Steven Fischer’s Wonderful, Happy, Cartoony Workshop, Tokyo!

Many thanks to Takeshi Okada and team! I appreciate the chance to share my thoughts on creativity and the creative process, creating original stories and characters along the way. Domo arigato!

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Creative Writing and Journal Writing at Northwestern University

Many thanks to Debra Ann Blade and Sylvia Tan for your continued interest in my Creative Writing workshops!

Northwestern University’s Norris Center is offering free sessions in Creative Writing and Journal Writing (among many other courses) to provide some much needed relief for people needing artful, healthy outlets during these stressful times.

Steve & Bluey Tell it Like it is in the World of Cartoons

From the Daily Record, August 21, 2002 and the first release of The Wonderful, Happy, Cartoony World of Steve & Bluey.

Steve & Bluey tell it like it is in the world of cartoons

EarthRise Apollo: Lunar Toons at BLINK Cincinnati

Our animated projection mapping epic EarthRise Apollo: Lunar Toons projected at the BLINK Cincinnati light-based arts festival, October 10-13, 2019! (The festival estimates 1.5 million people attended.)

The rooftop scene from EarthRise Apollo: Lunar Toons (2019) by George Berlin Studios.

Conceived by animator George Berlin, Lunar Toons is inspired by the artist’s own adventures growing up enthralled with space travel and exploration.

Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/371998637

Hats off to the George Berlin Studios Team:

 

Director

George Berlin

 

Producer

Steven Fischer

 

Animators and Illustrators

Nick Janecki

Ryan Jolly

Marc Walls

Lindsay Zimmerman

Vanja Spremo Zogovic

Mike Jagodzinski

Alec Rudek

George Berlin

 

Music

Mike Langlie, Twink the Toy Piano Band

Big Wheel space adventure from EarthRise Apollo: Lunar Toons (2019) George Berlin Studios.

EarthRise Apollo: Moonbeams Projects in Bucharest

Our animated projection mapping epic EarthRise Apollo: Moonbeams released on September 21, 2019 in Bucharest, Romania! Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/362616567

EarthRise Apollo: Moonbeams by George Berlin Studios, screening at The Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania on Saturday Sept 21, 2019.

Moonbeams was one of only 8 invitations to the prestigious iMapp Festival, one of the world’s largest international 3D projection mapping shows. The creation of the animation required demanding technical precision as sixty-four 30K lumen projectors projected the movie as one image on the façade of The Palace of the Parliament building in Bucharest, an irregular screening space of 23,000 sqm (the second largest administrative building in the world), to an audience of 60,000 spectators.

EarthRise Apollo: Moonbeams production team:

Director

George Berlin

 

Producer

Steven Fischer

 

Animators and Illustrators

Nick Janecki

Ryan Jolly

Rick Lapidus

Chris Morris

Marc Walls

Lindsay Zimmerman

Vanja Spremo Zogovic

Mike Jagodzinski

Alec Rudek

 

Composer

Donny Walker

 

Sound Design

Zach Jarrett

Kelly Askam

Mind Exchange Music

 

Musicians

George Berlin

Donny Walker

Kelly Askam

Zach Jarrett

Jason Jade Lyons

Neil Alan Sacheck

Lucia Thomas

Cory Tiffin

Josh Williamson

The gods scene from EarthRise Apollo: Moonbeams. Art by Lindsay Zimmerman and Alec Rudek; animation by George Berlin, Lindsay, and Vanja Spremo Zogovic. Copyright 2019 George Berlin Studios

 

Apollo landing scene from EarthRise Apollo: Moonbeams Apollo. Art and animation by George Berlin. Copyright 2019 George Berlin Studios.

More Cartoons by Steven Fischer

An episode from Steven Fischer’s 2004 series, Francine. copyright 2004 Steven Fischer.

The History of Illness by Steven Fischer. Copyright 2002 Steven Fischer and Blue Dog Productions, Inc.

Steven Fischer’s 2000 character concept sketch for the feature film Youthquake by Michele Fischer. Drawing copyright 2000 Steven Fischer.

Fusion International Film Festivals Interview with Steven Fischer

Thank you, Dan Hickford and The Fusion International Film Festivals, for the honor of being the inaugural subject of The Green Room!

Click here to see the full interview with photos! https://www.fusionfilmfestivals.com/the-green-room/01-steven-fischer/

As part of our ever growing platform of content we wanted to add a new dimension, whereby we explore professionals within the industry from across the world that may not be able to join us at our festivals but still have a wonderful story to tell.

First up is one of our newest Jury Members Steven Fischer.  Festival Co-Director Dan Hickford is asking the questions!

DAN HICKFORD: Steven you are certainly a man of many talents but it all had to start somewhere! Your career began at 17…but when did you first pick up a pencil and begin drawing?
STEVEN FISCHER: Thank you. I created my first cartoon book at age 6 or 7. It was a take-off on the Peanuts characters. Age 6, 7 (laughs). You can imagine what it looks like: typing paper sandwiched between cardboard covers. Stapled. I still have it.

DH: And did you know from that moment what your path might be?
SF: Not consciously at first, but cartoons were a constant my whole childhood. I took solace in cartooning after a hard day at school dealing with all the bullies. And it’s where I would go simply for the joy of having a fanciful adventure. I remember at 17 a realization took over, the realization that the routine of school was ending and that I might actually have to do something with my life. That, combined with my dissatisfaction with what I saw as society’s poor values and mixed up priorities, compelled me to want to contribute to something uplifting. And with that I gravitated to my strengths and interests which was cartoons.

DH: As a film festival we get to see so many different types of films with many being documentaries! You’re own project, ‘Old School New School,’ was very personal to you. How do you feel about it when you look back now, did you get the truth and honesty you were looking for?
SF: I think we did. Like many people, I would talk about big ideas with friends over coffee. I always thought it would be great to record those private conversations which were so real and honest. One of the main challenges of the movie was to see if I could make a conversation-driven movie with no b-roll interesting. I wanted the discussion in the spotlight. It’s challenging enough to make a movie that keeps an audience engaged, now I’m throwing into the mix an intellectual discourse with no visual flash and glitter. It was tough.

DH: What inspired you?
SF: I was inspired by Louis Malle’s Place de la Republique and Jon Fauer’s courageous and beautifully photographed Cinematographer Style which is also an interview-only movie. We intentionally used a minimal crew at each location, sometimes just three of us. The DPs (Chris Cassidy, Phil Rosensteel, and Scott Uhlfelder) were challenged to use only available light. We used no production lights except on my in-studio hosted segments. No make up. No boom mike. And in most cases no tripods. We aimed to be as unobtrusive as possible in efforts to capture the most real and honest conversation. Of course we know that’s impossible. You know you’re being recorded, you know this is a movie, you know it will be public. You’ll never capture a subject completely unguarded. But still, we set the conditions as best we could so the subjects could be uninhibited, and I think we captured some essential truths.

DH: Do you think you’d get the same response today?
SF: I think so. Sure. Maybe even more. Is it too naïve to say that society is more conditioned to cameras out and recording? How many young people today are, in a sense, growing up on-camera? I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. But I’ll tell you one thing, to this day I still hear from people thanking me for Old School New School. And the most common response is: “This is just what I needed and wasn’t getting.” People want to talk about big ideas. Why are we here? Who am I? How can I tap into my full potential? And they’re just not getting it. And I think it’s because way too many of us live on the surface of life and never take the effort to search for understanding. That’s why I make movies. That’s why I tell stories, to search for understanding.

DH: Talk to us about Steve & Bluey?
SF: They’re doing great! They’ve been my life for my entire life. The first published production was their comic strip in 1990, but I’ve been writing Steve & Bluey stories since 1981.

DH: How do you describe them?
SF: Steve and Bluey are a modern day comedy team and they educate through entertainment, you know? Not educate in a formal sense, but through example… by celebrating the child within and using their life as cartoon entertainers to reflect on who we are and why people do what they do. It goes back to me at age 17, dissatisfied with society’s priorities and wondering why the class bully had to be so cruel.

We have a strong connection to London, as you know. In the 1990s we lived there and were guided by producer Steve Melendez at Melendez Films, back then on Gresse Street. We spent 12 years searching for a commission for a fully animated TV series, and I am forever grateful to the Melendez family for their generosity and support serving as co-producer of the effort. There were a few close calls, but we never got the big commission; however, in the U.S., Phillip Guthrie at TCI Communications of Baltimore accepted the show in 1996 and we produced a series of animatics which ran as interstitials for three years on TCI TV. A really good introduction to Steve & Bluey is the book The Wonderful, Happy, Cartoony World of Steve & Bluey, because the book take us with such intimacy into their professional and private lives.

