Destination D: 75 Years of Disney Animation, a Diamond Level Experience! - Completed!

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]

This Disneyland guide book was produced at a loss profit-wise. I can’t remember the price for the book, but it was ridiculously low priced. Walt’s business folks couldn’t understand why he would produce a book like this that cost him money, and sell it at a loss. He sold thousands of them, and why? Because every family who took home one of these books was going to show it to all their friends and talk about what a wonderful time that they had a Disneyland. It was better advertising than he could buy. Walt was smart like that.

This was another one of those books. I think the gist of the previous book, was that he had to have them ready on opening day, but there was no park to take pictures of and include in the book. Even with just artists renderings, the books sold out quickly. I guess this was the next one and now they had photos to use.

Here is a ticket book from the Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Roy Disney’s park entrance pass

An Epcot entrance ticket

I believe that this was Dave Smith’s new book.

He showed us some Mary Blair artwork

And some Marc Davis

He had some original cels

And other concept art and sketches

[Continued in Next Post]

 

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]

Then he just let us wander around the room and check things out for about 10-15 minutes until the next group was ready to come in.

These were some of the many awards received by the Disney company

As you probably know, Walt really loved trains so these were a few pieces of train memorabilia

This is the passport that he used to go to serve in World War 1 in France

We got the chance to pose with this Oscar

Some more of Mary Blair’s art work from the WWII years.

I remember my mother reading me bedtime stories from these books as a child. They were always my favorite!

And with that our portion of the Archives tour was over. The next group was ready to come in, so we went back out to wait. I’ll be back with more later.

 

[ACDSNY]

OMG this was an awesome tour, I'd love to see all of those archives! Very cute pic of you with the Oscar too.

 

[rentayenta]

Just wow! When I saw the Oscar I couldn't believe you were all so close to an Oscar and then you got to pose with it? Holy chills!

Great update. I wish I'd kept the numerous booklets etc from my childhood. My dad would take me weekly and every time I'd get something. Guess that's why I keep everything now.

The artwork is phenomenal.

 

[mvf-m11c]

What a great tour. You got to meet Dave Smith which was a great treat and showing all of the treasures is amazing. I really like all the books and tickets that he showed during the tour.

This is just getting me all excited to do the tour in early May.

Very nice update.

 

[PrincessInOz]

OMG! I've just died and gone to DisneyHeaven. What an amazing tour and I love LOVE LOVE that you got to hold an Oscar.

Those archives are just A-mazing.

 

[franandaj]

OMG this was an awesome tour, I'd love to see all of those archives! Very cute pic of you with the Oscar too.

It was awesome, probably our group got to do the best part of the afternoon tours first!

Just wow! When I saw the Oscar I couldn't believe you were all so close to an Oscar and then you got to pose with it? Holy chills!

Great update. I wish I'd kept the numerous booklets etc from my childhood. My dad would take me weekly and every time I'd get something. Guess that's why I keep everything now.

The artwork is phenomenal.

I know, at the time I didn't really even think about how cool it was that we got to hold the oscar, after that weekend everything was surreal. Looking back it was really pretty awesome.

What a great tour. You got to meet Dave Smith which was a great treat and showing all of the treasures is amazing. I really like all the books and tickets that he showed during the tour.

This is just getting me all excited to do the tour in early May.

Very nice update.

I hope that you two enjoy your tour in May!

OMG! I've just died and gone to DisneyHeaven. What an amazing tour and I love LOVE LOVE that you got to hold an Oscar.

Those archives are just A-mazing.

I know, it was really cool! I hope that the rest of the tour lives up to the first part of our afternoon.

 

[franandaj]

Now this was kind of a strange part of the tour. No one really told us what was going on and we sat around waiting for what seemed like a very long time. I guess the next place we were touring was very small and they could only fit half the group in there at a time, so we waited in the lobby near the Starbucks. I took these pictures of the stuff on display while we waited.

The multiplane camera

Some other random displays

Then we were off to the Ink and Paint department.

