Sunday, June 20, 2010

Prod. 2061 - Melody Time (IV)  - 2055 - Once Upon a Wintertime

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Directed by Ham Luske, assistant director Ted Sebern, layout by Al Zinnen, Don Griffith & Ken O'Connor. This FINAL draft is from 2/24/48.

Animation by Eric Larson, Rudy Larriva, Hal King, Judge Whitaker, John Lounsbery, Harvey Toombs and Don Lusk, with ice and waterfall by George Rowley.

This is one of the most Mary Blair-like of any Disney feature sequence. It is interesting to see how the animation is spread among the animators: except for Larriva doing the horses & sleigh in the beginning, most animators handle the human characters as well as the animals.

As much as I like Mary Blair's work, I am in two minds about the styling in this segment, storytelling-wise. Would we have gotten more emotionally involved with the characters had they been handled more classically, or more naturalistically?
On the other hand one can make a case for the more cartoony handling of the characters, which serves as a distancing device to make this segment "just a sweet bit of fun." Every time I think about it, I am inclined to go in the opposite direction from last time I thought about it...

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Steven Hartley says...

Probably the only sequence I know pretty well in Melody Time, and it really does look like Melody Time, this is wonderful animation!!

Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 9:10:00 AM PDT  
Anonymous Zartok-35 says...

The rerelase credites on these Melody Time shorts are a dangerous ruse.

Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 12:15:00 PM PDT  
Anonymous John V. says...

When this was re-released as a stand-alone short, the credits included -

animators: Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Harvey Toombs and Hal King, plus effects animator George Rowley, story: Art Scott and Mary Blair (!), layout: Ken O'Connor and Don Griffith.

As with "Trees", but unlie "Little Toot", the segment title is listed under "sequence title" but the production title is given as "Melody Time".

Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 5:03:00 PM PDT  
Anonymous John V. says...

Hey, check out the description of the skating action in scene 17! Referring to a scene which *wasn't* on the Dumbo draft!

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 4:29:00 PM PDT  
Anonymous Hans Perk says...

Yes, the skating scene in the pink elephants is one of the scenes that is on the page that is sadly missing, even going back 45 years...

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 8:39:00 PM PDT  

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