[HN Gopher] Disney Filmmaking Process
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Disney Filmmaking Process
Author : mariuz
Score : 255 points
Date : 2022-02-07 08:43 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (disneyanimation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (disneyanimation.com)
| iqandjoke wrote:
| Imagine if DIsney+ allows access to 65,000,000 assets from Disney
| Animation's nearly hundred-year history...
| samwillis wrote:
| Slight aside, but Encanto is a brilliant film, we watched it
| together as a family first but my 7yo daughter has watched a few
| more times since. We have had to listen to the sound track each
| way on the school run for the last couple of weeks, which to be
| honest is no bad thing as its so good.
|
| The "Welcome to the Family Madrigal" sequence at the begging of
| the film is absolutely jaw dropping, if you don't watch the whole
| film at least watch that sequence to see what is now possible.
| The fabric simulation for her dress while dancing is so
| incredible.
| coldcode wrote:
| I don't have kids at all and I found it a fun movie. It's not a
| heavy plot (there really is no villain) but so refreshing after
| a steady diet of superhero movies. Look at the average broadway
| musical and the plot is even lighter; every movie doesn't have
| to be Citizen Kane. The movie is a perfect embodiment of the
| culture (from people who are Columbian, not me), the music is
| very broadway but still in keeping with the country and well
| written and sung, and the animation is of course magical. There
| is no comparison with tripe such as Sing 2.
|
| I wonder what it would be like to work on something that takes
| 5 years to make, the longest I have ever worked on 1.0 apps
| (since the 80s when I started) is 14-16 months. Just
| coordinating thousands of people for 5 years is mind boggling.
| swivelmaster wrote:
| I think we all need to have a talk about what a "heavy" plot
| is. You don't NEED a villain for a plot to be heavy - I would
| argue that Encanto's focus on internal, emotional stakes is
| far heavier (and darker!) than most movies with clear-cut
| heroes and villains. It also resonates with people in a much
| more personal way - the vast majority of people can't
| identify with Aladdin's battle against Jafar (As fun as it
| is), but I know several people who were on the verge of tears
| watching Encanto because they could identify with Mirabel's
| struggle with her place in her family.
| swasheck wrote:
| i read an article about a month ago about how disney
| animation has steadily migrated away from a villain, to the
| self (or some other internal conflict) as the primary
| antagonist.
|
| frozen moana frozen 2 encanto
|
| during that time there were also traditional "villain" types:
| big hero 6 zootopia ralph breaks the internet raya and the
| last drago
|
| agree or disagree, it's an interesting read:
| https://screenrant.com/encanto-movie-villain-disney-pixar-
| co...
| rprenger wrote:
| That's an interesting pattern, that seems pretty clear now
| that you mention it. I would also argue that Ralph Breaks
| the Internet falls squarely into the "self/internal
| conflict" class too, as the main antagonist is literally
| Ralph's own insecurity.
| swasheck wrote:
| yeah, i agree. and zootopia is self vs societal norms,
| but each of them have a more "traditional" villain, so i
| included them in the traditional group.
| jedberg wrote:
| Frozen has a villain -- Hans.
|
| Frozen 2 has a villain -- King Runeard
|
| Moana has a villain -- Te Ka
|
| Really only Encanto doesn't.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Encanto's villain is childhood trauma or trauma and its
| effects more generally.
| jedberg wrote:
| I saw the villain as the Grandmother's pride, but either
| way, it wasn't a named character.
| bladegash wrote:
| Tend to agree here, or if you were to ask one of my kids
| (5 and 8), they'd say the grandmother in general was the
| villain. They didn't see the nuance of it or the end as a
| moment of redemption. They just saw her as mean to
| Maribel and the villain.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Abuela Alma has pride for sure, but I felt like she was
| driven much more by fear and trauma.
| samwillis wrote:
| It did also have the (real life) villains at the
| beginning which creates the tragedy that kicks off the
| events.
|
| But yes no villain for a child to anchor too.
| swasheck wrote:
| i see your point, but hans and runeard were not the
| primary _antagonist_ in each of those movies, and te ka
| was actually a good being who acted negatively because of
| maui's actions.
|
| hand and runeard were essentially "living" props and if
| anyone one moana was a villain, it was maui. again, i see
| your point, but i think the point of the article and how
| i parsed it was that the pure good v evil villain motif
| has gotten significantly more nuanced recently.
| jedberg wrote:
| Hans was most definitely the primary antagonist. We just
| don't find out until the end. And same for the King. His
| actions drive the conflict, we just don't find out that
| it's his actions until the end.
|
| > and te ka was actually a good being who acted
| negatively because of maui's actions.
|
| Darth Vader is a good being who acts negatively because
| of the Emperor's actions, but he's still the villain.
| Just because the villain is redeemed doesn't make them
| not the villain.
|
| Yes, they've moved away from the idea of establishing the
| villain in the first act and defeating them in the third,
| but that's just better storytelling, not removing the
| villain. Just ask a child who the "bad guy" is in each
| movie and they will tell you without hesitation. It's
| only more subtle to you because you're an adult.
| dom96 wrote:
| Encanto does have an antagonist: the grandmother.
| swivelmaster wrote:
| Te Ka doesn't drive most of Moana's action though, and
| defeating Te Ka is more like solving a puzzle than
| actually fighting a villain.
| jedberg wrote:
| Te Ka causes the blight that drives her to set off on her
| journey.
| sho_hn wrote:
| > I wonder what it would be like to work on something that
| takes 5 years to make, the longest I have ever worked on 1.0
| apps (since the 80s when I started) is 14-16 months. Just
| coordinating thousands of people for 5 years is mind
| boggling.
|
| In software, automotive projects can come quite close to
| this. Building a modern high-end headunit ECU with software
| can take a couple of years, 100-150 dev teams, 2k engineers
| and coordinating with many other groups/departments around
| it.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > I wonder what it would be like to work on something that
| takes 5 years to make
|
| Organic is the best way I can put it. At least for software.
|
| The largest project I've been on started in 1998 with a
| software team of 3 people (me and two others) and shipped
| V1.0 in 2003 with a team that varied in size over the years.
| Max was probably about 10 or 15 people. Total team size
| including electrical, mechanical, manufacturing, systems,
| technical writers, field service, training and QA was
| probably 70+.
