[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.) Disney dismissed two of the more inventive cartoons of the precedingyear: Music Land, a musical fantasy in which humanized musical instrumentsfrom the Land of Symphony war with their counterparts on the Isle ofJazz, and Cock o the Walk, in which barnyard fowl, in astonishing numbers,parody the elaborate Busby Berkeley dance numbers in such live-action mu-sicals as Gold Diggers of 1935. True, Disney wrote of those cartoons, a lot of people will like thesepictures, but the vast public that we are appealing to will not like them as awhole.They are not the type of picture that we want to make, becausewe are making.pictures to appeal to the masses. The best cartoons, hesaid, as if laying out a credo for his feature, appealed both to specialized tastesand to the masses. Writing in terms that applied at least as much to his fea-ture as to the shorts, he fastened on the importance of the animators to suc-cessful films: An animator should not be allowed to start on a scene until hethe leap to feature fi lms , 1 93 4 1 93 8 1 1 5 has not only the mechanics and routine of the business, but the feeling andthe idea behind the scene thoroughly in mind. Animators time in storymeetings should be devoted to finding out what possibilities the scene pre-sents to the animator, stirring up his imagination, stirring up his vision, stim-ulating his thought regarding what can be done in the scene. 53In a December 20, 1935, memorandum evaluating Bill Tytla s animationin Cock o the Walk, he emphasized caricature, calling it the thing we arestriving for. He oªered this advice: On any future stuª where we use hu-man action, first, study it for the mechanics, then look at it from the angleof what these humans could do if they weren t held down by the limitationsof the human body and gravity. He expressed a strong preference for do-ing things.which humans are unable to do. 54Disney emphasized caricature again in a memo he wrote to Don Grahamthree days later, to lay the groundwork for more extensive training: The firstduty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as theyactually happen but to give a caricature of life and action. 55There was, in short, a lot of intensive self-examination by Disney andhis people, with the thought in mind, as Disney said in his October 17memo, to prepare ourselves now for the future. The question was, as workon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began to pick up speed again, whetherWalt Disney s stubbornly personal working methods were really compatiblewith the industrial apparatus he had assembled and would need now to makea feature.As in previous years, the increase in employees numbers did not bring asignificant change in the number of releases; only eighteen Disney shorts cameout in 1935, one more than the year before.New employees were further di-viding work that was already being done, as with the animators who nowspecialized in special eªects like rain and fire, or they were doing jobs thathad not been done before, as with the sound-eªects department that Disneyset up in 1934.It started with two members and soon grew to five.Inevitably, the studio was growing more bureaucratic as it grew larger, butDisney like many an entrepreneur at the head of a rapidly growing smallbusiness continued to regard the studio as an extension of himself.Wil-fred Jackson explained how that worked: When [Walt] got ideas, he visu-alized the whole thing, 100 percent.He d give you a little action, he d de-scribe something the Mouse should do, and you d think you had the wholeidea of what Mickey was supposed to do, and you d show him the drawings,and he d say, No, Jack, we talked this all over, his tail shouldn t be back there,it should be up like this. 561 1 6 thi s character was a li ve pers on However problematical Disney s intensely personal approach to film-making may have been in some respects, it also contributed immensely tothe success of his films, for reasons suggested by Douglas Churchill in his1934 article. When he talks of a picture or a plot, Churchill wrote of Dis-ney, he becomes animated, intense; his mimicry leaps out; he moves aboutimpersonating the characters, making grotesque faces to stress his point. 57This was a side of Disney s involvement that his animators found particu-larly appealing, and particularly helpful.Said Ward Kimball, who witnessedsuch performances in later years: When he took the parts of.any of thepeople in the pictures, valets, anything he all of a sudden was a valet, justas good, we said, as Chaplin, for that moment, in the room, showing us howit ought to be done. 58That side of Disney s involvement is also particularly hard to grasp now.The transcripts of story meetings rarely give any sense of how he might havebeen portraying a character [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl odbijak.htw.pl
