New 3D animated feature film ‘The Ugly Duckling and Me’ is released in Irish cinemas this weekend. Producer Ralph Christians tells IFTN about the development of the Irish/German/French/Danish co-production and the Irish work completed at Magma Films.
Set up in Galway in 1994 by Ralph Christians, Magma Films is an independent production company which develops animation and live action series, feature films, TV Movies, magazine shows and documentaries for the Irish and international market. Magma’s biggest success stories include the animation series ‘Loggerheads’, ‘Norman Normal’, ‘Pigs Next Door’ and the animated feature ‘Derrick’.
Life began for ‘The Ugly Duckling & Me’ almost four years ago when Magma Films and Danish production outfit A Film successfully co-produced ‘The Fairytaler’ a series of animated adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tales. In the wake of Fairytaler’s success, Magma and A Film decided to adapt the classic Hans Christian Anderson story of the Ugly Duckling but this time with a twist, creating ‘The Ugly Duckling & Me’ where the famous duck teams with a city rat, Ratso, who pretends to be the father of the duckling in order to escape an evil gang of rats trying to track him down.
The story for ‘The Ugly Duckling & Me’ was developed by Magma’s team of writers, headed by Irish screenwriter Mark Hodkinson. In addition all the voice recording, effects and character design were carried out at Magma’s Galway HQ, accounting for 40% of the total work done on the film. The other 60% was divided between Hamburg, Paris and Copenhagen.
Ralph Christians |
“When you do a film for €6 million and a series for €8 million, you don’t find this money in Ireland, you have to go elsewhere,” explains Christians about the financial structure of the project, building what he describes as an invaluable “pipeline” of production across Europe. “There is nothing that you can call Irish Animation, or Belgian Animation, or European Animation - animation is just animation,” he says. “This means you try to get the best talents you can get into your crews, and it doesn’t matter if they are German, French, Irish or Canadian or whatever. You hire the best talent and then you build up a pipeline where you work together with different studios, one doing backgrounds, one doing props, one doing character design, one doing the animation and with all the modern technology we have now it’s absolutely fascinating to see it all growing together.”
For Christians, it’s not just the numbers that add up for this type of European partnership. The system creates a workflow where the different studios become experts in specific areas of the production. “This kind of European collaboration is necessary financially, but also creatively it’s important, because you specialise somehow. At Magma Films we have specialised in creating and writing, A Film have specialised in directing and other studios do so too.”
Taking just over 18 months to produce, the feature film ‘The Ugly Duckling & Me’ was created alongside a 23 x 30 animated series. The Irish Film Board provided €800,000 funding towards the delivery of both productions, one of the highest amounts invested in an Irish project. Christians believes their support has been a “great help” and argues that, in recent years, the Board has focused on Irish animation a lot more, securing the future of the animation industry in Ireland.
Cartoon Saloon's Brendan & The Secret of Kells |
“Cartoon Saloon is also doing the ‘Brendan and the Book of Kells’ with the support of the Irish Film Board, and we are in production with a new film called ‘Niko/The Way to the Stars’, it’s a cute story about a little reindeer who has never seen his father because he is in the flying squad of Santa. This is in production and will be released for Christmas 2008. You also have to remember that we, the animation industry, are probably the only ones who maintain work all year round for people. We’re not shooting in the summer of six weeks and then letting people go. When you count together how many people work in Cartoon Saloon, Brown Bag or Magma, these are companies of scale – not the one man and a dog companies you get for feature film.”
Creating the feature film and animated series in conjunction with one another had a number of advantages for the producers. The series offered young audiences an early introduction to the characters of the feature and established a shared information system for the animators of both the series and feature.