|
| It's like watching a child or a plant grow: you have this
| tiny kernel of functionality where you just need _something_
| to get started, not knowing how it 's going to change and
| then guiding it in the right direction, growing all the time,
| as you figure out how to get where you need to go. Pruning
| the dead branches and rotten fruit and fertilizing it where
| it's growing right. Then finally it's good enough to take to
| market. Then ship two major updates each year for 10 years.
|
| It's fun in its own way, but I prefer shorter projects. I get
| bored easily.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, in every Disney movie there's a musical waiting to come
| out, and if the movie is successful enough, it will (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_(musical),
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King_(musical), ...)
| jedberg wrote:
| > there really is no villain
|
| This is really an interesting callout, because I also found
| it interesting that there is no "bad guy" for kids to anchor
| on, but yet seems to have no problem with it.
|
| <spoiler>
|
| I saw the villain as the grandmother's pride.
| Aloha wrote:
| To be totally honest - I think in this day and age, for right
| now anyhow there is a desire for less Citizen Kane, and more
| Music Man.
| pfranz wrote:
| > I wonder what it would be like to work on something that
| takes 5 years to make
|
| The active departments and the size scale a lot along those 5
| years. The first few are usually a very small group of
| people. The weirdest part is that if you're targeting 5 year
| olds, they are just being born when you start the project.
| dmitriid wrote:
| That's my problem with Encanto: _technically_ it 's very
| impressive. All _the rest_ : standard Disney movie with
| forgettable songs, forgettable characters, forgettable story
| that rushes from plot point to plot point with no time to
| breathe.
|
| And given all the magic in it it's so highly _un_ imaginative
| with it.
|
| Isabella's lament was the best part of the movie (filled with
| emotion, meaning and imagination), but it's literally just a
| "meaningless stepping stone to discover Bruno" within the
| movie.
| kiliancs wrote:
| I am not sure why you are getting downvoted. It is
| subjective. Hard disagree, though.
| evan_ wrote:
| > Isabella's lament was the best part of the movie[...], but
| it's literally just a "meaningless stepping stone to discover
| Bruno" within the movie.
|
| Isabella's song ("What Else Can I Do") is pretty much the
| opposite of a lament and takes place after Mirabel has found
| Bruno. I don't know what "lament" you could be talking about,
| maybe "Waiting On a Miracle" which is Mirabel's classic
| Disney "I Want" song, in the same vein as "Part of Your
| World" or "Let It Go".
|
| My kids have basically listened to the soundtrack on repeat
| for two months now and I assure you the songs are anything
| but "forgettable".
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I kind of disagree. I found the elder sister being physically
| strong and an impressive leader and yet still a woman and
| also have vulnerability to be pretty new. Her arc didn't
| involve her marrying a man or finding absolution in becoming
| less independent as is common when a strong independent woman
| has a character arc. The lack of any big bad and instead
| implications of danger because of complex family expectations
| and dynamics are also new. When I was young there was always
| some big evil person (scar in lion king, Ursula in little
| mermaid). Even more recent but older movies like Tangled had
| bad/evil people with no nuance. Now a days childrens movies
| are much more nuanced in good and evil and I really liked the
| diversity of characters in Encanto and the diversity of how
| these characters get validation.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Slight nit: Luisa was the middle child. Isabella was the
| oldest.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Sorry, I missed that bit! Thanks for that catch. I
| unfortunately can't go an edit it now but I appreciate
| it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I found the elder sister being physically strong and an
| impressive leader and yet still a woman and also have
| vulnerability to be pretty new. Her arc didn't involve
|
| Well, I thought Encanto had good music and animation at the
| same time that the writing and plotting was a train wreck,
| and this is one of the best examples why.
|
| Luisa sings a song about how she's stressed by all the
| responsibilities she has. Except that she doesn't have any
| responsibilities - they are not depicted before _or after_
| her song. She 's not a leader and no one follows her. She
| doesn't run anything in the family or in the village. All
| she ever does is lift things and put them down at the
| direction of someone else. Her song makes no sense and her
| character has no arc.
|
| The movie takes this same approach to the much more plot-
| central relationship between Mirabel and Isabela - we're
| told that they hate each other, and then they have to make
| up, so there's a song that accomplishes that by hand-
| waving. This level of writing makes the song worse so that
| the movie can also be worse.
| caddemon wrote:
| I agree, I enjoyed the movie for what it was but I found
| the story pretty lacking compared to some of the other
| recent Disney (and Pixar) animated features. It kind of
| felt like the powers were chosen for the sake of pretty
| animation and/or good songs, with much less thought to
| how they work in the core story.
|
| The sister that can hear everything is especially bad for
| the internal consistency of the story. Perhaps with a
| different personality it could have been pulled off, but
| it made no sense that she couldn't contain her excitement
| over the Bruno vision gossip, then later on casually
| mentions she always knew Bruno was living in the walls of
| the house.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It kind of felt like the powers were chosen for the
| sake of pretty animation and/or good songs, with much
| less thought to how they work in the core story.
|
| There is a home run in "how the powers would work in the
| setting" (though not the story - neither character
| matters to that) in the character of Felix. He's Pepa's
| husband, and a person with her "powers" (inadvertent
| influence over the weather) would, in reality, end up
| with a husband exactly like him. He sees the positive
| side of _everything_. If there is no positive side, he
| talks about something else that is positive. He never,
| ever contradicts her. This is exactly what the local
| countryside needs!
|
| But this only shows up in one verse of "We Don't Talk
| About Bruno". And I'm surprised it happened at all - Pepa
| and Felix are so insignificant within the _movie_ that
| nobody needed to think about either of them one way or
| the other.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| > forgettable songs, forgettable characters, forgettable
| story
|
| Strong disagree on all three. IMO this group of songs are
| some of the most memorable Disney animation tunes since
| Frozen, and maybe even since the mid-90s-- don't ask me, look
| at how they're exploding all over Tiktok right now. For
| characters, I felt the movie does a pretty decent job of
| giving depth and personality to most members of a really
| large ensemble cast, particularly those closest to Mirabel.
| And even those with a lighter presence (Dolores, Camilo)
| still get their little moments that endeared them to me.
