the u.s. explains why some of america's most successful animated shows including the simpsons may have a slight russian accent. hello again and welcome to the spotlight show and party. today my guest is. the simpsons has become so popular in the united states it made it to the big screen but only few people know that this typical american family actually has aggression route so are several other super popular animated show in the u.s. how could this happen are the russians still coming or are they already there were asking the simpsons are death i mean it might. even launch it was a part of the award winning any mission studio called pilot but after the fall of

the soviet union he moved to america only to help create the country's best animated cartoons he joined his friend and colleague david cohen off another talented russian and the classic animation studio together they created one of the most successful animated get to the ninety's called rug rats the movie demon has also been a director for the simpsons movie and the television serious the simpsons. and she was into the show thank you thank you very much for being with us well first of all he in russia as we just heard you worked in the best cartoon studio that that we had at that time and maybe maybe the best still is so why did you decide to move. working in the u.s. for economic reasons for for political reasons certainly not political ones.

probably economical reasons at the time at ninety four i was out of a job for probably more than a year i was three i was already dwindling economically so when i got the invitation from the president of klasky triple triple and definitely eager corrado of insisted. on having me over there so i gladly accepted his invitation and at that time it was just invitation to come over for a year probably two and to see if i like it or not and we'll go from there that was the decision and we went to los angeles and one year passed another one and i'm still there well. it makes make stuff which is pretty different from what you were making when you were working here in russia

and they knew that so why do you think if you have an opinion on this matter what do you think they decided to invite you they wanted they wanted you to somehow change and they they the the image of the face of the. american cartoons or what. i believe the reason was that since i. am his wife arlene claus give they started their own studio basically in the bedroom of their apartment that's how they started their series rug rats so probably. business model was to. i have a studio which is not like any other studio so he wanted the constant edition of the prayer lot of the fresh blood and he would be an artist himself he really liked what igor did and what they saw that animation. he was a huge fan of it so all he constantly infused fresh blood from western europe

i believe that was the reason and at the time and that was pretty successful. later his policy changed he lost a little bit an interest in an emission itself. and the studio started to stall a little bit technically the official it still exists but it's out of the business well let's take a look at some of the recent russian animation of success stories in a report by spotlights in the demeter. impressionist painting this morning that's how one exam their patrols cartoons are often described the artist is drawn when released fingertips on gloss the technique brought him international recognition and the highest possible award an oscar russian cartoons have lately been more often nominated for the cademy awards than russian movies the latest nominee was a simplistic black and white animation my constantine bronze eat and although the

ski team then against to boast of at least twenty international awards for his cartoons what might make russian animation particular interest in to western audiences is their idea of techniques and which cartoons are done during the times of the soviet union the russian animation industry enjoyed substantial state support which allowed for creativity and although russian petunias had to go through harsh adaptation to market economy their creativity survived it was demonstrated to the full in the ninety nine. days when the most cool animations to do christmas did the series known as then they made it shakespeare for the b.b.c. half hour adaptations of shakespeare's plays produced using different animation dick nixon enjoyed international success russia's biggest commercial success an animation so far is the series shari the popularity of the little round bellied

characters is so huge that it is susan was made to distribute the good to an international but still the real pride of russian animation a non commercial project reworked so what like the recently released carry more than stop motion the ugly duckling with tchaikovsky's music as the soundtrack only for you should make use of money are currently being made at the old is trying to make you company so use more film. and i think you're one of the best people to ask what's the main difference between russian and american approaches to. well all the examples what we just saw. we can talk about success when. those are really deeply individual pieces been made by great artists and. targeted towards. you know mass

production of the same episode of the same kind of episode like week after week after week and that's our generation is really great and it is great. and mainly because of that he does what he feels he has to do and exactly the way. he feels it has to be done i can easily imagine that if it was. really on a production level new episode every several weeks it would have been so much different so of course. the author's festival kind of animation is way much different from. the mission which is done for cartoon network's and there's so many of them i've talked to a number of people working working in animation and this is strange they usually not the not the people working in the movies but people working in cartoons

in russia say here they have more freedom than they would have had in their colleagues have the people like you who work for big studios in the west do you agree. probably probably again it really depends on the project because there are projects. where certain level of freedom is really welcomed but again only a certain level when. we talk about russian animators working on their own which may be not targeted directly to bring commercial success you know let's believe the more freedom is that what you try while that's always the you know necessity is mother of invention so yeah when you. have a lot of limitations you really have to be extremely in with inventive so that really pushes you to wards more and more creativity you said you said if he

