The World of Oz Is a Very Funny Place

Canada’s first animated series for TV wasn’t altogether Canadian.

Crawley Films was a company based in Ottawa that made industrial films and commercials. Some of its work was animated. But then it was hired in 1961 by a small American company called Videocraft to help it jump into the expanding TV animation industry by animating a series of short cartoons called “Tales of the Wizard of Oz.”

Even though this was a huge undertaking for Crawley, Videocraft’s selection of a Canadian company was smart. Canada and the U.S. share a border and a language (for the most part) and the cheaper Canadian dollar meant production costs would be lower. And American studios had been complaining there weren’t enough trained animators and related artists in the U.S. due to the glut of TV work. Conversely, Crawley would never have been able to make a profit on animated cartoons exclusively for Canada; the country was too small. It needed the U.S. and other international markets.

The Oz cartoons are pleasant enough, and there are occasional bits of gentle satire and neat short-cut animation. The abstract backgrounds are a nice touch. And I like the voice work; of course, Videocraft used many of the same Toronto actors when it became Rankin-Bass.

The National Post of February 17, 1962 gave feature space to Crawley’s animated venture and the wire service provided a neat little story about an attempt to shoehorn some political satire into one of the cartoons. Unfortunately, we can’t reproduce an accompanying picture of some of the staff at work.

We're Doing Nicely in Animation
Our Cartoons Now Show in On TV Screens in the U. S.
By AUDREY GILL
OTTAWA—Although visitors to Canada frequently profess to find this country lacking in artistic expression, we are doing very nicely in one of the world's most competitive artistic fields—animated cartoons.
The evidence: An Ottawa firm.
Crawley Films Limited, is creating a rejuvenated and refurbished version of the children's story “Wizard of Oz” for world distribution.
Crawley Films has signed a contract with Videocraft International of New York to make a series of 130 five-minute cartoons about the Wizard. Value of the contract: $250,000. The contract contains an option allowing for another 130 episodes, but this depends on sales.
The Wizard is being seen on American television already—45 episodes have been delivered to Videocraft and Crawley is working on number 60. It must produce 10 episodes a month to keep to the tight schedule. Canadian rights to the series have been sold to Telefilm of Canada Ltd., Toronto, film distributors. It will offer the cartoons to CBC or CTV networks.
Recruiting the largest crew of artists ever assembled in this country (45 are working full-time on the Wizard) was a big headache for producer Tom Glynn. The majority of his crew are Canadian and consist of: eight key animators, seven junior animators, two background artists, 16 tracer-painters, three checkers, one sound-track reader and six animation) camera men.
The oldest and largest producer of sponsored motion pictures in Canada, Crawley has had a small animation department for many years. Putting together 100,000 pieces of artwork, however, was a project never before attempted in Canada.
In 23 years, Crawley Films has made over 1,000 motion pictures for business, industry, government and television. Their first diversification into entertainment films was the 39-episode RCMP series which has been sold in Canada, England, Australia, Argentina, Iran, Rhodesia, Peru and other countries. Crawley's documentary 13-episode series "St. Lawrence North" has been sold by the CBC in Italy, Australia and West Germany, with other sales pending.

"A serious drain on Canada's finances is the steady, unhindered flow of film dollars to Hollywood, New York, London and Paris," says Graeme Fraser, vice-president of Crawley. "The Canadian producer is fortunate to get 15% of his costs from the Canadian market. He must produce for the world—and in competition with the world's best."
Here's how the Wizard is made:
Script is written by Videocraft writers in New York. "They keep adding new characters all the time." moans Tom Glynn.
Sound track is made in Toronto by an independent producer—Bernard Cowan. Lead voices are Larry Mann, Paul Kligman, Alfie Scopp, James Doohan and Pegi Loder. Drawings and film prints are done at Crawley Films, by a complicated process. The first job is to work out a camera "master sheet" which, in effect, is a schedule co-ordinating background, sound, dialogue, and cartoon action.
From this, the animator knows how many cartoon frames are necessary to have his character say a particular piece of dialogue, or go through a particular action.
Having decided upon the number of necessary drawings, and the substance of them, the key animator makes rough pencil drawings of the extremes of action: and junior animators fill in the details—they make mouths and feet move, and, by consulting the master sheet, fit the movements into the dialogue.
Each sequence is then enlarged to fill in the exact time allotted to it.
The pencil drawings are then traced onto transparent sheets and the drawings are painted in, in color.
The next step is to relate the character drawings to the background which is painted on a separate sheet against which they are to take place.
This is done by placing the character drawings on top of the background drawings, and photographing them together. Action is secured by changing the character drawings, and photographing each change. The backgrounds are changed as the characters move from place to place.
Crawley handles the final job of superimposing the sound track on the film strip and of making prints for distribution.
Now that the Wizard is well under way, the next project at Crawley is another "first" for the company—a full-length feature film. Crawley has bought the film rights to Hugh MacLennan's "Barometer Rising" and will be looking for backing as soon as the film script is finished.

They Fight For See-Saw In Oz Film
CP Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA—The original L Frank Baum book, "The Wizard of Oz," is about a little Kansas girl named Dorothy who is blown by a cyclone into the mystical Land of Oz.
Dorothy's adventures in Oz, and those of her friends—the tin woodman who spends his time looking for a heart (being tin, he is "heartless"); Dandy, the cowardly lion who searches for courage; Socrates, a scarecrow who looks for courage [sic]—made up the substance of a whole series of "Oz" books which charmed generations of children.
The Crawley film series tells the original story and adds up-to-date trimmings.

Example: In one episode, the "Munchkins," inhabitants of Oz, become "North Munchkins" and "South Munchkins" who threaten to fight each other over possession of a see-saw.
The quarrel is taken to the "Oz Nations" which is referred to as the "ON".
At the ON, other "Munchkins" get into the act. One character is a red (the series is in color) "East Munchkin" who punctuates his speeches by banging his shoe on the table. Another piece of sand in the wheels of the ON is a yellow-slant-eyed "Southeast Munchkin."
Finally the see-saw is cut into two pieces, and everybody is unhappy. The episode isn't intended as a parallel satire on the UN—the viewer is free to find his own analogies, and the episode is intended to amuse.