Chris Haddock
Recently got short-listed for an extra/role in Disney's Maleficent with Angelina Jolie. Awesome.
Maleficent by ~Lavapulse
Disney's MALEFICENT Will Be Angelina Jolie's Next Film
VenkmanAngelina Jolie is going to be perfect as the evil sorceress Maleficent in the upcoming live action Disney adaptation of Sleeping Beauty.
JoBlo.com
Before Angelina Jolie sexes up MALEFICENT, rediscover the majesty of SLEEPING BEAUTY in this week's Ink & Pixel: http://shar.es/pOWjp
March 29, 2012
Ink & Pixel is a source of pride and joy for me as a writer and as such, I’m always striving to take this column further for those who read and enjoy it. If you yourself, or anyone you know, helped to make any of the amazing feature animated films found within this column, I would love to talk to you to further my knowledge. Please contact me at steveseigh@joblo.com so we can discuss it further.
Animation by definition is the act of adding a quality, liveliness, vivacity, and overwhelming sense of spirit to otherwise still images. Birthed from the womb of our subconscious and desire to express and create, animation has been a part of our world since the early 1800's. Though, there are certain examples of animation that shame the competition and redefine the very nature of the word. Towering above any film before or after its creation is Disney’s 16th classic animated feature: SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Taking nearly a decade to bring to life, Disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY was to be the film that would not only be remembered as the studio’s crowning animation achievement, but also a film that’s considered to be the last of it’s kind before the House of Mouse strayed from it’s more traditional roots of animated film making.
SLEEPING BEAUTY, of course, is the story of Princess Aurora (meaning “sunrise” in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), the beautiful, fair-haired daughter of King and Queen Stefan. Upon her birth, the child is blessed by three lovely and doting fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, bestowing her with beauty and gifts suited only to that of a true princess. However, all becomes grim when a wicked fairy by the name of Maleficent, on account of feeling slighted by the royal family for not inviting her to the celebration, curses the child and places her under a most dark and deadly spell. For upon the dawning of her 16th birthday Princess Aurora shall prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. To combat this most tragic fate the three good fairies fix the spell so that instead of death Aurora will fall into a deep, dark slumber only to be awakened by true loves kiss. A most tragic tale indeed, but hey, what good fairy tale doesn’t threaten you with an outstretched, bleeding grip of death and despair?
Walt Disney, in a rather bold move, decided that after the moderate box-office success of ALICE IN WODERLAND, PETER PAN, and LADY AND THE TRAMP, that it was time for the studio to try something bold and new. SLEEPING BEAUTY was to be approached using the “Princess Formula” already established by films such as SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES and CINDERELLA, but was designed to set itself apart by being much more stylized and “realistic” in it’s approach to animation and character development.
Princess Aurora (voiced by the lovely Mary Costa) was to be set apart from the previous and more um … simplistic princesses of Disney animation. Walt wanted Aurora to be remembered as a true fairy tale heroin. In order to achieve this more realistic tonality the film needed to lose the more traditional Disney approach to its animated story telling. More often than not, Disney animated features are chock full of slap-stick, characters with personalities that dominate the screen, and lots of singing to woodland creatures. This was not to be the case with SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Authenticity is of course one of the many staples that Disney Studios is known to bring to all of their animated films. In order to capture the stark and unenlightened nature of the film, Walt Disney himself saw to it that each and every frame of animation was scrutinized and approved by a team of Medieval historians. This, unfortunately, made the work environment rather hostile at times during the making of the film.
You see, in a rare act of power, Walt Disney deemed that Eyvind Earle, the film’s Chief Background Artist, would oversee the entire look of the film. This, understandably, angered the animators working on the film because none of them had ever had to work on a picture where the background art would purposefully overpower the performance of their characters that they worked so hard to create.
But despite Disney’s animation team rebelling against the changes being sent down by Earle, their complaints fell on deaf ears as their boss, Walt, insisted that this film be set apart from all of their previous efforts. See, Walt Disney, from the very beginning of the project in 1951 wanted the film to be an art (not character) driven masterpiece. Holding firmly to his guns, and at the dismay of the film’s animators, the project continued to ignore the tried and true formula long established by Disney’s past efforts.
Let’s build an example: While watching the scene in which the good fairy, Merryweather, is performing her ballad dance throughout the home of Aurora and her caregivers, you’ll notice that she is wearing a black bodice that completely weighs down her character in a scene where she’s supposed to appear weightless.
