Fleischer &Frame Grabs 08 Aug 2011 06:44 am
Fleischer Hoppity Multiplane
- Last week we looked at the Fleischer multiplane camera. It’s a horizontal device that shot flat animation art (cels) standing in front of 3D background constructions. Little sets that were able to add a unique look to their cartoons.
In the two Fleischer animated features, there’s only one scene that uses this multiplane camera, and that’s in the opening titles of Hoppity Goes To Town. I felt we couldn’t leave the Fleischers without a focus on that scene. So that will be the subject of today’s post.
Dave Fleischer in front of the multiplane 3D camera on Hoppity Goes to Town
Picture borrowed from: Ryan & Stephanie’s Fleischer Gallery
The entire multiplane pan is blocked out, in part, by the film’s credits.
I’ve taken frame grabs trying to indicate the move
while trying to accomodate the credits.
1
The opening starts over flat art coming from a star
in outer space, down to earth to this LS cityscape.
2
The multiplane scene dissolves in here . . .
3
. . . and pans down toward the street level as
it moves toward screen right.
4
5
That’s the Brill Building in the screen’s center
nopt far from the studio of the Fleischers.
6
7
As we go down, the color mix gets less golden . . .
8
. . . and sits more in shadow.
9
10
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Here is a transition point.
12
The background darkens to accomodate the
dissolve to a flat-art pan during a credit dissolve.
The pan of the 3D setup dissolves to this flat art
which pans down to the start of the film.
There are so many good examples of the Fleischer multiplane. I just chose two in the past couple two weeks, and I hope you’ll review some that you like. There are many on YouTube.
on 08 Aug 2011 at 9:13 am 1.Marc said …
Neat stuff opening for a weak film. The models opening to William Wyler’s film “Dead End” –a few years earlier–is far better. And the film is, too.
on 08 Aug 2011 at 1:20 pm 2.Tom Minton said …
The use of miniatures in search of a stylized three dimensional effect can certainly yield distinctive results. I can’t find any isolated clips of this 93 second shot from the 1942 “Yankee Doodle Dandy” feature but at the end of this comment are a couple of links to vertical format framegrabs you’ll have to paste in. But the thing really must be seen in motion to get the impact.
This one complex shot, a real time montage using stop motion, optical mattes and a dramatic model of Times Square in the decade of the 1920′s into the early 1930′s, does a heck of a lot more than relay the passage of time. Arguably most impressive is the swooping up, through and over what until that moment appeared to be mere 2D painted flats, to bring the shot home. The gestalt of the scene echoes the showmanship of its subject – George M. Cohan. The sole onscreen credit relating to anything like this in the film goes to the young Don Siegel, then working as a montage director, though it’s unknown how involved he may have been in such intricate, tricky miniature work as this. The technicians working on Warners Stage 5 in that era pulled this shot off beautifully.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tw5hXrbf1kg/TFZgIpFB98I/AAAAAAAAA9k/Jj0h_13sHKg/s1600/yankee1.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tw5hXrbf1kg/TFZgM2-7-oI/AAAAAAAAA9o/LqbT-S6XV4Q/s1600/yankee2.jpg
on 08 Aug 2011 at 5:36 pm 3.Robert Schaad said …
Work. of. Art.
on 08 Aug 2011 at 10:19 pm 4.Pierre said …
The images certainly do remind me of the film version of “Dead End”. I’ve never seen “Hoppity” and now I think I might have to search it out!
Thanks again for another cool post!
on 09 Aug 2011 at 10:23 am 5.Ray kosarin said …
Another great loss.
Corny Cole was brilliant: another, if not unsung, greatly undersung hero. A mindbogglingly good draughtsman who could (and did) do anything from top quality features to grinding out scads of Saturday morning shows. There was nothing this guy couldn’t do, and if the industry was less than generous to him in his last years he was beloved by students who knew greatness when they saw it.