Is RTÉ letting Irish Animation down?

Oscar night is approaching and the big Irish story this year is the fantastic achievement of the country’s animation industry in earning three Oscar nominations. However, insiders feel that the sector’s success is happening in spite of a conspicuous lack of support for animation in Ireland, with RTÉ being depicted as the major villain of the piece (dastardly Shredder to the animators’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if you like).

The list of Oscar nominations is impressive. Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon’s stunningly beautiful The Secret of Kells (with a soundtrack by Kíla) is in the running for the Best Animated Feature. Dublin’s Brown Bag Films has been nominated for Best Animated Short (they were nominated in the same category in 2001) for American Tail. Irish Avatar art supervisor Richard Baneham has also picked up his second Oscar nomination, having previously worked on The Lord of the Rings.
For The Secret of Kells director Tomm Moore, just back from LA, the last couple of weeks have been “a bit mental”.
“I went to the Oscars [Nominees’] Luncheon the day before yesterday and I was sitting at a table with Sandra Bullock and Quentin Tarantino. It was totally bizarre,” says Moore.
“And it was really weird, the lads from Brown Bag were there and Richard Baneham, who I went to college with, and a lad from Northern Ireland (Peter Devlin, nominated for the Best Sound Mixing award for his work on Star Trek) – it’s really weird that of the 121 nominees who were there, five or six were Irish.”
Like Baneham, and Brown Bag’s Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell, Moore studied animation at Ballyfermot College of Further Education. After graduating 10 years ago, he set up a studio in Kilkenny (“it was that or emigrate”) and started making commercials and TV series, as well as illustrating the first ever graphic novels as Gaeilge, An Sclábhaí and An Teachtaire.
Meanwhile, he was also chipping away at the idea of a film based on the illustrations in the Book of Kells.
“It was an idea I had since I was in college. A lot of Irish animation copies American animation. Because most animation comes from Japan or the States, I wanted to do something in an Irish style. That’s a hard thing to get off the ground, so it was just a pet project on the back burner for a long time.”
When French/Belgian producers Les Armateurs became interested in the project in 2005, Cartoon Saloon began work in earnest – and set about the protracted business of raising funds. The biggest financers in Ireland were the Irish Film Board, with RTÉ and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland also contributing.
“We raised €2 million in Ireland. That was a big achievement, to be honest, because it’s hard to raise any money in Ireland,” says Moore.
“Here’s what’s stupid: in every other country, the national broadcaster is the main funder and then the film board and others. In Ireland, it’s the film board. Meanwhile, RTÉ are spending the licence fee on American cartoons.”
He believes RTÉ stands to gain commercially from supporting Irish animation.
“We begged and pleaded with RTÉ on Kells and they eventually came in with some funding – but they could have been the co-producers and actually have made money out of it. We had to be distributed by Disney in Ireland. I’d like to see RTÉ take the attitude of the BBC towards animation in UK.”

Red post-boxes and yellow buses
The vast majority of animation shown on RTÉ is bought in from abroad. Gerard O’Rourke of the animation industry body, the Irish Animation CEO’s Forum, says this is because acquisition rates are cheap and because cartoons often come as part of a ‘package’ when other major shows are purchased from US networks.
“All those programmes are of US or UK origin and they don’t have any identification with Irish children. Irish children are looking at yellow buses and red post boxes. It’s stuff that’s bought in and scheduled – it’s thrown there, another opportunity to run some ads around some programming,” says O’Rourke.
O’Rourke emphasises that the animation industry isn’t asking RTÉ to foot the bill for entire productions – simply to cover a percentage of a budget, so that producers have the leverage to raise the rest of the funds.
“We’re not expecting them to write a cheque, merely to put some money down and producers can raise the rest. But without the support of the broadcaster – the portal to the audience – you cannot get access to the funds,” he says.
A spokeswoman for RTÉ responds: “As a genre, animation is extremely expensive and labour-intensive to make. RTÉ committed €2.864million on animated programming between 2005 and 2009.” She adds that this funding helped producers “unlock” funding of €17 million elsewhere.
The spokeswoman rejects O’Rourke’s contention that RTÉ is happy to allow children to live on a diet of imported programmes.
“We absolutely invest in and deliver indigenous programming to young people on this island. In terms of comments about acquired and home-produced programming, while we understand Gerard’s and indeed animators’ appetite and ambition in general to maximise funding for their genre, as a public service broadcaster RTÉ’s responsibility is to commission, support and broadcast a balanced mixed schedule of programming targeted at different age groups.”
O’Rourke insists animators aren’t just being greedy. He says the figure of €2.8 million over five years is only a drop in the ocean for RTÉ. “Even at the height of the Celtic Tiger, when they were spending €50, €60 or €70 million (per annum) on commissioning programmes in the independent sector, the most they spent on animation was €300,000.”

Education
Meanwhile, the head of animation at the college where Ireland’s four Oscar-nominated animators trained is also sharply critical of the level of support coming from the State.
Gareth Lee says he’s delighted at the success of his departments’ graduates – but insists funds are badly needed to keep the course up-to-date.
Teaching staff who have not worked in the industry for a number of years need to be up-skilled, particularly in relation to the increasing digitisation of animation. Funding is also needed to procure new digital animation technology and to enable more teaching staff to be hired.
A Department of Education responds: “Significant funding is made available by the Department – for building, staffing and ancillary services – to the College to enable it to offer appropriate facilities to the learners.”
Lee, however, takes a different view. “Ballyfermot is very much an under-funded institution, considering the success of this course,” he says.
“Irish animation is doing really well not only in Ireland but in spite of Ireland, globally and internationally. More money could be used to grow the industry from Ballyfermot College.
“The government harp on about the smart economy – but we’re not well funded. Four people achieving Oscar nominations? That’s fairly smart.”