What a Sunday...but when things are quiet, I guess that's the time to tie up some unfinished posts: here are the rest of the drafts for "All The Cats Join In'--specifically for Mark Mayerson. who has waited so patiently--and who, after all, is the chief resource of this somewhat arcane but important imformation. Thanks for keeping after me, Mark! And thanks again are due to Michael Barrier, who supplied the copy and graciously assented to their being posted here.
The scanned pages omit the header, which can be found in my earlier post. These are pages 4-8:
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10 comments:
One thing I like about this short is the girl looks funny ans sexy at the same time.Great posts!!
What exactly were these drafts for? Did they not use storyboards? I'm con-foozed!
Hans--that's exactly right--funny and sexy--not an easy thing to do!
David--I can imagine why this would seem confusing--yes, they sure did use storyboards--these "drafts" came after the cartoon was finished(or at least after it was handed out to all the animators); it's a record of who did what, and how much(footage). The studio did them for all its shorts and features. If you go to Michael Sporn's site, he's posted some of the drafts for "Pinocchio".
Thank you, Jenny. Eventually, I'll do a mosaic of this with thanks to you and Mike Barrier for the info.
Hi Mark--thanks, but you needn't mention me at all--if not for Mike Barrier, I wouldn't have been able to put them up. He'd have done it himself, but as he's written before, I think his approach is that he would rather keep his website more accessible to the general public(the ones who are gaga over animation, that is); posting draft scans is for us hardcore folks! ; )
Thanks goodness they did do these things...I wonder how early it started, or of it even started at Disney, as I assumed--do you know?
The earliest original I have seen is CS11 Arctic Antics 1930. Nothing fancy, just one sheet with 19 very long scenes, everything written by hand and lines in pencil. They probably did these sheets long before this, as well, but finding them may be a matter of luck. Someone told me he saw drafts on the old Disney Oswalds.
Also, at the studio, new drafts were made "after the fact", on the form paper we know. But the earliest ones do not have animator indications, and thus probably were not copied from any original sheets.
Thanks so much, Hans!
Oh, thank YOU for putting up all the Freddie drawings! (I know, I know - they are not your drawings... but YOU put in the effort of getting them out in the open!)
I did forget to mention, though, that it seems that a VERY important reason for the early drafts also was the calculation of the film's total footage. (I remember how much I worked on that myself on the draft I did for our 1984 short film Anna & Bella - we were under strict footage constraints, and it just HAD to fit...) It just looks like a lot of effort was put into just that...
That's fascinating, Hans--may I ask--why, on a short like Anna & Bella, was it so crucial to constrain the footage? Probably the same reason as in features, I'd guess-budget concerns? That must be even more of a worry with a short film.
By the way, I saw "Anna And Bella" at the County Museum here in L.A. when it was released(85?); they showed new international shorts there regularly then. What a beautiful film...I hope that when my career is done that I can say I worked on something that approaches your film in mood and quality. It certainly deserved the Oscar.
There aren't too many out there like that, then or now.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it - it was an experience to work on (see also my comment on Mark Mayerson's blog page on the film). The director, Børge Ring, liked to approach the film very much as a 40s Disney short, which was great. The simplicity was sort of given because of the extremely limited budget, something he had worked with on commercials always.
The length was a given. Børge was allowed 7:30, which he slyly calculated as video frames (25 fps in Europe) so in 24 fps that was 7:48:18. And that was our maximum.
The maximum was set in advance through negotiations with the principal money, the Dutch Ministry of Cultural Affairs. So when I shot the first Leica reel on 16mm (one storyboard image per frame), and projected it on a sheet of paper on Børge's wall with a toy projector that I only had seen Mickey in Arabia with for years, we began to see where we were going to have to cut. And I do say 'we', because this was an 'open forum' of the two of us, four of the most fun days I have ever had in the business. Real sweatboxing. Four days and three 16mm reels later the film was basically as you can see it still.
We only had to make it. And that took two years or so, because it was most often in between "real" work...
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