|
| And as to the story, it's unique within the Disney canon in a
| number of ways; chief among them is that it doesn't have a
| conventional villain. Yes there is a character who is the
| "main" problem, but the real antagonist is the family
| dynamics and the grandmother's trauma. These are issues that
| are super relatable for a lot of people/families, much moreso
| than the over-the-topness of a clearly antagonistic and
| unredeemable character like Mother Gothel (Tangled) or Prince
| Hans (Frozen). The comparison is even more stark if you go
| back further to classic villains like Scar, Gaston, or
| Ursula.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > _forgettable songs_
|
| Opinions of Encanto aside, I think it's fair to say "We don't
| talk about Bruno" is a legitimate earworm
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm)
| jayceedenton wrote:
| And reached no. 1 in the UK music chart.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, the eye candy on the average cereal box marketed at
| children looks impressive too, for some definition of
| "impressive". A movie needs more than just good graphics.
| bregma wrote:
| Disney animated features are not cinema; they're visual
| entertainment. All you need for good visual entertainment
| is to be good at entertaining visually. On that score there
| is no argument that they're very good at what they do.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| After finally watching the movie, well, the best description
| on the "problem" is that it's childish.
|
| But we are talking about a children movie.
| munificent wrote:
| They're called "family" movies and not "children's" movies
| for a reason. Kids are usually watching these with their
| parents, and when they're done well, every age group gets
| something out of them.
|
| _Frozen_ , _Up_ , and many others accomplish it well. I
| personally found _Encanto_ completely boring.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Agreed. I'm repeatedly shocked as I hear adults report
| they loved this movie.
|
| Of course my daughter is watching it over and over, and
| the songs are playing constantly. The music is fine, I'm
| a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan but I don't think this is his
| best work.
|
| But the movie?!? There's no growth in any character, even
| the catharsis with the grandmother is "look how much I
| suffered, have sympathy that I ended up a tyrant". It's
| just eye/ear candy, fine for kids.
|
| I genuinely don't get it, there are tons of relatively
| recent Pixar and Disney movies that I think are just
| better in all respects.
| oaiey wrote:
| I have to say that the positive vibe and the Colombian
| village cliche are very entertaining in a time of
| emotional darkness (COVID, crisis, inflation, monopolies,
| etc). They just cheer us adults up.
|
| IMHO it is an eye candy for everyone, not only kids. I
| mean there is a reason why romantic comedies just work
| telling the same kind of stories all over again with
| different actors.
| [deleted]
| rm445 wrote:
| Catching up with a couple of friends recently, it came up
| that our daughters, all of similar ages, are crazy about
| watching Encanto and even more keen on the songs. It's
| perfectly reasonable to have normal movie-criticism opinions
| about the film, but for the target audience, it's a smash.
| Another 'Frozen'.
| samwillis wrote:
| Exactly, the songs are an absolute hit with my daughter and
| her friends.
|
| Just take a look at the UK top 10, three Encanto songs with
| "We don't talk about Bruno" at number one for last three
| weeks:
|
| https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/uk-top-40-singles-
| char...
|
| Literal definition of a hit.
|
| Somewhere I read that Disney had to make submissions to the
| Academy Awards before finishing screenings of Encanto and
| weren't sure which song to submit (if they submit multiple
| songs it risks splitting the vote), so they submitted "Dos
| Oruguitas" and haven't had it nominated. Clearly picked the
| wrong song, should have gone with "We don't talk about
| Bruno", would have had a very good chance of getting an
| Oscar.
| evan_ wrote:
| Dos Orugutos was nominated for best song:
| https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/2022-oscar-
| nomination...
| gabythenerd wrote:
| Part of the problem might have been that "Dos Oruguitas"
| is a smash in Spanish but doesn't as have much emotional
| impact if you don't understand the lyrics. I saw the
| movie in a local theater in Latin America and several
| people cried with that scene.
|
| As a fun fact, every single voice actor is famous in
| Colombia because of their singing, for example Maribel is
| the leader of a popular girl band. The Spanish dub is
| incredible, one of the few movies I would recommend
| seeing in Spanish instead of English if you are
| bilingual.
| foobarian wrote:
| Aside on your aside, Kubo and the Two Strings is also really
| impressive. Until I saw the behind the scenes short video I had
| no idea it was done stop-motion.
| atonse wrote:
| It's a massive hit in our house for all of us (mom, dad, son,
| daughter). We have watched it together probably a dozen times
| now. That never happens.
|
| And for weeks, sung every song, played along with it on the
| piano while the instrumental versions play, etc.
| bladegash wrote:
| Glad I am not the only one. Have even watched it without my
| kids and listen to the soundtrack when they're not there!
| Haven't done that with a Disney movie, aside from maybe Moana
| with the soundtrack, probably ever.
| guiriduro wrote:
| Not to denigrate the fine work of many great animators and
| storytellers, but the missing element from this Disney filmmaking
| story is also the worst part of Disney: its commercial and
| political choices over why films get made and stories bent and
| subjects avoided and to what end and whose benefit. Tell that
| story.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I get the point but most art needs funding. If we go down that
| route, maybe we should start with Mozart or Beethoven? Or some
| prominent classical writers? I guess what I am saying is that
| this is not a particular unique situation.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Why Beethoven? Wasn't he the first to fund the composition of
| a significant works with the return of bank shares, which was
| relatively progressive in that it freed the composer from the
| whims of the arisotcracy/church dichotomy which existed
| before?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| AFAIK he used shares as collateral to get loans, but he
| generally had a fair amount of royal/aristocratic patronage
| from quite early on (with compositions dedicated to some of
| them, e.g., the Archduke Rudolf).
| j7ake wrote:
| Disney has no other motive but to tell stories that resonate
| with as many people as possible, because this alone will drive
| profits.
|
| In the case of movies, motives are purely to maximise the
| appreciation by the broadest audience.
| jayceedenton wrote:
| I really don't agree. Just look at the history of Disney, and
| Walt himself.
|
| Disney has a history of promoting socially conscious
| narratives and trying to promote peace and harmony. It's
| kitsch, but look at the message of 'It's a small world'. This
| is what Disney has always been about, from promoting animal
| welfare and an appreciation of the natural world, to telling
| stories of people from a variety of races and cultures and
| focusing on what should unite us.
|
| The other thing that Disney is (and has always been) about,
| is pushing the boundaries of the visual arts. You might not
| see Disney films as art, but one goal of Disney from the very
| earliest days has been to change your mind.
| eddieroger wrote:
| They are also a public company, so they have the motive of
| being profitable in their endeavors. But the goal of that is
| the same - resonate with viewers, because viewers equal movie
| tickets or subscribers to Disney+, which is how profit is
| made. It's not good or evil, it's just also a factor as
| they're responsible to shareholders.
| j7ake wrote:
| Yes, and crucially, there are competing companies that are
| trying to make even better films to make people watch their
| movies rather than Disney movies.
