Music by Marcello

We at the Watch Cat Files have some exciting news. Our composer and good friend Marcello De Francisci, with the help of Lisa Gerrard, (Gladiator, The Insider) have just finished scoring the upcoming western for a Hollywood film, "Jane got a Gun." Directed by Gavin O'Connor starring Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor.

We are very excited that our own composer will be a part of something so amazing. And we are equally excited on working with Marcello on future episodes of Watch Cat.

Congrats Marcello, you deserve it!

You can read all about it from the article below or click here.

Lisa Gerrard & Marcello De Francisci to Score Gavin O’Connor’s ‘Jane Got a Gun’

Posted: November 6, 2014 by filmmusicreporter in Film Scoring Assignments
Tags: Gavin O'Connor, Jane Got a Gun, Lisa Gerrard, Marcello De Francisci

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Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci have been tapped to score the upcoming western Jane Got a Gun. The film is directed by Gavin O’Connor and stars Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Rodrigo Santoro, Boyd Holbrook and Noah Emmerich. The movie follows a woman who asks an ex for help to save her outlaw husband from a gang out to kill him. Portman is also producing the project for her Handsomecharlie Films company, alongside Scott Steindorff (The Lincoln Lawyer, The Human Stain), Aleen Keshishian, Terry Dougas, Scott LaStaiti and Regency Boies. O’Connor has previously collaborated with composer Mark Isham on his last features including Miracle, Pride and Glory and Miracle. Gerrard’s best known previous scoring credits include Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Michael Mann’s The Insider & Ali and Nikki Caro’s Whale Rider. De Francisci has previously collaborated with Gerrard on projects including Samsara and Burning Man. Jane Got a Gun is currently in post-production and is set to be released on February 20, 2015 by Relativity Media.

When it Rains, it Purrs...

Last week, the skies grew dark and something fell, then a lot more of it fell and soon everything was getting wet. It rained, which is far and few between for us here in California. And with this change in the weather, several opportunities made themselves known to our cause. 

For one, ToonBoom Animation, makers of various 2D software like Animate Pro, Storyboard Pro and Harmony, promoted WatchCat on their Facebook page! We used ToonBoom Studio for Episode One and hope to try out Animate Pro for our next episode.

We also added our WatchCat Films channel to YouTube and below is our Holiday greeting promoting WatchCat Episode 2 in 2015.

Interest has been growing and we are asking everyone to subscribe to our YouTube channel to show your support. 

But until then,

The name Felix is from Latin meaning (happy, lucky) and was a very popular name back in 1900. It was also the name of a very famous black and white cartoon cat who had a bag full of tricks who's image is still known today.

 Felix the Cat

 

His origin begins with an Australian, newspaper cartoonist named Pat Sullivan who worked as assistant to newspaper cartoonist William Marriner, and drew four strips of his own. When Marriner died in 1914, Sullivan joined the new animated cartoon studio set up by Raoul Barre. In 1916 William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper giant, set up a studio to produce animated cartoons based on his paper's strips and hired Barre's best animators. 

There is some dispute if Felix was created by Sullivan or his top animator Otto Messmer. However Messmer is claimed to animated, the (unnamed) cat's first two cartoons which were the five-minute Feline Follies (1919) and Musical Mews (1919).  

Here is Felix's cartoon beginnings as Master Tom in the silent cartoon, Feline Follies.

        

Anything can happen in animation, the cat can remove his tail using it for a prop or as a way to tell the audience what he is thinking. Before animated films, there were newspaper comics and without sound, a lot of the jokes were written out to let the audience know what was going on. The first few cartoons. MasterTom looked more like a dog or rat with little pointy ears, but his look slowly evolved over time.By the third cartoon, Master Tom was renamed Felix.

Paramount Pictures distributed the first 25 Felix the Cat cartoons to theaters from 1919 to 1921. Here is the first cartoon where we found out the name of this cartoon cat in Felix saves the Day (1922). It contains stock footage, which reminds me of Chicago, however the live action was filmed at New York's Polo Grounds. This also has some stereotyping of African Americans. You can also see how Felix's design is slowly changing.

                          
Margaret J. Winkler was the first woman to help produce and distribute animated films for Max and Dave Fleischer, Pat Sullivan, Otto Messmer, and Walt Disney. 

In 1922, Winkler signed a contract with Pat Sullivan Productions to produce Felix the Cat cartoons. This act cemented her reputation as the top distributor in the cartoon world and distributed 64 Felix cartoons from 1922 to 1925.  

Winkler was open to viewing a pilot reel submitted by then neophyte animator Walt Disney, called "Alice's Wonderland", which was the first entry in the "Alice Comedies" series. Winkler was intrigued with the idea of a live-action girl in a cartoon world. Disney formed a new studio, Disney Brothers, which was the first cartoon studio in Hollywood and soon to change its name to The Walt Disney Company on October 16, 1923. 

