RealDeal opened this issue on Oct 01, 2002 ยท 11 posts
samsiahaija posted Fri, 11 October 2002 at 1:16 AM
Okay; this is how it works in Europe. A producer brings together the money needed for producing an animation show; usually a multi-million dollar budget is required. A professional, experienced production manager and a professional director, often also an experienced animation supervisor are brought in to take care of the logistics of a project of that magnitude, as well as accountants, legal advisors, etc. Often, from the initial idea, through script writing, design, story-boarding, sound recording, animation, compositing and post-production, months to years are needed to finish a production - a mere 60 days won't cut it. A trailer or trial episode is produced in order to sell the series at a TV convention like the MIP-con in Cannes, where TV-stations shop for products to broadcast. Usually, at first only this trailer gets produced, and the complete show will not get produced whithout being sold to TV-stations in prior. TV stations PAY fore the stuff they broadcast; that's where your revenue comes from; NO SENSIBLE PERSON WOULD PAY FOR GETTING HIS WORK BROADCASTED. Mostly, a large amount of TV stations are neccesary even to break even on the production costs; the real profit comes from the merchandize based on the show, to which you'd better make care to get a share of it. Twenty percent of just WHAT profits have you been offered if money has to be PAID TO A TV-STATION in order to get your work shown..? How about copy-rights..? How about the usual business lawyer to keep you from signing the wrong stuff..? PS; I have been a professional in cinenatic and TV traditional animation for over 15 years now, supervising an overseas animation unit for a short while, so I think that gives me some basic ideas about how things usually work. As tempting as an opportunity to get your work shown may be; please use your common sense; working for free for a period of months or years to get 80 percent of a non existing revenue sounds like an absolute rip-off to me.