SILLY SYMPHONY SECRETS

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 December 1934, Page 11

SILLY SYMPHONY SECRETS

WALT DISNEY MAKES £120,000. Mickey Mouse, whose adventures delight cinema audiences every week in eighty-eight countries, may become the forerunner of a new film art-form. Incidentally the name of this film “hero’’ in other countries is: FRENCH—MicheI Souris; GERMAN—Michael Maus; SPANISH —Miguel Ratonocito.. His creator, Walt Disney, is determined to experiment further with the cartoon-film. He is now making a full-length fairy-tale film of Grimm’s “Little Snow White.’ It will take 18 months to make, require 100,000 drawings and cost £50,000. The result of the experiment will be eagerly awaited by those who .have recognised Walt Disney as a creative genius. Already it is computed that the profits from his productions and royalties from the use of his “charcters”' for advertising amount to 600,000d01. (£120,000) a year. It is not generally realised that in the elaborate process of production the Silly Symphonies, which are no less popular than the “Mickey” series, are cut, elaborated and trimmed to fit the musical score. Only by fitting the pictures to the music can the peculiarly happy synchronisation and rhythm be obtained.

HOW THEY ARE MADE. The process, described in “Fortune,” an American magazine, is as follows:—When the idea has been worked out tentatively by Mr Disney and his assistants, it is turned over to the “writers,” who produce sequences of pictures telling the story roughly, while the composers think about appropriate music. After the final conference on ideas the backbone of the film becomes the “work chart,” on which appears a set o£ symbols for every picture in the 750-foot film-to-be. These pictures, or “frames,” arc calculated to move through the projector at a uniform rate of 24 frames a second. The number of frames is carefuly adjusted so that each “beat” of the musical score is made to fall on a definite frame. Tho “action” of the film must be adjusted accordingly. Once this mathematically accurate chart is completed, the art staff and the sound department work separately. Three “tracks” are utilised for the sound sequence, for dialogue, music, and incidental noises. The artists are divided into “background men” and “animators,” and their drawings (on celluloid) are super-imposed on a paper background, one over another, combined in this way. Apprentices are allowed to draw such unimportant things as whiskers, smoke and raindrops when they are to play only an incidental part in the production. CREATOR’S £120,000 A YEAR. The ordinary Silly Symphony costs 50,000d01. (£10,000)—27,500dol. (£5,500) to make and 22,500d01. (£4,500) to distribute. A good Disney will be worth £16,000 during its first year and half that in its second. Later receipts are much smaller, but continue for some years. The first year's returns from each film to the Disney "factory,” after the United Artists’ distribution charges arc met, are about £9,600. In the second year the clear profit on each film may be £4,400, and the present rate of production, apart from such ambitious efforts as “Little Snow White,” is 20 films a year. All told, Mr Disney spends 1,000,000 a year and receives back 1,440,000. Profits from advertisement rights (“Mickey Mouse” is used by 80 commercial companies in the United States alone) and from obsolete films bring his annual profits up to £120,000 a year.