Fantasia

Taking a sharp left turn away from fine art, I want to discuss how mainstream animation uses music. While experimental film explored the intrinsic qualities of music in abstract ways, mainstream film and animation would use music to the end of creating objective scenery and narrative. The Disney method/style capitalizes on the intrinsic influence music has on an audience, whether it be a musical score or songs with vocals and lyrics. And as a de facto pioneer of all aspects of animation film, Disney’s use of music has become a model for animated films even today.

Though not the first cartoon to feature music, Steamboat Willie in 1928, was the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound. Walt Disney then produced the Silly Symphonies series, exploring both visual techniques and exercising the use of animation to music: Skeleton Dance (1929) made use of a musical score, Three Little Pigs (1932) was a musical in which the story was told in song. The Old Mill (1937) was also set to a score, and showed Disney studio’s impressive use of the multiplane camera in immersive scenery coupled with atmospheric music.

But I think the culmination of Walt Disney’s personal conviction of music’s importance to film and animation, was the anthology film Fantasia (1940), a 126 minute behemoth with a concert-like program of 8 musical acts or segments. It was built around a longer Silly Symphony, starring Mickey Mouse as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and using the symphonic poem 1897 by French composer Paul Dukas, based on the German poem by Goethe.

It was a very daring production, for reasons ranging from its departure of traditional narrative based fairytale features like Snow White, to the production costs that were difficult to make back as Europe had plunged into World War II. For the music in Fantasia, the studio developed the stereo sound system to reproduce the most immersive audio experience, which they aptly named ‘Fantasound’. This makes Fantasia the first commercial film with stereo sound to ever be shown.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The first segment, set to an orchestral arrangement of Fugue in D Minor by Bach, changes from live action footage of a strongly lit musical ensemble into abstract scenes of patterns and shapes moving across the screen, highly reminiscent of the abstract visual music filmmakers usually associated with fine art more so than commercial animation. In fact, Walt Disney was inspired by Len Lye, a New Zealand experimental filmmaker, to create this segment, and hired Oskar Fischinger to work on the special effects with one of Disney’s top FX men, the Chinese-American Cy Young. However, Disney rejected Fischinger’s contributions, finding them too abstract. Although no doubt drawing from abstract animation, the segment is visibly more objective; the bows of string instruments, undulating waves, mountains and cathedral windows can be seen. The overall concept remains intact, and some of the visual vocabulary is similar to the works of ‘true’ visual music animators like Fischinger’s Studies. Watch this section of Disney’s homage to visual music below:

As my parents said to me when they showed me this film as a child, ‘Disney was teaching kids how to listen to music’. I think they were right, and, at least in teaching me, Disney succeeded.

References:

• 24 Frames: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Fantasia, Samuel Armstrong, 1940) https://quixotando.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/24-frames-toccata-and-fugue-in-d-minor-fantasia-samuel-armstrong-1940/
• Fantasia (1940 film), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(1940_film)
  • Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(1940_film)#Toccata_and_Fugue_in_D_Minor
• Fantasound, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasound