Animation Technique of Fantasia
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Walt Disney's 1939 animated feature Fantasia was a marriage of music and animation that drew upon all of the animation techniques in use at the time and that extended the range of the animated film to a great degree. Fantasia would also be a highly influential film, though it was not widely imitated as a feature film because of the cost and the uncertainty about whether commercial audiences would pay to see other animated films of this type. Classical music, after all, was not widely popular in the way other forms of music were then or now, and Fantasia had the advantage of being unique in its time. The most openly imitative feature to follow would come some time later with Allegro non Troppo by Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto in 1976. What was most influential about Fantasia and what would be imitated most by other filmmakers were some of the animation techniques, from the expressionistic sequences that open the film to the narrative use of music in the "Sorceror's Apprentice" and to the mixture of live action and animation that had been explored by other filmmakers before, though not in this way. Deems Taylor introduces the film and explains the way music will be used throughout. He also explains that the film will begin with impressions of the orchestra, as indeed it does, animating shadows with different levels of tone and color to evoke a sense of the orchestra rather than the orchestra itself, with one segment of the orchestra overlaid on other sections, with exp
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into the darker background of the forest at night. The dancing mushrooms are traditional character animation, isolated from their surroundings by a black background and a spotlight illuminating a circle of ground on which they dance. A more abstract image of rain hitting water leads to the dance of the waterlilies, again very much in keeping with traditional character animation and built on the rhythms of the music. This continues throughout this sequence, with different characters derived from nature fitting their actions to the rhythm of the music.
Probably the most traditional character animation is seen in the "Sorceror's Apprentice" sequence, with music by Dukas. This music has a programmatic structure as it tells the story of a sorceror's apprentice who tries to reproduce the magic of his master with disastrous results, since the magic is not something the apprentice understands or can control. Mickey Mouse, the traditional Disney character, "plays" the apprentice. The animation here is full character animation, with separately drawn cells for each frame and with elaborate backgrounds and drawing effects to simulate the coming to life of the brooms and pails, the massing of the water, the flood, and the angry return
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Deems Taylor, Rites Spring, Mickey Mouse, Nutcracker Suite, Bald Mountain, Ave Maria, Walt Disney's, Fugue Minor, Sorceror's Apprentice, Bruno Bozzetto, character animation, animation techniques, traditional character animation, sorceror's apprentice, traditional character, special effects, drawing effects, bald mountain, image music, sequences film, glass overlays, live action animation,
Approximate Word count = 1580
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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