bloodyrosemccoy | I'd Have Called Him "Diz"

Watchin' Fantasia again. Ah, this brings back memories. For example, the memory that while I was totally cool with the Satanic orgy from Night on Bald Mountain, with the giant demon-mountain casually tormenting his misshapen subjects, I was absolutely terrorized by one shot of the unstoppable broom army from The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I also remember being absolutely bored senseless by Deems Taylor's intros to each piece, so much so that I always fast-forwarded them.* Which means that I was unaware just how darn uncomfortable Mr. Radio there was in front of a camera. Poor dope has no idea what to do when we can see him.

Anyway, yeah, there was definitely a synesthete working on the Toccata and Fugue in D short. I know there's been some question about whether it was deliberate or not, but good GRIEF, it looks an awful lot like what would happen if you tried to animate the Synesthesia Dimension. I have this image of Disney and Co. struggling to describe what they wanted in the abstract piece, and some synesthetic animator going, "So, just draw what it looks like, then. Gotcha, Diz. I'm on it." Not quite the same level of research put into the dinosaurs in the Rite of Spring,** but as scientifically fascinating in its own way.

*Which took dedication on our old-ass Betamax. We had no remote for it, and you had to actually hold down the fast-forward button. And the button didn't make it go forward any faster, but did distort the screen with interesting lines of static. Those were tough times.

**Yes, they look rather derpy and lumpy now, but hey, this was the 30s and 40s. It was totally SCIENCE! at the time.

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On a related note, Fantasia is the first thing I remember; my parents took me to see it in '69.

I enjoyed most of it, but Ave Maria bores me to tears. Disney did a limited edition Night on Bald Mountain t-shirt, that I sadly found out about long after it sold out.

Yeah, I always stopped before Ave Maria,. As far as I was concerned, Fantasia ended when the demons got bored and wandered off.

Now I really like the music, though the visuals are pretty boring.

I'm still waiting for Epic Mickey T-shirts. I want 3D Oswald.

Ah, memories... ^___^ I once browbeat a visiting friend into (re-)watching Fantasia with me and she got bored halfway through and hung out with my mother while I finished watching. I was not a typical 15-year old. :D

Actually I rewatched it again a couple of months ago. It couldn't really compare to my nostalgic memories, but what hadn't changed was which numbers I liked and which I didn't. I always hated the Mickey one. It was just so... stupid, for some reason. Slapstick just doesn't appeal to me, and that's basically what it is. Plus, I'm not a fan of Mickey to begin with.

My favourite is hands down the Nutcracker suite. The Toccata and the Pastoral come in 2nd and 3rd place, also because the Toccata made a lot of sense to me long before I even knew what synestesia was. Night on Bald Mountain is also very cool, I espcially love the transformation from mountain to demon and back. The Ave Maria is just pretty, even if nothing much happens. Depending on my mood I'll feel it is either a good end after the raucous goings-on in NoBM, or a bit of a deflated afterthought. But either way I love the colours in that one. I think I have an icon of it somewhere. ...Er, or maybe not. :(

Oh, yeah, and the intros are indeed boring. I didn't know the guy was a radio presenter not used to being on camera, but the.. awkwardness makes more sense now. Oh, and I also skipped over the soundtrack character bit, that just never made sense to me at all.

...I could talk about Fantasia all day :D

I actually love the Sorcerer's Apprentice, especially for the music. It really solidified the character for me, and I do like Mickey. But, y'know, results may vary. ;)

The Toccata was the same for me--I remember thinking "Yeah, I suppose it WOULD be hard to make that perfect in 2D."

In the 80s there was some special that set the animation from the pastoral's second movement to Annie Lennox's "There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)," which is literally the first song I ever heard. (Mom would put headphones on her stomach so I could listen in utero.) I ... kind of always preferred that. But it bothered me that the centaur pairs appeared to be color-coded--why do the red ones have to get together? Can't they mix it up? (And that's not even getting into the implications of Sunflower ...)

I actually just found out how they did the animation for the snowflakes in the Nutcracker Suite! For years it's baffled me, because it looks like CGI. Apparently they were on a transparency, rotated with gears ... dang, some of the effects they came up with were genius.

What are your thoughts on Fantasia 2000?

...and now it will forever be in my head that people called him "Diz", because when presented with the option, who wouldn't?!

A while ago I did a massive Disney rewatch, getting every movie I could on dvd from the library, from the liveaction Kurt Russell's teen mad scientist era, to all the 'toons. In the middle of Fantasia, my dad commented that they took me to see it at the theater when I was four, but I started crying and they had to leave. "Yeah, I guess the demons in Night On Bald Mountain would have been too scary." "No, it was the dancing mushrooms."

Funny to see what settles in a little kid's mind, huh?

My first theater movie was The Little Mermaid at age three. I was so terrified I watched it backward through the projector screen. And then we got it on video and I think I watched it on a constant loop for the next four years.

I think maybe it's not so much the movies themselves, as being a *little* kid, and suddenly sitting in a dark room with a lot of strangers around. Get all anxious and excited, then the first strange thing on the screen sets us off.

I think I first saw Fantasia when I was three. My mom said I couldn't peel my eyes off the screen for the entire movie. Which is an accomplishment for a three-year-old, even one as calm I as was.

It's still one of my favorites today! And yeah, I was trying to explain synaesthesia to my mom the other day, and how for me I get a lot of sound -> visual things. The best way I found to describe it was "It's like Fantasia in my brain." :p

Fantasia used to be the magic-nap bullet that would get my little brother to sleep every time. Accordingly, I watched/listened/ignored it several times a week for years. It got to the point where he'd throw a tantrum when the box came out because he knew it meant naptime... but it still worked.

I'm not synesthetic, but my go-to descriptions of things kind of are (Not sure if I explained that right) -- Toccata animations always made sense to me. :) I loved the Nutrcracker suite, and the Pastoral Symphony because Magical Horse Creatures (even though mom complained that the centaurs had bell-bottoms and no nipples. The no nipples thing bothered her a lot). The bits with Mickey were my least liked.

What about the completely sexless cupids? Did those bug her?

Apparently getting away with even that little bit of toplessness was a reach. Hence the flower garlands and whatnot later.

I think my Default Image Of Fairies is that of the Dewdrop Fairies.

I had to go to YouTube to recall the Toccata and Fugue in D bit, but, yes, it looks so much like what happens when I close my eyes and listen to music. The colors, the colors.

You know, I've been thinking about that bit in Ratatouille, where the flavours of for example cheese and strawberry are described with colours and sounds/music. Could that be the work of a synaesthete?

I've wondered about that, too. Could be, but I don't know for sure ...

Man, I haven't seen that movie in ages. I'd forgotten there was more intro than just Stokowski's silhouette.

I'd Have Called Him "Diz"

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