American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

GROWING PAINS By WALT DISNEY At the Fall, 1940, Convention of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, the Society's Progress Medal was most appropriately awarded to Walt Disney. His informal response, elaborated into the article, "Growing Pains," appeared in the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (January, 1941, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 3040.) and is here reprinted because, in addition to providing most significant historical data on the amazing growth and expansion of the animated cartoon during the last twelve years, it is one of the few articles we have ever seen which fully captures the breezy spirit of one of the greatest artists of our day, Walt Disney. — Editor. IN DECEMBER, 1938, there appeared a most interesting paper written by Dr. H. T. Kalmus describing the adventures of Technicolor in Hollywood. I have been asked to prepare an article along similar lines telling of highlights in the history of our company and animated pictures. Messrs. Garity and Ledeen have written a paper covering the technical side of our development, so I had better stay on my side of the fence and talk about animation and where I was born and about Three Little Pigs and what-about-the-future of the business. When I protested that all this had been written up many times before, and that such an article would be dull and of little interest, Mr. Garity said, "That's right!" and left the office with a dirty laugh. Making this job even more difficult, I found in rereading Dr. Kalmus' paper of 1938, that he had "lifted" semi-philosophic thoughts which I had planned to put in my article. I accuse him of what might be called "prophetic plagiarism," and I resent it, too, because I have so few semi-philosophic thoughts. For instance, Dr. Kalmus starts off by stating that his developments in Technicolor have been an adventure, and adds the "Webster definitions of adventure: chance of danger or loss; the encounter of risks; a bold undertaking; a remarkable experience, a stirring incident; a mercantile or speculative enterprise of hazard. Now, I had planned to start my paper with this definition and continue with the statement, "My business has been a thrilling adventure, an unending voyage of discovery and exploration in the realms of color, sound, and motion." It has been that ! And it has been a lot of fun and a lot of headache. The suspense has been continuous and sometimes awful. In fact, life might seem rather dull without our annual crisis. But after all, it is stress and challenge and necessity that make an artist grow and outdo himself. My men have had plenty of all three to keep them on their toes. But how very fortunate we are, as artists, to have a medium whose potential limits are still far off in the future; a medium of entertainment where, theoretically at least, the only limit is the imagination of the artist. As for the past, the only important conclusion that I can draw from it are that the public will pay for quality, and the unseen future will take care of itself if one just keeps growing up a little every day. The span of twelve years between Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey with sound, and Fantasia, is the bridge between primitive and modern animated pictures. No genius built this bridge. It was built by hard work and enthusiasm, integrity of purpose, a devotion to our medium, confidence in its future, and, above all, by a steady day-by-day growth in which we all simply studied our trade and learned. I came to Hollywood broke in 1923, and my brother Roy staked me to a couple of hundred. We lived in one room and Roy did the cooking. He was my business manager, and I didn't have any business. His job was to scare up three meals a day, and his job now is to conjure up three million dollars to meet the annual payroll. Both jobs have demanded just about the same amount of sweat, ingenuity, and magic. The main difference is that Rov sweats more red Cartoon cameras grow up: left, camera that filmed early "Mickeys"; right, today's Multiplane Technicolor cartoon camera. ink now. But no matter what the future deals me, I shall consider that I have come a long way, if for no other reason than that Roy doesn't do the cooking any more. I sold my first animated cartoon for thirty cents a foot. Pinocchio and Fantasia cost around three hundred dollars a foot. The first Mickey Mouse was made by twelve people after hours in a garage. About twelve hundred people are working overtime now in a fifty-oneacre plant with fourteen buildings, four restaurants, its own water system, airconditioning, and a gentleman named Myron to massage the kinks out of my neck. My first motion picture camera was "ad libbed" out of spare parts and a drygoods box swiped from an alley off Hollywood Boulevard. It was hand-cranked, that camera. Even then I felt the urge to grow, to expand — -I was very ambitious in those days — so we bought a used motor for a dollar to run the camera. It had once been a second-hand motor, but since that time it had seen everything and died. We had to hire a technician to make it go. We have been hiring technicians ever since. Our business has grown with and by technical achievements. Should this technical progress ever come to a full stop, prepare the funeral oration for our medium. That is how dependent we artists have become on the new tools and refinements which the technicians give us. Sound, Technicolor, the multiplane camera, Fantasound. these and a host of other less spectacular contributions have been added to the artist's tools, and have made possible the pictures which are the milestones in our progress. That first movie camera now stands in all its ad lib splendor in a Los Angeles Museum. Our new multiplane cameras are two stories high and operate by remote control. But, on the whole, the basic tools and technics of my craft had been worked out before I learned the rudiments of animation out of a book in Kansas City. There had been animated cartoons long before motion pictures. The Stone Age artist came pretty close to animation when he drew several sets of legs on his animals, each set showing a different stage of a single movement. A Frenchman named Plateau was the first to make a cartoon move. In 1831, he invented the pltenakistoscope, a device of moving disks and peepholes. The successive stages of an action were drawn on one disk. When the disk was spun, the illusion of motion resulted. Many similar devices were invented to make pictures move. The first animated cartoon on motion picture film was made by J. Stuart Blackton in 1906. It showed a fellow blowing smoke in the face of his girl friend. A bit corny, but not bad! Snow White ami tin S< ven Dwarfs was 106 March, 1941 American Cinematographer