|
| It's not good or evil, it's just whatever the people want
| to watch.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Many of us, or most of us, are probably not sure what you're
| referring to, so it might be more useful to offer some focus to
| your argument rather than the vague suggestions you're making.
| guiriduro wrote:
| Disney make films - as part of a filmmaking process we might
| want to know why they make film X and not Y, why they depict
| characters a certain way and not others. Are filmmakers
| limited or directed in any way? Enquiring minds would like to
| know. Presumably if you were to view Soviet or Nazi
| propaganda films, you wouldn't consider it off-topic to ask
| about their provenance, or if the political orientation of
| their sponsors was evident, and if that is morally
| acceptable. Do you think Disney is immune?
| j7ake wrote:
| It is false to equate Disney with soviet and nazi
| propaganda, because Disney has to make a profit and compete
| with movies made by other capitalistic companies.
|
| State sponsored movies in dictatorships are different
| because viewers have no other choices but to view what's
| made by the government and has no goal of making a profit.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Exactly. Disney having to make a profit certainly taints
| their productions with ideology:
|
| - Obsession with royalty
|
| - Obsession with absolute power
|
| - Excuses for exceptionalism
|
| - Binary morals (good / evil)
|
| You might see it as simple entertainment, but seeing
| there is nothing to learn about in Disney stories, any
| worldview carried over to the real world _is_ propaganda.
| j7ake wrote:
| That is a valid viewpoint, but by that definition of
| propaganda you would have trouble naming anything that is
| not propaganda.
| jb1991 wrote:
| It seems you are circling around saying something that you
| don't want to say specifically, and I'm afraid I cannot
| follow the vague suggestion you are making.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| "We" make propaganda for "our way of life/moral
| convictions" - so?
|
| EDIT: I don't think people presume Disney to be immune,
| more like the presumption is probably "they are on our
| side"
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| So? Those stories are interesting.
|
| Disney is like any other BigCo. They have a million
| stakeholders pulling things a million different ways and
| they need to chart a course.
|
| Finding Nemo could have been a hilarious comedy or it
| could have been a drama that criticizes modern society
| (depending on which way you want to spin it). Replace the
| clownfish with disabled vets. Replace the turtles with
| some hippies in a bus. Replace Dory with a stripper.
| Replace the sharks with a biker gang. Replace the whale
| with a rent-seeking small town police department. Replace
| the dentist's boat with a greyhound bus across the
| country. Etc, etc.
|
| But they didn't, they chose to stick a kid's movie with
| what is a fairly heavy adult plot line at its core (and
| they distanced it even further by using animals). Why?
| That decision making process is its own story.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| A kind of moot point, this is decision process happening in
| every studio all over the world. The only people who are
| truly independent are those who finance their movies
| themselves, and they are for a very different audience than
| Disney.
|
| Not that I agree with certain Disney choices, but they are
| for-profit just like everybody else and if one doesn't like
| their production, voting with wallet is as usually the best
| course of action.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > why they depict characters a certain way and not others
|
| The writers have ideas for characters and stories, they
| share them with each other, they refine them, change them a
| lot, and eventually try to get to a point where it's a
| cohesive story.
|
| That's it -- that's the process. And if you ever get to
| work in an animation studio, you'll see just how much the
| story changes from the first pitch to the final product.
| csmpltn wrote:
| > "Disney make films - as part of a filmmaking process we
| might want to know why they make film X and not Y, why they
| depict characters a certain way and not others. Are
| filmmakers limited or directed in any way? Enquiring minds
| would like to know. Presumably if you were to view Soviet
| or Nazi propaganda films, you wouldn't consider it off-
| topic to ask about their provenance, or if the political
| orientation of their sponsors was evident, and if that is
| morally acceptable. Do you think Disney is immune?"
|
| What are you trying to say exactly? We also don't know why
| Chopin and Bach wrote their music the way they did. Why
| Picasso, Vincent, Da Vinci and others chose the motives
| they did, and painted the exact way they did. Are you
| bothered by that too?
|
| The answer you're looking for is "artistic freedoms", but I
| get the feeling you're looking for "ulterior motives"
| instead.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| He's implying that Disney has a political agenda because they
| are making movies with brown people in them now.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Mind explaining how you came to that conclusion? As far as
| I can tell you're the one who is brining race into the
| conversation.
| jayceedenton wrote:
| Um, haven't Disney been doing this for many decades?
| coolhand1 wrote:
| This was a super cool read. I miss the days of when of when I
| would spend hours trying to build models in 3ds max.
| rom1v wrote:
| Cool page (although I had to disable uBlock Origin to be able to
| see it correctly).
|
| > There are 24 frames in one second of animation.
|
| Why don't they target 60fps now?
| matt-attack wrote:
| We absolutely experiment with 48, 60 and even 120fps. We'd use
| them if they looked good. They don't, they make any content
| look atrocious. adding more (temporal) detail does indeed
| improve the realism but improving realism isn't good when
| you're delivering Impressionism.
|
| Your question is very analogous to asking "Van Gogh's work is
| great and all but it needs more (spatial) detail. I can't
| believe he's still using those broad brushes when now days you
| can buy fine brushes. His work would have much more detail and
| would look more realistic!"
|
| Once you seriously ponder how naive such a statement is, you'll
| understand why filmmakers stick with 24fps. It's _not_ reality.
| It's _not_ what our eyes see. Just like an impressionistic
| painting is _not_ what our eyes see. And that's a good thing.
| munificent wrote:
| Higher frame rates _do_ result in smoother motion and
| animation.
|
| The reason viewers prefer 24 FPS is that film is
| traditionally 24 FPS and video is 30 FPS (60 half-frame
| fields per second in NTSC). That has trained a generation of
| viewers to associate higher framerates with "cheap". The
| aesthetic carries an association that is counter to its
| actual quality.
|
| Sort of like how people prefer "rustic" furniture because
| that implies "handmade" which implies "expensive" even though
| roughly-made things can often be mass produced more cheaply.
|
| If it wasn't for the historical quirk that video was based on
| halving the AC rate which ended up being a few FPS faster
| than film, we'd all prefer higher framerates.
|
| I suspect that thanks to the rise of gaming, that association
| will fade and eventually we will use higher framerates for
| movies. You already see trends in that direction: YouTube
| will stream 60 FPS because a lot of what people are watching
| on YouTube is gaming. But because of that, people get used to
| it, and I now see more non-gaming videos at 60 FPS too.
