A. Film L.A. test

My friend and mentor Børge Ring commented on my posting of Dick Huemer's lecture on timing :       « "Dick Huemer on Timing" is one of the best pieces I ever read on a blog: Huemer debates precisely all the brass-tack problems that make up the wonderful game of chess that lively action animation can be. It is wonderful to hear about all these things from a fine animator who also happened to be a creative storyman (e.g. Dumbo) and a director with a clear vision of the totality of a picture (e.g. The Whalers).       Don Graham's remarks reveal that he had learned a lot about animation from the animators to whom he taught drawing, and it is a helpful luxury to have immediate access to the drafts of two of the films that are talked about.       Huemer does not pontificate; instead he gives an honest answer to questions for which the solutions are not immediately obvious. "Test it, then you will find out....

Here is something else to do with timing: Disney animator Randy Cartwright has written an application for the iPhone called Animation Timer (AnimTimer); basically a stopwatch, you tap (or shake) the phone, and it will register the time between these (max. 20) events, and show this in frames (at 24, 30 or 50 fps), feet-frames or seconds. For sale at the iTunes store for $2.99. The downloadable version must not be the latest, as the site shows the correct 25 fps for PAL video, and not 50 fps...

Thirty-seven years before the event covered in my previous posting, Dick Huemer was asked to give a talk on timing for Don Graham's class, less than two months after Walt Disney's famous inspirational and visionary memo to Graham. Discussed are the then just-released Mickey's Polo Game (beginning with Huemer's own scene 32) and the 9-months old Water Babies [mentioning Huemer's own toreador and bullfight sequence], but examples are also found in Alpine Climbers which would not see daylight until five months later, as well as The Band Concert , On Ice and The Tortoise and the Hare, all released the previous year. Among the people asking questions are Al Eugster and the feared but not very respected George "Flop-ears" Drake who headed the inbetween department. Note especially the interesting snippets of information on animation to music, the use of "twos" and extremes vs. straight-ahead animation on pages 5 and 6. Later on we get Huemer's ta...

Here is another photo taken at the Penthouse Club, the men-only club at the top of the animation building on Disney's Burbank lot. Richard Martin Huemer (1/2/1898-11/30/1979) received a Mousecar, the Disney Studio's Oscar in February 1973, and among the invited were (l. to r.) Jack Cutting, Bill Cottrell and Les Clark... << Click On It!

T. Hee (Thornton F. Hee, born 03/26/1911, died 10/30/1988) was well-known for his caricatures. Here we have him in the back, with his friends Norm Ferguson, Fred Moore, Bill Cottrell and Dick Huemer, a 9-foot penguin and a maître d' at the Brown Derby. It seems he had some back and forth running gag about this penguin with Bill Cottrell - as if it was the end-all-be-all fun story idea... << Click On It!

Had a look at Didier Ghez's blog? Author Pierre Lambert sent him a great picture of the celebrants at Les Clark's 30th anniversary with Walt Disney's company. John Canemaker mentions that Clark started work February 23rd, 1927, though in a list of Disneyites of November 1967 his hire date is listed as March 15th. Here is the memo inviting the members of the Penthouse Club to celebrate Clark's anniversary on March 14th, 1957... << Click On It!

[Don't forget to read the posting below this: "Congrats Børge!"] Courtesy of Leslie Iwerks' great film about her grandfather Ub, "The Hand Behind the Mouse," as found on the Disney Treasures DVD set for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, here is a composite of two frame grabs of a shot of the exposure sheet of the first public close-up of Mickey Mouse in his role as Steamboat Willie. Who knew this still exsisted? You will find that the beats are marked with dots every 8 frames, the lyrics are written in as guide for the animator (Ub), and that a beat was cut out at the cross (no more or less, I checked it with the film). Curiously there are 46 frames to a page, not 48 (3 feet or 6 beats), which could lead one to speculate that this maybe was a page from some random ledger. In any case, in the animation, Mickey's head, arms and hands are on the top level, his body and feet on the next (which also has him completely for a few drawings), then the wheel by itself. I...