petroff had to do an episode every week yes are you envious to people that who don't have to do an episode every week would you prefer to work this way rather than doing commercially successful. i i had a chance to compare working on the mass production. animation and on like really individual. festival oriented this is a by. of course from creative standpoint it's much more interesting and. there are really no boundaries for creativity on the project the problem is that they happen like once every five years. they last for six months they do not pay much. so. if a project like was happening every other month i would be ecstatic about that but

it just cannot happen we we are of the same generation you remember like in the seventy's i think in the series union. your honor appeared cartoons for the adults and we feel middle of the garden for adults and this was something new do you think this is adequate to have cartoons for children for the snow white and the seven dwarfs i watched it the other day i think it's for absolutely for adults and only for the kids love it. good animation of course you know if it's all the edges. i i really don't like this approach when sometimes a lot of corners been caught because there's an explosion this is for kids it has to be simple it has to be. maybe not that much you know creative and again it could be extremely simple because kids are rather stupid and they don't understand the difference between good and really good so it can be simple i don't

buy into this theory so if. animation piece is done for kids but. it's done with a great effort and creativity everybody's going to like it was like in america it is extremely important even when the project is oriented towards the kids kids not going to go to the theater by themselves they're going to go with parents so it is very important so that the parents not going to get bored in the first fifteen minutes and want to walk out of the theater so they wouldn't want to have those parents stay throughout the movie so it has to have some elements which will be of an interest of interest to the parents as well at last i have somebody who understands me because i have to go to the movies with my side and when i have to well when i have to go i have to go and watch with them movies like avatar and he he's ecstatic about it i mean i mean i can't stand this is too much for me but the

only thing i agree that there are great for kids and edible edible for adults and this is this i think great ok we're talking to dimitri maulana chair just a minute he's the i'd our director of the simpsons movie spotlight will be back shortly we'll talk more about his work in a minute after a break so don't go. wealthy british style. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my next concert no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune

into cars a report on our. welcome back to spotlight i'm going off and just reminded of my guest in the studio today he is the meet the milan each of the our director of the simpsons movie and also he worked on the rug rats movie that's true yes well. what you made the simpsons the series you made it into a full size widescreen movie what was the hardest part and while i'm working

on that because we all we all are used to simpsons being like a series like like like like little nothing like a smile that said but you made a movie what what was it was it really hot it was really hard because two main challenges were about first of all of course translate the format which is familiar to a majority of the audience been seen or not like twenty inch screen and then you have to splash it over a hundred feet of the screen in a movie theater and if you will just. projected on such a huge screen it's not going to hold up to the. just even physics of the human vision because way too much of yellow color and it's going to look is terribly flat line and all because also that there is need that it's the technique that you're drawing it so yes the guys are all their attention is going to be visible so you have to use a lot of enhanced moments to basically fill out that it was up to us as an object

in two years to change it to come up with ideas but the second challenge which pretty much cancels out the first challenge was to make it in such a way so that nobody would notice it again the simpsons is such an icon in american culture you do not treat it with such a freedom so that it changes its look and starts to look like something different that was the main goal of the creators of the movie not to make it like a one huge extended episode but it has to it had to stay true to the origins of the t.v. series and what about another thing. ask yourself a question is anybody going to go to the movies and by a ticket to watch this for two hours they know that they now had i had no dog out of there no i had no doubt at all. the biggest challenge was you know

knowing that expectations were so high is what the expectation is is not to disappointed not to go again the biggest fear was that it would look just overly extended t.v. episode and. we just you know had no right to make that mistake so the stakes were really high. and this year expects the rate of success we have with the movie. well it wasn't just it was just not disillusioning people in the disappointed but it was real success was that yes while i was seriously i was certainly hoping for that i was surprised what a big that is it's of. i have read in one of the interviews that you've gone to one of the american papers that you worked so hard and you were so much occupied. when you worked in that movie

that you were sort of depressed after it all finished after the work was terminated is that true while not depressed probably is not the right word. it's human nature you're getting used to an extremely high pressure pretty much you know becomes your. way of life the way of thinking you start thinking yellow a senior fellow in your dreams or nightmares so when the whole thing stops it really is very abrupt and bizarre feeling because the world goes back to what it is not moving. you need some time to adapt to that because you described it the work work on this and this piece you describe you have as working under restrictive conditions being very restrictive wildish are one of

those that was mostly the very beginning of the project because of course we started working on a project and the script was not still there it was changed late changing pretty much on a daily basis and creators they didn't quite know what to do a with the visuals of the movie it was not their main concern at the point so they wanted something by they didn't quite know what they want at some point the consensus on their side was that it's probably going to be safer just to go with what we used to have for the t.v. series and not do anything because again we start tampering with it and we lose some authenticity of the show and we might lose something it's not going to be quite the same as it used to be. and that was a little bit. dance for quite some time.

