Oregon Cartoon Institute is holding its second public meeting on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2:00 PM at 5th Avenue Cinema.

All friends and fans of Oregon Cartoon Institute are invited. If you think you might belong to this group, you do.

The agenda includes a brief introduction to the all volunteer Institute, and a discussion of what is up next. We’ll have announcements from the Mel Blanc Project and the Homer Davenport Project, some proposals to consider, and some hand outs to take home.

Reminder: last time the Institute met, Dennis Nyback supplied home made refreshments.

This year our featured attraction is a rare screening of The Clay Baker, a stop motion animation short by early Portland filmmaker Lewis Clark Cook (1909 – 1983). We will also screen a ten-minute profile of Cook, made for OPB in the early 1980’s by Portland artist Jim Blashfield.

Michele Kribs, who was trained by Cook to succeed him as head of Oregon Historical Society’s Moving Image Archive, will be in attendance.

In the photo above, use of which was generously made possible by the Oregon Historical Society, Lew Cook is 15 years old. That is his own 35mm camera. A doting aunt, knowing that he was in love with the movies, bought it for him. He quit selling newspapers and went to work as a newsreel photographer.

Top Four Reasons You Might Want To See The Clay Baker:

4. Cook made his living as an independent filmmaker using more tricks than you can imagine. Just as Bill Plympton turned down Disney, Lew Cook turned down Warner Brothers. He chose independence. Besides Plympton, the other Portland filmmakers who followed Cook’s lead include Homer Groening, Will Vinton, Joan Gratz, Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, Rose Bond and  Joanna Priestley.

3. The Clay Baker was made “in the 1920’s” which means Cook could have made it anywhere between age 11 and age 20. Come help us sleuth out clues as to whether this is the work of a hard working child or an uninhibited adult.

2.  No one else you know has seen this film.

1. Will Vinton credited The Clay Baker with inspiring him to consider clay animation. Who knows what it will inspire you to do!

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This event is a partnership between Oregon Cartoon Institute, Oregon Historical Society and 5th Avenue Cinema.

Thank you to Kerry Tymchuk, Michele Kribs and Scott Rook of Oregon Historical Society.

Thank you to Heather Petrocelli of 5th Avenue Cinema and PSU’s Public History Interest Group.

Joanna Priestley, the Queen of Independent Animation, has a policy of never repeating herself. The only rule she seems to obey consistently is the avoidance of boredom.

Anouck Iyer, of ASIFA Seattle, interviewed Priestley in 2002.

What led you to choosing film as your medium of artistic expression?

I started as a painter. I had been working at a studio in Paris and when I returned to the states I relocated to the town of Sisters in central Oregon. At that time there were no movie theaters in Sisters nor in the three surrounding counties, which encompassed a vast area. So, a friend and I started a group called “Strictly Cinema.” We starting renting 16mm prints and showing them at the Bend High School. The screenings were wildly successful, there was no VHS back then so people came in droves to see these films. Later we started showing films at the Redmond High School and in the summers we held outdoor screenings at local parks.

We just kept doing more and more screenings because there was a demand for it. This led us to organizing film festivals. Our first big event was an animation festival. We brought in a filmmaker from Portland named Bob Gardiner who won an Oscar for a film he did with Will Vinton called Closed Mondays. That event was a gigantic success. It got me interest in animation and it was the first time I was able to see noncommercial animation art. From “Strictly Cinema” I got a job as the Film Librarian, then the Regional Coordinator at the Northwest Film Center working for Bill Foster. That was at a time when Bill Foster was bringing in a lot of independent filmmakers and animators, like George Griffin, Jane Aaron, and Marv Newland. So I was able to meet them and they were actually guests in my home. I was exposed to lots of work. I got so excited about the possibilities of translating what I was doing in painting to filmmaking.

I went to the Safeway store across the street, bought some index cards and started experimenting. From there I took a class taught by Roger Kukes who was the first animation teacher at the NW Film Center. He is a brilliant artist who is still active in town, but not in animation. He got me really excited about animation and made want to pursue it, so I went on to study at Cal Arts’ Experimental Animation program.

For readers new to the study of Portland animation history, I would like to point out a few interesting mileposts on Joanna’s career path.

1. She went to Paris. Then she went to the desert. Classic trajectory for an emerging artist! It was in Oregon’s High Desert that publisher-turned-producer Mike Richardson found his vocation in comics. It was in the desert that filmmaker Penny Allen wrote her book, A Geography Of Saints. (Although Penny reversed things and went to Paris after, not before, her desert epiphany.)

2. The first noncommercial animation she saw was by fellow Oregonians, Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner. Somewhere it must have registered that those two also happened to be Oscar winners.