This woman explained to us how the animators would communicate the color palette that they wanted for the character that was being painted.

This drawing indicates the colors that are to be painted. They use numbers to indicate the hue, and in the example the colors are not at all similar to the colors that they want used so that each section is easily differentiated.

This drawing indicates the ink colors for the lines in the drawing

This is the finished painted and inked cel

Then we moved on to the section where they actually mix the paints.

This gentleman showed us the high tech gadget that they use to keep track of the various colors.

Truthfully, I don’t remember a lot of what he said in here, so just enjoy the pretty colors of paint.

Then we moved on to a room where they had one person doing the ink and one person doing paint. This guy is doing the ink.

See the dark lines he draws to reinforce the outline of the character.

You can see in this picture how the ink lines really define the outline and shapes.

After a lengthy demonstration and explanation we moved to the woman on the other side of the desk who was doing the paint portion. See the chart on the left which indicates which sections should be which shades.

She fills in the cell with the paint. Again she explained her process and demonstrated it for us.

Then we went to yet another room where a gentleman demonstrated for us how something transparent such as tinkerbell’s wings are airbrushed onto the cell. Here he has covered the cell with a plastic sheet with the wing cut out. That way only the shape of the wing will actually be painted on to the cell.

He did this twice (because she has two wings), carefully rotating the film cut out so that the wings were each at the correct angle.

He showed us this picture of the Blue Fairy, and explained that the same process was used to create her wings as well.

And that concluded the “Ink and Paint” portion of our tour for that day….where did we go next?

 

[PrincessInOz]

Truly illuminating! That is such a fascinating part of the tour, Alison. I'd never given the inking process much thought but it seems like there is quite a great deal behind getting the right colour palette and completely making the character come to life!


Hmmm......Did you head to the gift shop next???



(Maybe the sound room???)

 

[ACDSNY]

The colors are what make Disney items so special.

 

[mvf-m11c]

That is very interesting to hear about how the Animators use so many different colors for the cel animation.

 

[Pinkocto]

Wow Wow Wow! I'm loving everything! Your concert sounded amazing. I'd definitely have tears as well. And your tour is way too cool. Can't believe you got to hold an Oscar. I love all that memorabilia. Donald sure had a lot of food items

 

[rentayenta]

Remarkable. Ink + paint = teamwork. Wow, very informative. And I really like all of the pretty paint colors. I never realized how much work goes into a single concept.

 

[franandaj]

Truly illuminating! That is such a fascinating part of the tour, Alison. I'd never given the inking process much thought but it seems like there is quite a great deal behind getting the right colour palette and completely making the character come to life!


Hmmm......Did you head to the gift shop next???



(Maybe the sound room???)

I know, watching these people made me realize just how much work went into one Disney film, even the shorts. Part of me is thankful for computer animation, but I'm also glad that they have gone back to hand drawn animation. I think though that they have tools now that don't require manual ink and paint. The folks there did mention that they only did this for special things.

The colors are what make Disney items so special.

I know, isn't that so true!

That is very interesting to hear about how the Animators use so many different colors for the cel animation.

Especially how particular they were on the shades, it's fascinating!

Wow Wow Wow! I'm loving everything! Your concert sounded amazing. I'd definitely have tears as well. And your tour is way too cool. Can't believe you got to hold an Oscar. I love all that memorabilia. Donald sure had a lot of food items

I've never been a star struck person so holding the Oscar wasn't as big a thrill at the time as now when I'm looking back on it. I don't think I'll ever have another opportunity to pose with one!

Remarkable. Ink + paint = teamwork. Wow, very informative. And I really like all of the pretty paint colors. I never realized how much work goes into a single concept.

It was eye awakening to me too. I can't believe they made so many movies that way. The saddest part is that the film for the cels was so expensive that a lot of the ones from Snow White and the early pictures were washed away to be reused since the studio really didn't have a lot of money. Nobody likes to talk about that part.

 

[franandaj]

Our next presentation was on the restoration of older animated features, the challenges that they face and some education on the process of creating the film.

