Average Animator Footage in 1938
Two and a half months after the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, on March 11, 1938, Producer/Supervising Director Dave Hand issued this memo called DEADLINES. Of course, everybody in the animation business has gotten memos called this, but here is an insight into just how much was produced by the (now) famous animators at Disney's in the Golden Age. Fred Moore stands out as missing on this memo, but otherwise it is quite a list of top talent. (Bernard Garbutt animated?)
Now, I do not remember when Disney changed to a 5-day work week, but let's say it was before this time: in this case Norm Ferguson had a weekly average of 35 feet, or 23 seconds 8 frames! Pretty high up we also find Fred Spencer, Frank Thomas and Bill Tytla, with 30 feet, or 20 seconds each. On the other end of the scale is Larry Clemmons with 10 feet or 6 seconds and 16 frames, followed by Ollie Johnston and Don Lusk with 12.5 feet or 8 seconds 8 frames each...
Since the second page was a bit hard to read, I enhanced it for legibility, which is the image on the right.
Now, I do not remember when Disney changed to a 5-day work week, but let's say it was before this time: in this case Norm Ferguson had a weekly average of 35 feet, or 23 seconds 8 frames! Pretty high up we also find Fred Spencer, Frank Thomas and Bill Tytla, with 30 feet, or 20 seconds each. On the other end of the scale is Larry Clemmons with 10 feet or 6 seconds and 16 frames, followed by Ollie Johnston and Don Lusk with 12.5 feet or 8 seconds 8 frames each...
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For anyone who still believes computers make animation more efficient, it is astonishing how much faster these guys were than most computer animators today--not to mention how much better!
ReplyDeleteVery, very interesting. Do you have more of these footage reports from subsequent years, Hans ? Did they get faster or slow down as the movies got more complicated ? But 1938 would have been working on Pinocchio , right ? So, that was one of the most complex, detail-laden movies.
ReplyDeleteBill Burg: you note that "it is astonishing how much faster these guys were than most computer animators today."
I would say not just faster than most "computer animators" because those footage numbers seem very high compared to what many traditional animators were turning out at Disney Feature Animation from the late 80's (when I started at Disney), throughout the 1990's and up to the closing days of the old Disney hand-drawn dept. in 2004.
While there are some of the veterans (like Mark Henn, Dale Baer, Andreas Deja , Eric Goldberg, James Baxter, and quite a few others) who turn out high quantity as well as high quality footage, it was not unusual for animators at Disney in the 80's and 90's to be turning out more or less 7 ft. per week of finished rough footage.
There may have been other factors involved in that ... there was a high degree of micro-management going on and a lot of nitpicking and re-dos from the infamous "too-many-cooks-stirring-the -broth" syndrome on some of the 90's features, but it would seem that based on those 1938 footage numbers (when some of those high-footage guys were young, some only animating for 2 or 3 years at that point) it would be safe to say that they were much faster than many or most modern day animators.
Were they just more talented than us or was it that Depression-era work ethic or what ? Was the system in 1938 just not as "constipated" as later on , with the 30's animation directors and supervising animators more at liberty to approve large chunks of footage on their own assigned sequences , with Walt having the final say on approval of footage ?
Great document! Wow.
ReplyDeleteI am totally mystified as to why MOORE was not included on this memo? Is there any animator of similar stature left out? I can't think of a signle name other than Fred's not listed. It's very odd...
Jenny,
ReplyDeleteIt is an intriguing document , in more ways than one, especially the mystery of why top animator Fred Moore isn't mentioned on the list (Fred on vacation that week? This is a single memo providing us a snapshot of the animation crew's output on a certain week in 1938, so who knows where Moore was... home sick with the flu or on vacation ?)
I'm still trying to reconcile the higher daily footages listed on the Dave Hand memo with things like the Dick Lundy remark to Maltin that "5 ft. a week was acceptable" at Disney's (compared to the 25 ft. per week mandatory quota at a place like Lantz) and the similar numbers I've read over the years from other people contrasting the relatively high footage quotas at places like Lantz and Warner Bros. (25 to 30 ft. a week) compared with 5 - to - 10 ft. a week at Disney .
Is a puzzlement...
It just now occurred to me to count this daily footage together - it makes 145 ft or 2320 frames, or 1 minute 36 seconds 16 frames. EACH DAY. That is 8 minutes and 3 seconds (or a long short film) each week! About 6 and a half hours per year. Gee...
ReplyDeleteI returned to this post to consider it again and remain impressed with the productivity level of these old school animators.
ReplyDeleteWe've got a lot to learn (or relearn) yet!
Looking at this again I notice that in addition to Fred Moore not being on this list , Ham Luske is also not on the list . And Grim Natwick IS on the list, but I would have thought by 1938 Natwick would have been gone (since he left after Snow White to go to Fleischer's in Miami, FL to work on Gulliver's Travels ) Did Grim Natwick do any footage on Pinocchio or Fantasia around this time period , after Snow White had wrapped ?
ReplyDelete