J.B Kaufman on Snow White, Multi-plane Camera
Disney's Classic Animated Film Coming to Blu-Ray October 6th
Oct 6, 2009
Animation fans rejoice: Disney's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is coming to Blu-Ray and DVD on October 6th.
In Part #1 of this interview, Disney historian J.B. Kaufman talked about why he feels Snow White represents the pinnacle of character animation. In this installment, he discusses some of the technical innovations that made the film a classic.
S101: Let’s discuss how the film came together. I understand that Hollywood initially called it ‘Disney’s folly.’
Kaufman: “It’s incredibly daunting to produce a one-reel animated film, especially to the standard that Disney was developing in those days.”
S101: How many minutes are in one reel of film?
“The standard length of a reel was 1,000 feet of film, which runs about 10 minutes. Disney’s bread-and-butter was making one-reel shorts with Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies.
“But, if there was one thing Walt relished, it was challenges. He was always thinking: what was the next frontier? He had overcome the problems of adding sound and colour, what could he do next? A full feature would give him a bigger canvas. We know he was thinking about this as early as 1933, which is really early in the studio's history. He already had a hit with ‘The Three Little Pigs,’ but he was thinking of a 90-minute film.
“He introduced the story in a staff meeting in 1934: he told everybody to come back to the soundstage after dinner and told the story of Snow White, acted out all the parts and inspired them to begin this massive project. Work fell off for a little, while they tried to deal with all the problems that came up in a technical undertaking of that size.
“But, by the end of 1935, the wheels were really turning. They figured out how to draft the systems they’d already developed to the making of a longer film.
“For the shorts, the animators would report to a director who, in turn, reported to Walt. Snow White was divided into sequences that were produced as if they were short subjects, with an eye towards tying them all together. Each unit would concentrate on an assigned sequence. It’s one way of breaking up the labour into . . .”
S101: Bite-sized chunks.
“Exactly. Of course, they had to hire more animators: they sent artists to New York to conduct training classes. The ones who did the best were sent to the studio in California. By 1936, they had a staff of 750 people. That was a big hurdle: bringing on enough people to handle the tremendous amount of work.”
S101: What were some other technical advances in Snow White?
“You’re familiar with multi-plane camera, of course.”
S101: Why don’t you give us a quick ‘Multi-Plane Camera for Dummies’ session?
“Okay! (laughs) People originally photographed animated cartoons by shooting it on a flat camera table. The characters were inked and painted on cels that were placed over the painted background. For most kinds of cartoon scenes, that was fine. But, in telling a story like Snow White, Walt wanted to create a more convincing world. One way to do that was to create the illusion of depth.
“Instead of having everything sandwiched together on a flat table, Disney separated the cels of background art and animation into different focal planes from each other. And the camera could move toward and between them in a way that suggested a feeling of depth, because the cels were physically separated from each other.
“In live-action terms, it’s the difference between using a zoom lens and using a camera dolly. When you dolly a camera into a scene, you see things moving in perspective past the camera. You could do the same thing in a multi-plane camera. In the opening scene, when the camera moves toward a castle in the distance, you really feel you’re moving through space towards this tower. It was such a huge thing, and it required 3 or 4 operators to shoot a scene on it, but it made these tremendous effects possible."
S101: What about the different animation styles between the dwarves and with the humans? Wasn't there some rotoscoping involved when animating Snow White, Prince Charming and the Queen?
(Writer’s note: rotoscoping is an early animation technique where animators painted over live-action footage)
“There was. Max Fleischer had been using it since 1917. Many animators regarded rotoscoping as a crutch. I can personally testify that, even in the late 1980’s, if you said ‘rotoscope’ to some of those guys they would bristle. (laughs)
S101: Similar to how animators regard motion-capture today.
“Yes, it’s a great parallel. The difference in Snow White was: they would shoot live-action with Marjorie Champion as Snow White, or Louis Hightower as the Prince, then they would rotoscope those frames. But those weren't used in the film: those were a guide so the animators could see how wrinkles in clothing would move, or what would happen to a girl’s skirt when she turned.
“Then the animator would have the choice of which ones to use when animating the final scene. You’ve got an extra layer of drawings between the rotoscope and the finished product. The animators could draw on elements in the rotoscoping, but weren’t slavishly tied to it.”
S101: You’re in an elevator, talking up Snow White to someone who has never seen it before. What do you say?
“Snow White is a beautifully produced, and thoroughly captivating, film. It’s not just for children but for all ages. It takes a traditional fairy tale that’s older than recorded literature, and interprets it in a uniquely 20th century art – animated film – in its most accomplished and heartfelt. I hope that’s a fair description, but that’s what I feel.”
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