[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.We were privileged to sit there and makesketches of ideas as they came to us.Otherwise, we d turn in something at alater date. 19 Dick Lundy, who joined the staª as an assistant in July 1929,remembered that Disney called such meetings  a  round table. We had it inthe director s room when we were small, but later on.they would have itin the sound stage, and the whole group would get a synopsis of.a storyidea. Now, what gags can you think of ?  20 As in the Oswald period, somegags came perhaps too easily. In the early days, Wilfred Jackson said,  wealways figured that we had three laughs that were free, and we had to workfor the other ones.One was the drop-seat gag, two the thundermug [cham-ber pot] under the bed, and three the outhouse. 21The Plowboy, from June 1929, is filled with just that sort of cheerful farm-yard ribaldry.A cow s udder is animated with great plasticity as Mickey milksit, and two of the cow s teeth move up and down like window shades to letout a stream of tobacco juice.The cow literally licks Mickey s eye shuttwice.The first time, he squirts milk from the cow s own udder in its face;the second time, he pulls the cow s tongue out to great length and wraps itaround its muzzle.There s an undercurrent of lasciviousness, too.When Min-nie calls to Mickey and his horse, both wave back then the horse hitchesup his chest and starts to swagger over, until Mickey orders him back.WhenMinnie is singing, wordlessly, she puckers, her eyes closed, and Mickey, drool-ing with desire, seizes the opportunity to kiss her (she smashes him over thehead with a bucket).The cow laughs at Mickey a trombone provides thelaughter he gives the cow the razzberry, and she stalks away, first flippingher udder at him in disdain.The Plowboy ran afoul of a few censors, as did a couple of other 1929 car-toons.Disney expressed mystification that  anyone could take oªense at anyof the  stuª  contained in our pictures; especially how anyone could beoªended at anything pertaining to the milking of a cow. 22 Coarse, exuber-ant comedy of that kind was just what could be expected from a studio whosestaª was made up largely of young men, most of whom, like Disney himself,had almost no formal art training, and limited formal education of any kind.Like so many schoolboys, the Disney animators ate their sack lunches behindthe stage where Disney had filmed the live action for the Alice comedies.Theyalso played horseshoes there  Ub was the best, Jackson recalled.23Some of Disney s animators had fallen in love with the medium when theywere children, seeing what must have been some of the earliest series car-toons, like those of J.R.Bray.Jackson remembered growing up in Glendale,California:bui ldi ng a better mous e, 1 928 1 93 3 73We lived near the [trolley] tracks.and the conductors would tear all the trans-fers oª, and they d have a little stub left, about, oh, three quarters of an inchthick and half an inch wide, with a rivet through the middle, or a staple.Butthe ends you could flip, and so you could make any kind of a little drawingthere, and make it move.So I used to walk up and down the car tracks, find-ing the stubs where they d thrown them, and make my animation on those.24In the expansive atmosphere created by the Disney cartoons success and thegrowth of the staª, some of Disney s young animators tinkered with ways toimprove their work for example, by shooting some of their pencil anima-tion on film to see if it was turning out the way they hoped.The animatorsmade such pencil tests of  isolated actions within a scene when the animatorcame up against some new problem and wanted to see how eªectively orotherwise he was handling it before going ahead, Jackson said.25 In addi-tion, Dick Lundy said, the animators tested cycles; it was particularly im-portant to catch any mistakes in cycle animation, because the same mistakewould be seen on the screen over and over again.26 Walt Disney neither en-couraged nor discouraged such tests. We were allowed to use short ends offilm that weren t long enough to shoot a scene with.if we wanted to comeback at night and develop them ourselves, Jackson said.27By the late summer of 1929, both Iwerks and Gillett were performing allthe functions of directors, Iwerks for the Silly Symphonies and Gillett for theMickey Mouse cartoons.Disney called them  story men because they wereresponsible for their cartoons stories, although that was the area where Dis-ney himself continued to be most heavily involved.The two directors nowmade the layout drawings that showed the animators how to stage their scenes,and they worked with Stalling to prepare the bar sheets and exposure sheets.28As Disney s involvement in the details of production receded, he beganpaying more attention to how he might improve his cartoons and achievemore of the  quality he had fastened on as a crucial asset in the competi-tion for audiences [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]