AMUSEMENTS

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 154, 6 March 1939, Page 4

AMUSEMENTS

“SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS’*;, Walt. Disney chose the story of ‘‘Snow White” not alone because she is an, internationally known heroine of nursery fiction,; but because in the seven dwarfs he recognised characters such as his artists could invest with all the piquant humour for. which, his work lias become famous. The idea crystallised in 1933—nearly five years ago—and the first and perhaps greatest job was to create the principal characters. Thousands of different sketches were considered before Show White finally emerged. Thousands more sketches' had to be analysed, dissected!, revised, and given the general’s okay before the dwarf’s with their very intriguing and highly varied personalities came to life on the : .celluloid. There is “Doc,” self-appointed leader of the dwarfs, with his pomposity and self-importance. He constantly gets his words jumbled in his excited search for the right and most impressive one.

There’s “Happy”, a fat roly-poly dwarf with a constant smile and cheery voice. Then there’s “Sleepy.” He sees life through half-closed eyes and talks as though he were merely yawning. He doesn’t say much but when lie does talk lie goes straight to the point without being conscious of it. There’s “Grumpy”, the real leader of the gang, f whose .chief hate is “wiimnin.” He is a grouch, whose principal trouble is that he’s soft underneath, and, though he hates females, he cannot help loving SnowWhite.

Then comes “Dopey”, the lovable, slightly balmy fellow who gets a great kick out of Everything without knowing in the least what anything is about.

“Sneezy” always talks through his nose and suffers the very, deuce from bay fever -which always makes him . sneeze at the wrong time. Last, but not least, comes “Bashful,” kind-hearted and willing, an incurable romantic, who, however, is completely ill at ease with Snow White. Even when these individual characters had been decided upon, it took a year to work out the action in evenlydeveloped sequences of drawings. Then there was the great question of getting voices to suit each character. Hundieds of sound tests were made. Some were too simpering; some too hard. It took three months of daily tests to discover exactly the' right voice-double for Snow' White. And, of course, the dwarfs; all of whom had to speak cfiffereptly and yet have the kind of voices which would not be human in the strictly ordinary tense. Men and women had to be found for this recording work just as they were for the famous Donald Duck and Clara Cluck.

lhe work lias taken the best part of five years, and here is something to think over. Eighty per cent, of the total cost of £250,(100 has gene in salaries—to artists who' created 300,000 separate character sketches and 1200 different background drawings. Couldl you imagine a film with 1200 sets in it ? Could you visualise n screen play in terms of so many thousands of movements on the part cf it.s valions characters? That is how Disney works out his films. Ho doesn’t begin with a screen play in script form. He digs in from the beginning in drawings. Ris “story men” rough out the whole ..story in red crayon sketches, and, when they have all the .sequences properly balanced, and have fold the tale evenly and convincingly, the animators start, sequence by sequence, to build up the incidents through whir'll the characters may achieve all the delicious comedy, all the pathos 1 , all the genuine mimicry which makes Disney such good screen entertainment.