Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, John, I'm Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So? Recently, the Walt Disney Company held
Speaker 1: its D twenty three conference, which celebrates all things mouse
Speaker 1: House and serves as a huge publicity platform for the company.
Speaker 1: It's actually a heck of a thing. Disney is one
Speaker 1: of the few companies out there that can actually charge
Speaker 1: people admission to come and sit through a whole lot
Speaker 1: of marketing. It's kind of the opposite of how this
Speaker 1: normally goes. Because normal companies spend bucket loads of cash
Speaker 1: in order to advertise to people. Disney can charge people
Speaker 1: to come and watch advertising. There's more to it than that,
Speaker 1: but not a whole lot more. Now I am being
Speaker 1: a little cheeky and a lot reductive, But anyway back
Speaker 1: to the point. One of the many projects the company
Speaker 1: featured was the upcoming release of a live action version
Speaker 1: of their take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Speaker 1: And while I could certainly go off on a rant
Speaker 1: about how the words live action have been used to
Speaker 1: describe stuff that is largely computer generated. What I really
Speaker 1: wanted to do was talk about Disney's first Snow White feature,
Speaker 1: the one that came out back in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: That's boggling, right, Like, we are less than a decade
Speaker 1: and a half away from that film hitting its one
Speaker 1: hundred year anniversary. Now, the story behind Disney's desire to
Speaker 1: do a feature length animated film and the challenges that
Speaker 1: the company faced at that time are legendary. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, my dear friend Ariel Casten and I did
Speaker 1: a whole episode in a show called Business on the
Speaker 1: Brink all about Disney and the production of Snow White
Speaker 1: and the Seven Dwarfs, because there was a real chance
Speaker 1: that this project would have bankrupted the company. But one
Speaker 1: thing in particular about the film that I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about today was a piece of equipment that the
Speaker 1: company developed primarily in order to make a feature length
Speaker 1: animated film a real possibility, and it was an invention
Speaker 1: called the multiplane camera. Now, to understand why the multiplane
Speaker 1: camera was a cool invention to start with requires that
Speaker 1: we go a little bit further out and talk about
Speaker 1: animation itself. Now, as I'm sure you're all aware. Animation
Speaker 1: is the illusion of movement, and really all films, as
Speaker 1: in movie, shot on film, arguably all films period, but
Speaker 1: specifically shot on film, they are animation. It's not hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation or computer animation, but it is an animated
Speaker 1: sequence of pictures, or at least the illusion of animation.
Speaker 1: When you watch something on film, what you're really watching
Speaker 1: is a series of illuminated photographs that are shown in
Speaker 1: quick succession. Quentin Tarantino has a great way of describing this.
Speaker 1: You can find him in interviews talking about the magic
Speaker 1: of cinema and why cinema is a fantasy from the
Speaker 1: get go. Like just the fact that you're watching something
Speaker 1: that looks like it's moving, that alone is a fantasy
Speaker 1: before you even get to the subject matter. Even if
Speaker 1: you're watching a documentary, you're still engaged in a fantasy
Speaker 1: because nothing is actually moving as far as those images
Speaker 1: are concerned. Instead, it's a series of photographs, and when
Speaker 1: you play those photographs back at a fast enough speed
Speaker 1: the standard for films is twenty four frames per second,
Speaker 1: then the sequence appears to show a moving image, but again,
Speaker 1: the image itself is not moving at all, at least
Speaker 1: not on the screen inside the projector yes, you've got
Speaker 1: stuff that's moving. You've got film that's being pulled so
Speaker 1: that a lamp shines through it, and a shutter blocks
Speaker 1: the transition from one picture to the next. But our
Speaker 1: human eyes don't pick up on all of that. We
Speaker 1: see what appears to be a magical moving image in
Speaker 1: front of us. Now. In cartoon animation, this effect is
Speaker 1: achieved by photographing a series of drawings so that when
Speaker 1: those photographs are played back at the proper speed, we
Speaker 1: get what appears to be a moving but drawn image.
Speaker 1: In the basic animated short, you typically have a static
Speaker 1: background image. While you have to draw and redraw the
Speaker 1: character images to create the illusion of movement, the background
Speaker 1: can remain the same until you have a change of scene.
