Disneyesque Lecture

Just a few notes from todays lecture for anyone and everyone:

So todays lecture was all about music and animation working together. I am planning on doing the 'Disneyesque' essay so todays lecture was essential for me as it actually gave me an insight look as what is meant by the term Disneyesque. I saw the obvious similarities throughout the Disney workings such as the extensive use of Anthropermorphitism and realism. The characters and animals are very cutesy and it is obvious that the main audience of Disney are children. However, i did find it interesting how there are many subtle adult themes throughout. An example of this is in 'The Old Mill' which shows an animation where an old windmill withstands a storm. This could be related to the second world war which was taking place around the same time this animation was produced. It could possibly symbolise that 'America' is the windmill and although it will suffer damage, it will still be standing afterwards.

'The Old Mill' also showed the use of a multi layered camera to add depth to the animation. This allowed the viewer to feel like they were moving through things that were being animated e.g a spiderweb. Disney animation shows a high level of charm and happiness throughout its animation, but i think that this adds to the magic of there production and also links to the idea of escapism. That everyone needs to escape from there own lives and delve deep into Disney's world of fantasy and magic. To keep this idea of realistic magic, Disney animations have very little surrealistic elements in them, its a lot more naturalistic. Disney reinforced this by giving excuses for the surrealism whenever it did appear in one of the films. For instance, in 'Dumbo' he used they used the idea that Dumbo was drunk and having a hallucination to incorporate the very surreal 'Pink elephants on parade' scene.

Disney's characters were all lovable and personified in such a way that people could relate to them easily. Some productions that were not Disney seem to have copied this use of anthropermorphic techniques including Sir Paul McCartney who helped produce many musical animations.

There is a huge connection with music and Disney throughout many of the animation. Most Disney Features can be considered as musicals as there are many songs that lead the narrative of the stories. Many other animators used music in a more blunt way to create animations. Oskar Fischinger is an example of this as he did not like Disney's idea of realism so he used surrealism in his animations. These were created using all sorts of techniques including scratching directly on the film. The animation then morphs and moves across the screen in harmony to the music accompanying it. I didn't perticuarly enjoy this kind of animation as it seems to erratic and didnt seem to flow very well, and quite often i found myself wondering what was actually going on. But i gather from this that the animation wasn't designed to be watched like a cartoon, and that it was designed more as a piece of art for people to see and have their own opinions about it.

well thats all for now...more soon