Disney's got right touch
The studio that Walt Disney built has produced four animated box office smashes in a row, including the latest, "Aladdin," which is headed for $ 200 million, and in six short years, its TV package, "Disney Ducktails," has revitalized cartoons for kids.
The studio has an incomparably famous name, a great legacy, a load of talented animators and a good deal of money, but for years it was in a slump.
Invariably, those involved in today's successful Disney films and TV shows point to the modern management era of Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney as the key to the company's success.
"They brought to the animation department the creative challenge to do better ," says Don Hahn, producer of "Beauty and the Beast.""Not only visually, in terms of what's on the screen but better in terms of storytelling. They really challenged us to create bigger and better movies."
Ron Clements and John Musker, who wrote and directed "The Little Mermaid," and produced, directed and co-wrote "Aladdin," readily agree.
Clements recalls the gloomy days of the studio about 10 years ago when rumors were rife of a takeover. "Everyone thought the company might be broken apart and the film library sold," Clements says. "That would be the end of animation. Everyone was very nervous."
"The Black Cauldron" came out with a huge budget and flopped, and a rival studio produced "The Care Bears Movie" for very little and it was a hit.
Says Clements: "Some people in the company were saying the studio should stop making animation or farm it out, have it done overseas. Those were scary times."
The temptation to scale back traditional Disney values always existed, Clements says, who adds: "Certainly, the lavish films are not always the best ones. Even within the studio there's that aspect."
"Dumbo" (released in 1941) and "101 Dalmatians" (1961) were produced on relatively low budgets, Clements says, and were both we'll received and highly popular. "Sleeping Beauty," by comparison, was a huge undertaking and hugely expensive at the time, but it did not have great success at first.
All at Disney agree that storytelling is at the heart of the studio's success. Peter Schneider, president of animation, declares, "The way I interpret our legacy, we have three goals: to tell great stories, to create really interesting characters and to push the boundaries of animation one step further every time."
Roy E. Disney, who oversees all Disney animation, says that there are some oldtimers still at the studio who look at the new pictures and say, "Well, you're almost as good as we used to be."
Disney is not ready to make the claim. "With the technologies changing the way they have and with the different approach to pace and music, I'm not entirely sure it's fair to make comparisons," he says. "I wouldn't know how to compare 'Snow White' to 'Bambi,' either, or to 'Fantasia.' They all stand on their own feet."
Disney believes the studio's strength is that it is capable of at-tracting the best artists. This is the most collaborative medium in the world in terms of numbers," Disney says, pointing to the more than 400 names on the screen credits of a picture like "Aladdin."
Don Hahn, who has been at Disney for more than 16 years and was an associate producer of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," points to the studio's willingness to allow mistakes.
"There's a huge willingness to make mistakes, a willingness to experiment, a willingness to throw things out," Hahn says. "That is historic, going back to when Walt Disney threw out the soup-eating sequence in 'Snow White.' "
He says that at Disney there is corporate-level support for a development process that permits a film to be constantly re-evaluated.
Clements says the basic Disney approach is to never assume anything. "We're constantly evaluating the movie all through every step of the way," he says. "We keep it in a flexible state so that if we feel something's not working, the system is built so we can correct it."
Theoretically, the ideal way to shoot an animated film, Clements says, would be to write a script, approve it, storyboard it and then animate the storyboards.
"Unfortunately, at some studios when that's done the end result doesn't work and by then there's not a lot you can do about it," says Clements. "In live-action, you can shoot 10 times more footage than you need, and then you can edit and readjust things. Here, you pretty much animate what's there. We have to do a lot of experimenting and editing along the way."
John Musker believes that many filmmakers misunderstand what makes an animated picture successful. They tend to think that Disney does something called "full-animation," so that if they spend the same amount of money Disney does and make the picture fluid, that will give it Disney animation.
"In reality, what makes a film successful is the strength of the story," he says, "and constantly taking the time to make sure that it's not confusing and that the characters are coming off well."
Musker acknowledges that Disney reached its first apex in the '30s and '40s with the five classics, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,""Pinocchio,""Bambi, ""Fantasia" and "Dumbo."
Musker says he would never be quoted as saying that today's animators are doing better work now because those films are unique and special. But, he says, "I think the talent we have now is as strong as the talent they had back then."
Animation president Peter Schneider goes further. "One of the legacies left by Walt Disney was that there was a higher standard of moviemaking when he was alive.
"The films made right after he died failed because the people making them did not believe in their hearts that they could do better than Walt Disney did. I think our directors today believe they can do better. Whether they accomplish it is a secondary issue. They first must believe they can."
Such confidence spills over into Disney's TV production, where Gary Krisal, president of Walt Disney Television Animation, has overseen a similar resurgence in product and popularity.
Krisal says the trick was that in the '80s the studio began to put more money into animation technique specifically for television. He uses the analogy of comparing the movies "Star Wars" with TV's "Battlestar Galactica." The big- budget pictures special effects light up the big screen, but the TV production's visual elements are sufficient for the small screen.
"The decision to really design animation for television using Disney technique," Krisal says, "became the cornerstone of building the division. Some of the backgrounds we do are very detailed and elaborate. It really boils down to animation and acting."
Earlier TV animation would often use 8,000 or 12,000 cells for a half-hour show. Disney uses 20,000 to 30,000. While that is by no means a definitive way of assessing quality animation, Krisal says, "Any layman would see a marked difference."
Most of all, whether it's TV or movies, Disney wants its productions to be regarded as simply movies, and wants its films to be judged by the same standards used to judge live-action pictures.
"That's been our goal for the last eight years," says Schneider, "for animation to be taken as a serious moviemaking art-form and not as a ghetto of cartoon-making."