Speaker 1: So you might draw a larger background image than can
Speaker 1: actually fit into the frame. It might be wider than
Speaker 1: the camera frame is, but that gives you the option
Speaker 1: to have characters travel and to move the background image
Speaker 1: slightly between shots so that the characters look like they're
Speaker 1: actually going somewhere. But otherwise the background can be static.
Speaker 1: So let's say we have a character juggling in the
Speaker 1: foreground and we are using a background of like a
Speaker 1: circus tent. So you would draw the juggling character on
Speaker 1: a piece of celluloid, which is a clear sheet of
Speaker 1: plastic like material, and the character would be solid right,
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be able to see through the character, but
Speaker 1: the rest of the sheet is transparent, so that means
Speaker 1: when you lay it on top of the background, you
Speaker 1: can still see the background through the sheet. And you
Speaker 1: lay the celluloid or sell on the background, you clamp
Speaker 1: it down so it doesn't move around. You take a photo,
Speaker 1: you unclamp the cell, You take the cell off the background,
Speaker 1: and you move it to the side. You grab the
Speaker 1: next cell with the same foreground character drawn in a
Speaker 1: slightly different position. You clamp that down on the background.
Speaker 1: You take that photo, you unclamp it, You remove the cell,
Speaker 1: move it to the side, and so on. You repeat
Speaker 1: this over and over and over. It's a painstaking process,
Speaker 1: but it does allow for the animation. For the animation
Speaker 1: of a cartoon character, well, what Disney wanted to do
Speaker 1: was to make a system that would allow for more
Speaker 1: dynamic and realistic backgrounds, particularly when you're talking about backgrounds
Speaker 1: and camera movements. See in the real world, you could
Speaker 1: have a camera. You could have a set, or you
Speaker 1: could be filming on location and you move the camera around,
Speaker 1: everything in that area is going to behave more or
Speaker 1: less realistically, unless you're filming on a set where you're
Speaker 1: using a backdrop and the backdrop is causing issues that
Speaker 1: could actually be a problem. But when I'm talking about
Speaker 1: realistic with animation, I don't necessarily mean photo realistic. I
Speaker 1: don't mean that you would think, oh, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a photograph. Rather, the backgrounds would behave properly so that
Speaker 1: with the connection of camera movements, the background would behave
Speaker 1: in a way similar to what you would experience if
Speaker 1: you were to move through a real physical space. Now,
Speaker 1: let me give you an example that Walt Disney himself
Speaker 1: gave in a short film where he talked about this
Speaker 1: potenticular challenge. So in animation, just like with live action filming,
Speaker 1: it is possible to zoom in on a particular spot,
Speaker 1: to use a camera and to increase the focus so
Speaker 1: that you're zooming in on one part of the frame.
Speaker 1: But with a static background, you're zooming in on a
Speaker 1: static image. That means everything gets bigger no matter where
Speaker 1: in the background it happens to be So if your
Speaker 1: background is for say a nighttime scene, and you know
Speaker 1: in your background you have a path going up a
Speaker 1: hill and there's a building on the hilltop, and there's
Speaker 1: a moon hanging over the building in the far background.
Speaker 1: When you zoom in, all the different elements of that
Speaker 1: background get larger, Right, the bushes you have in the foreground,
Speaker 1: the pathway, the building, the moon, they all get bigger
Speaker 1: as you zoom in. And that's not really how things
Speaker 1: work in the real world. If you were physically walking
Speaker 1: on a path going up a hill at night and
Speaker 1: the moon's hanging in the air, things that are close
Speaker 1: to you would get larger as you approached. Things that
Speaker 1: are a bit further away would also get larger, but
Speaker 1: at a slower rate you wouldn't notice it as much.
