Animation Artifacts &Disney &Story & Storyboards 08 Apr 2008 08:22 am
101 Dalmatians – seq. 2 pt. 2
- Continuing with the yesterday’s post of the storyboard from 101 Dalmatians, we pick up with Cruella de Ville meeting Pongo in the film’s opening.
The storyboard sections were loaned to me by John Canemaker. Like past boards, they’re quite long, oversized photographs which would enlarge too small and illegible even if I worked at the max size. However, by my splitting each row in half, I can post them to be large enough for reading. This means I have to deconstruct the boards and put them together again. Below is the board for this sequence, and you can get an idea of its size.
_________________(Click any image to enlarge.)
Here is the sequence reconstructed. It’s one of my favorites in this film, and I very much like the entire film. I do like seeing the song in storyboard form.
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7The real companions to this board are on two other sites:
___Hans Perk is posting the studio Drafts for this film on his site, and
___Mark Mayerson is posting Mosaics and comments on his site.
on 08 Apr 2008 at 10:26 am 1.Mark Mayerson said …
In one of Bill Peet’s interviews, he was really angry at how little credit he felt he got for Dalmatians. It’s clear that his influence on this film is enormous. This board contains the essentials of the character designs, cutting continuity, and staging within shots. While there’s no question that Peet’s work was plussed by the other departments, he gave them a rock-solid foundation to start from.
All of which makes me wonder what the heck happened on The Sword in the Stone? Was it simply that the Dodie Smith original was strong enough to give Peet a foundation on Dalmatians and the T.H. White original was not? If that’s the case, then Peet’s grasp of dramatic structure wasn’t as strong as it needed to be. Or did other things/people get in the way on Sword, ruining what should have been a better movie? I have a lot of trouble reconciling Peet’s work on the two films from the standpoint of story as Dalmatians sings and Sword croaks.
on 08 Apr 2008 at 1:26 pm 2.Michael said …
A read of the two books informs your question a bit. T.H.White’s book took quite a bit of restructuring to make it work as a film. It’s certainly more picaresque than Dodie Smith’s book, and that would have a lot to do with the construction of the film.
In his autobiography, Peet says of the script for 101 Dalmatians, “I scrawled my manuscript for Dalmatians on large yellow tablets and worked at it with a frenzy every day and on through the weekends. I left out some parts of Didie Smith’s book and enlarged on others without losing the strange twists and turns in the wildly suspenseful story.
Of Sword in the Stone he said it “was complicated, with the Arthurian legend woven into a mixture of other legends and myths. Getting a more direct story line called for a lot of sifting and sorting. Walt questioned the first version of my screenplay, pointing out that it should have had more substance. So I mad an all-out effort to give it more substance by enlarging on the more dramatic aspects of the story.”
on 08 Apr 2008 at 1:34 pm 3.Hans Perk said …
Would it enlighten things if I uploaded Peet’s original typed script for Dalmatians when I’m done with the draft? It is quite close to the film, though a few things were tightened along the way…
Anyway, it is interesting to see that the photographs of the boards were taken about four months into animation, which started 8/4/58 (and was OK for Touch Up 11/13/59), whereas the photos are December 1958 – as shown in the first part of the negative number, 1258-550.
on 08 Apr 2008 at 8:45 pm 4.Will Finn said …
There are actually two print versions of T.H White’s SWORD IN THE STONE, 1.)the original stand-alone first edition published circa 1937, and 2.) a later version that was entirely re-written as Part One of THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, White’s final and comprehensive Arthurian volume.
Of the two ‘SWORDS’, the original version (which I borrowed from the Disney Studio library to read in 1979) is most like the movie (except with a more satisfying ending) and includes a version of ‘the wizard’s duel’ (cut from the later version) with the main differences being that Mim is a raven-haired beauty (Hecate, the witch-referee is more like Peet’s Mim) and that Merlin kills her dead when he becomes a microbe. There is also an entirely surreal sequence inside Morgan LaFey’s castle which is described as a vast modern-day snack concession with walls made of meat… (This too is not in the later version)
The original also contains Merlin blowing himself to Bermuda at the climax, although he returns at the end dressed in an Edwardian topper and suit, not a bathing suit etc. In the book Wart cannot remove the sword without coaching from all the animals he has learned from, who speak to him from icons in the banners decking the square, reminding him of the lessons he learned in each escapade, which I feel is far superior to the arbitrary fait accompli version of the film. Without that, it is just a series of pointless episodes that fill the days before a pre-ordained miracle.
In THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, White re-wrote SWORD in it’s entirety, re-working much of it, condensing it and adding a segment where Wart becomes an ant. The ant colony appears to be a parody of Nazi Germany, this version having been re-written after WW II. I’ve read both versions and I suspect the first one is what the film was based on, borne out by a rare paperback re-print of that version published with the Disney movie cover as a tie in.
I have a soft spot for SWORD but it is living proof that even a genius like Bill Peet can completely miss the mark. My personal theory is that Walt Disney felt confident after the well-earned success of DALMATIONS to leave it to Peet and by all accounts SWORD was made with little to no supervision by Walt. (Frank Thomas told me it was the most fun the crew ever had on a film because of that freedom. I get the impression Milt Kahl and Peet felt much the same way). It is also reported that Walt hated the finished film and decided to get more “hands on” afterward.
My thanks to you and Mr. Canemaker for these wonderful scans. A huge replica of this exact board used to adorn the hallway of the original Animation Building on the lot.
on 10 Apr 2008 at 2:54 pm 5.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Very interesting comments! I don’t think the Dalmations story is all that great, it’s too live action, but there’s some nice elements, and i’m really gratefull for the storyboard you put up.
In my opinion Disney animation took a wrong turn with “Lady and the Tramp.” The potential for imagination in a story about semi-realistic dogs just isn’t that great. Think of the interesting visuals in “Pinnochio,” “Three Cabelleros,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and “Peter Pan”…then think of “Aristocats.”
But I’m still soooo happy to see these boards, which are a work of art regardless of what story problems the film had. Actually the beginning of Dalmations where the villain is introduced is my favorite part of the film.