DH: You promoted that book with an amazing World tour, didn’t you?
SF: The 2014 re-release we did. The original was released in 2001, 2002. But I re-vamped the book — which is a collection of behind-the-scenes adventures about life in animated show business — and, yes, the tour took me across the U.S., Puerto Rico, England, Hungary, the Middle East, Asia, Southeast Asia. I was invited as a special guest speaker aboard Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 and twice aboard an ultra luxury mega yacht called SeaDream for Transatlantic crossings. That was surreal! Like Cinderella at the ball. I spent years promoting it with lectures on the nature of creativity and with cartoon storytelling workshops. In fact I’m still promoting. I’m in discussion now with the City of Paducah for a residency as part of their UNESCO Creative Cities network connection.

DH: Director, Producer, Actor, Editor, Writer, Cinematographer, Animator…you do a lot!! Above animation which role do you enjoy the most?
SF: I don’t like it, this slash title world in which we live. But when you live the life of a working artist, being a Jack-of-all-trades can help… but I do feel I’m missing out on the rewards one gets from mastering one role. I try hard to simply be a good storyteller. If there’s one common denominator in all those titles it’s telling a story. Writer, I guess then would be the role I enjoy most. And producing. I love the team work, you know, the camaraderie, the coming together of many talents for a common goal. As aggravating as the sour apples in a group can be, collaborating with the good people and seeing an idea brought to life energizes me and brings so much pleasure. I’m still in love with it.

DH: You’re a working artist in perhaps the hardest industry in the world! Would you change anything?
SF: Ha! “Change anything.” About the world? About the industry? Or about being a working artist?

DH: Your choice.
SF: You know, I could be Zen about this and say, “Everything is happening as it should.”  I think the biggest lessons I’ve learned about being a working artist have to do with coming to terms with the words “compromise” and “control”, about the benefits of tenacity, and, as obvious as it sounds, of having something to say and using the arts to search for understanding. I don’t know if I’d phrase it as changing something so much as I see the responsibility we have as experienced professionals to share with others what we’ve learned. And the more I engage with people, all over the world, the more I see how crucial it is that people get off the surface of life. We are so conditioned to the conveniences of technology, and it’s numbing the human in us. Maybe that’s the thing I’d like to see changed, that people unplug from technology once in a while and go within to reflect. I’d like to see us build a stronger connection to instinct and to that little whisper inside which is how our characters speak to us. Too many people dismiss one another with cynicism and make no effort to find understanding about life, about human behavior.

You know, the first day of a rehearsal or a workshop or any creative endeavour I lead… here’s what I tell the artists: You are in the safest place you’ll ever be to create, because by my way of thinking there are no good ideas or bad ideas only ideas that reflect who you are and the level you’re at. And there is no right or wrong, there’s only effective or ineffective. If your idea is effective, great. It worked. If not then we work on it, we examine the motivation and objective of the character, and what you want to say, and we experiment until we make something that’s ineffective, effective.

And we do this by being open, in the moment, playful, spontaneous, curious … that’s the big one. Conditioning ourselves to be curious and inquisitive and to show interest in something other than self. I’ve listened to so many people talk, fixated on their own perspective — and I mean fixations that are narrow, limited, negative, bitter, unenlightened. And I want to ask them: have you ever engaged someone and just spent the time asking questions and listening? Just because you consider another point of view doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. It means you are open to something other than yourself. You’re asking what might be changed? How about we listen more than we speak, ask questions more than we make comments, and then combine the discoveries we make with our own point of view and let our work make the comment.

DH: Wow! That was…
SF: I know; I was appearing at Speakers’ Corner there for a moment.

DH: No, no. We like passion! One last question, what film still remains timeless for you?
SF: City Lights. Charlie Chaplin, 1931. Best last line of a movie ever, silent or sound.

DH: What a wonderful insight into your journey and career to date. Thank you, Steven Fischer, for being our inaugural subject in ‘The Green Room’. It has been a pleasure.
SF: It has pleasure for me, too. Thank you so much for the honour!

Baltimore Homecoming 2019!

A very special thank you to Robbin Lee and Baltimore Homecoming for the creative invitation to attend Baltimore Homecoming 2019! The View Master, featuring photos from last year’s inaugural homecoming, is a fun way to celebrate your celebration of the city. It is a real honor to be included. Thank you!

 

Producer Steven Fischer in Hollywood, California, during production of “I am Max” for AMP Polska.

 

Max Linder in the Pravda Report

Max Linder is in the news! The Russian news source PRAVDA.RU released today this article about our new movie, I am Max, directed by the very talented Edward Porembny at AMP Polska.

Read the full article below or at http://www.pravdareport.com/society/showbiz/07-01-2019/142162-i_am_max-0/ 

You can help us complete the movie for a 2019 release. Please donate finishing funds (link: https://www.documentary.org/film/i-am-max ) through our fiscal sponsor, The International Documentary Association and receive a tax deduction. Thank you!

