Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- The stag, young Bambi, hears something. He grows alert; then jumps. This is a fine piece animated by Milt Kahl. The drawing is brilliant, as usual, with fine acting in the animation. I had a bit of trouble properly registering the piece; it wasn’t easy, and I’m sorry it isn’t tighter, but it’s close.

This is the final piece from the flipbook that came with the initial publication of the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film.

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The stag hears something and bolts.

- This week, I enjoyed posting the article by Ross Care on the music of Bambi.
I have been a film music fan almost as long as I have been an animation enthusiast. When I was 12, I bought my first soundtrack, the score to To Kill A Mockingbird, by Elmer Bernstein. What a way to start! This was almosts immediately followed by Lillies of the Field by Jerry Goldsmith. I subsequently bought every score I could find by either of them and stayed a devotee of both. (Animation fans might recognize Goldsmith’s brilliant score for The Secret of Nimh and Mulan or Bernstein’s for The Black Cauldron and Heavy Metal.)
______Ed Plumb in a break between
______recording sessions on Fantasia.___________I have spent quite a bit of interest
__________________________.________________searching down any bits and pieces of information written about film scores and film musicians. I virtually absorbed Roy Pendergast‘s book, Film Music: A Neglected Art, with its interview with Scott Bradley and discussion wiht Gail Kubik (who wrote the score to Gerald McBoing Boing.) I subscribed to Film Score Monthly and Soundtrack Collector’s Newsletter, and I belonged to collector’s groups that would introduce Japanese versions of many scores that included cues that weren’t included in US releases or offered records that weren’t available here. In short, I was obsessed.

That obsession has quieted somewhat, though I still pay close attention to soundtracks and scores. Goldsmith and Bernstein are gone now, but there’s still Tom Newman and James Horner and John Debney (who did the score for my film, Goodnight Moon.)

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Ross Care, who wrote the article on Bambi and has written and performed much of his own music – concert as well as filmusic – wrote to tell me that he has a concert upcoming in LA.
Letter to the World – Poets to Song,
Original Songs by Ross Care
June 8, 2008 2pm

First United Methodist Church
1338 E. Santa Clara St.
Downtown Ventura
805-901-2697
Suggested Donation, $15

Featuring the poems of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Christina Rossetti, Frank O’Hara, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, William Blake and A.E. Housman

Ross Care, Composer/Pianist
Diana Burdick, Soprano
Molly Kohler Pei, Soprano
Steve Perren, Baritone
Philip Vaiman, Violin
Maksim Velichkin, Cello

Notes on the Music
Care has always been interested in the fusion of music and poetry in a somewhat
neglected form, the modern art song. “Letter To The World” draws from both classic
and modern texts. The settings in this concert are written for voice and piano and
voices with piano, violin, and cello.

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- Nina Paley is interviewed in depth on Film & Video‘s site. The subject is how she animated a feature length film, Sita Sings The Blues, in Flash. The film just recently finished playing in the Tribeca Film Festival and will soon show at Annecy.
You can read Variety‘s very positive review here.

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- I enjoy Mike Barrier‘s essays built around “A Day In The Life” of someone or some animation studio.

These are extraordinary little commentaries on moments in time. His most recent details a trip Walt and Lillian Disney made to New York in 1938 where they met a young Robert Taylor on the train.
Disney: June 20, 1938

These pieces really give you a feel for the time and place of the event. This is something too often left out of animation history and an aspect that I demand of good history (even if I have to supply it myself.)

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- The fine blog, The Thief, has two excellent pieces on Roy Naisbitt. Roy was one of the keys to the Richard Williams Studio. The two posts feature some of the elaborate and exceptional art Roy did for Dick’s feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. Roy was probably the closest thing Dick had to a computer back in the ’70′s. The post calls him a “certified genius,” and I’d have to agree. For years I knew about Roy’s work; The Thief gives us some of his drawings.

There’s some amazing art here.
Roy Naisbitt pt 1
Roy Naisbitt pt 2

- This is the completion of Ross Care‘s article on the musical score for Bambi published in The Quarterly Journal of The Library of Congress, Spring 1983 issue.

This article is an extensive examination of the music for a film that has fewer than 100 words of dialogue heard on its soundtrack. The score was integral to the film and pushes it forward with delicacy and poetry. It’s a beautiful and powerful score and was nominated in 1942 for the Academy Award. The song, “Love Is A Song” was also nominated.

Many thanks to Ross for allowing me to post this. You should go to his site to read other writings he’s done on filmmusic.

The article gets into the details in this part. So much the better if you can read music.

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Article: Copyright © 1983 Ross B. Care

– This past weekend I came upon two reviews in one issue of Daily Variety. Kung Fu Panda and Waltz with Bashir were reviewed on the very same page. Both animated films are being presented in Cannes, and Variety reviewed them well in advance of their release (at least, in the U.S.).

Kung Fu Panda didn’t receive a very positive notice: Chopsocky ‘Panda’ has bear necessities read the headline.
“Even by moppet-defined standards, _______The cast of Kung Fu Panda in Cannes.
the situations, characters and moti-
vations here are extremely elementary and lack nuance; other than Po and his prescribed transformation, none of the other figures reveal dimensions not fully evident at their initial appearances.” They went on to praise some of the graphics.

As for Waltz With Bashir, the reviewer said it is, “A subject that might, had it been made conventionally, have repped just another docu about a war atrocity, is tranmuted via novel use of animation into something special, strange and peculairly potent …”

The Hollywood product is designed to capatilize on the voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu and Angelina Jolie. The other, Israeli made feature uses a mix of acted and documentary voices (including the director) and is subtitled.

The reviews in Hollywood Reporter were almost identical to these in Variety.

Of course, Kung Fu Panda will ulltimately have a large enough public in its Dreamworks distribution and will probably score $150-200 million. It was designed for commercial purposes to attract a large “family” (meaning “children”) audience.
Waltz With Bashir may not make it to the U.S. Variety said that U.S. distributors in Cannes are taking a “wait and see attitude” before buying into it.
________ Ari Folman _______.._.____That usually means that it has some problems.
_____________________.__________The film has sold to distribution in Spain, Germany, France and Greece. Writer/director, Ari Folman admits that the film is difficult to watch (it is about war) and cannot be changed to a happy ending movie.

The directors of Kung Fu Panda have worked in LA’s animation community. John Stevenson has been with Dreamworks for a while. Stevenson worked in storyboard on Madagascar, Sinbad and Spirit. He also directed episodes of the tv show, Father of the Pride. Mark Osborne has directed episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants prior to joining Dreamworks to direct on this film.

The director of Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman, also wrote the film. He wrote and directed two other live action films and wrote episodes of “In Treatment”, the Israeli version of the show that transferred to HBO. His next film will be an animated adaptation of Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s “The Futurological Congress”. This time, he’ll make the animated feature in English.

I haven’t seen either film, obviously, though I’ve looked at a lot of clips. One is dyamically drawn with a lot of pop and snap to the animation – meaning there are no characters there. The other looks rotoscoped – more in the manner of the Chicago 10 than Waking Life. I’m getting discouraged again about the medium I love. But then, I’ve only seen clips. Perhaps they thought the poetic scenes wouldn’t attract audiences.

Here’s an article about the Kung Fu Panda party at Cannes.
Here’s a Cannes interview with director, Ari Folman.

- I first met Ross Care years ago. He had scored the music to one of John Canemaker‘s early short films, The Wizard’s Son. I was impressed, and since I was looking for a composer for the first film of my new company, Byron Blackbear & The Scientific Method, I asked Ross for his help. He did a great job with little time and less money.

It was only a short time later, that I learned that Ross was an animation music historian. Somehow, we worked together in setting up a program for ASIFA East in which the conductor for Bambi, Alexander Steinert, took the stage with Ross to analyze the music for that film. I had a 16mm print of the film, and we watched about half of it. It was one of those memorable ASIFA meetings, that stay with you forever.

A year or two later, Ross had written an extensive article on Bambi’s music for The Quarterly Journal of The Library of Congress, the Spring 1983 edition. I just recently ran into the article on my shelves, and after getting Ross’ permission, I’m posting that article here. It’s 22 pages long, so I’ll have to post it in two parts.

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_________________________________________________To be completed Thursday.

Article: Copyright © 1983 Ross B. Care

- I have a few really down and dirty older xeroxed copies of layouts for some Fantasia scenes. Without defining what they are, I thought I’d just post them and let you figure them out. When I have the folder info, I post that as well so you can see who did what.

I follow the LO’s of each scene with frame grabs from that scene.

___Falling flowers land on water. Unfortunately, a small part of the
midsection for this drawing is missing. The xeroxes, of course,
are all large and reconstructing them was a bit complex.

The BG layout is below.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

These two drawings represent twirling blossoms as well as
the perspective planning for them and the background for the scene.

The following two long pans show a background of leaves and the
progression of Faeries that sparkle around those leaves.

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Zeus

Clouds open

Zeus steps out of a silhouette.

Zeus in closer shot

The BG layout

- Some of you may remember that I gave some attention to some steel sculptured trees that were placed in Madison Square Park last year. They stood there for almost a year and became part of my daily trek through this city park.

This past week some objects started to appear on the large, Oval Lawn, and I started to photograph the setup.

It turns out to be a number
___________ (Click any image to enlarge.) ________________of ceramic works by
____________________________________________________Richard Deacon, a British sculptor. He has his own website. Oddly, his artwork doesn’t seem to be reproduced large in any of the photos on his site or others I visited.

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A tent was set up to protect the materials from the rain, and the
not-very-large sculptures were drawn out of wooden boxes.

There was the one tent on the side of the great lawn, and another tent
was set up over on a sandy side bar (about 100 yards away.)
The tents obviously protected the sculpture from the rain, and
it was raining while I shot some of these stills.

This was done off on the side. I’m not sure how the actual sculptures
were moved to the Oval Lawn. I don’t even know if they’re heavy,
though one assumes they must be to survive the weather.

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Things came together quickly. At the end, there were a couple of
vehicles left standing about. There’s a truck in the background
of the photo on the left, and another is almost hidden
in the background of the photo on the right.

Finally everything seemed to be in place, and
the sculptures were all centrally located on the big lawn.

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Here you can see the children’s playground in the background.
The sculptures almost seem to be part of it.

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At the moment, the lawn is closed to pedestrians.
Once the public performance events begin to happen, it’ll be curious to see
how the public intermingles with these sculptures.

The art pieces do blend well with each other, though.
Something new to view on my walks.

After all the construction vehicles had disappeared, I noticed
a tool box off to the side. At least, I think it was a toolbox.

Just today, I noticed that they’ve added little markers in front of each piece to identify and give information about the art. The Oval Lawn is shut off to the public, so it’s not possible, at the moment, to read the markers.

I didn’t have my camera with me this morning. I’ll get photos of the final setups and post them on another day.

- Here’s another of the animated bits from the flipbook that came with the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film. It’s peculiar that they selected this sequence to put into a flipbook since it doesn’t quite work. Obvously they don’t use all of the animation drawings for the flipbook, and they’ve washed over the short holds that are in the animation. There are lots of interesting poses, though.

The piece was animated by Ollie Johnston.

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__________________________________________ Bambi tries to walk on threes.

- I have quite a bit of artwork from the film, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, the 1976 feature film by Dick Williams. Hence, it’s always an easy decision to post some of it. Unfortunately, every animation drawing is so large, it takes a lot of time to scan and put it together.

Here are two pieces that were I first posted in October 2006 with a healthy focus on one indomitable artist:

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I think in many ways, the unsung hero of Raggedy Ann was Corny Cole. He was there from day one working with Dick Williams and Tissa David – once the one minute pilot had secured the job for Dick. Corny was brought in as the key designer, and Gerry Potterton came on as Dick’s Associate Director.

I was hired soon thereafter, even though I had no idea what I’d be doing. For the first couple of weeks, while they were recording, I just moved furniture and read the script and whiled away the time by drawing Johnny Gruelle‘s characters.

I helped Dick and Gerry add spot coloring to the storyboard as the animatic was being shot. We spent a long Saturday coloring like mad with colored pencils. We worked on the last section of the animatic to be shot. I’d say 90% of the board was done by Corny. Dick and Gerry added spot drawings as needed, while we built the animatic.

Corny then did lots and lots and lots of drawings to give to animators.
Some of those drawings are posted herein for a scene at the beginning of the “taffy pit” sequence. These drawings were also used in the animatic.

After Corny finished feeding the animators, he started animating, himself. He took on a sequence that filled the screen with a pirate ship full of dolls floating around some rough waters. The large sheets of paper were filled with Corny’s black bic pen lines. Doug Compton eventually worked with Corny to finish this overworked sequence.

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- John Celestri sent me a clipping from the Cincinnati Enquirer re the kidnapping of Ann & Andy. Hence, I am prompted to post the following layouts and storyboard drawings by Corny Cole.

This first Layout marks the introduction of Raggedy Andy. He’s under the box. This drawing gives you a good idea of the detail Corny put into every drawing.

The following images come from the first shots of the Pirate Captain. He espys the new doll, Babette, and falls madly in love.

The first four stills are 8.5×14 copies of the storyboard; the remainder come from the director’s workbook. They’re all sequential.

I think the parrot, which was added in pencil, is the work of Asst. Director, Cosmo Anzilotti. The bird just shows up later, so Cosmo probably tried to give him some business.

It’s here that the Pirate goes into his song (everybody sings in this film) and concocts his plot to kidnap the French doll.

- Among the brilliant scenes in Dumbo is one that usually is overlooked in all the animation books. Yet, to me it separates this film from other Disney films, except, perhaps, Pinocchio. The tent building scenes are a brilliant mix of solid animation, excellent (and quietly hidden) effects, strong music and perfect screen direction. The sequence works extremely well on its own, but it works even better as a significant part of the film as a whole.

I sincerely doubt that Walt could have been in the studio when the sequence was built. Certainly, this espouses the Socialist politiical views of many of the strikers and one wonders what Walt thought of it. Presumably, because it has been developed as such an integral part of the film, the underlying political current of the sequence could hardly be lost, but it’s hard to miss the overall feel of it. Perhaps I’m completely wrong, and the feel of the piece can just be chalked up to a product of the period.

I would love to hear what other, more informed historians have to say about it.

Here, are frame grabs detailing the sequence.

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