A. Film L.A. test

Makin' Whoopee! played by Børge Ring in 1978. This music means a lot to me! It was the opening of the March 1978 tv program called "Aan de Grenzen" (On the Borders) by Veronica tv presenter Tineke Vos, about Børge Ring's animation and Jazz music, and his wife Joanika's scuptures. It presented a film that was just finished called "Oh My Darling" before it went across the globe, winning the Jury Prize in Cannes and an Oscar nomination, to boot. This was the very first time I heard of Børge as animator/film maker. Previously, I only knew that he drew a comic strip "Distel" for the magazine "Sjors." At the end of the program it listed among other things the town where Børge lived then, and to my surprise, it was only some three miles away from where I (then a 16 years old High School kid) lived, so I boldly called him up and asked if I could meet him, wanting to learn all I could about animation. [From Wikipedia : "Makin' Whoopee...

To end the year with a bit of a bang, here are some pertinent pages from the June 10, 1983 internal Disney Newsreel. They outline the "Where the Wild Things Are" test, which can be viewed on YouTube here . There is also mention of the Brave Little Toaster, a film that ultimately was made outside Disney, directed by Jerry Rees (who was, with Bill Kroyer , one of the animation directors on TRON). I find this article especially poignant as I have just yesterday revisited Glen Keane's baby Rapunzel (now called Tangled, to make it more appealing to a male audience) in 3-D, which has a trailer for John Lasseter's Cars 2 in front of it (also Smurfs and Mars Needs Moms - Oh, boy, I'm countin' the days - NOT!). Whereas Cars 2 seems to be all about car racing (and thus selling toys to boys), Rapunzel was without a doubt the most beautiful, poetic and luscious CG movie I have ever seen, with amazingly controlled acting and animation, believable characters that never mov...

...though not meant to be comical. It tells a story in separate but similar images in progression, with balloons that show the dialogue. But this is from 1493, the year after Columbus stumbled upon the Caribbean ("discovered America")! Yes, predating The Yellow Kid by about 400 years! The duchy of Gelria (Gelre), in what is now part of the Dutch province of Gelderland, saw the return of the young Duke Charles (Karel) from captivity in Burgundian France in 1492. Bernard, Count Van Meurs remained hostage in stead of his uncle Charles in Péronne, France, so Charles could settle his ransom. It is Van Meurs who in this document of 1493 complains that Charles has not kept his promises... (From the Municipal Archives of Zutphen, old arch. nr. 2386.) [Though I found the above image in a book, you can see a wonderful reproduction of it here on the website of the Zutphen Archives!] I would venture to guess it would read something like this:    1) "Oh, King of Burgundy, I, Count ...

A week ago today I spent several hours in line to see the Christmas Carol Train Tour exhibit at L.A. Union Station. It marked the beginning of a national tour promoting the new film by Robert Zemekis made for Disney called A Christmas Carol , of course based on Dickens' famous book. The train exhibit seemed extremely well done. Reference costumes, clips, models and a cute photo opportunity. Best of all, there were original Dickens documents on display. Very popular but less impressive was the "morph yourself into the characters" setup. This last bit did have problems, though: it spoke of "morph yourself into one of four characters," but there were only three, as the female lead was not available. Also, the images have as yet not turned up in my email, I wonder if they ever will...[They did, Monday night, eight days after the event!] After the train exhibit, we got into a new line, this time for the inflatable theater. Oh boy... Ok, my main bone of contention: i...

The eminent historian Michael Barrier has recently posted an item about the fake Disney sighting in the 1944 film "Once Upon a Time." What struck me in the whole issue is that I find that the office actually REALLY looks like Walt's formal office! I have shamelessly stolen the screen grab from Mike's site, the left image below. Then, a triptych composed of one black and white photo taken during Walt's lifetime and two taken in 1968, and finally a plan of Walt's formal office in the Animation Building in Burbank, room 3H-1 which I recreated from photos. The office currently may still be hidden behind the walls in the Disneyland Opera House, if it is not already moved into the Disney Archives' storage in conjunction with the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln recreation. On the floor plan, the camera in the scene from Once Upon a Time sees the light red area, originating behind "Walt"'s left side. The three photos are taken in the direction of t...

