New York – Clive Smith leaps high and lands with a loud slap of his feet, his arms spread wide. John Celestri copies the wild exercise, the two talk for a moment, then repeat the movement.

A film director coaching an actor? Exactly. Almost.

Smith is, indeed, a director; Celestri, in a sense, is an actor. A while later, Celestri will mock the action once more, now on paper, in the form of an inches-high cartoon character called Daniel Mouse.

“We cast our characters to the animators,” says Michael Hirsh, founder of Nelvana Ltd. and co-producer of the animated movie, “The Devil and Daniel Mouse.”

“The animator becomes the character, acts out the part, attempts to make the character real.”

The half-hour film, a new version of the classic short story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” has been syndicated in nearly 140 U.S. cities for broadcast between Oct. 21 an the end of the month.

It’s the story of Jan and Dan, folk singers tossed out of work by a night club manager who wants to run a disco. Jan inadvertently signs a contract with the Devil, who shows up to claim the young singer just as her career reaches its peak.

“The Devil and Daniel Mouse,” with a Halloween theme, is the second major seasonal special distributed in this country by Nelvana, a Toronto-based firm. The first, “A Cosmic Christmas,” was widely syndicated last winter.

Nelvana’s objective, says Hirsh, is production of animated film that is distinctly superior to the normal Saturday morning cartoon fare – and he’s convinced there is a difference. “What it boils down to,” he says, “is how much work you put into a drawing.”

Production of an animated movie can be a laborious, painstaking process – an animator can work as long as a week on 10 seconds of film. “The Devil and Daniel Mouse” took about a year to complete.

Hirsh Attributed a great deal of Nelvana’s success in the competitive syndication market that kind of extra effort, an effort he says is not extended in computerized cartoon-making for Saturday morning. “We’re trying to revive the art of animation,” he says, “And in a film, good animation is like good acting.”

“The Devil and Daniel Mouse” was attractive to station managers, Hirsh says, because “it has a contemporary slant, is based on well-known story with a sort of American appeal, and John Sebastian created the music specifically for it.

“If I were watching it,” he says, “I would notice the fresh approach, the color, the music. We put a lot of work into this, and others don’t.”

Hirsh says Nelvana is trying to develop “a team of animators that will be the best in the world” – 12 worked on the latest production – and will aim for production of at least one cartoon special a year. “I think specials will become more special, while computers will continue to satisfy the Saturday morning market,” he says.

– Tom Jory, Associated Press Writer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 18, 1978