Know what else we're missing?

[Toonboy]

Loony Tunes profiles! We need a Loony Tunes expert. Someone who remembers what the shorts were called and what they were about. I can remember about a dozen or so, but only three or so I know the names to. These are the crown jewels of cartooning but we're strangely missing them.

[athena]

Loony Tunes profiles! We need a Loony Tunes expert. Someone who remembers what the shorts were called and what they were about. I can remember about a dozen or so, but only three or so I know the names to. These are the crown jewels of cartooning but we're strangely missing them.


I've got the first Looney Tunes Gold Collection box set so if I went through that, it'd be a good start... but honestly, I'm not sure how we should be filing the Looney Tunes shorts.

Just have them take over the short-film section? Give them (and the Disney shorts) their own section?


...:confused:

[starlac]

To give you some idea of the scope of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, Bugs, Daffy and Sylvester all had over 100 shorts apiece. So if you put them down as individual cartoons I think they would completely swamp the short's section.

[P.C. Unfunny]

I also suggest the classic MGM shorts.

[starlac]

I also suggest the classic MGM shorts.

Well the Tom & Jerry ones are easy enough, since I have almost all of them on DVD.

[athena]

if you put them down as individual cartoons I think they would completely swamp the short's section.

That's my concern too. At the moment the shorts section is more of an 'independent/festival favourites' deal... we could label it as such and then create new sections for shorts... maybe by studio?

[Toonboy]

I was thinking of having the Looney Tunes having their own separate section, but that's still a LOT of shorts. And we couldn't possibly list them under one entry as one cartoon because the quality of the shorts vary wildly because they span multiple decades and some people may have character preferences(i.e. I absolutely hate Speedy). *ponder ponder*

[Toonboy]

If this doesn't work, we could just pick a handful of the most famous ones(which would likely reduce it to all Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer cartoons). My favorite one is Duck Amock. Not to mention the Duck Season Rabbit Season trilogy.

[starlac]

Thanks to Jerry Beck's Ultimate Looney Tunes guide and various other books I have around, I have the names of 386 shorts down, just for Warner Bros.

You might want to think about seperated them by characters (in some way), or Directors.

[lupercal]

Ah, this subject.

If I remember rightly it was Athena who first brought this suggestion up as a matter of some importance, and I was lukewarm to it at first. However, over time I warmed to it more and more, to the point that I ended up badgering her about it, "We've got to work out a system for theatrical shorts" - which never happened before I left. I sneaked a few in - a small number which I didn't think would interfere with the present system - e.g., 'Balloon Land' and 'Red Hot Riding Hood'. I would have added a few more but there was no way for me to get screenshots for them at the time.

First I'd just point out one factor which might defuse or reduce a few percieved problems. Because the profiles are all interlinked by studio, director, voice cast, etc, to a certain extent this reduces the need for multiple categories. If you want to search on everything directed by Chuck Jones, or released by MGM, you can do that from any individual profile of a film involving either of those entities. True, your results won't be limited to shorts, but how many feature films did Bob Clampett direct?

However this is a long way from perfect.

My thinking for a long time was that we needed first of all, a theatrical shorts category, as distinct from plain 'shorts'. True, some modern shorts do get shown in theatres, but they're more likely to go straight to DVD or TV, and if they're in theatres they're more likely to be in film festivals or arthouse theatres rather than being supporting material for mainstream feature films like they were prior to TV, so I wouldn't call them primarily 'theatrical' in the same way that pre-TV shorts were.

Due to the sheer number of possible entries (not only WB and Chuck Jones and Tom Jerry, I have the complete Tex Avery cartoons for MGM and it's a 5 or 6 DVD boxed set - and that's not counting what he did for WB before he left them), plus Van Buren, Ub Iwerks, Fleischer, Pat Sullivan, and God knows who, right back to the early 20's.

If we were going to subdivide 'theatrical shorts', I'd suggest doing it by studio rather than by directors or characters. As to how to get around someone searching for everything with Bugs Bunny in it, well we still have the search function, but that's useless unless it has 'bugs' or 'bunny' in the title. We could use the 'see also' function, but that would get massively out of control where there are hundreds of shorts involved. I don't see a way of sealing that up without being unweildly. You could probably find all the Bugs shorts by searching on Mel Blanc, but that presupposes a certain amount of knowledge already.

