Music in Disney's Animated Features

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Bohn ◽  
Jeff Kurtti
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Form ◽  
Biographical Information ◽  
Snow White ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theme And Variation ◽  
Variation Technique

Music in Disney’s Animated Features: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Jungle Book investigates how music functions in Disney Animated films. The book identifies several techniques used in a number of Disney animated movies. In addition it also presents a history of music in Disney animated films, as well as biographical information on several of the Studios’ seminal composers. The popularity and critical acclaim of Disney animated features is built as much on music as it is on animation. From Steamboat Willie through Bambi, music is the organizing element of Disney’s animation. Songs that establish character and aid in narrative form the backbone of the Studios’ animated features from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through The Jungle Book and beyond. In the course of their early animated features the Studios’ composers developed a number of techniques and models that have been used throughout their oeuvre. Instrumental instances of a given film’s songs are used to comment on various character’s thoughts, as well as on the plot and action. Songs featured in Disney films are often transitioned into or out of using rhymed, metered dialog, functioning in much the same way as recitative in opera. The book also explores the use of theme and variation technique, leitmotif, theatrical conventions, and song archetypes.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty: The Components of Costume Design in Disney’s Early Hand-Drawn Animated Feature Films

Animation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarit Kalmakurki
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Costume Design ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Principal Character ◽  
Snow White ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
Character Design ◽  
History Of ◽  
Live Action

Costumes in feature films can be deliberately used for narrative purposes to reveal or conceal something related to the plot, functioning as a key element for cinematic storytelling. Costume design in animation is an integral part of character creation; however, relatively little is known about the design process. Previous research concentrates on either the history of hand-drawn animation, the principles of making animated films or character construction. This article presents several key components of the animators’ costume design process in Walt Disney’s animated feature films Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959). The author demonstrates that the costume design in these films was a multi-layered process. For example, for Snow White, the costume silhouette of the final animation is visible in the early conceptual designs whereas, for Cinderella or Princess Aurora, the principal character animators designed the final costume. Additionally, the slow production time influenced the style of the costumes: small details on costumes and complex constructions were not used as it would have taken too long for them to be drawn. The article also reveals that animators used live-action filming and rotoscoping as tools for designing costumes. Furthermore, costumes that were used in pre-production filming for rotoscope were different in their construction from everyday garments. The work of a costume designer existed in the character design process, although not as a separate profession. This article aims to highlight the importance of characters’ costumes in Disney’s early hand-drawn animated films and the different ways costumes have been designed for animated characters.

Misreading Egypt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Technologies

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.

Las Yslas de Esperar en Dios: The Jesuit Mission in Moro 1546–1571

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-606
Author(s):  
John Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Mission Field

The numerous and voluminous reports and letters which the Jesuits wrote on the Moro mission, as on all their missions in Asia, are perhaps of less interest to us now for what they reveal of the methods adopted by the Society of Jesus in this remote corner of their mission field or the details they contain about the successes and failures of individual missionaries, than for the wealth of information they provide on the islands where the Jesuits lived and the indigenous societies with which they came into contact through their work of evangelization. In other words, it is not theprimary purpose of this essay to analyse the Jesuit documents with a view to reconstructing the history of the Moro mission in narrative form but rather to glean from them some of the informationthey contain about the social and political conditions in Moro during the forty years or so in the sixteenth century when both the Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were active in the regio Because the Jesuits were often in close touch with local rulers and notables, whether or not they succeeded in converting them to Christianity, and because they lived among their subjects for long periods, depending upon them for the necessities of life and sharing their hardships, their letters and reports often show a deeper understanding of the social, economic and political conditions of the indigenous societies and, one suspects, give a more accurate and measured account of events and personalities than do the official chroniclers and historians of the time, most of whom never ventured further east than Malacca and who in any case were chiefly concerned to glorify the deeds of the Portuguese and justify their actions to the world.

scholarly journals Model baśni filmowej w złotym wieku wytwórni Walta Disneya (wraz z późniejszymi modyfikacjami)

Wielogłos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 151-181
Author(s):  
Maciej Skowera
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Snow White ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Model Film

[Model of a Film Fairy Tale in the Disney Golden Age (with Later Modifications)] The article attempts to determine the constitutive elements of a model film fairy tale in the so-called Disney Golden Age and to examine how it was used in later works, both these created by the studio and those by unrelated creators. After preliminary remarks, the author analyses three feature-length animated films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959). In these works, as he notes, one can notice a set of features that make up the classic Disney model of a film fairy tale. Next, the author discusses modifications applied to the pattern during the Disney Renaissance and Revival. Finally, he cites examples of cultural texts polemical to this paradigm which point to the cultural vitality and heterogeneity of the studio’s films.

scholarly journals Personal fund of hydropower engineer S. V. Grigoriev of the Museum-archive of the BCH KSC RAS

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4-2021) ◽  
pp. 28-36
Author(s):  
O. V. Shabalina ◽  
◽  
K. S. Kazakova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Study ◽  
Water Bodies ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Biographical Information ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
European North ◽  
Potential Sources ◽  
History Of

The article presents materials from the personal fund of the largest hydropower engineer of the North-West of the USSR S. V. Grigoriev, belonging to the Museum-Archive of History of Studying and Exploration of the European North of the Barents Centre of Humanities of the KSC RAS. The personal documents of the scientist and the practitioner are sources of biographical information given in the article and potential sources for research in the field of the history of the scientific study of water bodies, rivers and the development of hydropower in the Arctic.

