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Fine Arts Films was a production studio based in Northern England and Hollywood. It was founded in 1955 by the animator John David Wilson as a means to preserve the notion of animation as an art form. It shut down in 1996.
The company's first production was Tara, the Stonecutter, which won high praise and many awards including the New York Golden Eagle, the London Film Festival Award and the Edinburgh Film Festival Award. The next production was the groundbreaking animated music special Petroushka (based on Stravinsky's ballet) for NBC's Sol Hurok Music Hour. [1] It was noted for being one of the first animated shows on television and for being what could be called the first music video. Stravinsky himself conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Fine Arts Films sought to raise the bar on children's entertainment by creating educational and illuminating shorts, many of which were shown in schools during class. These shorts were also broadcast as part of NBC's show Exploring and won the Peabody Award. Wilson additionally has seven Golden Eagle Awards for this work.
Wilson was given the chance by Australian television to set up shop in Melbourne. He later returned to the United States to work on his only feature film, Shinbone Alley , [2] based on the hit Broadway musical of the 1950s. Shinbone incorporated the talents of some of the original cast, including Eddie Bracken as Archie the Cockroach, Carol Channing as Mehitabel, and John Carradine as Tyrone T. Tattersol.
One of the studio's more notable achievements was for the 1960 Seattle World's Fair. The film, Journey to the Stars, used cutting-edge technology and was seen by over seven million people. It was the first 70mm Fulldome presentation, a precursor to IMAX.
Other noteworthy credits include opening titles and many music videos for The Sonny and Cher Show , the animated opening sequence for Grease , [3] an animated trailer for Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce and the ABC-TV half-hour animated special, Stanley, the Ugly Duckling . He directed The Seventh Brother for Family Films, Fox Network-TV's Peter Pan and the Pirates , Fraggle Rock , Muppet Babies , Jem and The Specialists for MTV. In 1971 Fine Arts produced an animated video for the song "One Tin Soldier" by Coven which was the theme for the movie Billy Jack and aired on the Sonny & Cher Show and becoming a chart hit twice in 1971 and 1973. The video also aired occasionally as part of local TV Saturday Morning cartoon packages in Canada into the 1980's.
Video Gems, a home video company, released at least two anthologies of short-form animation films by John Wilson, John Wilson's Animation Wonderland and John Wilson's Mini Musicals (also known as The Fantastic All-Electric Music Movie ).
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Looney Tunes is an American animated franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. It began as a series of short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, along with its partner series Merrie Melodies, during the golden age of American animation. Following a revival in the late 1970s, new shorts were released as recently as 2014. The two series introduced a large cast of characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. The term Looney Tunes has since been expanded to also refer to the characters themselves.
Animation in the United States in the television era was a period in the history of American animation that slowly set in with the decline of theatrical animated shorts and the popularization of television animation that started in the late 1950s, reached its peak during the 1970s, and ended around the mid-1980s. This era is characterized by low budgets, limited animation, an emphasis on television over the theater, and the general perception of cartoons being primarily for children. Due to the perceived cheap production values, poor animation, and mixed critical and commercial reception, the era is generally looked back upon negatively by critics and animation historians. The television animation of this period is often referred to as the dark age of American animation, while the theatrical animation from the time is sometimes referred as the bronze age.
The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
John Cannizzaro Jr., better known as John Canemaker, is an American independent animator, animation historian, author, teacher and lecturer. In 1980, he began teaching and developing the animation program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts', Kanbar Institute of Film and Television Department. Since 1988 he has directed the program and is currently a tenured full professor. From 2001-2002 he was Acting Chair of the NYU Undergraduate Film and Television Department. In 2006, his film The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, a 28-minute animated piece about Canemaker's relationship with his father, won the Academy Award for best animated short. In 2007 the same piece picked up an Emmy award for its graphic and artistic design.
