Please note: if an earlier link doesn't work, it may have changed following an update! Check the Category Labels in the side-bar on the right! There you can find animator drafts for sixteen complete Disney features and eighty-six shorts,
as well as Action Analysis Classes and many other vintage animation documents!

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Prod. 2082 (Sleeping Beauty) - Seq. 01.0 Opening

"Opening - to - Entrance of Maleficent" was not the first sequence in animation. The date on this FINAL draft is July 15th, 1958. In the Ink and Paint schedule it had seven sequences on either side of it.

Most of the earliest sequences, about half the film, were directed by Eric Larson, but as we can learn from John Canemaker's Nine Old Men book, he was removed as head director of the film (Walt felt he had spent way too much), and the later sequences were directed by Woolie Reitherman and the official director Gerry Geronimi. This opening sequence, though, was directed by Les Clark, and laid out by Homer Jonas, Victor Haboush and Jack Huber.

Animation by George Nicholas, Bob Youngquist, Jack Bailey, Fred Kopietz (Misc. Characters), Hal King, Blaine Gibson, Hal Ambro, Jack Boyd, Don Lusk (Fairies) Bob Carlson and John Sibley (King & Queen).

This sequence sets the tone of the film, and has had a lot of iterations, including a different song! When I saw the movie in a cinema in Hilversum in Holland, my dear sweet mother whispered to me, during this first sequence: "Are you sure this is a Disney film???"
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This draft has 137 pages...

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Lionel says...

Hans, thanks so much for these sheets, they're already illuminating the whole summer.

I can still picture me, aged 13, in 1987, with my then 10-year-old brother, going to see a reissue of the movie (which I had first seen in 1980 and kept whishing they would rerelease) with sheets of paper in our hands, and me instructing him to write down as many names as possible during the opening credits, which is, I can tell now, impossible in the dark. I ad no idea, then, that there were books that gave you the complete credits.

Since then, my Disney library and my Disney knowledge have vastly expanded. This movie remains (and WILL remain) probably the most aesthetically astounding, Disney or other.

These drafts are really a godsend. I won't comment on them, probably (not being a professionnal, and thus not having anything earth shattering to say), but I want you to know that each post will be read and reread.

Thanks!

Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 3:34:00 PM PDT  

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