Idealists and Realists: British Views of Germany,1864–1939

1975 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Form ◽  
Past Century ◽  
General Survey ◽  
Small Segment ◽  
The Past ◽  
British Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
Sheer Number

Yet another survey of the much-traversed field of Anglo-German relations will seem to many historians of modern Europe to border on the realm of superfluity; probably no two countries have had their relationship to each other so frequently examined in the past century as Britain and Germany. Moreover, even if one restricted such a study to the British side alone, the sheer number of publications upon this topic, or upon only a section of it like the age of ‘appeasement’, is simply too great to allow a compression of existing knowledge into a narrative form that would be anything other than crude and sketchy. The following contribution therefore seeks neither to provide such a general survey, nor, by use of new and detailed archival materials, to concentrate upon a small segment of the history of British policy towards Germany in the period 1864–1939; but instead to consider throughout all these years a particular aspect, namely, the respective arguments of Germanophiles and Germanophobes in Britain and the connection between this dialogue and the more general ideological standpoints of both sides. In so doing, the author has produced a survey which remains embarrassingly summary in detail but does at least attempt to offer a fresh approach to the subject.

Towards a Journey Narrative Syntax

2018 ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Christopher Holliday
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
First Line ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Virtual Experiences ◽  
Narrative Syntax

This chapter moves forward by unpacking the generic identity of computer-animated films and examines the journey narrative structure as their prevailing syntax and first line of action. In this chapter, two forms of narrative are established that are widely operational within the genre. The first of these are the “flushed away” narratives that rely upon on abrupt geographical disjuncture, and which often requires the protagonist to negotiate and quickly adapt to a foreign milieu. The second journey narrative form advanced in this chapter is the “over the hedge” narrative, which are voyages signalled as altogether more prepared or expected. This chapter explores in detail how computer-animated films deploy these two forms of journey narrative structure to interrogate ideas of mobility, location, destination and tourism through the virtual experiences they offer of travelled space. Chapter Two concludes by positioning the journey narrative within the context of film franchising and the “sequelled” narrative. Computer-animated films rarely exists in isolation, but are supported by a range of sequels, spin-offs and short films. This chapter identifies how narrative structure can be productively entwined with the wider role of film series and cycles that continues to define the franchise mentality of post-millennial Hollywood cinema.

On the Borders: Children’s Horror and Indiewood Animation

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-177
Author(s):  
Noel Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Mass Market ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on a recent tradition of Hollywood animated films which mine the intersection between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘cult’ firmaments. While there is a long history of experimental or leftfield animation in the United States, the films discussed here are characterised by a duality specific to post-1990s Hollywood cinema: they target a mass market while simultaneously addressing audiences that may reject mainstream animation in its more conventional iterations. The first half of this chapter examines the ‘children’s horror film’, a cycle that presents grotesque imagery with sufficient wit to appeal to leftfield sensibilities while still delivering the pleasing emotive content associated with mainstream family entertainment. The second half discusses ‘indiewood animation’ films, which often exhibit a comparatively cerebral patented kookiness and trippy, offbeat humour. Collectively, the ‘children’s horror’ and ‘indiewood’ animated films represent a compromise between the perceived requirements of mass audiences and the promise of additional credibility and cachet associated with cult cinema.

Old Futures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Lothian
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Space Distortion ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Feminist Utopias

Old Futures traverses the history of imagined futures from the 1890s to the 2010s, interweaving speculative visions of gender, race, and sexuality from literature, film, and digital media. Centering works by women, queers, and people of color that are marginalized within most accounts of the genre, the book offers a new perspective on speculative fiction studies while reframing established theories of queer temporality by arguing that futures imagined in the past offer new ways to queer the present. Imagined futures have been central to the creation and maintenance of imperial domination and technological modernity; Old Futures rewrites the history of the future by gathering together works that counter such narratives even as they are part of them. Lothian explores how queer possibilities are constructed and deconstructed through extrapolative projections and affective engagements with alternative temporalities. The book is structured in three parts, each addressing one convergence of political economy, theoretical framework, and narrative form that has given rise to a formation of speculative futurity. Six main chapters focus on white feminist utopias and dystopias of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; on Afrofuturist narratives that turn the dehumanization of black lives into feminist and queer visions of transformation; on futuristic landscapes in queer speculative cinema; and on fan creators’ digital interventions into televised futures. Two shorter chapters, named “Wormholes” in homage to the science fiction trope of a time-space distortion that connects distant locations, highlight current resonances of the old futures under discussion.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document