| dahart wrote:
| There seems to be a lot of evidence that audiences that
| prefer 24fps do so because they're so used to it, and for
| that reason, expert film makers seem to be even more strongly
| biased than general audiences.
|
| 24fps wasn't chosen by animators, and wasn't decided on for
| it's Impressionism, right? If you want Impressionism, 1fps is
| better than 24, no? Disney used to animate on 1s, 2s, 3s for
| both economy and style reasons, and no longer do. Live action
| films are also 24fps, because _all_ films are 24 by default,
| and many people complain about live action in higher frame
| rates. Suggesting that Disney consciously chose 24 for it's
| impressionism seems revisionist and inaccurate.
|
| Kids watching modern TVs, however, don't seem as bothered by
| 60fps video, because they're much more used to it.
|
| BTW I used to prefer 24 fps categorically, back when I worked
| in film. Personally, 60fps looks weird to me, but it's
| becoming better. I've started _really_ disliking 24fps when
| there are horizontal pans, that kind of shot is now
| unwatchable for me, it's _awful_. I don't know why it used to
| seem tolerable.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I always feel like 24 fps, dropping to a lower effective
| rate as you start going on twos or using more eccentric,
| punchy timing, is an artifact that exists because it is
| really close to the absolute lowest framerate where the
| "illusion of life" breaks down and you are looking at
| slideshow of static drawings. My experience from when I
| still animated was that a sustained 10fps is _right_ on the
| edge, it was _real_ hard to get away with holds on the
| production I worked on that was on 10.
|
| And animation is _a fuckton of work_. Anything you can do
| to not have to do a new drawing for every single frame is
| welcomed, unless you are Richard Williams endlessly
| iterating on _The Thief And The Cobbler_ and sneaking
| around your studio at night slipping extra drawings into
| your animators ' shots to put everything on ones,
| regardless of whether or not it works best for the shot. If
| you can make a computer inbetween it for you then it's
| easier to fuck around with much higher framerates than is
| sustainable with an all-human production, but there's still
| gonna be times when you just want to hold the heck out of
| an image to make damn sure it reads.
|
| (hell, when I was doing stuff in Flash, we regularly made a
| practice of taking the ultra-smooth tweens it made and
| putting it back on twos, because it just Looked Weird and
| we preferred to save going on ones for fast motion with a
| semi-hand-crafted smear.)
| dahart wrote:
| Totally, I agree, animating on 2s/3s is teetering on the
| edge of slideshow. Dropping to twos & threes probably
| really is much more about economy than style, but your
| last point is part of why I think it's not only about
| economy, right? It definitely seems to help a lot when
| the animation rate changes dynamically and fluidly, using
| 2s and 3s for slow stuff and 1s for action. I never
| noticed as a kit watching cartoons how often the frame
| rate varies.
|
| > we regularly made a practice of taking the ultra-smooth
| tweens it made a putting it back on twos
|
| There's something interesting here, and maybe this does
| relate to @matt-attack's point. In your case, I wonder if
| too smooth is a real thing, an actual animation quality
| problem with too much mushy motion and not enough detail.
| Like crappy CG has this problem a lot, it's too smooth,
| which makes it ugly / fake looking. Reducing it to twos
| ironically does help sometimes because it hides the lack
| of motion detail, but it also helps
| matt-attack wrote:
| Sorry didn't mean to imply that it was _intentional_.
| History shows it was a combination of other random factors.
|
| It'd be more accurate to describe it as a Happy Accident. I
| might even argue that had the founders not been concerned
| with film stock costs and that 60fps became the de facto
| standard, I'd wager film as a medium would not have been as
| successful. And at some point creatives would have
| discovered the eerie otherworldly, impressionistic feeling
| if slightly reduced capture rates.
|
| I disagree with tue contention that "we're just used to
| 24". To reran my analogy, it's like all those painters who,
| after photography because widespread as a means of
| reproducing portraits, began to experiment with forms
| beyond simply realism. I'm certain that it just struck them
| _immediately_ as a compelling format. Honestly can you
| imagine witnessing the first impressionistic painting after
| a lifetime of consuming only realism? I think it's impact
| would be significant.
|
| Being used to realism wouldn't change that.
| dahart wrote:
| You might be right, but this analogy to impressionism is
| an uncompelling argument for me, repeating it doesn't
| help me. A lot of older people report feeling like 24fps
| looks higher quality and more realistic than 60fps, that
| 60fps feels campy or faked or just "strange". That isn't
| well explained by your posts at all. Being used to
| realism is a real confounding factor here, since realism
| doesn't come in 24fps.
|
| Like many people, I experience some negative reaction to
| high frames; watching LOTR in 48fps was like watching
| BBC. But I'm just not convinced that this is something
| true or fundamental about frame rates, it does feel like
| the preference might be learned.
|
| And like I said, there seems to be real evidence for this
| learned association that your argument is completely
| ignoring. People growing up now who've watched 60fps TV
| and YouTube a lot don't seem to have the same reaction.
| How do Brits feel about high frame rates? I'm going to
| ask a few, I'm not sure I ever have, and it might be
| informative here. Personally, the strangeness of 60fps
| has been waning over time, and that seems to support the
| idea that I was biased to 24 by years of moving watching.
| chottocharaii wrote:
| 1) very expensive to do more in betweens
|
| 2) 60fps looks uncanny to viewers. we're culturally accustomed
| to associating 24fps with feature films
| rom1v wrote:
| > 1) very expensive to do more in betweens
|
| That's maybe a bit native, but for an animated movie, I think
| that the intermediate frames could be computed automatically,
| for a small additional cost.
|
| I don't dispute that there might be a bit more work (I guess
| some frames might need to be adjusted manually), but I am not
| convinced that it is that much expensive to do 60fps rather
| of 24fps.
| martin_balsam wrote:
| Not really, yes some interpolation is done automatically,
| but most character animation, especially for high budget
| films like Pixar is hyper finely tuned to the frame level,
| manually adjusting the interpolation curves to get the most
| expressive animation.
|
| And then you have films like Spider-Man Into the
| Spiderverse where they did a mix of 24fps and 12fps for a
| more punchy and cartoony effect. In the end it's not about
| realism but emotion and artistic representation
| disease wrote:
| I saw The Hobbit in a theater playing at 60fps in 3D and
| several people in the theater laughed at points in the film
| that were not supposed to be funny just because how odd certain
| things looked. Although I personally enjoyed the unique
| presentation it kind of made me realize that 60fps would never
| take off.