Speaker 1: And things that are very very far away, like the moon,
Speaker 1: would seem to remain the same size. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: how far you walked. The moon would not appear to
Speaker 1: grow larger in the sky. But how do you do
Speaker 1: that with animation, Well, you could draw a whole series
Speaker 1: of backgrounds, and you could swap the backgrounds out between
Speaker 1: shots so that the moon would remain the right size
Speaker 1: as the camera would appear to zoom in, so you
Speaker 1: would actually draw the moon a little smaller for like
Speaker 1: the next shot, so when the camera does zoom in,
Speaker 1: the moon appears to remain the same size. That would
Speaker 1: just mean you'd be swapping out backgrounds left and right,
Speaker 1: with each background having different proportions than the others, and
Speaker 1: you would have to factor in like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: how much larger should I make the foreground objects versus
Speaker 1: the background? That would be a huge headache. It'd be
Speaker 1: a ton of work, it would be very difficult to replicate,
Speaker 1: it would be in readibly expensive. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: a non starter. So Disney and his team came up
Speaker 1: with a solution. What if you were able to break
Speaker 1: the background up into different planes, different elements, So some
Speaker 1: of the background would be closer to the viewer or
Speaker 1: the camera. Some elements would be closer to the camera.
Speaker 1: That would represent stuff that would be near us the viewer,
Speaker 1: some large stuff in the background be much further away
Speaker 1: from the camera. Therefore, it wouldn't change as much if
Speaker 1: you were to zoom in, and actually they did something
Speaker 1: much more clever than zooming in, or if you were
Speaker 1: to do a tracking shot, like if you were to
Speaker 1: make stuff move past the camera, you could do it
Speaker 1: so that the stuff that's closer is moving at a
Speaker 1: faster pace than the stuff that's further away. And you
Speaker 1: just had to figure out a way to achieve this goal,
Speaker 1: and they did, and I'll talk about that after we
Speaker 1: take this quick break. So how would you achieve this
Speaker 1: effect of being able to have elements in the foreground
Speaker 1: move at a different pace than stuff in the background,
Speaker 1: or to get larger while the stuff further away doesn't
Speaker 1: change as much. Well, that would be the multiplane camera.
Speaker 1: So at its most basic level, this camera is really
Speaker 1: a system and it consists of a series of frames
Speaker 1: of background. You have the bottomost frame that's the far background.
Speaker 1: This is the solid piece of background. It is the
Speaker 1: furthest back you get. And then above that you would
Speaker 1: have a sheet of clear material like plexiglass or even glass,
Speaker 1: and on this you would have elements of background that
Speaker 1: are slightly closer to the camera than the far background.
Speaker 1: You go up a frame, you have the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, another clear sheet with elements of background. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'd call this the mid ground, and you might have
Speaker 1: a couple of sheets that and then close to the
Speaker 1: camera in the foreground, you would have yet another sheet
Speaker 1: that would have elements of background, and this would make
Speaker 1: a vertical system. You would position the camera above all
Speaker 1: these frames and point the camera downward, so it's a
Speaker 1: vertical system. Each frame could be moved independently. You could
Speaker 1: raise or lower the frames so that rather than actually
Speaker 1: zooming the camera, you're bringing elements of the background closer
Speaker 1: to the camera and allowing to have the effect of
Speaker 1: a zoom through a landscape. You could also move things
Speaker 1: laterally so that you could have a tracking shot that
Speaker 1: goes say left or right or right to left, and
Speaker 1: have the elements that are closest to the camera move
Speaker 1: at a faster pace than the stuff that's much further away.
Speaker 1: It all replicates camera motions in the real world, but
Speaker 1: in the context of an animated film. And it was
Speaker 1: really clever, like being able to think, how can we
Speaker 1: make an anime film behave in a way that we
Speaker 1: are used to based upon the films that are shot
Speaker 1: in the real world, and not just have it be
Speaker 1: flat and only two dimensional, So this would give the
Speaker 1: film a sense of dimensionality. Now you can watch a
Speaker 1: really good demonstration of this from Disney himself. The company
Speaker 1: created a short film demonstrating the use of the multiplaying
Speaker 1: camera back in nineteen fifty seven. You can find copies
Speaker 1: of this on YouTube. You could just search Disney Multiplane
Speaker 1: camera and it'll pop right up. It includes an explanation
Speaker 1: of how the system can create panning shots by moving
Speaker 1: these various planes horizontally across the camera's view. Between them,
Speaker 1: you get some goofy scripted exchanges between Disney engineers who
Speaker 1: are working on shooting a sequence. It doesn't come across
Speaker 1: as natural at all, but it does illustrate how the
Speaker 1: system works. You also get a sense of how truly
Speaker 1: enormous the multiplaying camera was because it was quite big,
Speaker 1: and so sometimes the backgrounds that these animators were using
Speaker 1: they'd be several feet long in order to have lots
Speaker 1: of landscape to play with when you were doing things
Speaker 1: like panning, because you would physically, you know, turn a
Speaker 1: little crank and move the entire frame a little bit over.
