411 Movies Interview: Futurama Producer Claudia Katz
Posted by Tony Farinella on 11.26.2007
411's Tony Farinella sits down with Futurama Producer Claudia Katz to talk about Bender's Big Score!
Claudia Katz has helped produce a number of diverse and interesting shows. She's worked on such projects as Futurama, The Simpsons Movie, Drawn Together, and a whole lot more. Recently, she helped produce Bender's Big Score, which is the first of four Futurama direct-to-dvd movies. Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Claudia Katz, and we talked about her storied career at Rough Draft Studios. Bender's Big Score hits DVD on November 27th. Be sure to check it out.
TONY: When you look back on your time with Rough Draft, are you just in awe? I mean, you guys have been involved in so many different projects.
Claudia Katz: In retrospect, I'm always really proud of our sort of very wide variety of work, and most of all, the quality of our work. It's funny, because once in a while, we'll re-cut our reel and I'll go back and look at things that are really, really old like The Maxx or things we did a long time ago, and you go, "Wow, that looks really good." We would love to do even more, so we sort of really don't get impressed with ourselves and sort of constantly want to do sort of bigger and better things. But I think we're very proud of the work we've done.
TONY: How did your passion for the animation world start in the first place? Did it start when you were a child, and were your parents supportive of your decision to join the animation world?
Claudia Katz: I came at it from really more of a production side, so, I mean, there's a lot of artists and directors here who I think probably knew they wanted to be animators from the time they were children. Especially because I can't draw, that was never a real aspiration or a realistic aspiration. Honestly, to me, the thing I love about it is it's this great blend of sort of art and commerce, and I'm sort of more of the business end of it. Although, I'm probably more of a creative producer than just a straight pragmatic producer, but I sort of came about it more as a fan than an aspiring artist.
TONY: What can we expect from these new Futurama DVDs?
Claudia Katz: The first DVD movie comes out November 27th, so we hope everybody buys at least two of them each. They were written as movies, which is pretty exciting, so each DVD movie has basically a story arc that carries over the whole movie. It's not just sort of four episodes that were jammed together. We're producing them in 16 by 9 aspect ratio, which has really been fun for us, and in HD. So, they're definitely a little different than the TV series, but I think the fans will be thrilled with them, and hopefully we'll get some new fans as well.
TONY: What is one aspect of your job that maybe we don't know about, but we should know about?
Claudia Katz: Hmm, that's a good question. I mean, to me, it's sort of to keep the studio running very smoothly, and some days that requires a lot of work and sometimes that doesn't. It basically means staying on top of everything, including making sure there's coffee and coffee beans for everybody. So, to me, I'm sort of the great facilitator. It's my job to make sure everybody sort of has what they need and who they need to do a great job and produce a great product.
TONY: How do you manage your time at Rough Draft? I mean, you're involved in a lot of projects.
Claudia Katz: Well, one, I'm an excellent juggler, which is essential. Really, some of it's time management and some of it is we have great people here, so it's not just me sort of juggling everything, but there are times where you do fall short on some things, and unfortunately that's usually in your personal life as opposed to work. I mean, last year when we were working on Drawn Together and Futurama and The Simpsons Movie, there were times where that was just a really tough year, but we all survived it and are the better for it, so you get really good at multi-tasking.
TONY: Now that you've been with Rough Draft for over ten years, is there one aspect of your job that maybe you didn't expect?
Claudia Katz: I'm a partner in the studio, but Gregg Vanzo, who's the owner, is a director and very creative, and we have it sort of different than other studios, because to us, it's all about the work. Ultimately, I'm surprised, honestly, by the good friends I've made and really just how integral a part of my life work is, just from a work standpoint and a social standpoint. I mean, some of my best friends are from work now, and it's really sort of a second family to some extent.
TONY: I want to talk to you a little bit about Drawn Together. I enjoy the show, but it's obviously not for everybody. Have you shown Drawn Together to a lot of your friends and family? If so, how did they respond to it?
Claudia Katz: It's funny, because my mom, who's actually going to be 80 next year, was actually a pretty avid fan for the first two seasons, and I'm not sure what turned her off in Season Three, but she actually lasted far longer than I would have guessed. But clearly something crossed the line for her, and in fairness, I don't think she's the demographic they're going for, but we had a lot of fun working on Drawn Together, and we're just really huge fans of Matt and Dave, the creators. And we hope to work with them again soon, and that was just a great collaboration, but it's a little blue, and even at times, at the table reads, there were definitely some groans from the audience.
