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Topic: Disney re-working "Beauty and the Beast" in 3-D

Wayne Keyser
Master Film Handler

Posts: 272
From: Arlington, Virginia, USA
Registered: May 2004

posted 11-21-2008 08:50 PM

Darryl: "I think Walt's flipped in his grave so many times over what has happened to the Walt Disney studios over the years, that he has drilled through his casket and out of the cemetery."

Disney was always about money from day one. He was an amazingly canny businessman, practically invented bigtime tie-in merchandising, invented the destination theme park, and painted it all with candy-rainbow hues branding Disney product as a "family-friendly beloved institution."

I too have become disgusted with Disney, mostly because the "beloved" act was getting threadbare and the cynicism was showing: "Buy my stuff and don't ask questions, I'm beloved, dammit!"

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Louis Bornwasser
Film God

Posts: 4441
From: prospect ky usa
Registered: Mar 2005

posted 11-22-2008 07:30 PM

Remember the closer-you-get-to-Orlando, the harder the Mouse bites!

Walt was always very hard to deal with; about the only change is that now they are getting more viscious about it; therefore it is more offensive.

I have at least one theatre customer that won't play a Buena Vista film EVER again. Louis

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-22-2008 11:14 PM

Guy must not like money?

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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God

Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004

posted 11-23-2008 12:07 AM

Sounds typical of the Mouse House..every time they advertise one of their classics' video releases as "going back into the vault forever", it seems that forever is only about one year in Disney Time. [thumbsdown]

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-23-2008 10:17 AM

I still have a Boxoffice around here somewhere containing a Disney guy saying they would never "cheapen" their classic movies by releasing them on home video.

I guess "never" means "shortly."

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 11-23-2008 11:34 AM

Out of all the efforts to rework something into 3D, CGI-based movies like Toy Story are the only things worth the trouble since the entire movies can be completely re-rendered for a truly convincing 3D effect.

The The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D was okay, but not all that great. The 3D effect was fleeting at best. Superman Returns didn't work very well in 3D at all.

I'm very skeptical about anyone being able to make a 2D live action movie work convincingly in 3D. The only way to do live action in 3D is to shoot it in 3D from the start. This digital 3D conversion stuff is a bunch of costly, time wasting crap.

It might be slightly less difficult to convert a 2D animated movie like Beauty in the Beast into 3D. Still, even if Disney can make the 3D look convincing, at best you'll see a lot of flat 2D cut outs floating above other layers of 2D stuff. It still won't look like real 3D.

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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 801
From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006

posted 11-23-2008 07:16 PM

Well something to consider. Even if you had the option to make a classically animated film in 3D from the start, how would you do it? How would it look? I'm not talking CGI, but regular cartoons. The closest real life analog would be the actual cells over the background in a multi plane camera. Animated in 3D, it really would look just like a bunch of 2D cutouts being animated in a 3D environment.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-23-2008 09:53 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
I'm very skeptical about anyone being able to make a 2D live action movie work convincingly in 3D.

You're probably right about that. I saw a demo of the original "Star Wars" in 3-D at the Great States convention about 3 years ago when they were all gung-ho to bring the trilogy out in 3-D. It looked semi-OK but I had absolutely no desire to see the whole movie that way.

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-24-2008 06:34 AM

quote: Charles Greenlee
Animated in 3D, it really would look just like a bunch of 2D cutouts being animated in a 3D environment.

and

quote: Bobby Henderson
at best you'll see a lot of flat 2D cut outs floating above other layers of 2D stuff. It still won't look like real 3D.

Correct; which is exactly how 2D multiplane animation looks. So the difference then would be that while you feel the space between the planes, they will still be 2D, FLAT levels. And feeling that space between them might actually make the "flatness" of the layers much more pronounced. And how freakin sucky is that?!

quote: Mike Blakesley
I still have a Boxoffice around here somewhere containing a Disney guy saying they would never "cheapen" their classic movies by releasing them on home video.