later. actually they were way too busy with the visuals and that was a really blessing in disguise because they just forgot to think about the way the movie is going to look so at that time i was pretty much free to come up with solutions that i in the end offered to them and they were really happy about that. lots of russians work and movies in the united states lots of russians in hollywood . but we never see them working as a teen i mean as a russian team. it occurred to me when i when i read about these sciences the guys are good nobel prize and physically see they have a russian floor like a whole whole floor or all the rooms they're all russians were there oh this is the russian flyer but it doesn't happen in movies in the united states why russians

represent a great school of cinematography why don't you flock together why don't you work as a team because because you quit it you want to do it to make american movies in america or because the producers try to keep your point and not cheer up and not let your blind eye but i wouldn't say that there is a there is an attempt to really spread people around depending on their ethnicity actually at the class teachable there was some moment where a group of three or four maybe five russians were working together as a team but. i don't know it's just my observation probably it's not very welcomed to have people of the same cultural group be in a locked out from from the rest because initially i guess that in live action movies it's the same communication is the key it's extremely important to communicate but all the other people and when the people start to being locked out

and being isolated in a small group of their own something goes wrong communication wise and that usually is a really bad science so you think that that you have to keep keep it multicultural and this we're getting back to cartoons nickelodeon a great channel a great a great. market for for for a cartoon do you think russia needs a channel like think about it absolutely absolutely and. of course from my not indicated standpoint of russia desperately needs an image that we do have to do content do we all know that that's the problem because there's there's tons of content like imported content. nickelodeon d.n.a. and there's thousands of projects which could easily fill out the space on the such channels i strongly believe that russia needs its own content

nickelodeon has a very very strict requirements for animators for example they don't allow cartoons events of the past is that is that true why was that used to be publicized in no are because when i was describing the situation in one of my interviews that was the end of ninety's quite likely this. time this policy has changed at that point yes that was one of the rules which were not carved in stone but we've been told several times that some projects that i was working on and let's say all the events were taken place in a like seventeenth century. nickelodeon advise does not to do so because they prefer to have all the action take place in either you know present time or in the future. your colleague eager to karloff said in one of his interviews i quote i

like to draw like children do in primitive techniques what do you think makes such technique so so so so so attractive for contemporary artists in animation while our ego is a very strong artists and. yeah he might wish that here he will draw like a kid even though he really admires let's say the drawings that my daughter made when she was like three years old he still has a few of them are on his wall. kids' day they think different day they do different they have such a freedom in their life and at the same time they are not burdened with the years of training deadlines and not to straight or really thought out they just draw from heart and that what probably eager means because he wants to make his are

you know really coming from your soul and from your heart the way kids do it is that the reason why my son when he was about three four five years of age he did wonderful drawings i had them as you said on the wall but now he's like eleven and they and they tried to teach him to draw in school he's awfully he i mean he's worse than anybody i've ever seen the same happened to my daughter i was absolutely sure that i have a genius on my hands because she was doing absolutely amazing there are wings when she was like three five year olds freedom yeah they lose their cool because you know several years passed and all you could see you know those princes. you know little dragons and extremely steve. is that it does that mean that an artist a true artist is the man that somebody who managed to sustain his feet to keep his freedom while growing up. yes of course even going to see him since

you know since becoming bigger louder brighter the huge change even from technical standpoint and thirty six ten point happened about two years ago when the show was switched to high definition format. again the typical normal t.v. screen in the average american household it's not a twenty inch tube anymore it's like a fifty inch plasma so a lot of information has to fill out this screen so what it turns it into the high definition show became much more sophisticated visual wise yet at the same time i have really strong the style just for the very first years of simpsons when it was really clumsy crude naive. and beautiful at the same time it was not so clearly drawn perspective. it was not sophisticated yet it had really strong sense of passion which was coming from creators thank you thank you very much for

being with us and just a reminder that my guest in the studio today was meet the maligned chip our director of the simpsons movie and also the rug rats and that's it for now from all of us here if you don't have your sound spotlight just drop me a line we'll be back with more first hand comments on what's going on in and outside this country until then stay on our team and take care.

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a job criticizes nato intervention in libya saying it led to the bloody massacre of people and brought no solutions and says iran will never seek to develop nuclear weapons while giving to your head as altie speaks exclusively to the ukrainian president. tens of thousands of israelis out on the streets to demand social justice and low prices but some intel of that say the demonstrations address on the as a small part of the government's policy. also the ukrainian green on the maid forty eight still echoes through the us as people living in a radioactive mining areas say they have been abandoned by their government. news from russia and around the while this is all she was me thanks for joining us mutate says no bones iran's present.