Friday, July 02, 2010

What Disney Did Best 2: Atmosphere



Color, layout, scene planning, camerawork, special effects and music - and more important than any of those individual elements is the hierarchical coordination of them all.
the cutesy character stuff kind of gets in the way of the atmosphere, but I guess you gotta put something in there for the Moms and pantywaists in the audience.

My favorite parts of classic Disney movies are the sequences that evoke haunting moods and atmosphere: The witches defeat in Snow White, Maleficent's appearance through the wall in Sleeping Beauty, April Showers in Bambi - the fire

No one could touch Disney for those kinds of scenes, then or now.

Again, if you say out loud (or write) what's actually happening you can see how pedestrian the ideas are: "The reeds break in half and whistle like a chorus of angels". It makes me wonder why they even needed a story staff.

I think Disney's real magic - what separated him from everyone else in animation - was in his ability to build elaborate solid structures. Huge monolithic structures that could support the most fragile core ideas. - Like building a huge decorative skyscraper to support a colony of flatworms.