This slide represents the timeline for the restoration process of the Disney materials.

They explained a lot about the various processes in filmmaking, and what a breakthrough Technicolor was to the industry. I, however, remember almost none of what they said!

OK, now I remember, Technicolor is the one that used three filmstrips to create the colors, red, blue and green.

I believe this photo demonstrates the degradation of the film, notice the greenish or blueish tinges on the picture. That is when each color of film shortens at a different rate than the others.

This is a photo from the screening room, not sure which Disney studio it was (the first one or the one in Burbank).

Nitrate is highly flammable and needs to be stored at very climate controlled conditions.

This is how the concept of Technicolor works. The three images in Red, Green and Blue are combined through a special projection camera and recombined back on the screen.

UB Iwerks is credited with developing the process where live action and animation are combined as in Song of the South. Herbert Kalmus was co founder and President of the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation.

OK, I did a google search and got my best explanation for this slide.

Sequential Exposure (SE)

The original three-strip Technicolor process utilized three-color records to create a single color image. Rather than use this three-strip Technicolor method, which used three separate pieces of film, Disney pioneered a method of recording the components of color images, successively on a single strip of black and white film. This method places the three-color records in succession (next to each other). So each single color frame that you see on screen is in fact a “triple exposure” of the three successive frames of negative. This method is ideally suited to filming animation which shoots individual frames, as opposed to the bulky “3-strip” cameras that are designed to move films at 90 feet per minute (at 24 frames per second)

Instead of having three Y-C-M (actually captured as Red-Green-Blue) linear records (three rolls of film), an SE negative can best be described as: Y1-C1-M1-Y2-M2-C2-Y3-C3-M3 and so on (albeit through RGB filters). This means that the linear length of an SE negative is three times that of the print that it generates.

The two key advantages to shooting SE as opposed to three-strip photography is that the optical path is far simpler resulting in a single focal plane for each frame, and the alignment of frames back into color from a single strip of film as opposed to three separate records is far easier and considerably more accurate, especially when working with negatives that could be as much as 80 years old.

Digital Files Scanned to Film for Long Term Preservation
Once scanned, this digital data was compared against the best-preserved picture print of the same title, to make sure that all the frames were preserved within the digital file. Once the digital image data was verified, a new Black and White/Successive Exposure (SE) negative was created from the scanned data by the Disney Digital Studio Services Film and Digital Services Department.

The Disney Digital Studio Services Film and Digital Services group has been hard at work creating SE negatives of not just our historical library, but also has employed the SE process as an important aspect of the Studio’s long-term archive strategy for films that have been finished digitally. The digital image data is separated into the digital equivalent of the film Yellow, Cyan and Magenta “records” for output onto a single piece of black and white negative film using a Laser Film Recorder. Just as in the original film process, in the digital SE process, each color record is written using an laser in succession onto black and white negative stock. What makes this process so important to our archive strategy is that that this single continuous strand of black and white stock, when properly stored, has proven to last over 100 years. There is not any digital media storage format that currently holds this same promise, and thus, the ability to convert our aging and deteriorating Nitrate film as well as our currently digitally finished motion pictures to a single stand of black and white

Hopefully these next two slides are self explanatory.

I assume this is the cleaned up slide.

Hopefully this is self explanatory.

This slide shows how the restoration process improves the quality of the film.

All of these films take quite a bit of time to restore.

They also talked about the restoration of the black and white film. I’m not sure exactly why they showed these shots, but they’re cool.

This is what happens to nitrate film if it’s not stored properly.

Here is a picture from the place where they store the film now.

 

[franandaj]

Here are some more pictures of damaged film.

Here is a picture of one of the previous storage facilities going up in flames.

Our host continued to talk about the difficulties associated with each different type of media as the processes changed over the years. Sleeping Beauty was filmed in Technorama and over the years (as all films do) it began to show signs of wear and dust and other elements. Watch this YouTube Video for a better explanation than I could give you of what all they did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-z0o26HD40

Through restoration, the colors came out even more vibrant.