 

Disney was helped by Winkler, who insisted on editing all of the "Alice Comedies" episodes herself. One of her suggestions was the addition of a suspiciously Felix-like character called Julius. This was apparently the "straw that broke the camel's back" for Sullivan, who signed with rival distributor E. W. Hammons of Educational Pictures in 1925.


Luck was on Felix's side as well as Pat Sullivan and Educational Pictures became the series largest distributor yielding 78 cartoons from 1925 to 1928. Felix was becoming the first animated star who had merchandise before Mickey Mouse. Here's Felix in another silent cartoon called Two-Lip Time from 1926, stereotyping the Dutch this time.

The Sound Era had begun and soon Felix changed distributors again to Copley Pictures where old cartoons were given sound, but sound synchronization still wasn't perfect. Two Lip Time was one of the silent films that was later given a sound track. Copley was the distibutor from 1929 to 1930

Felix on Television
 
Philo Farnsworth 

In 1927, Philo Farnsworth was the first inventor to transmit a television image comprised of 60 horizontal lines. RCA  and Farnsworth fought over the patient rights, eventually pioneering his invention and in 1929, NBC would broadcast a 13" paper mache Felix doll rotating on a turntable. For two hours every day, the same non-animated cartoon character, simply spun around and around. The broadcast image was a mere 2 inches tall and compiled of a paltry 60-line screen picture. Felix the Cat was the early broadcast image best remembered, most likely due to RCA's publicity machine, thus, becoming television's first true icon. 

Here you can see 4 lights which surround the camera lense area which recorded Felix on a turntable.
 
That same year, Felix the cat became the first giant balloon ever made for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

 

The last Felix the Cat cartoon, The Last Life (1928), was due to the advent of the talkies and the success of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. Messmer continued with his comic strip (begun in 1923) until 1966.

Felix the Cat sound cartoons weren't very successful and Pat Sullivan died in 1933. Felix saw a brief three cartoon resurrection in 1936 by the Van Beuren Studios. Felix cartoons began airing on American TV in 1953. Joe Oriolo introduced a redesigned, "long-legged" Felix, added new characters, and gave Felix a "Magic Bag of Tricks" that could assume an infinite variety of shapes at Felix's behest. The cat has since starred in other television programs and in two feature films. 

In 2010, Felix is featured on a variety of merchandise from clothing to toys. Oriolo's son, Don Oriolo, later assumed creative control of Felix. Others say, Felix got out of the cartoon business and decided to sell cars instead. One thing is for certain, in 2014 Dreamworks Animation acquired the rights to Felix the Cat and currently owns the character.

 

Felix the Cat is only one of many cartoon cats we will explore in the coming months, that is, when we're not telling you more about WatchCat Episode 2.

Happy Holidays and we hope to hear from you in the new year.

Jimr

Famous Felines of Animation

Last Friday, my Animation Principles class ended for the Fall semester at Woodbury University. 15 weeks has gone by really fast since the students first made a flipbook, later animated a bouncing ball and other exercises. Each assignment builds on the next, helping them understand how the animation process works.

All 12 students had 5 weeks to complete their final animation projects based on one of three scenerios.

1) A surprise gift, 2) A stuck door or 3) A heavy weight

Most created a storyboard, an animatic and the final project with either 1 or 2, no one choose #3 this semester. In the coming weeks, I will feature a few of theses student films for your viewing pleasure. 

As we enter the holidays, I thought I would explore something I like to call...

Famous Felines in History

To find out what was the first animated cat character, we have to go back 2,220 years ago, to ancient Egypt where cats were first bred and some were domesticated. They have found millions of cat mummies buried throughout Egypt and its believed that cats were kept to keep down vermin population. The Egyptians also had great respect and admiration for them and the export of cats was forbidden, and the penalty for killing a cat was death. However many were sacrificed to their two goddesses. Mafdet, the deification of justice and execution and Bastet represented protection, fertility, and motherhood.

Bastet

Mafdet

                                                                                      
In future episodes of WatchCat, we plan to go back in time to this period and explore some of our character's pre-history.

Mice were a big problem to humans after they settled and stored their food like rice or grain. The cats were used to keep down the rodent population. And so, many Egypt cats were smuggled or traded with the Romans, who also respected the cat for their mouse keeping abilities and were kept as mascots by the Roman legions often  travelling with them as they conquered foreign lands. 

The shorthaired domestic cat were introduced to other countries like India, China and Japan. Later, longhair cat breeds came from Turkey and Iran same reasons the Egytians  and made their way to the Far East. In 600 ad, a cat was presented to China. England got them around and many cats were taken on ships to America, always to keep the mice at bay. In many countries, cats were respected and if anyone harmed or killed a cat could be executed or jailed.