| chronogram wrote:
| The low FPS also helps in disguising the theater. Lots of
| things in movies are fake, and if it was in 60 FPS you'd be
| able to see clearly what is happening. Additionally it helps in
| making still things stand out, like scenery or the main
| character in a crowd.
|
| For real things like sports and esports, more FPS is used
| because instead of hiding things you want to show things.
| alickz wrote:
| For live action I believe this is the case. For example the
| 48fps version of The Hobbit was very uncanny, and the makeup
| and SFX were too obvious.
|
| But for purely animated films I don't think this is the case;
| there's no makeup or SFX to hide. The bigger issue would be
| budget I think, and tradition.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| I hate hate HATE this style of web site design. Great content but
| why does it all have to be scrollbar-triggered-dynamic? It never
| works right for me. It's completely unusable on mobile and
| incredibly tedious on desktop.
| billconan wrote:
| I'm curious how do film studios manage this process using
| software. Do they have something similar to jira?
| [deleted]
| egypturnash wrote:
| When I was working in the industry around the turn of the
| century it was mostly just folders. One per scene. They'd start
| with just the scene number and the storyboard panels on them;
| they'd go off to layout and get drawings of key poses and
| background roughs, then go back to the set of shelves
| designated for that episode. After directorial approval they'd
| go on to further parts of the process - we were a Flash studio
| so the layout drawings would get inked, get approved, get
| scanned and cleaned up and put into a file (with a studio-wide
| standard for naming both the file and every single piece of art
| in the file so as to avoid conflicts when putting the final
| file together), get colored, then get handed off to the Flash
| crew who would make the animation happen.
|
| If you had wanted to sabotage our process, the set of shelves
| that held all the scene folders would have been a great place
| to go. Every scene lived there when it wasn't being worked on
| by someone.
|
| If you want a glimpse at the modern process for 2D animation,
| have a look at Toon Boom's suite of software.
| https://www.toonboom.com - not everyone uses it but it's pretty
| widespread.
|
| Though realistically? I'm not in the industry any more but the
| bits I see of the process from my friends who are directors
| lead me to believe that it's still not uncommon to have a
| checklist that lives on a wall in the director's office,
| tracking the journey of every scene from storyboard to finished
| shot.
| jedberg wrote:
| Each studio has their own (usually crappy) tools. Sometimes
| it's just spreadsheets.
|
| One thing I hear Netflix is doing right now is focusing on
| making better studio tools so that creatives prefer to work for
| Netflix because they have better tools.
| asdff wrote:
| Its not the tooling keeping people away from wanting to work
| for Netflix though. People want to work where they have
| creative freedom and reasonable expectations.
| angryGhost wrote:
| I found the Disney video on path tracing quite interesting too!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frLwRLS_ZR0
| sweetheart wrote:
| Now _that_ is how you ELI5.
| pomian wrote:
| This was really interesting to see, and update our knowledge on
| production techniques. But, Why? The big heads?
| open-source-ux wrote:
| This is really nice. Although Disney is only currently producing
| 3D animation films, it's a bit of a shame that nothing about 2D
| animation is included.
|
| The 3D animated film _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_ (2018)
| has a refreshing 3D /2D hybrid visual look that breaks away from
| the 3D aesthetic common across the industry. I suspect in the
| future we'll see more animated films with a 2D aesthetic but
| created with 3D software.
|
| _Aside_ : Disney produced lots of behind-the-scenes for their 2D
| animated films in the 50s and 60s. Here's one on the MultiPlane
| Camera - a camera setup that gave 2D animation greater depth:
|
| _Walt Disney 's MultiPlane Camera_ (1957):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw
| nkozyra wrote:
| This is likely because the approaches and techniques are not
| measurably different with a "2D" animated movie in 2022 or
| recently, unless they're doing some retro cel animation.
|
| Disney's last was The Princess and The Frog (which is a very
| good one that predates the story-in-a-box Pixar plots), which
| of course was still partially made in the same animation
| software used by others at the time.
|
| If Disney made another traditional animation movie I suspect it
| would be a lot like spiderverse: mostly an aesthetic change to
| the existing process.
| somishere wrote:
| I own an amazing coffee table book called the illusion of life.
| It essentially lays out the history and key techniques of cell
| animation. I haven't opened it for a few years now, but it
| still has pride of place within my design books.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Animation:_The_Illusi...
| dagmx wrote:
| It's interesting hearing the Illusion of Life referred to as
| a coffee table book, since it's actually a learning resource
| and reference book for those in animation. I know it wasn't
| meant as a diminutive etc... It just caught my eye because it
| made me think what the delineation would be between a coffee
| table book and a reference book
| somishere wrote:
| Yes, interesting point. I worked in book stores for years
| and use the term coffee table book specifically for the
| format. I'd certainly use it interchangeably with a certain
| style of reference book.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| _> I suspect in the future we 'll see more animated films with
| a 2D aesthetic but created with 3D software._
|
| The Arcane series has that look too and it's _gorgeous_.
| [deleted]
| saadalem wrote:
| i guess 3D animation costs 1 million per minute, while 2d
| animation costs about 15k a minute.
|
| could AI help reduce the costs in the future ? imagine making a
| movie in a short time and also x0.1-0.001% costs
|
| here's a good read too:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20201121143218/https://arr.am/202...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I don't know where you get those numbers from, but obviously
| animation price for both 2D and 3D are dependent on level of
| detail.
|
| Naive calculation says that princess and the frog (disneys last
| 2D) was 100mill for 97 minutes, while Up (released same year)
| was 175mill for 96 minutes.
|
| I don't think either movie had particularly bigger stars than
| the other, so i think the overall budget ratio gives an okay
| idea of how far your estimate is off for cinema animation.
| loudthing wrote:
| 3d movies require a lot more technical r&d, experimentation
| and tool development.
|
| This was true for 2d in the past, but Princess and the Frog
| was made in more or less off the shelf 2d animation software.
|
| The biggest challenge to doing 2d though is finding the
| talent and the justification. Take a look at what most art
| school are offering as far as animation goes...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you are arguing for, but if an
| expensive 3D film is only 1.75 times more expensive than a
| cheap 2D film, then that's a pretty strong argument that 3D
| isn't much more expensive than 2D (OP was saying it was
| 1000 to 15 ratio)
|
| > The biggest challenge to doing 2d though is finding the
| talent and the justification.