I'd suggest theatrical shorts/ by studio, and then people can use the profiles to find everything else by director or voice actor. I don't see a way of searching by character, unless you either a) throw out the 'by studio' idea and replace it with 'by character' (but then what do you do with characters who only had half a dozen shorts, or misc. ones who only appeared once?) - or b) further subdivide the tree into theatrical shorts/by studio/by character - but this wouldn't nescessarily work, because not all characters stayed with the same studios.

There's also the fact that some shorts, particularly in the early days of TV, were actually produced purely for TV (e.g. the only Hanna Barbera character who was produced purely for theatres was Loopy de Loop - but essentially is a Loopy de Loop short different from a Touche Turtle short?)

If you can figure out an elegant way of allowing to list by studio AND character, all the better, but in a year or more we didn't. I think it would require a re-structuring of the basic category system, not just the addition of new categories or subcategories.

Another dillemma I had with Athena was that I really wanted to start introducing earlier TV series - particularly from the 60's - but a lot of the time these would consist of a show made up of three different segments (e.g. 'Atom Ant' was made up of 'Atom Ant', 'The Hillbilly Bears' and 'Precious Pupp'), so do you list them by their parent show or their individual segments - and if you list them by their parent show, what happens when a huge number of them appeared in numerous shows (e.g., 'Atom Ant', if I remember correctly, was originally part of 'The Secret Squirrel Show'), and God only knows how many parent shows Yogi Bear has been in.

Now, that makes everything seem starightforward, doesn't it?

Loop

[starlac]

I've built up several lists of shorts, which I've seperated into studios. However there is still a vast amount of them per studio. Athough a good majority of them circle around recurring character teams. With these ones you could devide them into pairings and any shorts without recurring antagonists could be sectioned under the protagonist's name.

Something like:

Theatrical Shorts
Studio
Protagonist(s) - recurring Antagonist(s)

e.g.
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny - Daffy Duck
Bugs Bunny - Elmer Fudd (Egghead)
Bugs Bunny - Yosemite Sam
etc

Although this is still far from perfect... Where do you draw the line with 'Recurring' for one. Elmer and Bugs may have starred together in 50 odd shorts (some of them with Daffy Duck), but Gruesome Gorilla only starred in about 2, which to my eyes doesn't make him a true recurring foe.

It also still leaves the problem of what to do with one-off shorts like "One Froggy Evening" One way would be to put them in a devide marked 'one-off' 'specials' or 'other.' Another way would be to list them as seperate enities, in-between the recurring stars.

Characters who change studios... I'll use Oswald the Rabbit as a example, put the shorts he did at Disney in Disney's section and those he did at Universal in Universal's (maybe using the see-also or Of-note redirecting you to the other's studio).

[Toonboy]

I'm getting a headache.

[lupercal]

Though I more or less agree with Starlac's system, I do suspect that the only workable system would be

Theatrical shorts - studio

and not worry about characters. I can't see an even vaguely elegant way of doing it using the present category system.

As a precedent I'd just note that even on IMDB you can't search by character; only by studio, director, voice actor, etc.

Loop

[starlac]

As a precedent I'd just note that even on IMDB you can't search by character; only by studio, director, voice actor, etc.Loop

Of course imdb isn't wholly interested in animated characters, more the people who make them.

The Big Cartoon Database (bcdb.com) however does have a 'Character' section on its search engine, so it's not as if this hasn't been done before.

However, as Toonboy said earlier, we could go for the more well known ones, seperate them by Studio; then maybe make the way to lesser known shorts over time.

EDIT:It would also be easier review wise.

[athena]

Refresh my memory here, all the voices in the Looney Tune shorts were done by Mel Blanc? ...which would basically rule out using the voice actor system to whittle this down a bit.

We could add characters, but it would mean adding more fields to the database... not impossible, but then no longer just as simple as adding another master animation type to the system.

[P.C. Unfunny]

Refresh my memory here, all the voices in the Looney Tune shorts were done by Mel Blanc?

He did alot of voices for the Looney Tunes, but there were others like June Foray and Arthur Q. Bryan.

[starlac]

and lastly Stan Freberg, who did the voices of characters like Junyer Bear, Pete Puma and the goofy gophers.

EDIT: Apart from an occasional someone else that was pretty much it as far as the warner voice cast went.

[athena]

If you want to search on everything directed by Chuck Jones
It should also be noted, that you can now find Chuck Jones by simply entering the name into the search field. Studios are not currently in the search field, but that's a possibility for future programming ventures if there is a need.


My thinking for a long time was that we needed first of all, a theatrical shorts category, as distinct from plain 'shorts'.
I like this name, btw... I think there's something in it that at least hints at the fact that these are older "classic" short films.


