#Adam Himoff | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lu9 · 5 years

Text

Interview with Erik Mara about the short “Catching Kringle” from 2004

Ever since I came across this obscure short I had several questions that I wouldn’t find answers because of how obscure it is... but then I managed to contact one of the people from the staff who worked on the short, and so... here you go.

Q: How was it like working on the short, from what you remember?

A: It was fun, it took over 2 years because it was on our own schedule due to our regular 9 to 5 work. I used to work for Toon Boom Technologies, INC and I had the privilege to install the high end animation software on my desktop. I set up my condo into a production studio. I had a few computers running (1 being the server, 1 rendering computer and 1 work station) on Windows NT. I also had a Fujitsu auto scanner and set it up with a peg bar to scan animation paper. It was quite the experience.

Q: How connected were you to the staff working on the short?

A: I only knew Adam and Andrea Himoff, the producers and creators of the project. They called it Jellyman productions. The rest of the team were scattered across the world. We had animators in Korea, Philippines, and background artist in the United States and other parts of the world. We all communicated via email or Instant Messengers.

Q: Would you happen to know how the short's concept came to be, or any other interesting thing that got changed in the final release?

A: Adam and Andrea were a very nice and kind Jewish couple and creating a story of Christmas was very ironic but funny. I believe they were using the skit to also promote and pilot to other networks so they can pick up for a TV series.

Q: What made me be aware of Catching Kringle's existence in first place was because of a composer that I liked, who does movie score and video game music, Shawn K. Clement. However, the work he did for Catching Kringle doesn't seem to be present in the final version of the short. He has a video on his channel with a draft of the short with his music on it. Do you know what happened for the score to be changed?

A: I am not aware about the score at the time because when I worked on the scenes, it was not married to the score yet until I saw it after I sent my part of the production to the editor.

Q: On the credits, a character is listed as "Snowflake" - is that the elf boy? Or does he have no name?

A: Yes, Snowflake was a male elf. I think he was just called Snowflake.

Q: On a few news sites it was stated that a full-length version of the short was being worked on. Would you happen to know whatever happened to that, or how much progress in that was made?

A: I was informed before we started on the pilot that Adam and Andrea had a vision of Catching Kringle on the big screen. It has been over 15 years, I would not know if they are still working on it.

Q: What do you think ultimately led this short to fall into obscurity, even with a cast like Danny DeVito and Larry King?

A: It was lack of marketing and promotion. I felt it could have gone viral at the time because we implemented 2 vector based software that were not married at the time. Because of our project, Toon Boom Technologies, INC. used the combination of USAnimation and Flash into one. Today it's called Harmony.

Q: What was your favorite short/movie/cartoon to work on?

A: I worked on Powerpuff Girls the Movie. That a very fun project.

There you have it. I recommend you check out the short, it stars Danny DeVito, Larry King and other well known (voice) actors. The animation is not something you could say is “extremely good”, but for its time, it’s pretty decent and mixes some mediums nicely. Music is good, and so is Shawn K’s score which didn’t make it into the final release. (You can also check it out on his Soundcloud.)

#catching kringle #this is probably the first post with this tag ever #rip #short #christmas #danny devito #larry king #erik mara #powerpuff girls #shawn k. clement

