Genre Paper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqzFUhGPJg

Sarah McConnell
COM 232; Visual Literacy
Paper#4 – Genre: Animated Film

From childhood through adulthood, Walt Disney’s animated films have been a regular part of American cinematography. These films have brought us countless hours of laughter, tears, and even nightmares, but still animated films continue to be a box-office hit for all ages. From Steamboat Willie to the academy award winner UP, Disney’s animated full-feature length films have taken the world by storm in terms of entertainment, technology, and visual stimulation. Although some say that animation is not a film genre but merely a film technique, I disagree because the definition of genre is a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or likeness. Disney’s animated films have changed and adapted with technology, full story lines, and overall creative value throughout the history of film allowing him to become the most infamous animator of all time.

Animated films much like other films genres had its origins begin with comic strips. In 1906, newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton developed the first animated film, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, by using the single frame method, projected at 20 frames per second. In the film, the line drawings of two faces were animated on a blackboard, smiling and winking, and the cigar-smoking man blew smoke in the lady's face. Comic-strip animator and sketch artist Winsor McCay was the first to establish the technical method of animating graphics, suing characters from his comic strips using between 4,000 and 10,000 hand drawn frames. McCay created the interactive “illusion of walking” in 1914, the earliest example of combined 'live action' and animation, and the first interactive animated cartoon considering it to be the first successful, fully animated cartoon.

In 1922, Walt Disney made himself known for his own animation studio in Kansas City with short cartoons called Newman Laugh-O-Grams, such as Little Red Riding Hood and the Four Musicians of Bremen. The first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy, was released in which Mickey, while impressing Minnie, imitated aviator Charles Lindbergh. Disney challenged himself and experimented with groundbreaking series of animations with musical accompaniment called Silly Symphonies - a series of 75 shorts that lasted 10 years, and won a total of seven Academy Awards. Disney went one step further in 1937 with the first, full-length animated film Snow White, which took four years to make and cost $1.5 million dollars. It was 1938's top moneymaker at $8 million. This was the beginning of Disney’s golden road through the years with Pinocchio, Fantasia, Cinderella, Peter Pan and many more. Walt Disney achieved a milestone in the 1954 awards ceremony - as the individual with the most Oscar wins (4) in a single year.

As technology changed and advanced, so did Disney’s production methods. In the 1960s, he began to use pixillation, the frame by frame animation of live subjects or objects and human beings by filming them incrementally in various fixed poses. In 1964, Disney made Mary Poppins, semi-animated kids musical with both live-action and animated characters. But technology did not stop and neither did Disney. In 1995, Pixar Studios and Disney (with their first collaboration), created the first completely computer-generated animated feature film Toy Story. The visuals were entirely generated from computers, creating a realistic 3-D world with lighting, shading, and textures, that included real toys in supporting roles. It scored three Oscar nominations: Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Song, and at the box-office totaled $362 million (worldwide). In 2009, Disney and Pixar made Up, the first film presented in Disney Digital 3-D. Up was nominated for five Academy Awards with two wins: Best Animated Feature Film (win), Best Original Score (win), Best Picture, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Screenplay, clearly showing the advancement of animated film.