Why I Do What I Do and Kvetch at the Same Time
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Let’s take a look at the anthology Storytelling in Animation, and in particular the transcript of a panel discussion that was composed of the editor (Canemaker), Schneider who at the time was Walt Disney Feature Animation Vice President under Katzenberg, Joe Ranft who was doing story at Disney and later went on to be a major story force at Pixar, Jerry Rees who co-wrote and directed THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER as well as numerous shorts for various Disney attractions, and children’s book author and illustrator - and arguably the greatest story artist in the history of animation - the late Bill Peet who wrote the very first screenplay for an animated feature, 101 DALMATIANS. The opinions expressed in this conversation are as varied and disparate as just about any other conversation in the animation industry. Each observation and even some of the platitudes are things I’ve found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with at one time or another. Some of the most revealing thoughts are expressed by Schneider on page 73:
“I’m working with two different processes. I’d like to go back to BillPeet’s metaphor of a train leaving the station. I happen to think personality, character and story go hand in hand. It’s like the train leaving the station without an engine, with the passengers on it - it would be a very interesting ride, but there’s no control. I happen to think story is your control, from which characters and personalities must work as your framework to allow the entertainment, the jokes, the fun to happen. But story is the control that governs the speed, takes you up and down the hills, and if you only have personality and characters, you don’t ever get up your hills. So the approach we’re taking now is multifold. A lot of emphasis is put on the written word, in terms of having a framework before you start exploring personality and storyboarding. You cannot do one without the other. You can’t have story without personality and character, and you can’t have characters and personality without a very good story to hang the frame on (sic).�?
Schneider is absolutely correct in theory, but his and Katzenberg’s decision to make the written word king, although it may have revolutionized the animation screenplays at Disney, neglected the fertile ground of Disney’s artist driven past. I don’t mean it entirely ignored it, but it shoved it off to the side while the writers were given a favored nation status. While there was some noise made by the “eldest children�? during this period, best evidenced by the extraordinary efforts of Brenda Chapman, Roger Allers, Lorna Cook and Chris Sanders among others, Schnieder along with his protégée and predecessor Tom Schumacher still relied more heavily on screenwriters to mediate their story dilemmas and fertilize “the process�? through the end of the last decade, all but forgetting to feed their greatest potential bumper crop - the story artists.
As example of how blind the studio was to the proven artist-driven approach to story during the 80’s and 90’s, consider that Linda Wolverton was nominated for an Oscar
© for her screenplay for BEAUTY & THE BEAST. While Wolverton’s contribution was truly valuable, and she is a wonderful screenwriter, it must not be forgotten that the vast majority of what made it to the screen was the result of Brenda Chapman’s and Chris Sanders’ and Roger Allers’ brilliant storyboards - much of which was elevated from simple stage directions into entire scenes and sequences by these artists. Characters like Lumier and Cogsworth owe their personalities more to visual development and character design than to writing. But once again in defense of Schneider’s wisdom, had it not been for a strong story on which to hang those personalities they would have been wasted. And yet, does not personality in animation gain its strength from how it is visualized much more so than from how it is written?Consider for example this tiny bit of comic mastery from OLD McDONALD DUCK, which was never written, but conceived entirely in boards
This is a pure character moment which is not easily written. Donald is not a character that you can capture in succinct stage direction, and yet these boards speak volumes. It’s not enough to write the gag - you have to realize it visually and the character is better expressed through the action as drawn than the action as described.
Of course, character and gags are not substantial enough to drive a feature film. Incident does not a story make. And to his credit, Schneider was keenly aware of this, too.
My concern with personality is indulgence. One has to be very careful no to become indulgent with a personality and characters, to the exclusion of everything else. Our tendency today is to be indulgent in terms of taking the characters too far and losing sight of the story and losing sight of the filmmaking. I happen to call this “sequencitis.�? Lots of people get trapped into make a great sequence, or a great moment, as opposed to making the entire film hang together.
I believe Schneider was referring to the tendency in all film at the time, not just in animation, although his observations are indeed trenchant if you consider FOX & THE HOUND or BLACK CAULDRON. On the other hand, I’d like to know which held more sway over THE LION KING - the script (by Wolverton) or the storyboards (by Chapman, Cook and Allers)? Because the film, as much as I like it - and I do, seems overrun by indulgent character moments that put it at risk of losing sight of the story and threaten to prevent it from hanging together, as Schneider insists it should.
I’m fairly torn about what Schneider brought to the studio during this time. His core philosophy is sound, and truly valuable. But his unintentional ignorance of the studio’s artist driven story history, I believe, got him and his staff into trouble. And I wonder if the new regime isn’t about to stumble as well.
From all indications the awareness of the contributions and approaches - and by that I mean the collaborative reliance on story artists when developing a strong story for a feature - were all but erased by the time Schneider left and Tom Schumacher came on board. I know of one exec who was interviewed for one of the infamous “Creative Executive�? jobs during this time, and when he was asked why he was inspired to work in animation as opposed to live action he pointed to how much he admired the work of Bill Peet and Dave Hand - only to be met by a blank stare from the highly placed Creative Executive vetting him for the job. She’d had never heard of either. When this fellow tried to reference someone more contemporary he named Chris Sanders - again, a blank stare and a response of “who?�? If the studio’s executives are still unaware of even its most recent example of the successful approach to story telling under the leadership of story artists, then what hope do audiences have for anything truly new comes from Burbank, regardless of the screenwriter hired to pen the story?