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Portsmouth’s Hatchling Banking on
its Star ‘Toll’
Portsmouth Herald - October 3,
2005
Michael McCord
PORTSMOUTH, N.H.—There aren’t many
companies in the region that are considering multimillion film deals.
That’s more of a Hollywood or New York reality.
But then there
aren’t many companies like Hatchling Studios, which is poised to take off
and perhaps make a computer animation feature hit - a "Toy Story" or "Finding
Nemo" - in the next decade.
"There’s no going back," said Marc Dole, founder of
Hatchling Studios, as he sat in his office crowded with computer screens and
video playback equipment. Dole’s office, like the rest of the two-room
Congress Street headquarters, has the feel of a high-tech start-up from the
1990s, which Hatchling was, and if Dole has his way will remain the same for as
long as possible.
Dole’s office, like the rest of the two-room
Congress Street headquarters, has the feel of a high-tech start-up from the
1990s, which Hatchling was, and if Dole has his way will remain the same for as
long as possible. "We’ve been cautious and frugal," said Dole, a graduate
of Newmarket High School, whose interest in film production coincided with the
personal computer revolution that has transformed not only the film industry,
but electronic communications on all levels.
Dole started Hatchling in
1999 as a computer animation shop to provide content for, to name just a few
mediums, Web sites, industrial and publicity videos, PowerPoint presentations
and television shows.
Hatchling has 13 full-time employees, all young
and representing the first generation raised with personal computers as an
everyday and, often, an all-consuming part of their lives. Many have multiple
talents with the ability to provide interactive Web site content or 3-D
animation details. Dole says that 60-hour and more work weeks are the
norm.
What they are creating at Hatchling is 21st century cutting-edge
animated, interactive material that artfully redefines the notion of content.
Consider the game portion of the Kansas State Lottery Web site in which players
have the option of taking their lottery game ticket to the Web site, log on,
and find out through an animated presentation whether they won.
Or
consider the site for Gigunda Group, a Manchester-based marketing company,
which has one of the most advanced Web sites in terms of visual presentation
and entertainment, complete with an animated character guide named
Element.
"It’s our coolest Web site," Dole said as he took a tour
of the Gigunda site and showed the entertaining part of interacting with the
agile Element.
But there’s another character that Dole and
Hatchling are betting on and his name is Toll, the star of a five-minute short
film that holds the key to the future of Hatchling. It will cost the company
between $400,000 and $600,000 to make, and Dole is using Toll’s tale as a
vehicle to transform Hatchling into a potential major player into the computer
animation film industry.
 For the past few years, Hatchling has been building to this
crossroads. The company had donated more than $100,000 worth of work for
feature animated shorts for works including one that tells the story of the
making of the USS Ranger. Dole said the company decided to ratchet up its
ambitions and create an animated short that would attract investors who might
strike gold with the next "Finding Nemo."
One idea was started and then
shelved. The Toll became the next idea, and Dole put five of his creative staff
on the project full-time, even though it wasn’t a money-generating
venture. The interactive side of the business was growing fast so he could
afford to take the risk.
The creation of Toll started in earnest about a
year ago, one painstakingly choreographed movement at a time, with thousands of
hours of labor-intensive work and millions of computer key strokes going into a
process that seems impossibly difficult for an outsider to
comprehend.
Dole’s role as the creative wizard for Hatchling has
also changed. Investors demand such accountability.
"I’ve gotten a
business degree," he said, and spends "about 90 percent of my time before Excel
spreadsheets" juggling budgets and forecasting revenues for the company.
He’s planning five years out for the future of providing top-shelf content
for corporate customers and feature filmmaking.
Dole said the
company’s name was changed last year from M2-3D (for multi-media 3D) to
Hatchling so it could be more comprehensible to investors.
 Investors
have become interested - some local and others not so local. Deals with
financial rainmakers have come close to being signed and then collapse at the
last moment. Dole has received seed money from a New Hampshire-based angel
investor, but he’s looking for a few million dollars to finish a
five-minute short for The Toll, which by itself won’t make any money but
acts as a magnet for investors in the larger project.
One of Hatchling’s biggest boosters is Sylvia Reif of
Portsmouth-based Reif Financial, an investment group that has dealt primarily
in commercial real estate projects. But Reif said Hatchling is an opportunity
she couldn’t pass up.
"I did the research and it’s a $9
billion industry just for computer-generated animation," she said. "Very seldom
do you get a chance to get in on the ground floor on a project with this much
potential."
Reif has invested her own money and is putting an investment
group together as fast as she can, because she believes "once this film is
funded and shown at Sundance (the major film festival), there won’t be a
lack of interested investors."
As part of his new business-focused
persona, Dole is weighing different deals from heavyweight investors for the
$45 million full-length feature. A New York group has a $35 million offer for
one major film, but that would likely require making it outside of New
Hampshire to take advantage of sizable tax breaks from states such as
Louisiana, New Mexico, Massachusetts or Rhode Island.
"I never thought
of tax incentives before," Dole said.
 A Los Angeles group is
interested in a multifilm deal, and Dole would like to create a separate
investment vehicle for the film itself. Dole admits it’s a lot to consider
for a former film student who graduated from Lyndon State College in Vermont.
Though there is little the state of New Hampshire can do when it comes
to tax incentives, ideally, Dole said, he would like to keep the production
here in Portsmouth if, as they say daily in Hollywood, the numbers work.
In particular, he’d like to attract at least 100 new animators for
the full-length project.
"Our artists love the downtown area," he said.
"They work long hours, and it’s convenient for them to get lunch or go out
after work."
This invading animation army could have a major impact on
the local economy because of its annual salary, which averages $65,000 or
higher.
Dole recently spoke before the N.H. Creative Club. Four years
before, he said, he talked about animation for industrial videos, "about
animating how to make a widget. It wasn’t very exciting."
But his
recent presentation attracted more excitement because everyone there was aware
not only about what Hatchling was doing, but how the computer revolution has
matured, making film production more democratic, more accessible.
As
part of the long-term planning for Hatchling, Dole has also had a documentary
film crew creating "A Making Of..." project for The Toll. It could prove to be
quite the unorthodox story if a full-length feature animated film is made in
Portsmouth.
Hatchling Studios is a New England-based
animation company that creates character-driven, story-centric entertainment
and commercial work. In addition to advertising, trade and educational
materials, and web-based design and animation, Hatchling develops its own
properties for film and television with artistic vision and technical finesse.
The company’s first short film, The Toll, is slated for release in 2006.
For more information, contact 603-436-0059 or visit
www.hatchlingstudios.com. |
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