Today marks the 88th birthday of Børge Ring, whom I am proud to call my mentor. He lives in a rural part of Holland, but though he feels slowed down by age, his mind is as sharp as always. He sent me following as follow-up on my mentioning of Steamboat Willie's timing:       « As Hans justly states: A tempo of 2-16 aka 4-8 is the simplest and most manageable of tempos. David Hand timed his Disney shorts by metronome and beat. He gave this advice: "If you make changes in your timing - making an action slower or faster - never add or subtract anything less than a whole beat. That way you stay within the pattern and you do not bring the musician into weird difficulties."       Dave was not intimately conversant with music techniques and his musician Bert Lewis gave him this rule of thumb; "Write your timing in bars of 4 beats. Always put strong accents on 1 or on 3 in the bar. Then you will never get me into trouble." I con...

Here is a question that I have wondered about a lot: Ub Iwerks received an Academy Award for his groundbreaking work on Traveling Mattes, for combining live actors and animation in Mary Poppins. Ub had worked with this since 1923, when he figured out the technique to combine Alice with her Cartoonland. The actual 1963 camera used a beam-splitter prism to record the live actors on black on one roll of film, and the matte on another. My question: why not have both on the same roll, and eliminate the possible difference between the two rolls, like shrinkage etc.? Having the characters and the bright yellow sodium matte area on one reel and then separating them by filtering them in an optical printer seems to be a more controlled solution. Then why split it in camera instead? Were optical printers not precise enough? Did the colors bleed? Was it hard to separate if all was on one roll? Anyone with a definite answer is welcome to comment! Below three images of the retrofitted three-strip-Te...

As if there has not been said enough about this, here are my two bits on this oh-so-controversial subject. I rode the new It's a Small World attraction in Disneyland twice last Tuesday. My "verdict:" I loved it! I was thoroughly entertained! Basically there isn't more to it than that! Of course, I will say a few more words about it... Before, there were holes where things used to be, taken out by maintenance seemingly not caring. It had become a shell of its former self, from what I had seen of old footage and remember seeing for myself back in 1978 and 1991. We are now presented with a full show. Everything that used to move now moves. There is more to see, which means the lands have been condensed, as well. So what about the new additions? To me, they were not intrusive at all, even though I get the impression they are still playing with lighting, set dressing and sound levels, because there are a few things that could be tweaked, certainly. The additional Disney c...

More Milt Kahl and Hal King, a scene by Fred Hellmich, and the final scenes by Ollie Johnston and Hal Ambro... This ends the draft for The Sword in the Stone ! Remember where you saw it first, folks... Did you already check out the other feature drafts here? - Pinocchio - The Three Caballeros - Alice in Wonderland - Sleeping Beauty - One Hundred and One Dalmatians And did you check out any of my 75 Disney short film drafts ?

Animation by Dick Lucas, Eric Larson, Eric Cleworth, Cliff Nordberg, Milt Kahl, Hal King and a scene by John Sibley. This FINAL draft dated 7/25/1963...

As readers of this blog have noticed, I am especially interested in the timing of the Disney films, from Steamboat Willie onwards. Southern California readers can now "Discover the magic of Disney music at the Western Center Museum February 6th – May 10th, 2009. Disney: The Music Behind the Magic (organized by the Experience Music Project, Seattle) is the first museum exhibition to tell the story of how Disney has used music to engage audiences, drive its timeless narratives, and succeed in cartoons, television, theme parks, live-action films, on Broadway and the Billboard charts." You will find the very first score for Steamboat Willie there, as well as Frank Churchill's score for the Three Little Pigs, Ub Iwerks' original 1929 drawn script for The Karnival Kid, and much, much more (ok, all the way up to Miley Cyrus and High School Musical 3...) By the way, if you like mammoths, well, they have those, too! It's certainly worth the hour-and-a-half drive from Burb...

This Seq. 14 is wedged inbetween Seq. 10 and Seq. 12 ("Ending"). Animation by John Ewing, Eric Cleworth, Hal Ambro, Dick Lucas, John Lounsbery, Hal King, and the last half by Ollie Johnston. This FINAL draft dated 7/24/1963... Comments anyone?