A. Film L.A. test

Just a few notes by Bill Garity and Burt Gillett to Disney's animators in the early 30s regarding putting sync marks on their drawings so the pencil tests that are shot overnight will be in sync when shown on their moviolas the next morning.

A quick "inbetween:" Steven Hartley asks: "didn't John Reed go on to become the leading animator for the great British-animated film 'Animal Farm'?" Funny you should ask this, Steven, just after I re-read Dave Hand's book "Memoirs." When Hand got the job of creating an animation studio for J. Arthur Rank (later known as Gaumont British Animation), he found he needed trained, skilled artists to teach the rather untrained British ones, and he chose Ralph Wright for story, Ray Patterson for animation and John Reed for effect animation. Patterson returned Stateside after a year, Wright stayed longer, and, yes, John Franklin Reed (1908-1992) remained after all others had gone "home," to become the animation director on Halas & Batchelor's 1954 release "Animal Farm." It seems he animated for Disney on - among other films - Paul Bunyan (1958) after that. The book "Memoirs" has a funny anecdote in it told by Ha...

Here is an antiquated yet interesting invention: to be able to get consistency in rerecording and mixing of soundtracks at the Disney studios, a console that is generally referred to as The Iron Pencil was designed by Bill Garity and Jackson G. Kuhn (whom I believe to be alumnus of the Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York around 1930). The patent was applied for on July 31st, 1940, the same day as the filing of the two Fantasound patents, which implies to me that it was invented originally for mixing Fantasia, which was released in November that year. The patent was granted June 24th, 1941, in the middle of the infamous strike. In its simplest form the console would look like the patent application image: in the center would be the master score, and the musician - or Jim MacDonald - would follow it using a metal pin connected to a pantograph system which in turn moved a lamp throwing a light circle, not much larger than an inch in diameter, on copies of the scor...

Last week-and-a-half, I stumbled upon Bill Garity's Disney Legends plaque on one of the pillars on the structure surrounding Legends Plaza (where the reflecting pool was before) on the Disney Studio lot. Since I am nothing if not a completist, I include a picture of it here... << Click On It!

A few more images of the Archives Multiplane Camera. I took these last week...

I'd like to follow, and conclude my Multiplane week with a little celebration of the inventor, Bill Garity. We met Garity several times before, as inventor of the click track and the method for making 3-D (stereoscopic) animation, and now as the patent holder of the Multiplane Camera. He is also one of the inventors of Disney's pseudo-stereophonic sound system Fantasound, of the film mixing console that used the Iron Pencil to follow the score, and of a sound fader that suppresses one channel while boosting another. He even invented a rig for shooting miniature airplanes for the war-time films. And lets not forget that before Disney, he had several vacuum tube patents to his name. As important as he was to the technical development at the studio, and with him being the first person officially named manager of the studio, it seems surprising that not much has been written about him. He was justly made a Disney Legend posthumously in 1999, and it is on the Legends site we can re...

Can't get enough of the Multiplane camera either? Here is my final posting to top off Multiplane week. I thought of spreading this out, like Disney's 18 month "year," but enough is as good as a feast, especially since most of the readers are out locating metal columns or attending welding class. First the simplified drawing printed in Bob Thomas' Art of Animation (1958). It shows how the levels can move in relation to each other. Where the patent art was a complex schematic, this one is down to the basics... The camera at work - first in plain clothes (a clearer version of the one in the first posting of this series), then in lab coats, the two right images seemingly press pictures - the gent on the right seems to be the department head. (Suggestions anyone?) The next picture on the left has a caption written up: « The multiplane camera room. This new type of camera, developed within the studio at a cost exceeding $75,000, is seen at the left. It consists of seven...

The camera on the "Archives Multiplane" is a Bell & Howell 35mm camera. It uses Zeiss lenses of several focal lengths. Here are first two images I shot of the camera. For display purposes a mirror has been attached so one can see the top of the camera. The little exposure table is attached to the camera and shows exposure times from half a second to eight seconds. Then a box on display of the Zeiss lenses, 50mm, 72mm and 117mm focal lengths. Finally, here is what you would see if YOU were a cell, looking up at the lens. You may think it's strange, but I get a kick out of that...

As I mentioned in a comment, I was told that there are three cameras in existence: there is one in Paris, and as far as I know it used to be on display in Florida. Then there is the one at the Archives and finally there is one supposed to be "usable as spare parts only." David mentioned there would be one at the Walt Disney Museum at the San Francisco Presidio, which I would guess (!) to be the one from the Archives. It is the one from the Archives that I took a few pictures of. Here is first the console, then a few detailed images of one of the levels. The second image shows the locking mechanism that keeps the level in its place. It is obvious from this that the maximum depth of a level is the distance between the teeth on the front and back columns (minus a little bit). When I took the photos, the rig sadly was very dusty: while in use in the Camera Department, there would not be a speck of dust on it. They had air blowers to remove dust and lint from clothing as you went...

The question arises - what is new in this patent? It is a different application from the one we saw two postings ago! Again, it was applied for by Bill Garity on behalf of Walt Disney Productions, filed May 8th, 1939, granted April 28th, 1942. It thus was filed between the patents of the last two postings. This patent introduces the "photometric device" and its workings, and shows that the background could be mounted at an angle using a mirror. Otherwise, it is just a simplified version of the patent applied for half a year earlier! Or am I missing something?