.) Disney dismissed two of the more inventive cartoons of the precedingyear: Music Land, a musical fantasy in which humanized musical instrumentsfrom the Land of Symphony war with their counterparts on the Isle ofJazz, and Cock o the Walk, in which barnyard fowl, in astonishing numbers,parody the elaborate Busby Berkeley dance numbers in such live-action mu-sicals as Gold Diggers of 1935. True, Disney wrote of those cartoons, a lot of people will like thesepictures, but the vast public that we are appealing to will not like them as awhole.They are not the type of picture that we want to make, becausewe are making.pictures to appeal to the masses. The best cartoons, hesaid, as if laying out a credo for his feature, appealed both to specialized tastesand to the masses. Writing in terms that applied at least as much to his fea-ture as to the shorts, he fastened on the importance of the animators to suc-cessful films: An animator should not be allowed to start on a scene until hethe leap to feature fi lms , 1 93 4 1 93 8 1 1 5 has not only the mechanics and routine of the business, but the feeling andthe idea behind the scene thoroughly in mind. Animators time in storymeetings should be devoted to finding out what possibilities the scene pre-sents to the animator, stirring up his imagination, stirring up his vision, stim-ulating his thought regarding what can be done in the scene. 53In a December 20, 1935, memorandum evaluating Bill Tytla s animationin Cock o the Walk, he emphasized caricature, calling it the thing we arestriving for. He oªered this advice: On any future stuª where we use hu-man action, first, study it for the mechanics, then look at it from the angleof what these humans could do if they weren t held down by the limitationsof the human body and gravity. He expressed a strong preference for do-ing things.which humans are unable to do. 54Disney emphasized caricature again in a memo he wrote to Don Grahamthree days later, to lay the groundwork for more extensive training: The firstduty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as theyactually happen but to give a caricature of life and action. 55There was, in short, a lot of intensive self-examination by Disney andhis people, with the thought in mind, as Disney said in his October 17memo, to prepare ourselves now for the future. The question was, as workon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began to pick up speed again, whetherWalt Disney s stubbornly personal working methods were really compatiblewith the industrial apparatus he had assembled and would need now to makea feature.As in previous years, the increase in employees numbers did not bring asignificant change in the number of releases; only eighteen Disney shorts cameout in 1935, one more than the year before.New employees were further di-viding work that was already being done, as with the animators who nowspecialized in special eªects like rain and fire, or they were doing jobs thathad not been done before, as with the sound-eªects department that Disneyset up in 1934.It started with two members and soon grew to five.Inevitably, the studio was growing more bureaucratic as it grew larger, butDisney like many an entrepreneur at the head of a rapidly growing smallbusiness continued to regard the studio as an extension of himself.Wil-fred Jackson explained how that worked: When [Walt] got ideas, he visu-alized the whole thing, 100 percent.He d give you a little action, he d de-scribe something the Mouse should do, and you d think you had the wholeidea of what Mickey was supposed to do, and you d show him the drawings,and he d say, No, Jack, we talked this all over, his tail shouldn t be back there,it should be up like this. 561 1 6 thi s character was a li ve pers on However problematical Disney s intensely personal approach to film-making may have been in some respects, it also contributed immensely tothe success of his films, for reasons suggested by Douglas Churchill in his1934 article. When he talks of a picture or a plot, Churchill wrote of Dis-ney, he becomes animated, intense; his mimicry leaps out; he moves aboutimpersonating the characters, making grotesque faces to stress his point. 57This was a side of Disney s involvement that his animators found particu-larly appealing, and particularly helpful.Said Ward Kimball, who witnessedsuch performances in later years: When he took the parts of.any of thepeople in the pictures, valets, anything he all of a sudden was a valet, justas good, we said, as Chaplin, for that moment, in the room, showing us howit ought to be done. 58That side of Disney s involvement is also particularly hard to grasp now.The transcripts of story meetings rarely give any sense of how he might havebeen portraying a character [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]