In the following couple of postings you will find, what I would call "mini-essays" about animation history based on items I have previously posted. As the astute reader of this blog will have noticed, I have posted a good amount of Animation Drafts, documents listing the scenes in a film. In the 74 shorts and six feature film drafts (see links on right) I have posted so far (go look if you haven't already), we have found that some also name the director and the layout personnel, and some are more accurate than others. There are First and Second drafts, as well as Post-Preview and Final drafts. We have seen that they are not always correct or complete. What the drafts do have in common is that they name the names of the animators . This is the part that often is the most interesting - and the most thwartingly illusive, because, as I have mentioned before in disclaimers, the drafts were never meant to be historical documentation. The names indicate not only the footage to ...

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...

A quick word before I continue with new postings. If you are new to my blog, I'd like to refer you to the archive pages linked to in the right side bar. Here you can find out how most all of Disney's shorts from 1928 and for some 25 years onwards were timed to a musical beat. You can read who animated which scenes on 60+ Disney short films and five feature films. You can find the technical manuals and transcripts of Action Analysis Classes of the 30s. And let's not forget information on early Disney patents. There are animation drawings, model sheets, articles and curiosa. Most of the stuff in the 433 postings over the last 2 years and a bit has never been published anywhere else. And then there is some info on my own studio as well! This last week saw the Danish premiere of our feature film Journey to Saturn, based on the 1970s Danish graphic novel by the late Claus Deleuran...

"If the audience becomes conscious of the quality of your drawings, it means that you have lost their interest in the scene." --Ollie Johnston, in a letter to my old mentor Børge Ring. Think about it for a while...

A visit to an antique mall some time ago yielded these photos of a kid at a studio microphone in the 1940s. At first, he seemed unknown - but a look at the text on the back told me otherwise. There seems to be very little info available about Paul Bryant (not the football coach). He was already at an early age a little radio star, though, when he became the voice of the George Pal Puppetoon character Jasper ! Hungarian-born Pal, seen holding the Jasper puppet in the image on the right, had very little contact with people of other race before he came from Holland to the USA, so he did not find anything offensive in the antics of this little innocent, but stereotypically naive African-American character. It seems to have come as a surprise to him that a group of people took offense to this series. Be that as it may, little Paul Bryant was a movie star in his own right. The writing on the first image reads "To Miss Dolares [?] who thought I was good enough for radio. Sincerely, Paul ...

Something just occurred to me: this blog had its second anniversary four days ago, and I forgot to celebrate... What was there to celebrate, you ask? Well, I was pretty happy to be able to explain the timing to a musical beat using different kinds of original Disney bar sheets , with click track examples - and I made a little pc metronome for just that. Then there are the Who is who's, by way of animation drafts for 62 short films, four whole features ( Pinocchio , The Three Caballeros , Alice in Wonderland and One Hundred and One Dalmatians ) and parts of several others; 14 Action Analysis Classes and Technical Manuals of the 30's; photos and articles . I suggest that new visitors browse the archives! In the mean time I go look for more skeletons to drag out of the closet... Like this one. Yes, that is Les Clark with the little moustache, looking down. And I believe the older gent in the front is Earl Hurd, the legendary inventor of cels, who was at Disney's until he ...

A quick note regarding Disney field sizes: I see so often that someone - e.g. a gallery - notes that a drawing was made on 12 Field Disney paper. This is not the correct way of indicating sizes, as at Disney, until 1984, the standard sizes were 5 Field and (from the mid-30s) 6 1/2 Field, corresponding to ACME sizes 10 1/2 and 14.44 Field, which are 10 1/2 and 14.44 inches wide respectively. Thus, the smaller, standard size used for all earlier drawings should be called a Disney 5 Field, but can be referred to as 10 1/2" (ACME) Field. The larger size is the Disney 6 1/2 Field, or 14.44" (ACME) Field. Calling something a Disney 12 Field would be very wrong. It would indicate a drawing area that is 28.88 inches wide! For proper conversion, see the converter boxes in the right sidebar! You can find more info on the sizes used in some of the technical manuals I posted (much) earlier and on my separate page on this. Suffice to say here that the ACME sizes refer to the width of the...

For those among us who have wondered what happened to the rest of the Hyperion Avenue buildings, here is an article from an internal studio publication dated December 1966. Being the last one during Walt's lifetime, it could actually be found on the desk in his working office after his passing. Early October that year, the lot was bulldozed to make way for the grocery store that later became the Gelson's. Somehow it is interesting, in a macabre sort of way, that the Hyperion lot and Walt himself seemingly shared a destiny... < Click on it!

