Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Destination D - 75 years of Animation - The Greatest Animation You Never Saw

This panel was hosted by Dave Bossert and Don Hahn.  Hahn began the presentation by telling the D23 members that were a frightening group to have to put this panel on for, because we were probably the group of people who had seen it all.  And he wasn't far off on that assessment.  Most of the things they did show are things that most Disney Animation buffs have seen, but maybe not for a long time.  The first thing they brought out was the Robin Williams Back to Neverland that was made for then MGM studios tour.  We then were shown a 1952 "I Like Ike" commercial that was produced by Roy O. Disney.  Tummy Trouble, one of the three Roger Rabbit shorts that were meant to keep the characters alive for a sequel, and, as we know, that didn't happen.  Another commercial break to see a 1950's American Motors commercial.  After that came Cranium Command pre-show from the EPCOT life and health pavilion.  Then on to another commercial break, a 1950's Peter Pan Peanut Butter commercial.  They also managed to match up footage of Walt recording Mickey's voice to the animation footage from Mickey Steps out, so you could see the side by side comparison.  The next commercial break was Alice in Wonderland promoting Jello!  It was a pretty crazy commercial but a good example of reusing animation.  We then were able to see a cut out scene of Roger Rabbit where we was the Toon Town tunnel (in Griffith Park) where Eddie is given a toon head by the weasels.  It's pretty creepy looking so I can understand why it was taken out.  In order to make it look like Eddie was realistically washing the toon pig head off in the shower, special effects made a head out of cotton candy that did literally melt away in the shower.  Another commercial break of Roger Rabbit promoting Coca-Cola.  By the way, Disney characters are no longer allowed to hold products to promote them.
The strangest and best part, in may opinion, was so storyboard concepts for Pomp and Circumstance from Fantasia 2000.  Apparently Michael Esiner was at a graduation and got to thinking that Pomp an Circumstance would be a good song to include in the movie.  So story boards were started.  One of the stranger ideas was to have the princess and their princes 'graduate' into adulthood by becoming parents.  So you see all the princess and princes leaving their castles in the storybook and beginning a procession past all of the Disney family (all the characters from the films), including the dwarfs playing the organ.  The happy couples are then handed a baby - yup, that's right, a baby.  Now, as the hosts pointed out, this idea was dropped as it brought up all kinds of questions, that frankly, you just couldn't answer, so we'll leave it at that.  As this is a Snow White centric blog, I'll just add that Dumbo delivers a little bundle of joy to Snow White and her prince.  actually, it was two bundles of joy.
The panel wrapped up with a 1990's Mickey cereal commercial, a segment on Hiawatha Erick Goldberg put together for the upcoming release of Pocahontas on Blu-ray, and finally Song of the South's Zip-a-de-doo-dah.  And no, they don't have any information as to when, if ever, it will be released.

1 comment:

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