3. She was taught by Roger Kukes, who also taught Rose Bond. Perhaps Priestley and Bond were in the same class! If so, Kukes is a master teacher, because these two students went on to have international careers.

4. “I was exposed to lots of work.” Bill Foster made sure Northwest Film Center students saw lots of independent animation and met living, breathing filmmakers.

The longer ASIFA interview provides a great short introduction to what Portland did right to nurture a young film artist. Joanna returned the favor by founding the Portland chapter of ASIFA, and by teaching at AI, PNCA and NWFC, and by running an apprenticeship program from her own studio.

See Joanna Priestley’s films, including three premieres, and meet the Queen Of Independent Animation herself, on January 28, 2012, at 7:00 PM, at Whitsell Auditorium. More information here.

Entertainment Weekly called them “the coolest wrinkled musicians this side of the Stones”.  The brainchildren of California Raisin Marketing Board, the musically talented Raisins first came to life at Will Vinton Studios in 1986.

They took the country by storm.

Executive producer Will Vinton, producer David Altschul and writer Ralph Liddle collected a 1988 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for their work.

I hereby claim A Claymation Christmas Celebration as an Oregon film on the basis of multiple criteria (credits include two Oregon Oscar winners – Will Vinton and Joan Gratz).

Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

Animator Laura Di Trapani has been making films in Oregon since 1984. If you study with her at Portland State you will be learning from someone who has worked with Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, Chel White, Will Vinton, and the late cartoonist John Callahan, as well as Childrens Television Workshop and Sesame Street.

Di Trapani belongs to the extraordinary sisterhood of Oregon animators which includes Joan Gratz, Rose Bond, Joanna Priestley, Marilyn Zornado.

On May 22, at 8:oo PM, Di Trapani will screen her current work in progress Exquisite Corpse at the Curious Comedy Theater, 5225 NE MLK Blvd, in Portland.

Film preservationist Michele Kribs receives a commendation from Thomas Vaughn, former head of the Oregon Historical Society.

Michele Kribs has kept an eye on the Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive since 1979.  Although the collection is catalogued, she remains the best source of information about what the archive holds and how to find it.

Michele explained to me that Oregon had an early start in the film industry because of three things: the Rose Festival, the Columbia Gorge, and the Pendleton Round Up. These three endlessly fascinating subjects were documented, year after year, for national audiences by silent newsreel photographers. The steadiness of the demand for these three Oregon subjects created enough economic stability for a local film scene.

The coming of sound in 1927 dampened the progress of the local industry. Only Hollywood had the budgets to keep up with the expanded costs brought in by sound. But since the roots of Portland’s film industry were deep, there was never a complete hiatus. Local ad agencies, including one run by Homer Groening, kept skills ( and processing labs)  alive. Then in 1975, after Will Vinton came home with an Oscar,  independent filmmakers in Portland had renewed determination and inspiration.

Michele was not the first preservationist/archivist to work for OHS. That honor goes to the man who trained her: Lewis Clark Cook, a filmmaker-turned-archivist who inspired both Will Vinton and Jim Blashfield ( who in turn inspired, employed and mentored a young, film curious, Gus Van Sant.) For that reason, Lew Cook could reasonably be called the granddaddy of Portland filmmaking today.

Congratulations, Michele Kribs, and thank you for keeping everything in order, including our sense of Portland film history.

The Cinefamily has invited Portland filmmaker Will Vinton to come lord over their international animation festivities.

This is from the festival website:

12/5 @ 1:45pm / SERIES: THE 2ND LOS ANGELES ANIMATION FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL
Will Vinton Shorts
(W/ Will Vinton In Person!)
He may not be a household name, but Will Vinton has ushered the medium of Claymation into ubiquity. He even coined the term itself, trademarked it the year he established his own studio — and his work has been nothing short of iconic, to the point where any ‘80s time capsule would be incomplete without a figurine of one of his soul-singing raisins. The Domino’s Pizza “Noid”? Yes. The “Gnome King” inReturn to Oz, and Michael Jackson as a moonwalking bunny? Check. And of course, those California Raisins? All vintage Vinton! An Oscar, five Emmies, beloved holiday specials, and thirty-four years later, Will is still breaking ground in his commercial and independent work, and LAAF is proud to both have him as our guest of honor, and to award him for his lifetime spent molding animation memories.

Back in the early ‘70s, Vinton founded his studio in order to explore the potential of Claymation, and this series of shorts is undeniable proof of his success. This special program showcases a wide selection of works spanning his career, from his most obscure work to his most beloved, includingClosed Mondays, his first independent short, which garnered him the 1975 Academy Award for Best Animated Film! The detail and innovation of Closed Mondays is still startling today, so it’s no surprise that three other films in this show (The Great Cognito, The Creation, and Rip Van Winkle) also earned Oscar nods. In addition to these films, we’ll also see more shorts from Will’s deep well of stop-motion mastery, a nostalgic reel of his memorable work in the realm of the thirty-second commercial spot, and a rare screening of the entire CBS special “Meet The Raisins”!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Cinefamily/Los Angeles Animation Festival International takes its Vinton love a step further by programming one of Vinton’s less well known works.