My old mentor Børge Ring has written the account of our working on the Leica reel of Børge's Academy Award winning short film Anna & Bella in 1980, and sent it on to Michael Barrier, who kindly posted it on his weblog . It is basically the story of four of the best days in my life working in animation, as we excitedly worked specifically to streamline the story of the film. At the end of each day, I reshot the board with all changes - the fourth version is what is in the film. Thank you, Børge for telling the story, and Michael, for posting it! Michael is deep into Kansas City in 1922 - check it out !

Two days ago, I was in the neighborhood of Assistens Kirkegaard , the "assisting cemetery," which opened November 6th., 1760 to alleviate the crowded town of Copenhagen from the pressure of burials within the city walls. Since it is relatively close to the city center, I pass this cemetary regularly--our studio has been facing it back in 1990, and right now it's less than a mile away--but I now finally got myself to go inside. Nowadays, it is mainly used as a large park, but people are still being buried here. It's a clean park, but hardly well groomed. My specific reason to come here was to pay hommage to that great Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, here called H.C. Andersen - pronounced Ho Say (like José!) Andersen. Of course, we remember HCA from Disney's The Little Mermaid, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Little Match Girl and The Ugly Duckling, and we at A. Film produced The Ugly Duckling and Me (loosely based on his story, as feature and series ), The Sh...

Another thought by Børge Ring: "HOW DID A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU GET INTO THIS?" A number of renowned persons in American animation originally set out to become something quite different. Here are some of them: Walt Disney (director of live action) Art Babbitt (headshrink) Joe Barbera (playwright) Ham Luske (engineer) Shamus Culhane (archeologist) Woolie Reitherman (aviator) Bill Littlejohn (aviator) Ward Kimball (magazine illustrator) Eric Larson (writer) John Canemaker (actor) Marc Davis (fine arts painter) Richard Williams (jazz trumpeter) Of these, Joe Barbera, Bill Littlejohn, Woolie Reitherman, Marc Davis and Richard Williams managed (to varying degrees) to reach both goals. Some of you probably know of many more; A select few may have wanted to become jailers or dentists...

More from Børge Ring: Pluto's Judgement Day, Alpine Climbers, Building a Building, Camping Out, The Dognapper, The Mail Pilot, Who killed Cock Robin? These (mentioned at random) are some of the shorts that David Hand directed for Disney. One of them titled Mickey's Polo Team was a breakthrough being the first short to be completed in ruffs before further steps were taken. In 1950 Dave was asked how he went about directing a short for Disney, and this is what he told: "I would isolate myself with the storyboard for three weeks. I would not go to meetings, but I would answer the telephone. I begin timing the film, not necessarily chronologically, but certain passages are already clear in my mind. (I do the pertaining layouts as thumbnails all the while.) Lots of what you decide is instinctive and intuitive, but afterwards you sit back and rationalise it. You analyse what you have being doing. Walt would keep asking WHY you did such and such (also in the story department). H...

Ha! The feature film Valhalla had its premiere in 1986. It was the reason for my move from Holland to Denmark. Now I find that at this address, one can buy cells from this production, signed by the director, Peter Madsen. Funny, though - I animated the scene with the kid and the sword, my A. Film business partner Karsten Kiilerich animated the scenes with Thor "..when NOT to use it!" Compare the poster that is for sale to the one on the page that I linked to first. Peter redid the poster completely in bright colors, as the distributor didn't think they could sell the film with the more subdued one. There is a world of difference: we all still love the original one! Not much artwork still exists from this production, and not only because it was Xeroxed using a Canon NP10 cold copier, so the lines chip of the cells. Actually, most artwork was sent to the garbage dump when the owner of the rights, Danish distributor Metronome (then owned by musician and music producer Ben...

More from Børge Ring: Walt Disney's Hyperion studio kept check on the output not only of each department but of each individual working in there. Department heads kept books answering questions like "Is he or she a companyman?" The books were bound and stored for statistic use. Pretty and devoted Elisabeth Nerbovig.....you can find a picture of her in a publication by one of (what Shamus Culhane called) the Bernard Berensons of animation where she is painting a "live" wooden marionet of Pinochio, built to aid the animation......was a young girl who applied for a job in ink and paint. She was accepted on proof for one week. On friday she got paId and was given a slip that told her whether or not to return on Monday. This proof period of one week with pay and slip was steadily renewed on and on for 7 (seven) years. Then she was abruptly hoisted inside and made head of the department. "It was weird" she said "to sit there and read your own dossier o...