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Disney’s Double Takes
Disney’s Double Takes
This video reveals that many classic animated films use recycled animation.
By Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 11:03am
If watching these old-school Disney clips brings back fond memories, that may be because you’ve seen the animation before in a different Disney movie. Does this corner-cutting production trick make you distrust Disney altogether, or are the movies still magical and worth your time?
Title: Disney Templates Fail!
Stats: More than 62,000 viewings since this video was posted in the first two weeks (the video appeared on YouTube April 8), generating 250 text comments.
What you see: Here's another example of YouTube forensics at work. "Wetr0x," a Swedish teenager, splices together various scenes from Disney classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Robin Hood, and The Jungle Book to show just how frequently Disney animators recycled scenes from one classic to the next. The clip goes on for more than three minutes, showing, for example, the conspicuously similar dance moves of Snow White and Maid Marian.
Disney’s Double Takes
Comments
Just How Repetitive?
All the examples shown are Robin Hood ripping off an older classic. They're edited in different orders as if to imply that all sorts of movies are stealing from each other, but even a glancing inspection and some knowlege of the timeline of these movies will tell you that this is only one instance of cheap corner cutting and not a systemic problem.
Don't stop with the animation...
Disney doesnt just recycle animation, it has also mastered a repetitious formula (albeit very successful) for it's Disney Channel "Original" Movies. The same usual protagonist/antagonist set-up, over arching theme (a sporting event, musical) and touching moment somewhere. Musical features have songs roll out every 6-9 minutes with a finale score with a guest "star" from another movie.
Critically, these shows are unoriginal to the average adult but they score well with the kids and bring in the big bucks. Can't fault them for that.
Stick with a winner!
How is this a failure? Disney's templates obviously succeeded over and over again--these are some of my favorite movies! Just imagine how difficult and time consuming animation was in those days. So many very successful shows, movies, commericals, and products are the same as something that came before it--just dressed up differently. There's nothing wrong with that if you own the rights.
Animators recycle? What a shock.
This should not be news to anyone who knows anything about the history of animation. Betty Boop shorts are nothing but cycles of animation repeated over and over. They, like Japanese animation, were often shot at under the recommended 24 fps rate (i.e., two or three shots of each frame, rather than one). Warner Bros. shorts, "The Simpsons"... the list of traditional animation sources that use techniques like this goes on and on.
In my book, re-using poses and angles is far less of a "cheat" (if that's what we consider this) than re-using whole animation clips, cutting the frame rate, or excessive use of cycles. I think that part of this may stem from the complexity of the movements that are in the animation shown in this clip, for one thing. Notice how much of the clip is made up of dancing. Dancing is a complicated thing to animate, and likely something that was rotoscoped (also an animation "cheat"). As the characters themselves, such as Snow White and Maid Marian, are too dissimilar to have been "traced" from one another, a likely explanation is that film footage was shot of live actors in the "Snow White" dance sequence, and then re-used as a reference point in "Robin Hood." It's also worth noting that most, if not all of the films shown were from the late 60s to early 70s period, already recognized as a period of artistic decline at Disney (and a period of cost-cutting techniques, such as Xeroxing cells).
Oh, and as for the similarity between Baloo of "Jungle Book" and Little John of "Robin Hood," it does bear mentioning that the two characters were voiced by the same actor, Phil Harris, which goes a long way towards explaining why the characters also look so similar.
Traditional animation is a horribly expensive art form when compared to live action or digital animation. Possibly the only thing more tedious and expensive would be claymation/stop motion animation (which also likely re-uses shots, movements etc. - Puppetoons, anyone?). If relying on prior films for reference is what is necessary to prompt studios to even consider even producing traditional animated films, then a little borrowing here and there is totally within the realm of respectability.
Disney video
Sorry, but the fact that Disney has re-used animation references (particularly in their cost-cutting heyday of the 1970s, when few would honestly consider their films "classic") is hardly a secret or a new revelation. The same information is available on Wikipedia, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_(1973_film)
Disney "recyclables"
It's actually interesting to see the duplicated scenes, but I don't think it's a deal breaker for Disney movies. It could be argued that the movements were reminiscent of a style that was distinct to Disney animation. The plots and dialogue were still unique. Plus considering it was all hand-drawn back then, (no computers to speed up the process, kids) I can understand using a template for more general scenes, like dance sequences.