12/4 @ 7:15pm / SERIES: THE 2ND LOS ANGELES ANIMATION FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL
The Adventures Of Mark Twain
(25th Aniv. Screening, Brand-New 35mm Print, Will Vinton In Person!)
The world’s first all-Claymation feature film is Will Vinton’s most ambitious, and ultimately satisfying endeavor. Criminally underseen, barely released, yet critically lauded, The Adventures of Mark Twain is a complex multi-layered story that echoes the convoluted richness of Charlie Kaufman’s best creations. What appears to be a kids’ film on the surface (with Huck, Tom and Becky meeting Twain and hitching a ride on his spacebound riverboat) turns out to be rather weighty underneath, exploring the same themes of mortality and ethical conflict that Twain explored in his own works. Where it gets strange, however, is when we quickly realize that said riverboat is on a deliberate suicide run to meet Halley’s Comet (steered by Twain’s bizarro alter ego), and that’s just in the first ten minutes! From there, Will’s daring, lysergic vision of Satan, the black void, Adam and Eve, and meta-representations of Twain’s stories equal what Michael Medved has called “the most original and audacious animated feature film since Disney’s Fantasia.” Will Vinton will be here in person for a Q&A after the film!
Dir. Will Vinton, 1986, 35mm, 86 min.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hooray for Cinefamily recognizing the immense originality of Will Vinton! His lasting impact on animation could be seen in the success of two recent stop motion animated features, Coraline and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, animated by artists he trained, Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson.

How many other filmmakers did Vinton train and/or inspire? I’m hoping the full story of Vinton’s impact on Portland’s filmmaking infrastructure will be revealed in the autobiography he promised me he would someday write. I have cleared a space for it on the Oregon Cartoon Institute bookcase (reference section) and am patiently looking forward to reading it.

Last year, Oregon was represented at the Oscars by Coraline and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, both films animated by artists trained by Will Vinton, at Will Vinton Studios here in Portland. This year, Bill Plympton decided to keep Oregon animation in the spotlight by making sure his internationally acclaimed, multi-award winning Idiots and Angels was eligible for an Oscar nomination.

Here’s the story in Bill’s own words.

I believed in the film enough to try for an Oscar nomination.

So, without a distribution deal in place, I decided to handle the release myself. Now this isn’t the end of the world, in fact there are some positive aspects of self-release. But let me first list the negative points:

1.     I had to lay out a lot of money for prints and trailers.

2.     I had to hire press agents.

3.     I produced posters and postcards myself.

4.     I called all my press friends begging to get any kind of interview or articles.

5.     I organized street teams of students to canvas the city.

6.     I booked myself in every art school I could think of to give me a Master Class, to make the schools aware of the screening.

However on the positive side, here are the benefits of self-distribution.

1.     The rights to the film remain in  my hands, thus I can control when it’s released how it’s released, and where it shows. And if I want to rerelease it, it’s my decision.

2.     All the money, if there is money, comes directly to me.

3.     I get to control the images and style of the release. I can talk directly to my audience.

Idiots and Angels’ run at the IFC theater in New York, which began Oct.6, now has been extended to Oct. 21.

Congratulations, Bill! For all you Academy members out there, here’s the screening times:

• Wed, Oct 13 at: 1:00 PM, 2:45 PM, 4:40 PM, 6:40 PM,8:40 PM, 10:35 PM
• Thu, Oct 14 at: 1:00 PM, 2:45 PM, 4:40 PM, 6:40 PM,8:40 PM, 10:35 PM
• Fri, Oct 15 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Sat, Oct 16 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Sun, Oct 17 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Mon, Oct 18 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Tue, Oct 19 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Wed, Oct 20 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM
• Thu, Oct 21 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM

The IFC Theater is at 323 Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village, New York. Yes! You are correct. It  is located on the site of the historic Waverly Theater, just off the southwest corner of Washington Park.

Q: What is Bill Plympton’s Idiots and Angels about?

A: New York Magazine sez: In the animation icon’s ambitious, hilariously demented moral fantasy, a selfish businessman discovers angel wings growing out of his back and finds his crass impulses suddenly at odds with a newfound, unwelcome desire to do good.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post brought to you by the good people at Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Basil Wolverton displays his pioneering “spaghetti and meatballs” approach to human anatomy.

As Oregon Cartoon Institute heads into its fourth year, I sat down to retrace the steps that led to its creation.

