Maeve Dineen: We need to get animated about our talented cartoon studios
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Did you watch the Oscars last night? Perhaps you didn't stay up late enough to see Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon's 'The Secret of Kells' or Brown Bag Films' animated fairytale 'Granny O' Grimm', but it was worth staying up to see such innovative Irish companies finally getting the recognition they deserve.
Both animation studios represent more than a personal triumph for the people involved -- they represent a template for what this country should be doing right now.
They understand how to manage talent, how to manage costs, how to export their business and how to do all this while still having fun -- which brings us back to talent.
Anybody who has been inside Cartoon Saloon's offices in the state-funded business centre known as The Maltings, in the centre of Kilkenny, will know it is a multi-cultural affair, with cartoonists from dozens of countries. Cartoon Saloon has done something few Irish companies have done: created an environment where local and foreign talent is cherished and exploited.
The studio is ruthless about managing costs. The workforce contracts and expands as necessary; people go on half-time or other contracts depending on the type of animation feature being produced.
While producing 'The Secret of Kells' and another film, 'Skunk fu', Cartoon Saloon employed 75 people full time.
In its day-to-day operations, it employs 17 people, 10 of whom are full time. Brown Bag Films employs 55 full-time staff and provides another 15 freelance jobs.
The sad facts of life today mean employers have to let people go, but it is also true that if this is handled well, then some former staff can return refreshed and invigorated when new contracts are won. That's real flexibility.
Like any world-class Irish business, Cartoon Saloon and Brown Bag Films understood from the start that they must export to survive. Almost 90pc of their business is export-based.
The tiny Irish market cannot sustain an animation studio, so they set their sights on the BBC, Cartoon Network and other giants from the beginning. Their Oscar nominations were the culmination of that policy, which has paid off handsomely.
Many politicians talk vaguely of leveraging our cultural heritage and I usually cringe when they suggest that James Joyce and his contemporaries will somehow be enough to save us. We need to get real.
Hardly anybody reads Joyce any more and nobody will ever make money out of him. Even poor Joyce couldn't make money out of being Joyce and required wealthy patrons to survive.
But it is true that companies such as these animation studios could become part of a real hub of creative industries if they were supported further by government policies.
A penchant for the arts and storytelling talent, coupled with a section 481 tax incentive for film production and an immigration policy that allows talent to move in and out of this country at will, has the potential to create an environment that becomes self-sustaining as more and more creative people gather together. Just ask the tens of thousands of writers, artists and musicians living in Berlin (granted there are a few dossers there, too).
But affordable studio space, a multi-cultural environment and a reputation for creativity are usually enough to foster more of the same.
Cheap space won't be a problem once the property market finds its floor. Cartoon Saloon's and Brown Bag Films' Oscar nominations prove we have the talent, both local and foreign, and we have the tradition. So let's use it.
- Maeve Dineen
Irish Independent
