ASIFA Hero:

As you can see below Steve Worth has advertised the Evening With Bill Melendez and Floyd Norman DVD project that I worked on. If you have been following these pages then you know the step by step of the process from my side of the project as I tried to bring this set of interviews to market. What you don`t know is the hours of very hard work by the other person involved in this project. (he doesn`t write a Blog and talk on an on about himself like some people)

I would like to focus today on that person and on all of the work he did that made this whole project possible. I am talking of Eric Graf, Extraordinary ASIFA Volunteer. This project would never have happened without him.

I first meet Eric at an ASIFA volunteer meeting. Which is not strange because he has been a dedicated volunteer for years.

I worked with him on the Terry Thoren Archive move. Now that the ASIFA Archive is up and running, he is very active at the Archive. He takes that long commute from Orange County into Burbank almost every Saturday to help with the digitizing and cataloging.

But all this is small potatoes compared to the major contribution Eric made to ASIFA over the last couple of months.

It all started in this Blog about 3 months ago. I was talking about a DVD I was editing of a couple Mark Kausler interviews. The next day I get an email for Eric saying that he would be glad to help ASIFA with DVD editing and authoring, which is what he does professionally.

Soon after that email, during an Archives move, I found a group of tapes of the Tom Sito Evening With interviews and just about now maybe Eric is a little sorry that he offered his talents because he ended up donation hundreds of hours of his free time to turn the substandard source material that I was able to lay my hands on into a very professional package.

I love the menu system that he designed. It is logical and aimed at the animation history buff. I am so tired of the DVD menu systems that seem to be designed to hide the good stuff under layers and layers of introductions and forced previews that I then have to fight my way through to get to the clip that I need to show my students. With Eric`s menu design it is all right there clearly labeled and just a click away.

I find myself using this interview disk almost weekly in my Animation History class to add a point on one subject or another. Just this last week I called up a couple of interviews from the Bill Melendez interview that covered the strike years, Leon Schlesinger and the organized crime / animation union boss Willie Bioff.

A big thank you is due to Video Resources for letting Eric use their equipment on his off hours to work on a project for a non-profit origination. http://www.videoresources.com (if you need short runs of professional authored DVD they are the people to turn to) and a giant heart felt mega-thank you is due to Eric Graf for all the long hours and the supreme talent he brought to the Evening With Bill Melendez and Floyd Norman DVD project.

As Steve Worth notes below, this limited DVD is available to own. Order yours today.

Here is the content of the disk:

Bill Melendez


• intro
  
• Animator`s attitudes - then and now
  
• Meeting Walt Disney . . . Walt draws Mickey Mouse . . . Producers and artists
  
• How quickly? How cheaply? Whay Walt was a great producer. . . Fred Quimby`s footage Book
  
• Rudy Zamora and Fred Quimby
  
• Rudy Zamora at Disney . . . The lack of humor at the studio . . . The Spirit of $17.76
  
• The non-Disney studios . . .The Clampett unit at Warner Bros. . . Practical jokes
  
• Leon Schlesinger. . .Asking Leon for a raise
  
• The beginning of TV
  
• The blacklist
  
• Willie Bioff . . .Strikes
  
• Cleanup and assistants . . . The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
  
• Jose Cuauhtemoc Melendez
  
• How I became an animator . . . Drawing classes
  
• Mexican polo players. . . Bill Tytla. . . Disney`s art library
  
• Norm Ferguson. . . Always shoot a test
  
• Working with Charles Schulz. . . Turning Charlie Brown
  
• Getting fired from Warner Bros.
  
• Voice acting and the SAG
  
  
  Floyd Norman
  
  
• Intro
  
• How I becaome a story artist
  
• Disney in 1956. . . Milt Kahl Features vs shors
  
• Race at Disney
  
• Disney artists acting like kids. . . Meeting Walt
  
• Dailies, drawing quotas, cleanup
  
• 101 Dalmations. . . The Sleeping Beauty Layoff. . . Drafted
  
• Windwagon Smith. . . The Hanna-Barbera poker game
  
• The Jungle Book. . . Sthe story department . . Recording Trust In Me. . .
• Plussing gags
  
• Walt`s input. . . Walt`s death. . . The Jungle Book`s ending
  
• Walt on camera. . . Roy Disney takes over. . . Disneyland
  
• Career path. . . Storyboarding. . .Disney comic strips. . . Writing for Mickey Mouse
  
• Comic strip gag meetings. . . Burnout
  
• Leaving Disney. . . Vignette Films. . . Hanna-Barbera. . . Faster! Cheaper! . . . art supplies
  
• Tex Avery and Kwicky Koala. . . When you gotta go. . .
  
• Phil Mendez`s office. . . Carter/Mendez Productions. . . Monkey muffins!
  
• Walt and 101 Dalmations. . . The Sword in the Stone. . . Xerox vs ink and paint
  
• Cleanup vs touch-up. . . Doing cleanup for Milt Kahl. . .Working rough
  
• Inter-studio visits
  
• Disney and race
  
• Floyd`s return to Disney. . . The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  
• Women in animation
  
• The Eisner era
  

  ¶ 8:09 AM