|
| I disagree. There is a lot of great 2D cinema animation
| coming out of the East. It's not just Ghibli that makes
| beautiful, well-told cartoons.
| loudthing wrote:
| I missed that ratio part. I actually thought it they were
| saying 1.75x more expensive for 3d vs 2d. I wouldn't
| expect one art style to be thousands of times more
| expensive than the other. Good catch.
|
| Also regarding 2d cinema animation, I'm speaking through
| a very American lens (considering the link points to
| Disney) so take what I say with a grain of salt.
| Andrex wrote:
| At least we finally seem to be moving on from the CalArts
| style.
| Andrex wrote:
| As someone who recently began producing 2D animation, it seems
| like 2D has only gotten more rare and expensive as 3D/CG
| animation continues to proliferate.
|
| But could be a "grass is always greener" thing.
| bspear wrote:
| This is really cool
| wodenokoto wrote:
| A long time ago I saw a rather good behind the scenes of Aladdin.
|
| I was quite surprised to see that after writing the script they
| had stand-in actors do the entire script, which they then did
| animatics (storyboards times to the recorded audio) to, after
| which they edited the story. Only then did final actors record.
| Then redo animatics and editing before doing final animation.
|
| Imagine my surprise watching the documentary on Hayao Miyazaki,
| where he has a 100 animators working on final animation, while he
| is still storyboarding, undecided on the ending of the movie and
| hasn't even casted the voice actors!
| laddershoe wrote:
| Modern Disney filmmaking (Pixar, WDAS) is much closer to the
| Miyazaki approach you describe than you'd think. It's very,
| very iterative; each film goes through 5-6 screenings, during
| which the story structure can and does change dramatically.
| People are very definitely working on the final product while
| the story is still being worked out. One pretty common pattern:
| with 8-9 months left to go until release, the entire third act
| has to be scrapped and reworked, and often big chunks of the
| first and second act reworked to match. Voice actors for the
| main characters are involved throughout, and often come in many
| times to record new pages of freshly written dialog.
|
| If all this seems chaotic, it is. It leads to untold stress as
| the release date looms closer and closer and the ending still
| isn't figured out, which compresses the schedule for each
| department to deliver a finished product. Very very rarely, the
| release date is allowed to slip (see "The Good Dinosaur" for
| example) but that's really the nuclear option, as it involves
| shuffling the release schedule and incurs a ton of cost. This
| is a big part of why these movies cost so much: compressing the
| schedule means hiring tons of people and paying them tons of
| overtime.
|
| Source: I worked the better part of a decade at WDAS.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I have a few friends in the industry and their whole process
| just seems nuts. They earn good money from overtime but I'd
| just be so annoyed doing so much throwaway work even though a
| lot of it just seems like it could be avoided with planning,
| time management and more honest pricing when it comes to sub
| contracting.
| pchristensen wrote:
| The willingness to throw away work that, no matter how well
| done, is in service of a less enjoyable movie, is why some
| movies are great while others are, well, just movies.
| Producing 90 minutes of animation is a heck of a lot
| cheaper than producing 90 minutes of animation that
| hundreds of millions of people will cherish for
| generations.
| jedc wrote:
| There was a great documentary series about the making of
| Frozen 2 that shows exactly this - https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Into_the_Unknown:_Making_Froze...
|
| I found it fascinating how the team was still developing key
| plot points (let alone dialog/animation) down to the final
| few weeks/days before the film needed to be completed!
| wigster wrote:
| I heard they were writing the scenes of Casablanca as they
| filmed it. seems to work out ok.
| tomphoolery wrote:
| This goes back to the days of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty!
| One of the pieces of old footage Disney likes to show off is
| animators sketching the movements of a girl dancing around the
| room and then merging that into the final product for Sleeping
| Beauty where she's in the dress and it's spinning around.
| ntkachov wrote:
| Its basically like writing code. Aladdin was prototyped, Proof
| of concept, then put into production. So if anything needed a
| complete re-write, it wouldn't affect final production.
|
| Hayao seems to doing continuous refactoring, so as long as you
| don't need to edit too many scenes already drawn you can
| potentially come out with a good final product while giving
| production as much time as possible.
| seanicus wrote:
| I love love love watching animation reference ftg -
| https://twitter.com/NickTyson/status/1129904441153376256?s=2...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Why even link to the tweet?
|
| https://vimeo.com/336117214
| dom96 wrote:
| fwiw vimeo requires login to watch that
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| >I was quite surprised to see that after writing the script
| they had stand-in actors do the entire script, which they then
| did animatics (storyboards times to the recorded audio) to,
| after which they edited the story. Only then did final actors
| record. Then redo animatics and editing before doing final
| animation
|
| I have no experience in animation, however that process is not
| unlike the common process in music production: a song is
| written, a demo is cut by the songwriter, a "scratch track" is
| cut by the chosen lead vocalist and an instrument or two, then
| the arrangement is recorded by the band (to the scratch track),
| then final vocals are cut to the band's backing track, and
| often after that tweaks to the accompaniment are still made.
| lc9er wrote:
| Yup. I've recorded several albums, some in small home studios
| and others in pro environments. It's always been scratch
| track -> drums (me) -> guitars/bass (bass almost always
| direct to console) -> vocals.
| oDot wrote:
| Japanese anime is dubbed, compared to western animated content
| which isn't
| felipemnoa wrote:
| I'm confused, isn't all animated content "dubbed"? It isn't
| like the animated characters themselves are talking.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I think they mean "western" animation typically records the
| voices first and then animates to them, where anime records
| the voices after the animation is complete. But I'm not
| familiar with either production practice, so this is just a
| guess.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I think this article about the wildly different scripts
| to the English and Japanese version of Batman Ninja goes
| a long way towards explaining:
|
| https://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-batman-ninja-in-
| englis...
|
| >"My first exposure to the anime process was working with
| [Hayao] Miyazaki on Spirited Away," Chu said. "It was
| just very interesting watching him do the story. Like, he
| kind of thinks up the story, and then you don't really
| write it, you start sort of thumb-nailing out like, what
| key visual moments might be, and then you start
| storyboarding and then you start animating.
|
| >
|
| >"And I was like, 'OK, but what are you animated to?'
| He's like, 'Oh, we just make the mouths move.' And then I
| was like, 'But is there dialogue?" And he's like, 'No,
| no. We add the dialogue at the end.' And you're like,
| 'Oh, that's really weird.' And people always complain
| about, 'Oh, I'm going to watch the original Japanese
| version with English sub, not the English dub version,'
| but the truth is the Japanese version is dubbed as well."
