Disney Movies

Author's note: I wrote this for the Disney project Sydney and I just finished. Be sure to also check out Sydney's piece on Disney characters on her blog.

The outcome of a Disney movie doesn’t really show how much effort is put into the movie making process. For example, try to think of Finding Nemo in millions of separate drawings all put together at 24 frames per second. That means that every single second, someone drew 24 pictures just slightly different from one another to create the effects that you see on the screen.

Behind the screen that you and I see, there’s an animation team that puts everything in a Disney movie together. The animation team is made up of directors, producers, songwriters, story artists, layout artists, background artists, supervising animators, actors, animators, inbetweeners, cleanup artists, special effects animators, computer people, computers themselves, artistic coordinator and the editor. As you can see, there are several people who have a part in Disney movies.

The first task is to take an idea and then dive into it. They have to think of who, what, when, where, why, and how. Then they might start thinking of the characters. Almost always, there will be a hero, villain, “fool”, (someone who is in the story mainly for the purpose of laughs) community, mentor, and a parent. (For some reason, there is usually only one parent, or one of the parents died early in the movie).

Then, after the main outline of the story is done, the artists will start to draw out the movie. They will start with only the major movements of the characters, and then give them do the people who write the script. They will then put words into the pictures to make the movie more interesting. The main thing they have to worry about is avoiding things that are shown in the pictures. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, when Belle first enters the beast’s castle, she wouldn’t say “I’m very afraid to enter this big dark castle, but I'm doing it to find my dad.”

The next step is drawing the characters moving according to the script. First they might draw the mouths moving along with all the movements the character makes while moving. Then they will fill in all the missing little details. This is the “inbetweeners” job. They have to take all the original movements that the animators drew, and fill in all the little, yet important movements that the character makes in between the major movements that the animators drew as a guideline. After the inbetweeners, the cleanup artists will then play out all the pictures to see if there are still missing movements in there.

The next step after art is sound. Sound plays a huge role in movies. Can you imagine the Lion King without any sound? That would completely ruin the great movie. In most Disney movies there are songs. If there are songs sung by the characters in the movie, there is typically an anthem, which might express the heroes hopes and dreams, a love song, the “I want something song,(where the hero is requesting something they want) the villain song, (where the villains might express his evil plans) and the entertainment song which follows the main theme of the movie but the main purpose is just to be fun.

There’s also the type of sound that is for the background of the movie. There is a thing called a sound library which is where you can download sounds like cars honking and horses neighing. The last sound steps are adding the words. This is where the actors and actresses come in. Once the people are selected for the job, they will start working. These people usually try to experience things that their characters are experiencing. For example, someone in Cinderella might learn how to ball room dance to experience the feeling that Cinderella is feeling while dancing with the prince. They will usually come into record about 5-6 times and almost always are either at a different time or place as the other actors.

The final process is called a CAPS process. (Computer animation production system) This process includes scanning, animation check, scene planning, sweatbox, animation check again, color model, markup, ink and paint, final checking, composting and film printing.

First, the computer will scan each drawing. One at a time. Then, they will make sure every little detail is there and start getting ready for color. Next, people will look at the movie to see what’s missing and come up with a “technical solution” to the problem. After that, everyone will get together in what’s called a sweatbox and critique the movie before it’s put into color. (The term sweatbox is named after a room they used to work in that had no air conditioning). Then you look at it again to see if anything’s missing. If not, we move on to the Color Model where all the colors are selected on a computer and then added to the characters and the backgrounds. Then, they will make a palette for everything. A palette is where they give a tray of colors that the character or scenes typically use so they do not have to constantly select the same color over and over again. After this, they use the palettes and apply color. Then everybody looks to see if they can find any flaws, and if not we finally move on to composting. Composting is where you combine every detail. Lastly they will play everything at once. (Including sound) Then, the reel is off to the editor.

The editors job is to make everything flow smoothly. The editor will work with the sound effects editors and the music editors to combine everything into a smoothly flowing movie. The editor will also have several assistants to help deal with the thousands of feet of film and sound.

As the finishing touches are in progress, people will be pulled from malls to come and preview a Disney movie. These people will then fill out reviews and if there needs to be changes the editor will then fix the problems.

At last the Disney movie is finally complete. All the effort into the movie is over. It’s then time for the workers to sit back and enjoy the show.

So next time you watch a Disney movie, think about everything that is put into making one. It gives you an entire new perspective on the classic movies you know and love.