![]() ![]() To turn a profit, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice needed to be part of a full-length feature thus Fantasia was born. He was involved nearly every step of the creative process, conducting an orchestra of animators.ĭisney lavished his studio’s resources on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice until the costs mounted to at least three times the normal budget for a Silly Symphony. Just as a conductor does not actually make any sound, Disney himself had stopped animating fairly early on instead, like a conductor, he inspired, shaped, corrected and oversaw the work of others. Stokowski explained, “The men drink coffee to keep awake it makes everybody alert.” A still from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice The Creative Processĭisney likely saw parallels between himself and Stokowski. May I talk with you?’” The recording session for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice took place soon after, running from midnight to past 3:00 am. A man walked in and looked at me and came over and said, ‘I’m Walt Disney. Stokowski later recalled the beginning of his collaboration with Disney: “One night I was in California and I had dinner in a restaurant. Plus, by 1937 Stokowski was no stranger to Hollywood, having recently played himself in two films. Stokowski had won fame by transforming the Philadelphia Orchestra into what Rachmaninoff called “the finest orchestra I have ever heard at any time or any place in my whole life.” He molded this ensemble with a famous spirit of innovation that likely appealed to Disney. After attending one of his concerts in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, Disney knew that Leopold Stokowski was the man for the job. For this Silly Symphony, which would star Mickey Mouse, Disney wanted the best musical collaborator he could find. In the wake of Snow White, Disney wanted to create a more ambitious Silly Symphony using Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, music inspired by an ancient legend first recorded by Lucian around 200 AD and later retold by Goethe. One of the staples of the Disney studio had been animated shorts called “Silly Symphonies”-cartoons accompanied by music. Walt Disney, Deems Taylor and Leopold Stokowski pose for a photo in front of a Fantasia storyboard. The film broke box office records worldwide with millions of dollars pouring into his studio’s coffers, Disney was eager for new projects and even grander successes. Upon its release in December 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was an unprecedented critical and commercial success. The challenge of producing a feature-length film would change the medium-and Disney-forever animation was now about storytelling and artistry. Cartoons had always been short comedies that depended on visual gags, not literary niceties such as plot and character development. ![]() In his studio’s early days, Disney had balked when one of his animators expressed an ambition to animate the works of Shakespeare in general, highfalutin artistic pretensions were alien to him. By the mid-1930s, the next step was to create the first feature-length animated film: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. When one examines the evolution of Disney’s early cartoons, the rate at which they increased in sophistication is astounding. Disney Studio Early Daysĭespite some early setbacks, the Disney enterprise would come to dominate the animation industry, thanks in large part to Disney’s competitive drive to stay on the cutting edge of technological innovation. Intrigued by the nascent art form of animated films, he went to work for an ad agency, and soon after started his own animation studio in 1921 when he was only 20 years old. Having been put to work as a teenager in order to help support his family, Walt Disney never completed more than an eighth grade formal education nevertheless, from an early age he was determined to be his own boss. Walt Disney introduces the seven dwarves in the original 1937 theatrical trailer for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Walt Disney himself said, “In a profession that has been an unending voyage of discovery in the realms of color, sound and motion, Fantasia represents our most exciting adventure.” The story of how Disney’s most ambitious and experimental film came to be, however, is as fantastic as the film itself. For many of us, Disney’s Fantasia was our first introduction to the playground of the imagination that is the orchestra. ![]()
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