Music and the Animated Pictur

Music and the Animated Pictur
There may be no way of drawing a comparison, emotionally or in magnitude, between a spectacle of nature as painted in Mr. Kipling’s lines and Micley Mouse’ s performance in glorious black and white, as he bounced through Steamboat Willie, the first animated cartoon with sound. But, one thing is certain-Mickey and his music have had the greater ompact world wide. The sunrise, inspiring as it is, is for now-Mickey and his music is for days and days into time. Steamboat Willie, the third Mickey short to be made, was the first tu be exhibited. The opening was on November 18, 1928, at the “Colony” theater in New Y ork city. The day Mickey started bouncing to the sound of nusic, the entertainment curtain opened wider and wider and the animated picurte took on a new and exciting dimension. The shorts pictures to follow were musically constructed to the “beat”--all carefully planned out in entirety by the director and his musician, cozily housed in their “music room”, before animation was even begun.
Gradually we began to look to music to further enhance our pictures tather than to “control” then. We pulled away from the “beat” domination. With SNOW WHITE the animated picture became an exciting competitor to the live action film. Linear drawn characters, moving in the imaginative world of Walt Disney animation, pushed to the front, right, an Stromboll would say: “In the public’s eye”, and with those drawings came a new and wxpressive use of music in our films, giving support and punctuation to moods, locales and action. Music became a vital part of our story, adding new emotional pleasures and meaning to our pictures. And then came those wonderful moments when musical instruments interpreted the personalities of our characters and the characters “did speak through music”.
In PETER AND WOLF the bassoon, you remember, was the personality and voice of the “Grandfather” . The oboe, melancholy in its sound, was Sascha’ s friend, the “Duck”. The flute, with its pitch and note capabilites, too, found his identity in an instrument and melody. In PETER AND WOLF, so closely were the instruments and music related to the characters’ personalities and actions that all musical notes in the
score, where relevant to the scene, were copied onto the exposure sheet in proper place, often in a diagonal way that would suggest the “upscale”or “down’scale”,movenent of the musical phrase, giving a positive “dialogue”inflection and interpretation.
Music can interpret any visual happening. The sweep and grandeur o f the countryside transcends reality when sounds fo music are part of the picture. And the fury of a thunderstorm over the canyon, or that which was Maleficent, reaches a visual crescendo when supported by interpretive music. The humor and carm so often seen in the personality and movements fo a bird, an animal or a human is two fold when supported by complimentary music. As noted, in PETER AND WOLF the choice of the instrument, as well as the musical theme, was impotant to the development of a given character on the screen. It was a strong identification of that character’ s personalty. It was as much a part of him as were his physical makeup and actions. In contrast, the tortoise in TORTOISE AND THE HARE had a thewme that instantly said: “Slow-persietent-determined.”In each of these themes, like many others, the animatous found a “spirit”to use in theeir animation. This is ture in all we do, we try to be on target.
Perhaps today, Olli’ s show would be considered crude, but it surely is a graphic illustration fo the value and need of music in our entertainment.
Think about it: Sight and Sound—so complimentary, ome to the other.。