Technorama seemed to incorporate the Technicolor processes because the film was still in red blue and green.

Once they were successful with Sleeping Beauty, they began restoring all the old films.

They talked about advancements that they had made since the restoration project began. I believe this slide indicates what they did to release the standard definition version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

This slide indicates the streamlined process that they used to create the Blue Ray DVD.

They showed us various examples of degraded film and the various Technicolor slides and their colors.

I know there was more explanation, but at this point, I just don’t remember it. They showed us some before and after scenes from these movies.

And that concluded the restoration tour. After that we were herded back to the spot where we had lunch and they loaded us up on a bus to take us over to the archive storage place in Glendale. Now we were definitely not allowed to take pictures in that place. In fact we had to leave all of our stuff in the lobby, no bags purses, cell phone, cameras, nothing.

This place was really cool though, they have just about every picture, every model and everything you can think of from every movie, ride and everything stored there. There is some of the older stuff, but a lot more of the newer things. The building is kept at a very cold temperature. In the first room we saw pictures that they had out on display. Mostly concept art, but other sketches and drawings. Disney imagineers can come to this place and refer to previous artists work which comes in handy when someone new takes over drawing a well known character.

In the second room they had all the statues and models, really cool. Incidentally we are actually purchasing a model of Sully this week from an ex-Disney employee. We bought some stuff from him off of Craig’s list a couple weeks ago. When we picked up the figures at his house, he showed us a few more that he had available. We said we had to think on it (because of the price), but this was so unique, I couldn’t pass it up. I know funny huh? Usually it’s Fran who is the instigator.

Back to the TR, they had all the stored art in the third room and it was all expertly catalogued. The gentleman there was willing to tell us all about it and talk for hours, but we only had less than half an hour in the whole place so I moved on.

There was this really cool prop room where all sorts of incoming stuff was on display. Evidently they rotate it based on what the imagineers need.

Finally there was a room where they were scanning in documents for storage. This was no scanner like you and I have in our home offices. There were at least three stations in the room, and all I remember was that the scanning processes of these machines were incredible. 600 dpi was a joke compared to the resolution that they were packing. I watched a demonstration of the procedure for a few minutes before doubling back to room #2 which I missed on the first time around. I think they said that with two to three people doing it on 2 eight hour shifts a day they still would never catch up the back log of items that needed to be scanned and saved.

After our short little trip to the archives we were herded back on to our buses and taken back to the studios.

Here’s where I KNOW I took more pictures. They let us loose in the Studios gift shop and we bought some stuff, but they also had some sodas and a spread of light appetizers on the lawn outside the studio store. Now I know that I took pictures of the food. I remember I tried two of the things they had, and they were good, but the other two had something in them I wouldn’t have ever touched, so I steered clear of those. They gave us copies of the pictures they took after lunch as well as a couple books and stuff as souvenirs.

Unfortunately I am since on another camera and the pictures from my second memory card never made it into my computer and I have searched high and low for the other memory card to no avail. Maybe I will find them someday and complete the picture portion of this report. However, for here and now this is all that have. I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to complete!

I think at this point the only folks still reading are my friends and fans on my normal TRs, so no reason to put a link to my Expo TR when I start that. If you’re lurking and want to join in, now is the time to speak up!

I will be back over here in August when the Expo starts. We are Sorcerers at the Expo so we get into every presentation that we want to see (except if they are concurrent, I don’t think that they have mastered the art of cloning us!), so hopefully that report will be full of great information without all the pesky waits in the queues!

TTFN!

 

[ACDSNY]

The restoration process is really interesting especially with all the technical progress that's been made over the years.

 

[PrincessInOz]

WOW!! What a great informative update. Restoration is fascinating and I'm on a psychadelic colour high. Who would have thought???


Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to the next one!

 

[Pinkocto]

Thanks so much for sharing. I absolutely must get to one of these events in the future. What a fabulous experience! Are they able to save the film that has the crust all over it or are those too damaged?

Thanks again for the wonderful TR