Then around the Middle Ages, the Black Plague came along, caused by rats, religious leaders blamed it on cats as being in league with Satan. European folk lore evolved and the black cat became associated with the devil and witches.

Cats have a long and interesting history and we've barely, scratched the surface. We'll pick this up again in future WatchCat blogs. As for the first animated cat character, most people would say Felix the Cat by Otto Messmer from 1920. But actually, back around 1916, there was a New York newspaper columnist and humorist named Don Marquet.

Don Marquet

Marquet became well known for his stories of Archy the cockroach and Mehitabe, a cat in her ninth life. In his newspaper column, Archy could only type his free verse poetry in lower case, because he wasn't strong enough to make capital letters on his typewriter.

While Marquet was creating his prose, the cartoon illustrations were done by cartoonist George Herriman. Herriman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to mulatto Creole parents, and grew up in Los Angeles. Apparently, he always wore a hat to conceal his hair which he thought people would have a problem with his race. Luckily, no one ever knew.

George Herriman, Creator of Krazy Kat

He created a comic strip called "the Dingbat Family" which introduced two incidental characters, a cat and mouse. Years later, after he did the cartoon drawings for Marquet, Herriman introduced Krazy Cat and a brick throwing mouse named Ignatz. 

Herriman's cartoons were in William Randolf Hurst's newspapers and a series of Krazy Kat cartoons were created. Here's one from 1916 called Krazy Kat goes a wooing. Enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/Krazy_kat_goesA-wooing_1916

Do you have a favorite cartoon Cat character? Please let me know and I'll add it to my list. Next week; we will give you an update on WatchCat 2 production, find out a little more about Felix the Cat and more.

Check out our WatchCat Films channel on YouTube and Subscribe! 

If you learned something new, click on the ad to the right and the ad below this article, let us know you appreciate animation , Thank You!

Jimr

WatchCat Episode 2

It was a busy November getting our first WatchCat episode put together in time for this year's CTN Animation Expo. We walked around in our stylish WatchCat logo t-shirts, promoting our webseries by handing out postcards and business cards to everyone we met along the way.

And now, its December and we are beginning the storyboard process for our next WatchCat episode. In the coming months, every WatchCat Wednesday you'll see the second episode go from Storyboards, to Animatic and eventually into the final show.

Story sketches for the next one.

We promise not to leave you hanging this time around and hope you will send us some feedback to keep us on track. So, here's the first episode if you missed it and if you like it, send it to a friend or two thousand and visit our WatchCat Facebook page as well.

WatchCat @ CTN Animation Expo

We made it to the CTN Animation Expo on Saturday with our WatchCat postcards in hand and wearing our official WatchCat t-shirts. The Expo was in full swing as we walked around running into old friends and making new ones, building an audience one person at a time.

 

I had been to CTN in the past, usually when I was looking for work and would sometimes get a little overwhelmed by all the talent there. But this year it was a little different -- we had something to show.

This is the place to network and meet other artists and creators. We walked around -- doing a lot of "stop and chats" -- handing out postcards and telling everyone about our webisode. 

The biggest thing that happened to us on Saturday, when Greg was walking along and this guy ran up to him. I thought the guy was security because Greg had his pass hanging on his back. Turns out the guy stopped Greg because he really liked his WatchCat t-shirt and wanted to know where he got it. 

My good friend, John Whisler screenprinted them from a design I had created. We only printed a few shirts, but we might print up more if people really like the design.

The guy who really liked the design turned out to be character designer and cat t-Shirt collector, Peter de Seve. You might not know his name, but you have seen his work in Mulan, A Bug's Life, Tarzan and Finding Nemo.  He also designed "Scrat." 

When we found this out, we removed our shirts, knelt before this animation legend and offered our shirts to him. He said he was in a hurry to get to a panel, but appreciated our offer and asked us to put our shirts back on asap. If you still want a shirt, Peter, email us and we'll talk...

Saturday ended with us feeling pretty good and only having about 20 postcards left to hand out. We talked about all the things we had seen that day and wondered if we should return the next day or not. We're glad we did.

Greg and I both went to Columbia College in Chicago years ago and today the world became a little bit smaller. We met John Musker, writer and director of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Princess and the Frog.  He's from Chicago and it turns out that Mr. Musker's daughter, Mimi, married my favorite "Film Tech 2" instructor, Dan Dinello! 

Then we met James Lopez who also used to work for Disney, but is now working on his own animated series called "Hullabaloo". James gave us some very helpful advice for making our WatchCat series a success.

And now, our WatchCat work has just begun and you can help "Support the Cat" by checking out Watchcat on Facebook and sharing our youtube link with your friends. liking us and letting everyone know that their neighborhood is under his watch...

Send us your WatchCat photos! 
Have a Happy Thanksgiving day and night.

 Keeping an eye on it.