, John Canemaker, were all influencing the look of the film in one way or another. But it wasn’t until I saw Frederic Back’s film CRAC! that it all started to gel. Then I saw a bootleg copy Richard Williams’ The Thief and the Cobbler and really went nuts over how far the principles of hand-drawn animation could be pushed.
DAN: Has it changed or evolved since starting it?
DEAN: Some of the color design has changed but the overall look of the piece has remained pretty much the same. To insure this, I’m constantly referring back to the earlier animation so that the work doesn’t become slick all of a sudden.
DAN: In an interview, you mentioned you wrote back to Anna Olson. Have you met her in person, or continued any correspondence? If so, has she had any influence on the look and feel of the film, either directly or indirectly?
DEAN: I did write to her initially but have never received a reply.
Early on in the production I had arranged to spend a day in a nursing home recording ambient sound and some of the residence. In speaking with one of the facility’s administrators about the film, and how it was inspired by my actually finding the note from Anna Olson, I was told that it is a fairly common practice at nursing homes to send notes out via balloons so residents, who may not have many visitors, will (hopefully) receive some mail from the outside world.
DAN: As far as getting animators to help, do they need to meet certain requirements?
DEAN: In general, they need to be familiar with hand-drawn animation techniques, have solid drafting skills and a strong understanding of the principles of animation, as well as a willingness to fully explore the performance potential within their assigned shots.
DAN: And what can they expect in return if brought on board production?
DEAN: Well, they’ll be getting paid a reasonable footage rate for one thing. But aside from that, what sort of experience will they come away with? I think that I’d rather have one of the animators from the project, Stewart Shaw, answer that question:
For me, it was a tremendous growing experience as an aspiring animator as far as working under a director for the first time, and the challenges of creating a performance that fits within a larger whole as seamlessly as possible. I was tested in my willingness to “fully explore the performance potential” in a shot, but my labors were understood, appreciated, and my work respected in whole.
It was a chance to be part of a unique personal statement, something beautiful and poignant, and in this digital age, incredibly rare. As a lover of animation, the opportunity to participate in a labor of love, even one other than my own is rewarding in and of itself. (Stewart is now an animator working at Blue Sky Studios.)
DAN: If you were to start from scratch, what would you do differently in terms of production, if anything?
DEAN: During the many years that Dear Anna Olson existed as a side project I was learning so much at the studios about how a professional production is run. Having that information from the start would have saved me a lot of grief and wasted time.
But, if I had to choose one thing I’d do differently it would be to draw smaller. This is a lesson I learned when I had a chance to meet Frederic Back and see some of his production art for The Mighty River. The first thing that struck me was how small the drawings were. Much of the artwork for that film was drawn within a 6 field. I asked him about this and he replied, “If I drew any bigger I would never finish my films.” This rationale was echoed a couple of years later by Richard Williams when he was lecturing about a Shell Oil commercial he had done. In this case they had a very short schedule for completing the job so the decision was made to speed up the production by working within a 6 field. The epilogue to this latter story is they were awarded a second commercial in the same style with a more reasonable schedule. They decided to work in an 8 field and it wound up taking twice as long.
DAN: With the recent delay in production, what is the new goal for completing the film, and what will it take to reach that goal?
DEAN: The new goal is to raise the full balance of the budget. After that has been attained I will be able to hire back some artists and animators and have the film wrapped-up in ten months. For the immediate future, however, I’m looking at becoming a crew-of-one to make the remaining funds last as long as possible and keep the production moving forward as best I can. While I still intend to spend as much time as possible at the animation table, fund-raising will be taking up a greater share of my time.
So, if anyone reading this would like to make a tax-deductible contribution remember, no amount is too small! During our 2006/2007 Challenge Grant Campaign individuals, not unlike like yourself, helped to raise a total of $5,125 above our $25,000 target with gifts ranging from $25 to $4,986. So each and every donation counts!
Dear Anna Olson speaks to how small, positive actions can have great impact on the lives of others. Now it’s your chance. Take your own action to make a difference, and consider a tax-deductible gift in support of Dear Anna Olson today:
There you have it, and I hope you enjoyed it. Dean is currently the Acting Executive Director of Animation at the Maurice Kanbar Institute for Film and Television, and teaches Advanced Animation Production and Stop-Motion Animation at NYU. To read more about the film, donate time or funds, or to just check in on the film’s progress, visit the website or the Facebook page. I wish the best to Dean, and can’t wait to see what I’m sure will turn out to be a great looking film.
