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!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Prod.2001-Snow White&the Seven Dwarfs(XXIII)

106107108109110
Seq. 15-A "Snow White Dead"
- Dwarfs by Frank Thomas, animals by Milt Kahl
Seq. 15-B "Titles"
- Three titles by the effects dept.
Seq. 16-A "S.W. in Coffin - Back to Life - Away with Prince"
- Snow White by Ham Luske, Grim Natwick and Jack Campbell, dwarfs by Frank Thomas, Dick Lundy and Fred Spencer, animals by Jim Algar and Bernard Garbutt.

Frank Thomas' famous sequence of crying dwarfs - the sequence that had hardened moguls crying at the premiere - is so well described in The Illusion of Life that I will suffice to refer to that most important of all books on animation. If you do not have it, GET IT! It is still in print! Then look it up on pages 173ff. and 475ff...

This concludes the draft for Snow White: it is no secret that they lived happily ever after...
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Walt Disney's BIG gamble, which grew bigger as it went along. At first it was thought that it would cost about the same as ten short films, since its length would be similar. But then costs ballooned, and it ended around a million and a half dollars. When the L.A. liaison of Bank of America, Joe Rosenberg said to Walt "That thing is going to make a hatful of money," he wasn't kidding! (By the way, I saw a documentary recently that spoke of "the evil banker." If Rosenberg, under orders from A.P. Giannini, really was an evil banker, there would NOT have been a Snow White!) Currently, IMDb has its Domestic gross as $184,925,485. Adjusted for inflation it ranks as the number two film after Gone With The Wind with $2.36 billion!!!

The eight million the film made in its initial release was quickly plowed back into the studio, with new films (Pinocchio, Fantasia) lined up and a whole new studio to be built. Eventually this led to a darker period, as well, as the money got spent so quickly that the bonuses that were promised during the production of Snow White were left unpaid. This became one of the breeding grounds of the unrest that fostered the 1941 strike. But let's not get too much into that - let us instead return to the tranquil beauty of the first successful Technicolor animated feature film Snow White. It was Walt's first, the film that took up all his attention. It will stand forever as a touchstone for all further success and advances in the field of animation!

Here is a line of trivia that I swiped from IMDb: "Publicity material relates that production employed 32 animators, 102 assistant, 167 "in-betweeners", 20 layout artists, 25 artists doing water color backgrounds, 65 effects animators, and 158 female inkers and painters. 2,000,000 illustrations were made using 1500 shades of paint."

For those of you who followed the last 23 postings and would like to be able to browse the Snow White draft more freely, you can find all 110 pages that are available on this blog in this handy 3.42MB .zip file! Just please remember where you saw it first! Note that if you haven't read the postings from the start, you are not invited to download the .zip file yet, go back and read them all first!

By the way, I am on a small trip, back some time next week! Please do not let that keep you from commenting on my Snow White postings, and remember to look at John V.'s blog for more of his thoughts on character casting etc.

Remember to check out the archives (see labels in the right column!), where you can find eighty (80) short film drafts, six other complete features and parts of others, as well as some twenty Action Analysis Classes, twelve patent descriptions and a lot of other documents, clippings and videos, and most importantly, information about my own studio, A. Film!

Happy Friday the 13th!

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7 Comments:

Anonymous Zartok-35 says...

Feeling my usual need to over-emphasize facts that are already mentioned, I will once again point out that "S.W. in coffin-Back to life-Away with prince" is one of the sequences in the film that was directed by Wilfred Jackson.

Thanks for posting up this draft, Mr. Perk! A very good read.
It just goes to show that IMDb and Alberto Bettacini have a few flaws in thier listings. I see no mention of Milt Niel, Frank Grundeen, or Hugh Fraser.

Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:54:00 AM PST  
Anonymous Zartok-35 says...

Looking at the draft, we can also confirm Terrell Stapp did the layouts...In one of the shots, the characters pass through a "Stapp setup", and he's even listed as Carrol!

Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:58:00 AM PST  
Anonymous Michael J. Ruocco says...

Thank you so much for bringing us these drafts Hans! It's been fun every step of the way!

Being an animation student, it's both such an immense privilege & an unbelievable learning experience to scan through these pages & finally know who's responsible for such a remarkable film. I thank you for contributing to my education & for peaking my interest in animation further. In other words, YOU ROCK!

Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:30:00 AM PST  
Anonymous Paul Reiter says...

Sorry, I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy with other stuff and that's eaten away a lot of my time.

In any case, thank you, Hans, for posting this wonderful treasure for us all. I'll be looking forward to what you post next.

Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 7:17:00 PM PST  
Anonymous Steven Hartley says...

Thanks Hans, you've made my day. I've always been wondering if Ward Kimball had any scenes surviving in the pictures, and they were the vultures, and its interesting to see that the director, assistant director, sect., and layout man are not credited for any scenes.

Just a quick note on "Zartok-35", I know there are uncredited animators, and its true that I don't even see Milt Neil, Frank Grundeen but I did see a Fraser, in one scene of Snow White and the Prince in the Garden, and that could have been "Hugh Fraser" animating that one scene or it could have been Marc Davis (a.k.a.) Fraser Davis animating that scene, but the drafts credit him as "DAVIS" No mention of Milt Neil, Frank Grundeen, and also no mention of David Swift, and also they don't mention the credited effect animators which are Robert Martsch or Ugo D'Orsi, many effect scenes have not been credited.

Anyway, Thanks Hans you've made it all interesting. What's your next feature draft you'll be posting? I would love to see more of the "Dumbo" draft, I really want to see Woolie Reitherman's work on it.

Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:37:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous Steven Hartley says...

Hi Hans,

I've got the Snow White mosaics up!

Saturday, May 28, 2011 at 3:01:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous rosscompose says...

This is from a list of Wilfred's sequences (as noted also in the first comment from Zartok):

Seq. 15A - Snow White Dead
Seq. 15B - Titles

His others:
Seq. 8A - Entertainment
Seq. 8B - Storytelling
Seq. 8C - Going to Bed

Saturday, January 2, 2016 at 8:11:00 AM PST  

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