“This is a very interesting marketing prospect,” says the producer. “First of all quality-wise, when you do the rigging for a 3D character you normally do a cheaper version for television than you do for the big screen. But since we created all our characters for the big screen, we then lifted them into television, and everybody who saw this character said ‘How is it possible to have this quality for television?’ We also gave our writer very strict rules that they could only invent one new character per episode. The quality of the 3D animated series is extraordinarily good. The second thing in this marketing concept is that, in Europe, the series is always shown before the film comes to cinemas. A lot of kids have seen the characters and they already know the characters. The two projects are fundamentally different though, while the film is going from the whole development of the characters from the egg to the swan, the animation series is frozen in time, it’s kindof a sitcom in the duck yard.”
A scene from The Ugly Duckling & Me |
With marketplace competition for family films heightened during the summer months, the Irish box office is teeming with competition for ‘The Ugly Ducking & Me’. The Ugly Duckling and his pal the rat go head to head with a big green ogre this week, ‘Shrek the Third’, currently riding high in the Irish Box office top spot. With a budget of $100,000,000+, ‘Shrek’ places ‘Ugly’ firmly among the underdogs, but with a witty script and original narrative Christians thinks his film has got the edge.
“I believe strongly that our story is better,” he says. “When I see some other films from America, the stories are not very good because the Americans have become so linear. They don’t have a second layer, or a b-story, in their movies because it has all become so simplified.”
There’s a camaraderie and support for the animation industry that becomes evident when you talk to Christians. A belief that those who work hard and produce top quality work should become successful, especially animators in Europe who must work together to compete with the American product.
“When it comes to animation, here in Europe, we don’t have this thing of competition. Like Cartoon Saloon, when I hear that they are doing a movie, I support them. They are not my competitors they are my friends, the same for those in Finland and France. The European animation community has an unpretentious solidarity. We are working together because we need the best talent and we need to keep them in Europe. It sounds arrogant but our competitors are Pixar, Disney and Dreamworks. They have of course one big advantage, the money for marketing. Every child knows Shrek 3 is coming and that’s what we’re up against.”
‘The Ugly Duckling & Me’ has already been released in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Russia, France and Norway “going practically week after week everywhere else”. Undeniably the animated feature will be considered a successful film - something Ralph, his team at Magma and co-producers Europe-wide are very proud of.
“You shouldn’t forget for filmmakers in Europe, live action and animation, we make nearly 800 films a year, that’s nearly a premiere every three days. So of these 800 films 90% won’t raise any awareness internationally and also very often they don’t raise any awareness in their local market. To have a film like ‘Ugly Duckling’, which has been sold all over the world except four territories at the moment and it was selected for the Toronto festival, it’s a nice success story.”
Over the years Christians has expanded his Magma empire to include Ulysses Films in Germany and Ulysses Films Northern Ireland. Credits for the three companies include the RTE television series ‘Foreign Exchange’ and the popular TG4 format ‘Paisean Faisean’. With animated features, a new 26 x30 series of Grimm tales, a 3D action series for boys called ‘Enyo’ and the impending release of live action feature ‘Summer of the Flying Saucer’ in the offing, the key to the company’s success appears to be collaboration and diversification.
“In Ireland, we need companies of scale” he states. “We have some companies of scale, like Shinawil, and some others but most of the companies are really one man and a dog…We’ve heard sentences from RTÉ saying ‘you don’t need us anymore, you are so big’. We are not.”
“As soon as you reach a certain size you need them more than anything else because you’ve got to keep the people employed for twelve months. I think that every company in Europe with 4 million inhabitants, has companies of scale which are taken seriously abroad. Denmark has Nordisk Film or Metronome or Egmont, Holland has Endemol. In Ireland now, if two people are successful they split up and make two different companies. I think we need a support system in this country for companies of scale because it’s the only way we can bring up talent and build the experience. Let people make a living in the film industry, let them buy a car, have a house, a mortgage. Not to mortgage the grandmothers house to make one film every three years. The understanding is not there but the animation companies like ourselves and Cartoon Saloon have managed to become somewhat of a player in Europe and be taken seriously. We are present internationally and this helps.”
By Tanya Warren