Now, normally, something like this would be sniffed out and removed. You see, the human eye tends to first process, and therefore be drawn to dark colors. By not changing the color of the bodice the viewer is subconsciously forced to concentrate on that particular area of the body rather than the joyful expression on her face and she prances about the room. This in turn upset the animators who were left with no choice but to leave the colors as Disney saw fit.
However, some would argue that each and every frame of SLEEPING BEAUTY is a work of art. Derived from the art styling’s of Mary Blare (a magnificent artist known throughout the Disney animation family) and inspired by The Book of Hours, an illuminated manuscript, prayer book, or calendar that illustrates the seasons, forests, fields, and architecture as it was known in the Middle Ages, SLEEPING BEAUTY was to be remembered as a film of pure talent and majesty by audiences the world over.
Another first inside Disney Animation Studios, SLEEPING BEAUTY was shot using film that measured out at 70 mm. called, Technorama. Because of this abnormally large canvas in which to create the artists were forced to draw on paper the size of bed sheets. This became a constant annoyance to the crew as the paged were very difficult to flip through in order to check their progress. What made this approach so unique was that the film would now be presented in a much wider format than other more traditionally animated feature films, the film itself running horizontally as opposed to vertically inside the camera.
Much like many animated films are shot today, SLEEPING BEAUTY was first shot placing the cast of voice actors inside of very real sets of many of the films exalted locations. Princess Aurora (Mary Costa), Prince Phillip (Bill Shirley), and Eleanor Audley (Maleficent) would all show up to work for the day dressed in their characters actual costumes from the film to act out their scenes with one another. This approach to the voice recording served to give the speaking parts of the film a much more free-flowing and organic rhythm and vibe.
In fact, many scenes in the film were firsts inside of the animation industry such as the Flight of the Fairies sequence as well as the battle against the dragon at the film's climax. Sure, you’ve seen characters fly inside of a Disney film before, but never with this kind of attention to detail. The super clean pencil work, the weightlessness of the characters as they soared through the air. Seriously, Peter Pan ain’t got nothing on Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.
Originally intended to be the female equivalents of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, the good fairies' demeanor were quickly changed so that their flamboyant and energetic nature wouldn’t clash with the overall tone of the film. Actually, the character model of Fauna (the green fairy) was based on a real life acquaintance of Disney himself. Upon this woman entering the room she’d continued to bumble her way through conversations with the staff and writers to a truly endearing capacity. It was because of her bizarre yet simple nature that Fauna became the fairy we all know and love.
In truth, many of the film's characters were created and drawn with their voice acting counterparts in mind. And in the case of filming Aurora’s choreographed dance sequences, the breathtaking Halene Stanley was given a replica of her character’s costume designed by Alice Davis in which to act out her part in the film. At any given time you could walk past the set and see this beautiful dancer in a peasant-like dirndl skirt that filled out to a bell shape toward the bottom, able to be manipulated as she swayed too and fro. Disney, never afraid to push authenticity to it’s fullest spent no expense in the making of SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Perhaps one of the more interesting facts to note about the film is that it’s scored was virtually written 75 years before the films creation by aide of the original Sleeping Beauty ballet score composed by Peter Chehovski. Originally, songs of grandiose proportions were planned for the film, but again, the art and feel of the picture required a much more elegant and subdued approach in the way the music would relate to the story. Because of this many of the songs that were written early on in the filming process were scrapped. Actually, the only song to be kept from the original plan was “Once Upon a Dream” a song that would go on to live throughout the ages.
SLEEPING BEAUTY, during it’s initial release inside of theaters was the second most successful film at the box office in 1959 after Ben-Hur. When adjusted for ticket price inflation, the domestic total gross comes out to $478.22 million, placing it in the top 30 of films. The prints of the film sent out to theaters across the globe made using the Super Technirama 70 prints were equipped with six-track stereophonic sound; some CinemaScope-compatible 35mm Technirama prints were released in four-track stereo, and others had monaural soundtracks. These sound specs allowed for the audience to experience a most grand display of sound and magic, all of it coming from an animated feature. Who would have ever thought a “cartoon” could be so dynamic?
SLEEPING BEAUTY still to this very day remains my absolute favorite full-length feature film of the Disney catalog. It’s whimsical, majestic, terrifying, malevolent, bold, beautiful, heart wrenching, and adventuresome all wrapped up in a stunningly animated package. They don’t make Disney films like this any more, making this installment of the Disney library truly unique and special in every sense of the word. I urge you all to seek it out and experience it once more, or perhaps introduce it to someone new so that they too can bask in it’s brilliance.
Source: The Digital Dorm
