I'd Have Called Him "Diz"
Apr. 17th, 2012 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyWatchin' 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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 09:13 am (UTC)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
no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 09:31 am (UTC)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?