| kiliancs wrote:
| > 'Oh, I'm going to watch the original Japanese version
| with English sub, not the English dub version,' but the
| truth is the Japanese version is dubbed as well."
|
| At least personally, the voice acting seems just so
| different. My preference is not related to the
| differences there may be between dubbed or not.
| psyc wrote:
| Dubbed means the actors say the lines while watching the
| characters lips move. The Disney way is exactly the
| opposite. The animators animate while charting and studying
| the audio.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I wonder what kind of challenges this introduces to the
| production - like what are the pros and cons of each
| method?
|
| I also wonder if 3d animation changes anything about this
| approach. I enjoy watching Japanese anime but 3d
| productions can be hard to watch with an English dub
| because it's very apparent that mouth movements don't
| match, whereas with more traditional 2d-style animation
| the mouth flaps match more easily in the mind. Video
| games made by Japanese studios for Japanese audiences can
| be particularly hard to watch with an English dub.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That's just how Japanese people talk. Look at Attack of
| the Killer Tomatoes.
|
| At least at the time, the situation you find so weird was
| common enough to be satirized, based on dubs of live-
| action movies.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It might sound odd, but it is not abnormal for a movie to be
| rewritten deep into production. Some infamous movies for this
| include Die Hard and Stripes, the endings for which were not
| written until after filming had begun. Given the much longer
| process for animated movies I'm not surprised this happens at
| Disney too.
| mrtksn wrote:
| "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life" is also a great read.
| Here is short video demonstrating 12 basic principles of
| animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiGY0qiy8fY
| DrBoring wrote:
| Could you imagine if Disney decided to open source one of their
| 3D films? How much fun would that be to play with?
|
| It would be like when Doom was open sourced (I pick Doom because
| it's one of the first major video games that I can remember being
| open sourced, and the creative results have been vast)
|
| I'd like to see Toy Story 1 re-rendered using the Toy Story 4
| models (assuming Disney also made those available). Imagine all
| the technical challenges you'd face to do that: Write code to
| convert the models, sets, skeletons, animations. Upscale/create
| new textures, etc.
| alksjdalkj wrote:
| They have open sourced some assets:
| https://disneyanimation.com/data-sets/. Obviously not a full
| movie, but enough that a researcher/developer could begin to
| experience the kind of technical challenges that arise at
| "Disney-scale". IIRC a single frame from the movie Moana used
| something like 100GB of assets.
| kinghtown wrote:
| Pixar has already released production ready, rigged models of
| the toy story characters as well as the kid's bedroom. You can
| download them into blender or maya as assets and animate them
| into scenes.
| oaiey wrote:
| I can imagine. And I am pretty sure I know the industry which -
| as usual - will move first to new technology/data. And I am
| pretty sure, Disney will not like that.
| jedberg wrote:
| If this kind of stuff interests you, there is a good documentary
| on Disney+ about the making of Frozen 2. They filmed the
| documentary from the beginning of the process to the end with the
| intention of making a deeply detailed doc. The directors had a
| lot of access.
|
| It's really interesting and I recommend it (but also make sure
| you watch Frozen 2 before you watch it if you aren't already
| familiar because it's more interesting if you can recall the
| scenes they are talking about).
|
| https://www.disneyplus.com/series/into-the-unknown-making-fr...
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Does anyone else enjoy the 2d storyboards almost even more than
| the final 3d film?
| Joeboy wrote:
| I really liked the artwork at the end of The Mandalorian, which
| I guess was meant to look like Ralph McQuarrie concept art.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Even with the old 2D movies, I've always liked the rough
| sketched animations even more. That rawness really makes you
| feel close to the artist and their process and is the most
| magical for me.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Beauty and the Beast has a feature on DVD (Blu ray too?)
| where you can watch the entire movie in animatic form. It's
| great! I don't know if Disney ever did that again with any of
| their other releases.
| quartz wrote:
| I really enjoy that Disney puts a lot of effort into making the
| "behind the scenes" edutainment to the point where it's a natural
| part of their brand.
|
| I remember watching the making-of videos for the Lion King when I
| was little and being blown away that the artists went and watched
| actual lions and live-sketched them to try and capture the
| physical motions and emotions of the animal.
|
| These kinds of steps are obvious to an adult but as a little kid
| it really helped me understand that movies like that are made
| through more or less obvious steps (want to draw a lion well? go
| look at a lion!) vs. magically coming into being.
| illwrks wrote:
| We recently took our daughter to see the Harry Potter Studio
| Tour. With the magic of movies, it's easy to forget what goes
| into a film. It was eye opening the amount of detail and
| thought that goes into every little thing. No wonder they can
| be so expensive to create.
| sho_hn wrote:
| > These kinds of steps are obvious to an adult but as a little
| kid it really helped me understand that movies like that are
| made through more or less obvious steps (want to draw a lion
| well? go look at a lion!) vs. magically coming into being.
|
| I think I know what you mean. As a kid I sometimes felt really
| intimidated and dispirited by things that appeared to be
| overwhelmingly hard or seemed to require rare talent to
| accomplish. Kind adults breaking down how it's done and how
| many people or what level of preparation it takes made a huge
| difference then. Understanding how an average person in the
| normal range of abilities can do it, and that an accomplished
| professional has worked hard but is only "cooking with water",
| too.
|
| An example: As a young kid I took guitar lessons. I was
| struggling with keeping time, I was very frustrated and I
| concluded I'm just no good at this and gave up. Later on I told
| this story to a professional orchestra musician and he told me
| that keeping time is simply hard for humans, and he still has
| to practice it every day and will practice for the rest of his
| career. It's just something he accepts as a part of what he
| likes to do. This completely reset my expectations of what
| playing music should be like, and allowed me to work on the
| skill and progress further.
|
| Unfortunately I think a lot of professionals try to shroud what
| they do in a certain level of mystery instead, because they
| enjoy being looked up to and consider it the reward for their
| toils and hardships. Programmers are frequently guilty of this
| - when non-IT people naively assume every programmer is a math
| wizard and programmers do nothing to correct this idea, for
| example. I tell people that if you wake up in the morning and
| sketch out the steps of an algorithm for how you get from there
| to your cup of morning coffee, you're essentially doing what
| programmers do. You could do it too if you choose to dedicate
| the time. It's fun to see how this sometimes makes people's
| level of genuine interest bloom.
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