Acquired
01:37:22 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:37:22] S1: Yeah. It's like, what, probably 15 feet tall? [01:37:25] S0: That feels high. Ten, twelve. Yeah. But something like that. There were up to seven planes that you could use. So you've got these horizontal planes between the floor and where the camera is mounted, you know, up 12 feet in the air. Typically, with the character on the celluloid almost all the way close to the top of the camera, unless you had, like, special effects or some foreground obscuring the character or something like that. And then all the elements of the background at various sort of different depths away from the character are painted on panes of glass and paper below that. And you'd want the background broken out onto multiple panes so you could do things like a parallax effect if they were sort of panning by. Or if you wanted to do, like, an establishing shot to zoom in on a subject from far away, you could progressively, in every single photo that the camera took, every frame, bring the panes of glass closer to the camera at different calculated rates. So the distance between the planes could be adjusted to really sell the the animation. David, you and I saw one of these in the corporate archives in Burbank. You've actually seen two of the three that exist. Right? [01:38:29] S1: Yes. Yes. One of the other ones is at the Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio in San Francisco, which is an incredible museum and resource that informed a lot of this episode.
01:38:29 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:38:29] S1: Yes. Yes. One of the other ones is at the Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio in San Francisco, which is an incredible museum and resource that informed a lot of this episode. [01:38:39] S0: Worth calling out, this is a photo camera, not a movie camera. So it would just photograph one frame at a time, and then all the technicians would adjust all the knobs and layer placements for the next frame. So when you look at the level of invention required to create a multiplane camera and operate it, you kinda start to understand how these guys in the animation department could evolve into Imagineers. [01:39:01] S1: Yes. [01:39:01] S0: Like, this there's a lot of physicality involved in animation that I don't [01:39:06] S1: think I really understood until diving into this process. You know what? What's happening at Disney isn't just the intersection of art and commerce. It's the three way intersection of art and commerce and engineering and always has been. [01:39:21] S0: Yep. I think that's right. Alright. So that's the animation process. Yeah. That is why this is such a giant difficult undertaking to create something like Snow White. [01:39:28] S1: Absolutely enormous undertaking. So when all is said and done, it takes 1 and a half million dollars of investment over three years of studio work to create Snow White. Remember, this is at the same time as Disney is making short cartoons for, like, I don't know, $2,030,000 dollars. And even that is way above what anybody else in the industry is spending.
01:39:28 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:39:28] S1: Absolutely enormous undertaking. So when all is said and done, it takes 1 and a half million dollars of investment over three years of studio work to create Snow White. Remember, this is at the same time as Disney is making short cartoons for, like, I don't know, $2,030,000 dollars. And even that is way above what anybody else in the industry is spending. [01:39:57] S0: This is $35,000,000 inflation adjusted. And, yeah, movies are, like, $300,000,000 budgets today. But imagine nobody's doing that, and you have the first idea to create an animated movie. You're like, I'd like $35,000,000 of budget to make that. [01:40:13] S1: Right. When Roy said that he was worried it was gonna bankrupt the studio, like, was being the rational one here. They have to take out a whole series of loans from Bank of America in order to finance production even with all the money they have coming in from the flywheel and consumer products and the Mickey Mouse Club, etcetera. Ben, as you were saying, all the art and the work that goes into it, 2,000,000 sketches and 250,000 finished drawings and cells go into Snow White. This is at a scale so beyond what anybody else in the entire entertainment industry is doing. Gabler in his book uses the analogy of it was like a Gothic cathedral in animation. That is, like, the only kind of analogy that makes sense here. [01:41:01] S0: They staffed up to 750 studio artists and did three years of nonstop work on production. [01:41:07] S1: Yep. Incredible.
01:41:07 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:41:07] S1: Yep. Incredible. [01:41:09] S0: They actually went so far as to hire actors to play each of the roles Yes. And put them in full costumes so they could film them for inspiration, just so the animators could watch and see the natural motions so it would look as lifelike as possible to sell the illusion. This is so much different than animating a cartoon mouse. The massive investment in all the little details just to make the viewer buy in emotionally to these characters. My favorite one of these little tidbits is that the actress who played Snow White even wore a hair helmet since the drawn character's proportions were actually pretty different than a real life woman so that they could kinda get a sense from watching the test footage how the character moved around in the world. [01:41:53] S1: Yeah. I mean, you made the point a few minutes ago, Ben, that Walt Disney wasn't doing this because he was some capitalist. I think he really did recognize the incredible flywheel business model that he had sort of accidentally created and leaned into it. But, like, that's not gonna motivate him to film a whole live action version in costume just so that they can make sure they get the spirit right. Like, this is art that they're creating. An obsession with quality. Absolutely. So the movie finally premieres in Hollywood on 12/21/1937. And, I mean, it's one of the greatest films ever made. The Academy Awards creates a special Oscar for Snow White, a special [01:42:37] S0: award. Because they didn't think it could be eligible for best picture. [01:42:40] S1: Right. Right.
01:42:40 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:42:40] S1: Right. Right. [01:42:41] S0: Right. Movie, and I don't wanna bury the lead, it was the highest grossing film not only of the year, but ever. Ever. It did $8,000,000 of rental revenue on a $1,500,000 production cost. And, the category was so new and different that they were like, instead of being eligible to be nominated for best picture, let's just create a special new category for it. [01:43:02] S1: So the the the Oscar statue that they give Walt and Disney for Snow White is the only one that's ever been made. It is a large Oscar. It is Snow White and then seven little Oscars below it. [01:43:15] S0: Walt personally would go on to win more Academy Awards than anyone in history. [01:43:20] S1: Yes. [01:43:20] S0: Walt has 26 Academy Awards. The next highest is 13. [01:43:25] S1: Yes. I mean, the audience reception was incredible. Like you said, Ben, it was the highest gross seeking film ever made of of any kind, animated or otherwise, in history to that point. The critics' reception is equally glowing. Time magazine writes prophetically that Snow White is an authentic masterpiece to be shown in theaters and beloved by new generations long after the current crop of Hollywood stars, writers, and directors are sleeping where no prince's kiss can wake them. Of course, foreshadowing the Disney vault. Snow White is alive and well today as my two young daughters will attest.
01:43:25 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:43:25] S1: Yes. I mean, the audience reception was incredible. Like you said, Ben, it was the highest gross seeking film ever made of of any kind, animated or otherwise, in history to that point. The critics' reception is equally glowing. Time magazine writes prophetically that Snow White is an authentic masterpiece to be shown in theaters and beloved by new generations long after the current crop of Hollywood stars, writers, and directors are sleeping where no prince's kiss can wake them. Of course, foreshadowing the Disney vault. Snow White is alive and well today as my two young daughters will attest. [01:44:06] S0: Yeah. The an interesting thing about this story, I'm curious since you have daughters who watch it, David, is it's kinda dark, And Walt did meaningfully change the Brothers Grimm story Yes. That he sort of adapted it from. It's very interesting that all of these early Disney's cartoon movies, animations are adapted fairy tales or adapted existing lore that Disney sort of changes, the film was not really made as a children's movie. No. Yes. It was animated, but it's dark.