TONY: Do you get that a lot from different people? I mean, I think you guys do a great job, but it's a very specific kind of humor.
Claudia Katz: I know that Drawn Together's probably gotten a little bit of heat for that. I mean, I think, as the producers, we're slightly removed from that. We got a really weird letter on Futurama from some kooky guy. It was very strange. It was a very weird sort of racist letter about how we were promoting interracial marriage and relationships. That's probably like the strangest letter we've gotten. I've also gotten a pitch letter from a guy in prison, which was a highlight for me.
TONY: What was it like working on The Simpsons Movie? Did you feel a lot of pressure on that project, because it's such a huge hit?
Claudia Katz: Story wise, the writers really had that burden, which I think they considered sort of a very serious responsibility. To us, it was really, "How do we bump up the visuals enough to really make it very theatrical looking but not so much that it just becomes alienating as to what you now as The Simpsons?" So, initially, they decided to work in CinemaScope, which is just this hugely wide aspect ratio, which right off the bat, I think, is so different than the show. Between the color pallets and that widescreen aspect ratio, it just gives you so much more to work with from a composition standpoint. It was a combination of many things ... plus the acting, the visuals. We used cell-shaded 3D, which they do not do in the show, so that was obviously a great tool. We do that in Futurama, but they had not done that on The Simpsons television show.
TONY: How do you feel about the current state of animation here in 2007? It seems more popular than ever with your studio and also with Pixar. Everything seems to be going really well. What's been the key to all this recent success?
Claudia Katz: I think Pixar's success, honestly, is just completely due to great characters and great storytelling. They can't seem to doing anything wrong, and I think that's because they just work so hard on the story. They sort of have the essentials down, and they really stick to them and they honor them and they just do a fantastic job. I think animated movies, if they're good, they do really well. And I think we've finally seen a slew of CG movies that were not so great. And I think we've gotten to the point where people don't think just because it's a 2D movie, it's sort of not good, and because it's a CG movie, it must be fantastic. So, I think it's sort of a more honest marketplace and I think The Simpsons Movie sort of proves there's definitely still a great appetite in theatricals for 2D. I know Disney is sort of totally redoing their 2D animation division, which I think is really terrific. I think we're gonna see some more animated prime time shows coming back to television and hopefully some more 2D movies.
TONY: I've talked to a number of producers and animators, and they all seem very self critical. Do you ever go back and watch old footage and obsess over the little details?
Claudia Katz: Yeah, we're pretty OCD here. We actually go through a tremendous amount of quality control passes before we even show the footage to our client, but I think for the directors, there's always a couple of things that will bother them. It's the stuff that nobody else in the universe will notice that will just bother them for eternity. Ultimately, no matter what the budget or schedule is, there's always constraints we have to respect and we really try and do the best job we can within those constraints, so we really set up the whole studio around trying to have the most control of the product that we can, so we can do the most amount of fixes here that we can. And I think that's a large reason of why our stuff looks really good.
TONY: Do you think we'll see more R-rated animated films in the future?
Claudia Katz: I mean, I hope so. Ultimately, it's all a business model, so I think if those movies do really well, people will be inclined to make more of them. I think there's also sort of a price point for them, so if you can deliver that movie at a certain price point, then it makes it worth it to go after that niche audience. I mean, you're probably not going to make a 160 million dollar R-rated movie, because in terms of getting your money back, you're sort of limiting your audience, but if you can make 20-30 million dollar R-rated movies, that may make perfectly good business sense.
TONY: Have you ever wanted to get more involved in the animation world? Maybe as a voice artist?
Claudia Katz: I did one voice role in a pilot we did called Vinyl Cafe, and that's sort of my only claim to fame. I think enough people here at Rough Draft have to listen to me, and I don't think I need to subject many more people to that.
TONY: Finally, what are your plans for the future?
Claudia Katz: We still have three more of these Futurama DVD movies to finish, which will keep us busy for a while, and we have a couple of prime time series in development. We're really trying to make a serious push to develop our own material and sort of get out there in that market as well as do more features. So, I'm hoping 2008 will be another great year for Rough Draft.