If we were going to subdivide 'theatrical shorts', I'd suggest doing it by studio rather than by directors or characters.
Okay, here's an idea based on what's been suggested in various posts...

-- Create a new animation type called "Theatrical Shorts"
-- The profile list for the theatrical shorts page will look like the listing for all the other profiles--mainly, defaulting to a 'List All' function, but with the alphabet menu across the top to narrow the search
-- As a "By Director" option is already taken care of, I'm going to suggest that what we need is, in addition to the alphabet menu, a dropdown that allows you to narrow the theatrical shorts list by studio... and then, AFTER you pick the studio and get a listing of all the shorts from that studio, you get a second dropdown beside it showing a list of characters and character pairings associated with that studio.

So, order of operations would be like this...
-- show me Theatrical Shorts
-- show me all Theatrical Shorts made by Warner Bros.
-- show me all Theatrical Shorts made by Warner Bros with a Bugs/Daffy pairing... although, now that I think about it, what do you do if it's like a Bugs/Daffy/Elmer pairing? Would it be better to just say instead, "Show me everything with Bugs in it" and ignore the added complication of the pairings?

I'm also going to propose that we NOT implement the studio sub-search and character sub-search just yet... I'll add the theatrical short section, but let's get some stuff in there before we start whittling down.



Another dillemma I had with Athena was that I really wanted to start introducing earlier TV series - particularly from the 60's - but a lot of the time these would consist of a show made up of three different segments (e.g. 'Atom Ant' was made up of 'Atom Ant', 'The Hillbilly Bears' and 'Precious Pupp'), so do you list them by their parent show or their individual segments
Ugh, you know I stilll haven't figured out an elegant way of coding this... conceptually the "parent" and "child" idea of profiling works, but code-wise it's just all kinds of pain.

[athena]

hehe, anyone besides me just *itching* to nominate starlac as our theatrical shorts editor? ;)

[starlac]

hehe, anyone besides me just *itching* to nominate starlac as our theatrical shorts editor? ;)

Well I nominate myself, I've alreadly started getting pictures and writing sypnosises for shorts.

One question: would I be able to add feature films to the feature film directory (and so on), or just be soley involved in theatrical shorts?

Either way I'm happy.

[lupercal]

It's something I wuoldn't have minded taking on myself, but since I'm out of the race, I can't think of anyone who seems better equipped then Starlac (and he may well be better equipped than me).

I'd just give a couple of bits of advice. Firstly it's very hard to find screengrabs for profiles of obscure old shorts (pr even the more well known ones), so a DVD drive is virtually a must, and so is access to the actual DVDs. Thankfully, in the case of the stuff produced before about 1945, a lot of this falls into public domain, and you can pick it up on DVDs literally for $1.

A quick note against character-based searches: 'Tom and Jerry' are not only the famous pair who peaked in the 50's with MGM, they were also a totaly unrelated pair of (humans) who were big with Van Buren studios in the late 20's. (also some of their cartoons are amazingly off the show)

And finally a personal request: Felix the Cat, the 1920's shorts. IMO these are the most ahead-of-their-time, inventive and downright funny theatrical shorts for their era. They are so different and less correct than the 1950's/60's ones most people are familiar with. In the 20's Felix would get drunk on moonshine, seduce women, throw up, steal things, and in one short I particular remember, pull down his pants and 'moon' someone. He may be American, he may be Australian, we can argue about that till doomsday, but what a guy. Who the hell else in 1925 would think of grabbing a pair of question marks out of the frame and turning them into snow-skis?

Loop

[athena]

Well I nominate myself, I've alreadly started getting pictures and writing sypnosises for shorts.

One question: would I be able to add feature films to the feature film directory (and so on), or just be soley involved in theatrical shorts?

Either way I'm happy.
Well, in terms of administrative powers you'd be an Animation Editor so you'd have the ability to add any kind of animation profile you want... and, for simplicity's sake, I'd just give you that title as well--unless you have your heart set on another.

I'll spend some time this morning setting up the theatrical shorts section and send you the instruction file on how to use the admin interface. I'm really behind on some "work-type" work, so I won't be able to add the other search filters we talked about yet... but you'll have plenty to get you started.

And welcome to the team. :)

[starlac]

And finally a personal request: Felix the Cat, the 1920's shorts.

I don't think you could really have a list without him, his 20's shorts are too historically important, so I was meaning to include them. I know I have got two of his 20's shorts here somewhere, which is a start, and I'll be keeping my eyes out for others.

And welcome to the team. :)

Thanks Athena.