Newport Beach Film Festival Offers Rare Disney Shorts Served Up with Expert Commentary
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Hahn went on to explain that Lebo M recorded the vocals for One by One in South Africa with children�s choirs and native singers. Bossert added that character designer Bruce Smith was presently working with John Musker and Ron Clements on The Princess and the Frog. �2D feature, by the way,� he noted, as the audience burst into applause. �Another thing that must be said is that this was designed to be an IMAX piece,� pointed out Roy. Bossert went on, �This probably had an enormous amount of talent that worked on this. I mean, just the sheer volume�there was a lot of people rolling off of various features that were going on at the time. It was kind of the end of an era. It was the end of 2D animation for a while.�

Roy mentioned that he understood the system had to be expanded to handle the complexity of some scenes. Bossert readily agreed, saying, �We have a computer animation system that�s referred to as CAPS at the Studio. We did a lot of great films during the 90s on that system. They arbitrarily set a scene to have 10,000 pieces of art, and we exceeded that. So the software guys had to come in and actually make that number much larger so that we could continue working.�

One by One proved a joyous crowd pleaser. The opening image was a brightly colored feather, drifting over a drab junkyard. Children, drawn to the color, emerged from shanties and gathered material to build fanciful kites. As the music swelled, the children raced across bridges and fields, lifting their voices and their spirits, until releasing the kites to fill the sky.

Roy Disney pointed out that One by One could still be the opening piece of a new Fantasia, as the trio joked about voting for the evening�s favorites. Seeing the film after so many years was, �thrilling, and a little humbling,� said Hahn, adding, �We work with some of the best artists in the world, and to see their work up on the screen and to hear Lebo�s music is a wonderful and humbling thing. That�s the only way I can describe it.�

Hahn jokingly referred to the next short, Oilspot and Lipstick, as, �a favorite of all of yours, I�m sure, you�ve grown up with it.� It was made by Mike Cedeno, who Hahn referred to as �one of the pioneers, with John Lassiter, and some of the early computer graphics pioneers at Disney.� It was made in 1986, before Pixar. Roy�s opinion was that, �It was trying to use computer graphics to create characters, piecing the characters together out of objects, as opposed to creating them in the kind of Pixar way.� He added, �I think we were just beginning to get to know John Lassiter at that time. That�s a long time ago.�

At this point, Bossert mentioned the Walt Disney Late Night Animation Group. �That was started as an after hours project,� he said. �As many of these films were,� added Hahn. �This sure was, chimed in Roy, who continued, �I remember [producer] Dave English coming to me and saying, �I think we need a story here.� They had a lot of pieces and not much of a story. That was the hardest part�was to try to actually create story and character out of all these creatures being kind of created out of a junk pile.� Hahn mentioned that the after hours group had a lot of passion. �At the time people would have been working on Great Mouse Detective,� he said, �So, you stay after hours, you get to work on a little film like this. It�s only been shown once, back at the SIGGRAPH Convention, the computer graphics convention, in 1987, and here, 21 years later for you.�

Oilspot and Lipstick proved to be a fairly short piece, long on character and short on incident. Two junk dogs (rather than junkyard dogs) awake to greet the day. Oilspot, composed primarily of tin cans, and his girlfriend Lipstick, made up mostly of a slipper, colander and pink parasol, are attracted to a dog food can. It proves to be the tail of an immense junk creature, who pursues them through the junkyard, eventually catching up Lipstick. Oilspot valiantly flings a shiny wrench at the creature, saving his girlfriend�s life and ending the film.

After the trio marveled at the names in the short list of credits, Hahn noted, �It�s amazing to see how far it�s come. If you see Wall.E, which is the next Disney-Pixar release coming out this Summer, it�s a tribute to the artists who have driven this art form so far.�

Next up was a film that, as Don Hahn pointed out, was close to Roy Disney�s heart, Destino. A collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney in the 1940s, the film was only completed in 2003 due to Roy Disney�s perseverance. Roy settled back and explained: �Walt and Dali met in Hollywood in 1945, more or less. Dali was out of Europe in World War II and in Hollywood. He had written some friends that he wanted to meet the three great American surrealists: Alfred Hitchcock, Groucho Marx, and Walt Disney.� According to the accounts, Walt and Dali met at a party at Jack Warner�s house. Roy continued, �I�ve always theorized, Dali was a wonderfully good self promoter, Walt was pretty good at it, too. And I think they saw something in each other that struck a spark. At any rate, they agreed that maybe they ought to try to make a surreal animated film.� Roy pointed out that this was not long after the original Fantasia had been made, and that many artists had left the Disney studio for military service. �So we were still in that sort of experimental phase of the Company�s history,� he concluded. Within the context of the compilation films that Disney was releasing at the time, a short like Destino made sense.

Roy then mentioned John Hench, the artist assigned to work with Dali. �John was probably the most intellectual of all of our artists,� Roy asserted. He became so skilled at working in Dali�s style, that eventually they could not tell their work apart. After six month�s of work on the story, they recorded a piece of music as a scratch track for the film. Roy marveled that the original recording survived as a 78rpm acetate disc, later transferred to magnetic tape. After a meticulous modern day restoration, the sound reproduction was so good that a �needle drop� was dubbed on to the beginning to make it clear it was a vintage recording.

Back in the 1940s, after six months had passed, Walt decided to abandon the project. �It all went into the library, the Morgue, as it was then called,� explained Roy. It stayed there for many years, as the legend grew, spread by word of mouth and occasional articles, speculating on what might have been. Roy revisited Destino when work was being done on an interstitial piece for Bette Midler to perform in Fantasia 2000, on the topic of the Disney That Never Was. In the course of selecting the artwork to be used, a lawyer warned Roy, �You know, we don�t actually own that material.� According to the orginal agreement, the artwork would become property of the Studio only when the film was actually made. Roy�s immediate concern was that there was some ten million dollars worth of artwork that was unavailable to them. �What if I made the movie now? Would we then own the art,� Roy wondered. �Ten attorneys and three or four weeks later, they got back to me and said, �Yeah, but the trick is, you�ve got to make the movie they intended to make.��

(don't forget to see LP Lotion for videos and pictures from the event)