Garri Yakovlevich Bardin is a Soviet and Russian animation director, screenwriter, producer and actor best known for his experimental musical and stop motion films. He was awarded the 1988 Short Film Palme d'Or for the Fioritures cartoon and the Order of Honour in 2011.
Augenblick Studios is an independent animation studio founded in 1999 by Aaron Augenblick, and located in Brooklyn, New York City. The company has created a wide array of animated shorts for television, film, and the Internet, with the target audience typically being adults. Their clients include Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Adult Swim, the TED conference, PBS, MTV, and Nickelodeon. Their logo features a moonshine bottle with wings.
Shanghai Animation Film Studio, also known as SAFS, is a Chinese animation studio based in Shanghai, China, as part of the Shanghai Film Group Corporation. Shanghai Animation Film Studio was officially established in April 1957, led by pioneering animators and artists, including Te Wei, and the Wan Brothers. It has produced around 500 films with over 40,000 minutes of original animation data source, covering 80% of China's domestic animation production.
Shinbone Alley is a musical with a book by Joe Darion and Mel Brooks, lyrics by Darion, and music by George Kleinsinger. Based on the album Archy and Mehitabel: A Back-Alley Opera, which in turned was based on archy and mehitabel, a series of New York Tribune columns by Don Marquis, it focuses on poetic cockroach archy, alley cat mehitabel, and her relationships with theatrical cat tyrone t. tattersal and tomcat big bill, under the watchful eye of the newspaperman, the voice-over narrator and only human being in the show.
Ambrozi "Amby" Paliwoda was an American animator, character designer, and layout artist, best known for his extensive work with Walt Disney Animation Studios. He contributed to numerous classic films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia (1940), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959).
John David Wilson was an English artist, animator and producer. He owned his own production studio, Fine Arts Films.
Michael Victor Sporn was an American animator who founded his New York City-based company, Michael Sporn Animation in 1980, and produced and directed numerous animated TV specials and short spots.
The Ugly Duckling is an animated short film by Walt Disney, based on the 1843 fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen. The film was directed by Jack Cutting and Clyde Geronimi, and released in theaters on April 7, 1939. Music was composed by Albert Hay Malotte, who was uncredited for the film. The animated short was first distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, and was shown with Love Affair.
Alan Louis Zaslove was an American animator, producer and director of animated series.
Chel White is an American film director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences. He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.” A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank.
Shinbone Alley is a 1970 American independent animated musical comedy film based on the Joe Darion, Mel Brooks, and George Kleinsinger musical of the same name as well as the original Archy and Mehitabel stories by Don Marquis. It was directed by John David Wilson. Eddie Bracken reprised his role from the Broadway musical; Carol Channing played the starring role originally performed by Eartha Kitt.
The Fantastic All-Electric Music Movie, also known as John Wilson's Mini Musicals, is an anthology of short animated music videos which were originally created by John Wilson for The Sonny and Cher Show during the early to mid-1970s.
Ferdinand the Bull is a 1938 American stand-alone animated short produced by Walt Disney Productions and released on November 25, 1938, by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by Dick Rickard and based on the 1936 book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. The music was by Albert Hay Malotte, most known for his setting of The Lord's Prayer, commonly sung at weddings.
Denise Faye Greenbaum is an American actress, dancer, choreographer, and director. She is the recipient of an American Choreography Award, as well as a Screen Actor's Guild Award for the 2002 film Chicago. Faye won the Dance Track Magazine Artist Award for best choreography in a feature film for her work in Burlesque. Additionally, she received nominations including the Fred and Adele Astaire Award and The World Dance Awards for her choreography in Burlesque.
Patrick Nolen McHale is an American animator, artist, screenwriter, director, and musician.
Jay Chern is a Taiwanese-American film director, screenwriter and producer. His short film Thief (2011) won a Best Short Film award at the 2011 Golden Horse Film Festival, as well as a Best Directing award at Taiwan's Golden Bell Awards.