2 notes · View notes

hollywoodjuliorivas · 7 years

Link

POLITICS Lack of Workers, Not Work, Weighs on the Nation’s Economy By BINYAMIN APPELBAUMMAY 21, 2017 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Share Tweet Email More Save Photo Juan Guerrero, right, and Joseph Waseme securing materials on a truck bed at a Roofers Supply lot in Salt Lake City. The company needs at least 15 more drivers to meet demand, but has had trouble finding workers. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times SALT LAKE CITY — Stephanie Pappas and her brothers built their roofing supply company in this fast-growing region by promising next-day delivery, but lately they’ve been forced to tell some customers that tomorrow is impossible. Their company, Roofers Supply, employs 28 drivers across Utah, and Ms. Pappas said she would need at least 15 more to meet the exploding demand for shingles and tiles. The company has raised its starting wage by 10 percent since the beginning of the year to $17.50 an hour, but it’s not enough. “We never want to have to say, ‘We can’t do it,’ but we need people,” Ms. Pappas said. After eight years of steady growth, the main economic concern in Utah and a growing number of other states is no longer a lack of jobs, but a lack of workers. The unemployment rate here fell to 3.1 percent in March, among the lowest figures in the nation. Nearly a third of the 388 metropolitan areas tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have an unemployment rate below 4 percent, well below the level that economists consider “full employment,” the normal churn of people quitting to find new jobs. The rate in some cities, like Ames, Iowa, and Boulder, Colo., is even lower, at 2 percent. That’s good news for workers, who are reaping wage increases and moving to better jobs after years of stagnating pay that, for many, was stuck at a low level. Daniel Edlund, a 21-year-old call center worker in Provo, Utah, learned Monday that his hours were changing. On Wednesday, he had his first interview for a new job. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story “I’m trying to find a company that treats you well,” he said. But labor shortages are weighing on overall economic growth, slowing the pace of expansion in northern Utah and other fast-growing regions even as unemployment remains stubbornly high in Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and in regions still recovering from the 2008 recession, like inland California. To Todd Bingham, the president of the Utah Manufacturers Association, “3.1 percent unemployment is fabulous unless you’re looking to hire people.” “Our companies are saying, ‘We could grow faster, we could produce more product, if we had the workers,’” he said. “Is it holding the economy back? I think it definitely is.” President Trump continues to promise that he will accelerate job growth by cutting taxes and regulations. But the accumulating evidence that workers are getting harder to find, and that wages are rising more quickly, has convinced many economists that significantly faster growth is unlikely. The Federal Reserve has cited the trend as its reason for moving to wind down its own economic stimulus campaign. The Fed may raise interest rates again at its next meeting in June. Qualtrics, which conducts online market research, is a prime example of the rapid growth of the Utah economy — and the sense that Utah is straining at the limits of its growth potential. Scott Smith started the company with his son, Ryan, and a college classmate in his Provo home in 2002. Qualtrics now employs 1,300 people, including about 800 in a new headquarters building opened in August at the mouth of Provo Canyon. And it is bringing workers to Utah as fast as it can. Photo Griffin Miller, a Qualtrics employee, at the company’s new headquarters in Provo, Utah. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times Each Monday, the company ties red balloons to the desks of that week’s batch of new employees. Last week, there were several dozen of those balloons. The parking lot outside the new headquarters building is already overstuffed, including many cars that still have out-of-state plates. Ryan Smith, now the chief executive, said Qualtrics had hired about three dozen graduates from the University of Michigan alone last year. The company estimates that new arrivals bought 100 homes in Provo last year. Utah’s tech scene is growing alongside the company. More local university students are studying engineering; more start-ups are popping up in the region, which boosters would very much like everyone to call “Silicon Slopes.” But by the end of the year, Mr. Smith said, he expects the company will have more employees outside Utah than in its home state. It is growing where it finds workers. Companies in Utah, as in the rest of the country, were slow to raise wages in recent years. At first there were plenty of available workers. But by the end of 2015, a report by Utah’s Department of Workforce Services concluded that inadequate wages had become a key reason companies were struggling to find employees. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It was as if employers hadn’t adjusted their approach to the labor market” as the economy recovered, said Carrie Mayne, the department’s chief economist. Now there are signs the logjam is breaking. Adam Himoff, the president of Xemplar Skilled Workforce Solutions, a recruiting firm hired by Roofers Supply to find drivers, said he had seen an increase this year in the willingness of clients to raise wages. Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story Morning Briefing Get what you need to know to start your day in the United States, Canada and the Americas, delivered to your inbox. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY “Labor has become the constraint on their growth goals, and they’re recognizing that they’re going to have to increase wages to achieve what they want to achieve,” he said. Ms. Mayne said the state also saw signs of what she described as a broad-based acceleration in wages in the most recent data, through the end of last year. But the share of Utah adults who have withdrawn from the labor force remains higher than before the recession. Last year, 31.7 percent of adults in Utah were neither working nor looking for work, up from 28.2 percent in 2006. That is part of a broad national trend. Photo Leo Tapia operating the milking machine at Gibson’s Green Acres Dairy in Ogden, Utah. In less lucrative industries such as agriculture, labor shortages may remain an intractable problem. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times And a 3.1 percent unemployment rate still means that about 50,000 people in Utah were trying to find jobs in March. Some, like Monica Von Strahl, expect to find work quickly. Ms. Von Strahl, 44, moved to Utah from Oregon in April for family reasons. She left a job as a caregiver for adults with disabilities that paid $16 an hour; so far, the most she has been offered in Utah is $10 an hour. She plans to keep looking a little longer. (Scholars at M.I.T. estimate that a living wage in Utah for a single person is $10.71 an hour.) But even in a red-hot market, some of the people who are looking for work struggle to find the right fit. Noel Nampijja, 42, left her job as a nurse’s aide two months ago because the work of moving patients was hurting her back. She just completed training as a phlebotomist, a medical assistant who draws blood. “I’m hoping to find a job that won’t hurt as much,” she said. In less lucrative industries, labor shortages may remain an intractable problem. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ron Gibson, a fifth-generation dairy farmer, tends 1,500 cows on family land outside Ogden. Last month, he placed an ad in local papers seeking three workers at wages starting around $12 an hour. It did not draw any responses. Mr. Gibson cannot afford to chase workers by raising wages. The price of milk, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than in the 1980s. Instead, he is producing less milk. Each cow is milked three times a day; only 15 percent get a fourth milking. He also laughed at the idea that Americans might move from other states to milk cows in Utah. He relies primarily on immigrant labor, communicating with his two dozen workers in the Spanish he learned as a young Mormon missionary in Argentina. And since Mr. Trump’s election, he said, workers are harder to find. “We are either going to import workers or we are going to import milk,” Mr. Gibson said. The work “is dirty, stinky and hard,” he added. “It’s not what we teach our young people to do.” But there is another solution on the horizon: automation. Last year, Mr. Gibson and his son visited a farm in upstate New York where robots milk cows. The cows learn to approach the machines when their udders are full. Mr. Gibson is not yet ready to make the jump. Each machine costs half a million dollars, and the New York farmer spends about as much on mechanics as he spent on farmhands. But Mr. Gibson said he expected his children would use robots to milk cows. A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Labor Shortages Slowing Growth Of U.S. Economy. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe Continue reading the main story

0 notes