SPAIN: CARTOON FORUM IN CORDOBA ATTRACTS PRODUCERS FROM ALL OVER EUROPE IN A MISSION TO KNOCK THE US FROM THE TOP OF THE RATINGS

Record ID: 388735

  • Title: SPAIN: CARTOON FORUM IN CORDOBA ATTRACTS PRODUCERS FROM ALL OVER EUROPE IN A MISSION TO KNOCK THE US FROM THE TOP OF THE RATINGS
  • Date: 22nd October 1999
  • Summary: CORDOBA, SPAIN, RECENT - REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PHILLIPE VIDAL, PRODUCER OF GINA SAYING 'I think 'Gina' is most of all a sitcom. A sitcom means comedy, and comedy comes with dialogue. You have to have good stories, you have to have good humour and it is very difficult to find right now.' VARIOUS OF PRODUCERS, DIRECTORS, ETC. AT CARTOON FORUM FINN ARNESEN, VICE
  • Embargoed: 6th November 1999 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: CORDOBA, SPAIN
  • Country: Spain
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA8LW10REQUNW2ECD65FMR9NO0Q
  • Story Text: The animation industry has reached a new golden age.
    US successes like The Simpsons and South Park have created viewing figures previously unheard of in the world of cartoons, but Europe is still trying to find that special something.
    At this year's Cartoon Forum, held in the Spanish city of Cordoba, producers from all over Europe brought their new series for first screenings, and joined together in the mission to knock the US off the top of the ratings.
    This is Cordoba, an ancient Spanish city , steeped in history, nestling between the grandeurs of Granada and Seville.
    And so an unlikely venue for one of the most forward-looking events in the world of television.
    Cordoba was this year host to the 10th Cartoon Forum - a European festival where the most exciting and innovative productions got their first screenings.
    Diversity is the name of the game - but all of these directors are united in a single goal....to reach the heady heights of success that the US alone currently enjoys.
    The Simpsons is generally credited with being the root of animation's new heyday.The brainchild behind the series, Matt Groening, has injected a humour and strength of character unrivalled in cartoons, and created an appetite no one could have imagined.
    With the massive success of cartoons like The Simpsons and South Park, the United States has launched animation into prime time television.European animators are now ready to seize this new audience.
    Meet 'Bosom Pals'.They may look like a friendly bunch of people but they are a carefully considered weapon that the UK is launching on the States.Fed up with laughing at the antics of Homer, Claudia Lloyd decided it's time for Britain to have a stab at the market: 'There's no doubt in British broadcasting that everuone's saying why can't we do a big, mainstream adult animation thing - but why should we aim for what they do coz they do it brillliantly.We should come up with our own thing.I mean they love our coustume dramas, 'Pride and Prejudice, and stuff like that.'Bosom Pals' is British but the heart of it is for everybody.' Based on the paintings of worldfamous artist Beryl Cook, 'Bosom Pals' is essentially a character-driven sitcom.Ginger Gibbons is the man who's been given the task of directing the animation.He's determined to seize the Britishness of the project and use this as its unique selling-point: 'I think for quite a time now we've been making a mistake in Great Britain and people have been trying to do in a sense an Americanised - an English version of what is an American genre.And I think it's a mistake.With Bosom Pals we've gone right back to basics and taken something that's essentially English - and said this can not only be as funny as anything the Americans can do but it can reach as wide an audience as anything the Americans can do because it transcends cultures.' It's not just the UK who are on the hunt for that special something.the States have made look so simple.French animators were also out in force at the Cartoon Forum with their attempt at having a piece of the action.
    Voila 'Gina' - she's being tipped as a kind of animated Parisian answer to Ally McBeal.
    Phillipe Vidal is the producer: 'I think 'Gina' is most of all a sitcom.A sitcom means comedy, and comedy comes with dialogue.You have to have good stories, you have to have good humour and it is very difficult to find right now.' Comedy is definitely the buzzword.Ironically, in an industry where increasingly brilliant technology allows amazing visual advances, it's dialogue that appears to be key.
    Finn Arnesen is the vice president of Cartoon Network.He knows exactly what his viewers want: 'We're looking for comedy-driven shows, we're looking for that European flavour that we seem to do so successfully well with from our American shows intrinsically, like 'Dexter'.
    What I'm looking for and the kind of shows that I'm co-producing at the moment are comdey, gag-driven, family-friendly, kid-friendly (hate that expression) humour.' For Phillipe Vidal, creator of hit children's series 'Babar', this is his first forray into the world of adult animation.He's discovering that catering for adult tastes brings with it a whole new agenda: 'If you want to do right now a series for adults, you have to have great stories and great characters, and very good dialogue and I think that the animation is something that's just stuck to it.' Nick Park's Oscar-winning 'Wallace and Gromit' is clearly testimony to that.Although the highly technical model animation can hardly be called an accessory, it's clearly the humour in the character and dialogue that propelled these figures into the limelight.
    Michael Rose is the Head of Film and TV at Aardman Animation.He's seen the company through the conception of Wallace and Gromit to Aardman's first attempt at a full-length animated feature film which is being backed by Spielberg's Dreamworks Studios.
    According to Rose, the States are ahead of Europe in their whole basic attitude to the creation of animated series: 'In the States, they've seen animation as the stuff of primetime shows and approached their animation series in the same way that they would do live-action.In the same way that they have teams of writers on Roseanne and Frasier - and they set out to make a show.I think in the UK we've come from more of a cottage-industry background and the industry is becoming increasingly more professionalised and industrialised but it's only now that broadcasters are beginning to see animation as something for primetime rather than just for kids.' It may have taken Europe a little longer, but a slow start isn't necessarily a bad thing.
    The States have clearly paved the way to success and are riding high on this discovery.But European animators are clearly now proving that they can deliver the goods too, and are determined to reach the massive viewing figures the US series are enjoying.
    There's no doubt that the energy and the talent is there - just whether that European je ne sais quoi can beat that very American flavour that we all seem to find irresistable.
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