Speaker 1: You'd be able to do that over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. You wanted to have a wide enough background
Speaker 1: to work with so that you didn't run out of
Speaker 1: background before your character has finished, you know, traveling across
Speaker 1: the frame of shot. Obviously This system required lots of
Speaker 1: fine tuning and careful adjustments during filming. Each element needed
Speaker 1: to be controlled precisely between shots to create the proper effect.
Speaker 1: If you have a character casually strolling through a field,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want the dandelions in the foreground to be
Speaker 1: whizzing by the character like he was the flash who
Speaker 1: just realized he was late to the Justice League softball game. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if you have a character racing down a city street,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want the trash cans and lamps in the
Speaker 1: foreground to just creep by and thus destroy the illusion.
Speaker 1: The multiplaying camera allowed for some effects that just had
Speaker 1: not been seen in animation before. Bill Garrity served as
Speaker 1: the lead technician on this project, and actually the first
Speaker 1: use of the multiplane camera wasn't on the feature film
Speaker 1: Snow White. The first Disney project that was released using
Speaker 1: the multiplane camera was a Silly Symphony animated short titled
Speaker 1: The Old Mill. Now, whether the technical achievement played a
Speaker 1: part or not, the Old Mill did earn Disney an
Speaker 1: Academy Award AKA and OSCAR for Best Animated Short Subject,
Speaker 1: and the multiplaying camera would get its own Scientific and
Speaker 1: Engineering Academy Award in nineteen thirty eight. The multiplane camera
Speaker 1: would become an important component behind the scenes on films
Speaker 1: like Pinocchio and Bambi. There are three of the original
Speaker 1: multiplane cameras on display today, so you can actually see
Speaker 1: one of the original multiplane cameras in one of these
Speaker 1: three locations. Two of them are in California in the
Speaker 1: United States. One of them is at the Walt Disney
Speaker 1: Animation Studio that's in Burbank, California. That's part of the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles area. The other one is in the Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Family Museum that's actually in San Francisco, California. The
Speaker 1: third original multiplaying camera is out in Paris, France at
Speaker 1: Disneyland Paris. The site Waldisney dot org even has a
Speaker 1: guide on how you can build your own multiplane camera
Speaker 1: system using stuff like plexiglass and compostable drinking cups, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Like if you wanted to make your
Speaker 1: own animated short using a very similar system to what
Speaker 1: Disney is, just much more low tech, like it would
Speaker 1: require a lot more hands on work, but you could
Speaker 1: achieve the same effects. They explain how to do it,
Speaker 1: and to me like that's super cool. Like, if you
Speaker 1: decide I'm going to try and do an animated short,
Speaker 1: and I'm on top of that, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: this multiplane approach so that I have more depth to
Speaker 1: my shot, you can totally learn how to do it.
Speaker 1: I think that's awesome. Bill Garritty, the guy behind the
Speaker 1: original multiplane camera, was inducted into the Disney Legends program
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine. It's kind of like Disney's own
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. Sadly that meant it was a posthumous award.
Speaker 1: Garrity passed away on September sixteenth, nineteen seventy one, but
Speaker 1: it is nice that the company recognized his contributions. As
Speaker 1: I've said on other podcasts, Snow White could have sunk
Speaker 1: the Disney Company if it had not been a success,
Speaker 1: and I think Garretty's work was one of many important
Speaker 1: factors that ultimately contributed to the feature being a hit
Speaker 1: and kind of cementing Disney's status in Hollywood history. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's a quick look at an influential piece of technology,
Speaker 1: the multiplane camera, and I do recommend you go and
Speaker 1: check out how you could make your own version, even
Speaker 1: if it's just to learn more about how it works,
Speaker 1: because I think getting a look at how you could
Speaker 1: build one yourself really teaches you the basics of the
Speaker 1: principles behind it, and that's more effective than any podcast
Speaker 1: would be. But I hope you enjoyed this short episode.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all doing well, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.