The full article:

Max Linder, the comic genius, mentor to Charlie Chaplin, has largely been forgotten – but now the movie industry is bringing him back to life in I am Max.

Pravdareport is proud to print an interview with Steven Fischer, Producer of the movie I am Max, about the life of one of cinema’s geniuses, mentor to Charlie Chaplin.

Give a synopsis of the subject of the movie? 

SF: I am Max tells the story of Max Linder, widely considered the first international movie star. He was a comic genius and a major contributor to cinema history. He was mentor to Charlie Chaplin and achieved incalculable wealth and celebrity, yet he died by suicide at age 42. How can a man like this be forgotten today?

Who got the idea to make the movie and why?

SF: The movie was originated by Edward Porembny, the director and lead producer, who is a gifted and award-winning filmmaker in Warsaw, Poland. In fact, earlier this year [2018] Edward won the Cannes Lions for his documentary, To The Last Tree Standing, which he co-directed with Aia Asé who is also working with us on I Am Max. Edward can tell you his reasons for wanting to tell the story of Max Linder, but for me, I was intrigued because of how timely and relevant Max Linder’s life is today. In his lifetime, Linder survived death four times only to die by suicide at age 42. And the first time he survived death, he was an infant, roast in an oven. It was the doctor’s attempt to cure him of cholera. He survived so much and achieved so much, fame and fortune, yet it wasn’t enough to bring happiness. He became so emotionally desperate he felt the only escape was suicide. His story touches also on that fine line between mental illness and genius which I find fascinating. Mental illness, depression, suicide, they’re each timely topics today, especially in the United States. His story touches on issues we see with Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Robin Williams…and it was all happening at the turn of the 20th Century. Also, the issue of celebrity and identity is relevant. Linder, who was born Gabriel Leuvielle, created this public persona called Max Linder. And then became Max Linder! This is a story of identity, and maybe even of personality disorder. Who was Max Linder? Who was Gabriel Leuvielle? And if they are two sides of the same person, then his life becomes a wonderful exploration into that complicated thing called the human psyche.

And in today’s world where social media makes everyone a Max Linder, that is to say a celebrity in their own world, a discussion what it means to have a healthy public life might be one that audiences would like. We’re excited to tour with our movie and have these discussions with audiences. I think it could be a helpful contribution to the public dialogue.

Now, on top of that, there’s the story of cinema history. Linder contributed so much to the history of comedy cinema by either inventing, innovating or at least making popular a lot of what became standard. The idea of a reoccurring character, for example. Before Chaplin developed his Tramp character, Linder was The Dandy, the bon vivant getting into all these jams and crazy adventures episode after episode. He was also Chaplin’s mentor. Chaplin admired his work greatly and considered Linder a teacher. The Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball, so many cinema and television comics tip their hat to Linder’s influence. This in itself is worthy of a movie, but when you add onto that all the social aspects I mentioned, I think you have a story ripe with history, art, and social significance.

How things are going right now?

SF: We are in post production and preparing for a release in 2019, in time for the Venice Film Festival. Also, the movie will be distributed by Canal+ in France and air on TVP Poland, RTBF Belgium, BNT Bulgaria, RTV Slovenia, CT Czech Republic, SVT Sweden, and RTP Portugal.

 

What do you need?

SF: What we need is an angel investor to support us with finishing funds. Our fiscal sponsor is the International Documentary Association, a 501c3 organization in Los Angeles, California. This means that anyone who donates, gifts, or invests with us receives a tax deduction. We need about 200,000 Euros to ensure we complete on time. We are also seeking a well-known film figure to serve as Executive Producer. For this we have approached the office of Martin Scorsese. He would be ideal to present our movie given his dedication to cinema history and preservation.

We are in position to create an artful and entertaining docu-drama. We are using archival footage in a new and creative way. By manipulating archival films, Linder movies, and actuality footage we hope to give an immediacy, as though we are discovering Linder’s life as it happens. For instance, there’s a Linder movie where he is snow skiing and meets a pretty girl. We have put our own dialogue to that footage and re-cut it to look like we’ve captured the moment where Linder meets the woman who becomes his wife. In this way we are dramatizing his life.

What is the broader message the movie wants to give?

SF: In my opinion the movie warns about the trappings of celebrity: the excess and the danger of believing one’s own hype. It’s a story about identity and it questions us about the blurred lines between our public self and our private self. And it’s a movie that celebrates the art of a true comic genius who has sadly been forgotten. If there’s one message we want our movie to deliver it’s this: This is Max Linder!

Story filed by: Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravdareport