Disney &Frame Grabs &Layout & Design 06 Jun 2011 06:40 am
Cinderella Multiplane
- Cinderella was produced on a rather tight budget. After having produced a number of package films, containing collections of shorts, the film was Disney’s attempt to get back into features. His coffers were emptying, and he wanted to get back into the mainstream. They tightened the budget for the film and produced it quickly.
As such, I was curious to see how many multiplane shots were in the film. I was only able to locate five of them, and they’re all uncomplicated shots – all with a simple camera move in. They didn’t allow for much in the way of focus changes and kept focus pretty mcuh constant throughout them all. There was nothing elaborate built into the camerawork.
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Seq 1.1 Scene 55
This is the opening of the film, after the storybook section reveals the back story.
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The camera slowly begins to move in.
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4
We’re starting to see some marginal soft-focus in the foreground elements.
5
The final setup before the dissolve into Cinderella’s room.
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Seq 2.0 Scene 1
The town with the castle in the distance.
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The camera moves past the town into the castle.
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We end on the castle before dissolving to the interior of the castle.
With this shot we have images of some of the elements used to create the multiplane shot.
The artwork looks to be for a night version of the same shot. I haven’t seen this in the film.
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Top level.
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Level #2 – middle level
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Level #3 – the castle with sky separate.
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The final composite.
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Seq 2.0 Scene 2
The camera moves through the glass. King is out of focus/ glass is in focus.
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As we get closer, king comes into focus and glass out of focus.
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Seq 4.0 Scene not listed on drafts
Cinderella’s coach is on the way to the ball.
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The camera moves in on the Palace.
3
The final setup before the dissolve to the next shot.
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Seq 4.0 Scene 1
We move in from an aerial view of the ball – through a window.
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The camera continues on to a closer shot of the Prince.
3
The Prince is greeting another young, available female.
Next week I’ll take a look at the multiplane camera in Disney’s feature, Peter Pan.
on 06 Jun 2011 at 9:23 am 1.Pierre said …
Even as a sequence of still images, Disney’s multi-plane shots never fail to impress me. The manipulation of 2D images in a 3D space is truly magical.
I find Victorian Peep Shows and Toy Theaters have the same magical effect because the eye knows that you are looking at a representation of something real but is transported into the realm of fantasy when you perceive depth as well.
on 06 Jun 2011 at 9:34 am 2.Steisha Pintado said …
Great post, Michael! I’m looking forward to this series of posts.
on 06 Jun 2011 at 1:05 pm 3.Tom Minton said …
Because they wanted translucence in the blue window they could not paint the back of the broken glass black to avoid reflection on the plane below, which is visible in the second image of Setup 3. Today this shot would be a digital multiplane approximation and in softer focus than 3 strip Tech 35mm film.
on 08 Jun 2011 at 7:45 am 4.Stephen Perry said …
The three levels of the night scene don’t match the final comp? They’re totally different buildings and the castle is different too?