This timeline of development was originally written for Jill Hartz, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Thank you, Jill, for providing me with the impetus to pull this together!

1990’s in New York

As I fly back and forth between Portland and New York, I begin noticing the way Oregon press underplays the fame of Oregon’s most well received artists (Chuck Palahniuk a great example ) while at the same time New York press omits the Oregon citizenship of an artist all together. I begin to understand the way this has created a misperception that Oregon does not produce artists.

At about this same time Columbia sportswear begins showing up on the subways. The Simpsons are becoming a cultural mainstay. Elliott Smith, the Dandy Warhols, Courtney Love, Gus Van Sant — I start to feel  surrounded by Portland even when I am 3,000 miles away.

1999 visiting Portland

David Chelsea tells me about Basil Wolverton.

I knew about Homer Davenport, the Hearst newspaper cartoonist from Silverton.

I’d heard about Mel Blanc, Portland’s most reknowned voice artist.

But I am stupefied by Wolverton. How could a guy from Central Point (pop: 12,000)  influence an entire generation of  Americans? And do it via Mad Magazine ?

A seed starts to sprout in my mind.

2001, in Portland

Dennis Nyback and I teach an avant garde film survey course at Northwest Film Center. Preparing for it, I discover avant garde animator Harry Smith was born in Portland.

Smith was both the disciplined, insightful, completely original collector behind Folkways’ enormously influential Anthology of American Folk Music and a self taught, extravagantly experimental, completely original filmmaker. I never dreamt he had anything to do with Oregon.

In my previous understanding, Oregon rarely produced nationally known artists.

Now with Harry “High Brow” Smith and Basil “Low Brow” Wolverton in the picture, I am completely confused.

2003 in New York

Standing in Kim’s Video, I stumble across a footnote in a book about Robert Crumb which identifies Carl Barks, creator of the comic books which were a huge influence on Crumb, as being from Merrill, Oregon.

I turn the book over to see who wrote it — D. K. Holm, from Portland.

At this point I compile a list of living and dead Oregon cartoonists and animators and send it to John Canemaker, asking what he thinks. He calls me, excited and impressed.

He adds two new names.

He tells me Marc Davis, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, graduated from high school in Klamath Falls

and that Pinto Colvig, an early animator turned voice artist, is from Jacksonville.

2006 in Portland

Dennis and I interview Portland cartoonist  John Callahan for The Portland That Was.

Callahan is surprised to learn that Mel Blanc, a life long hero, is from his own home town. Our intern, a graduate of Lincoln High School, the school Blanc attended, tells us she never heard of him.

About this time, graphic journalist  Joe Sacco returns home to live in Portland, bringing with him his 1996 American Book Award.

Dennis and I return home too.

2007 in Portland

We hold the first Oregon Cartoon Institute public event, a three week screening series at Disjecta of 16mm animation from Dennis’ collection. Jim Blashfield and Rose Bond come and speak. Both have conducted far ranging film careers from Portland.

Blashfield made his acclaimed music videos here, and Bond her monumentally scaled installations. Both use animation.

Our model for engaging audiences emerges  — we will use living artists as interpreters as we raise awareness about the dead ones. Chel White, Bill Plympton, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestly, Marilyn Zornado and Will Vinton loan us 35mm prints for the final night of the Disjecta series, which takes place at the Hollywood Theater.

Second Oregon Cartoon Institute event: Dennis conducts video interviews with visiting and local artists at the Platform International Animation Festival. We put these online.

At this point, I thought we had found all the historic Oregon animation and cartooning figures there were to find.

I was wrong.

In the course of researching Oregon film history for the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival, I stumble across George Bruns, a four time Oscar nominee for animated film scores, from Sandy

and Dennis stumbles across Ralph Wright, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1957. He’s from Grants Pass.

2009 in Portland

Third Oregon Cartoon Institute event: we co-sponsored Bill Plympton Day at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst.

Bill is as fascinated with this history as we are.

Not all our research comes from history books. Some comes from the news. Just when we weren’t looking,  Brad Bird received first one, then two Oscars.

Looking ahead:

An interview about Oregon Cartoon Institute’s next public event, which will take place in 2011, can be found online at  KBOO.fm. Conducted by S. W. Conser as part of his Words & Pictures series, this interview introduces our first artist in residence, Heather Perkins.

Oregon Cartoon Institute is all about partnerships. As soon as the details get finalized, we will announce our upcoming partnerships with others who share our goal of raising public awareness of  this state’s rich animation and cartooning history.

Tonight production designer Nelson Lowry and key animator Brad Schiff team up with cinematographer  Tristan Oliver to discuss their work on the Oscar nominated The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Portland’s gift to Wes Anderson! Lowry and Schiff perfected their skills on The PJ’s and Gary and Mike, at Will Vinton Studios.