FIRST FULL-LENGTH FEATURE
Would audiences hold still to watch eighty minutes of drawings on a screen? Nobody knew.[1]
Rumor has it that among Hollywood big-wigs and movie critics Walt’s ground-breaking new project became known as “Disney’s Folly”. If this derogative was indeed bruited about among the film industry elite, the 1937 release of the first animated feature ever produced – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – and the film’s immediate phenomenal worldwide success shut them up quick. “An authentic masterpiece,” declared TIME Magazine.
In the late ’30s, as America clawed itself out of the Great Depression and was on the verge of encountering the events that would lead to WWII, there was a brief respite of happiness. At this time came a first glimpse of what the future of animation was going to be, and it was incredible… While animation had existed decades prior, this was the first time the art form had been used to tell one narrative story for the entire runtime of a feature film.[2]
Remarked Roger Ebert (1942-2013), film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, “Snow White was received, not as a children’s movie, but as the dawning of a new art form.”[3] Dave Kehr (1953), Ebert’s colleague on staff at the other Chicago tabloid, The Tribune, asserted
Snow White remains the Disney movie, the title most redolent of the charm and artistry of the Disney style, as well as the title most evocative of the pleasures and terrors of the childhood filmgoing experience.[4]
At this later day and age when animated features have become much more commonplace, it is challenging to imagine the effect this totally unprecedented event had on the general public. This film – overwhelmingly appealing in its own right – also elaborated a brand new artform. And how often had that happened during the course of human history? The world’s great artists have worked in various long-established forms – painting, sculpting, music composition, storytelling, poetry, dramatic presentation – all with subcategories and many actually primeval in their origins. Some of these artists did create individual works that became transformational but nevertheless these were still artifacts of one established form or another. Suddenly in the late Nineteenth Century technology provided artists with a brand new artform: the motion picture. And close on its heels came its ultimate realization: the animated feature.
Only a half-dozen years after Mickey Mouse’s public debut in Steamboat Willie, it became clear to Walt that his studio – though currently thriving – could not continue to survive on the limited income from churning out 7-minute short cartoons. The motion picture major leagues were dominated by producers like MGM, Paramount, United Artists, whose stock in trade was the live-action feature. Walt longed to be counted in their number, to relish a klieg-lighted star-studded grand ceremony at a major Hollywood cinema.
But a feature-length cartoon? The risks were numerous and incalculable! Not only the aforementioned uncertainty about whether an audience could endure over an hour’s exposure to animation at one sitting, but also
- whether his artists’ abilities could enable them to draw believable characters with credible emotions navigating through realistic narrative situations
- whether the technology involved could be enhanced to achieve more thorough immersion in a fantasy world
- whether sound and visual effects could be adequately engineered to re-enforce the credibility and
- whether his organization’s modus operandi could be re-structured to co-ordinate such a vastly complex undertaking.
And these were only the general risks. Every minor detail of the endeavor presented its own challenges.
As Walt’s determination to produce an animated feature crystalized in the mid ’30s, he began addressing these risks. In 1935 during a three-month visit overseas to receive the League of Nations’ award for the creation of Mickey Mouse Walt discovered that a cinema in Paris was screening a full hour of only his animated shorts. The popularity of this bill of fare relieved some of Walt’s anxiety about whether an audience could sit through a lengthy program strictly of animation. To ensure that such a long cartoon would be more palatable he decided to tone down the color scheme of his feature to make it easier on the eyes.
After much experiment a muted palette, with browns and greens predominating, was arrived at – and it remains one of the most pleasant aspects of the picture.[5]
Not only was the color palette so carefully devised, but the very method of transferring animators’ drawings to the topside of the cels in the Ink and Paint Department evolved:
No one quite remembers who first suggested the idea of inking the outline of an area with the same paint that would be used to fill in the area [on the cel’s backside], but it revolutionized the appearance of the characters…before long, the characters had more colored lines on them than the black… The name accepted for the colored line became a “self-ink line”…[6]
To enhance his artists’ abilities he hired art instructor Don Graham (1883-1976)…
…an art teacher from the Chouinard art school in Los Angeles as a permanent staff member. Graham had helped Disney to form the Disney Art School in the Hyperion Studios, on a part-time basis, back in 1932, to help animators improve their technique.… In further pursuit of flawless draftsmanship, Don Graham held day and evening classes, assisted by other art teachers, and with seasoned animators as guest lecturers.[7]
Walt screened major motion pictures at the studio and encouraged artistic staff to watch them and glean pointers on staging, lighting, editing and other elements of effective cinematography. He encouraged Ub Iwerks (1901-1971) – Mickey’s first animator now turned inventor – to devise and construct the ultimate animation camera, the multiplane, which produced a stunning new depth in backgrounds and astonishing realism in water effects.
During the making of Snow White, the Effects Animation Department grew to a total of 56 men and women, many proficient in special techniques, all amazingly patient as they drew endless tiny shapes.[8]
And perhaps most importantly Walt gradually established a clear-cut hierarchy of talented directors, supervisors, and animators in order to streamline throughput. Using his shorts for experimentation, he began testing all these solutions to the challenges of his unprecedented new project.
[1] Thomas, Bob: The Art of Animation, Golden Press, Inc., NY, p.21.
[2] From Pinney, Dustin: “Top 10 Animated Movies According To The AFI” Jan. 13, 2022 at www.looper.com/732633/to-top-10-animated-movies-according-to-the-afi:
[3] “Snow White Is Still a Giant of Animation”, 7/17/1987, p.35.
[4] Kehr, Dave: “Snow White Still Bright”, Chicago Tribune, 4/5/1987, Section 13 (Arts), p. 4.
[5] Shickel, Richard: op. cit., p. 183.
[6] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: op. cit., p.277.
[7] From Bailey, Adrian: Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Fantasy, Everest House Publishers, New York, 1982, p. 104.
[8] Johnston, Ollie, and Thomas, Frank: Disney Animation – The Illusion of Life, Abbeville Press, New York, 1981, p. 251.
