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| > > 3.Casting for my animation project > > The first time I've gone through a proper process of > > trying out actors, seeing actors treat my work as > > something...well, real. The project in question is a > > script (the first in a series) that I hope to share with > > you all soon (I hope to use some of Jim's music as well) > > I love animation but I think it must be very difficult. I > recently went to see Disney's "Snow White" at our local > cinema. There were no children watching but there did seem > to be a lot of university student age people. It is a > great work of art that would have bankrupted Disney if it > had failed. I believe it was the first feature length > cartoon ever. A lot of people told Walt that he was > crazy. > Extraordinarily difficult, I imagine. And imagine what it must have been like before they had computers. Everything had to be painted by hand. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was the first full-length animated feature, I believe, or at least the first one to succeed. And it's true that a lot of people thought that Disney had gone mad. They called the film "Disney's folly". And the rest is history... It was the success of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" that led to the making of "The Wizard of Oz". And because of "Snow White:, the Wicked Witch of the West in the film was originally going to be very beautiful. Unfortunately for Gale Sondergaard who was cast in the role they changed their minds and decided to stick with tradition. She walked away. Margaret Hamilton was cast and again, the rest is history... The next films that Disney released "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia" were not as successful as "Snow White", because of World War 2, though many fans agree that "Pinocchio" is better than "Snow White". They'd had more experience and the animation was more refined and more ambitious. "Fantasia" was truly a masterpiece. If "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia" had originally been successful, well, I guess we'll never know what the next films would have been like. Because they weren't successful, "Dumbo", a much less ambitious feature, was made. "Bambi" followed and that was "the end" for a while... Disney made a lot of compilation films like "Saludos Amigos", "The Three Caballeros", "Make Mine Music" (which features one of the deleted scenes from "Fantasia", I believe), "Melody Time" and "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (One half an adaptation of "The Wind in the Willows" and the other half "Sleepy Hollow". The Headless Horseman was really cool in this.) "Cinderella" saw the return to feature animation but I've never thought much of that one. It's alright. "Alice in Wonderland" was supposed to have been the first feature animated film but Disney encountered the same problems that everybody encounters when they try to adapt this story. How to craft a narrative from those episodic series of events... When the film was finally made it was not successful and Disney thought it lacked warmth. "Peter Pan" and "Lady in the Tramp" were both successful, but "Sleeping Beauty" at that point was one of the most ambitious projects Disney had ever undertaken. Six years in the making (that's a lot of coffee) it was the first widescreen animated feature. Beloved today, it was not the success it really should have been at the time. After "Sleeping Beauty" was made, everything changed. They had to find ways of cutting costs and this combined with the introduction of the then revolutionary Xerox machine resulted in the film "One Hundred and One Dalmatians". This is why the lines look so rough in every film that was made between "Sleeping Beauty" and "The Rescuers". It’s the Xerox machine. They hadn't quite refined it. "The Black Cauldron", based on Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series, was eleven years in the making and a ginormous flop. During the making, the hierarchy at Disney changed and Jeffrey Katzenberg himself went in and cut 10 minutes of the film (Which is almost criminal in animation. Very rarely do you cut animation that is complete.) These scenes were rather dark and frightening, hence why they were removed I believe, but Disney were only keeping with the times... There were lots of darker science fiction/fantasy films being made. Unfortunately for the fans, those 10 minutes of deleted scenes have never been released and probably will never be released. They had their opportunity when they were prepared the 25th anniversary DVD release but they blew it. "The Great Mouse Detective" saw the introduction of CGI and gradually Disney entered into its famous Renaissance period. Will there ever be another period like this? I don't know. But I thought that they came close with "Tangled" and then it was said that they wouldn’t be making any more fairy tale films. Jeez... I'd love if I could make an animated film. I'd love if I could be like Disney except it would be the total opposite. It would be like seeing a darker horror/science fiction/fantasy film. It would be like "Beauty and the Beast" but darker, more like "The Phantom of the Opera" and the way "Hunchback of Notre Dame" should have been, the way it was in Berlin. But ah well... Such an endeavour would be an enormous risk probably not worth undertaking. PS. Disney was not all that fond of the Xerox machine. He thought something had been lost. PPS. Hitler's favourite film was "Snow White".
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