I am late to the Disney+ party, but I have had time at home (not able to work due to Coronavirus restrictions for our office -- and without company laptops not able to do much) and decided to peruse it and YouTube.
Anyhow, I wanted to say that I just watched two landmark shorts on Disney+ that I have always taken for granted, but seeing them in HD on a modern large-screen television just demonstrates the amazing innovation and the work that was done by hand so many years ago... just plain art and innovation.
I watched "Flowers and Trees" first. It was the first cartoon done in Technicolor, and released in 1932! It is told that it was almost complete, but that Walt Disney, upon signing with Technicolor as a new process for his films, directed the studio to scrap the old black-and-white film and do it all over again. And man, what a glorious piece of moving art. It features the interplay between darkness and light, rain and fire... and all in glorious, expensive, heavy-equipment Technicolor. What an amazing innovation. And he almost immediately used the process to begin production on his biggest gamble of the time, "Snow White," which everyone knows as the first feature length animated film... but one that would not have been a good risk without the experiment of this glorious little film.
Then I watched "The Old Mill," another land mark, from 1937, which this time brought us the depth in perspective of Ub Iwerks' new multi-plane camera -- and again, what a beautiful, glorious piece of art. This one also uses the forces of wind and rain and other parts of nature, giving them almost human characteristics and emotion, and really showing off that new perspective of depth that the multi-plane camera allowed. Anyone who has seen it on display at One Man's Dream will know how much work it must have been to work with that behemoth, ironically to create such fluid motion. And all at the time that the studio was also doing everything it can to finance and finish "Snow White."
So, I highly recommend taking some time to really watch these landmarks (and others) again, or for the first time, and imagine the efforts that it took to create them. We take modern computers and other resources for granted today in the creation of imagery. But to see these and think of the new wolds they created literally by hand and by INVENTING new machinery to do it, just reminds me of why I came to admire Walt Disney and his team in the first place. They were innovators that moved forward while creating amazing timeless art.
I suggest taking some time to "smell the roses" while are in a sort of "suspended animation" (no pun intended) right now, and this is one way I have found to do it. And I am glad I did.
Anyhow, I wanted to say that I just watched two landmark shorts on Disney+ that I have always taken for granted, but seeing them in HD on a modern large-screen television just demonstrates the amazing innovation and the work that was done by hand so many years ago... just plain art and innovation.
I watched "Flowers and Trees" first. It was the first cartoon done in Technicolor, and released in 1932! It is told that it was almost complete, but that Walt Disney, upon signing with Technicolor as a new process for his films, directed the studio to scrap the old black-and-white film and do it all over again. And man, what a glorious piece of moving art. It features the interplay between darkness and light, rain and fire... and all in glorious, expensive, heavy-equipment Technicolor. What an amazing innovation. And he almost immediately used the process to begin production on his biggest gamble of the time, "Snow White," which everyone knows as the first feature length animated film... but one that would not have been a good risk without the experiment of this glorious little film.
Then I watched "The Old Mill," another land mark, from 1937, which this time brought us the depth in perspective of Ub Iwerks' new multi-plane camera -- and again, what a beautiful, glorious piece of art. This one also uses the forces of wind and rain and other parts of nature, giving them almost human characteristics and emotion, and really showing off that new perspective of depth that the multi-plane camera allowed. Anyone who has seen it on display at One Man's Dream will know how much work it must have been to work with that behemoth, ironically to create such fluid motion. And all at the time that the studio was also doing everything it can to finance and finish "Snow White."
So, I highly recommend taking some time to really watch these landmarks (and others) again, or for the first time, and imagine the efforts that it took to create them. We take modern computers and other resources for granted today in the creation of imagery. But to see these and think of the new wolds they created literally by hand and by INVENTING new machinery to do it, just reminds me of why I came to admire Walt Disney and his team in the first place. They were innovators that moved forward while creating amazing timeless art.
I suggest taking some time to "smell the roses" while are in a sort of "suspended animation" (no pun intended) right now, and this is one way I have found to do it. And I am glad I did.