Yah, Mike, I remember that. But then once they started seeing the big dollar signs written on the video wall, they reversed their own protestations and started releasing the earlier classics, but they said emphatically, absolutely, they would never, EVER release FANTASIA to video lest Walt send the rodent to chew off their genitals.....that classic was just too too classic of all their classics....it was a super classic. Releasing it would be anathema -- just too unspeakable for words. I guess "never EVER" means a bit later and unspeakable means, read my lips.

As for their "video vault." I have often fantasized owning a video rental store just for the sole purpose of, when Disney releases a video and they shout that it would only be available for a short time before it goes "back into the vault," I would buy a couple of thousand of them and just keep them in the back room....waiting. Then, when it's no longer available because the rest of the outlets have run out of them, I would put them out on the shelves and put ads in Variety and send email ads to all the Disney suits proclaiming that the Disney classic ISN'T in the vault at all, but can be purchased right here at Angels Video Emporium. Eat that Mouse House.

Yah, I know...it's a pretty pathetic fantasy life I lead.

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 11-24-2008 07:05 AM

"Boo Moon", "Working For Peanuts", "Lumber Jack Rabbit", "Melody", and "Hypnotic Hick" all looked pretty good to me. I'll admit that a lot of times they may have looked like View Masters in motion, and some did a much better job at creating 3D than the others, but they were still fun to watch.

But now that I think about it, wasn't Beauty & the Beast animated in a computer? It was still hand drawn, obviously, but I think it was hand drawn in a computer, not on physical cells. If so, I wonder if they still have all of the files, and I wonder if they can easily slide the digital cells around inside of the computer and re-do all of the shots. If so, that would make things much easier to do than almost everything else non-CGI they have re-done in 3D to date.

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 11-24-2008 07:55 AM

B & the B was traditional drawn animation that used computer rendering for the 3D ballroom sequence, but only for the backgrounds. I'm sure they also used the computer to track where the hand-drawn cells should go on top of that.

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 11-24-2008 12:11 PM

Right, but I think the "cels" were either drawn directly in the computer or drawn on paper and scanned into the computer and then the shots were composed in the computer using the "digital cels". If that's the case, and they still have the "digital cels" then manipulating them for the other eye should be fairly straight forward because they won't have to artificially recreate what's behind the objects when they move them around.

I thought that Nightmare Before Christmas was probably one of the easier ones to re-do in 3D since there wasn't much (if any) motion blur to deal with. But Beauty and the Beast should be even easier because they probably still have all of the original elements layered in all of the original shots.

Of course it will be presented with one projector in most cases, so the end result will still suck a bit for 99% of the viewers.

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Demetris Thoupis
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1240
From: Aradippou, Larnaca, Cyprus
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 11-24-2008 03:05 PM

Wasn't Walt frozen until he could be brought back to life! If so then bye bye ice as to the shaking in the grave part. In any case I am saddened seened both major animation studios stopping hand drawn animation and sticking in 3D animation. It looks too adult. Nothing beats Beauty & the Beast, Alladin, Lion King e.t.c. Even Dreamworks Animation did the same. Remember Prince Of Egypt & the Road to El Dorado? Oh well, now we have Kung Fu Panda!!! WOW [puke]

Jack Black in Action [Eek!]

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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted 11-26-2008 07:44 PM

quote: Wayne Keyser was the last to post
Walt's flipped in his grave so many times over what has happened to the Walt Disney studios over the years, that he has drilled through his casket and out of the cemetery.

HAHAHAHA! LOL!
That's one of the best Disney lines I've heard in years!

I don't know if those stories about 'ol Walt being frozen are
true, but I chuckle every time I see a poster for "Disney On Ice".
There is a plaque on the Disney family mausoleum which states
he he buried there. But like Grant's Tomb, who knows for
sure who's buried there?

. . . and shouldn't Walt actually be buried in a "mouseoleum?

Plaque On The Disney Mausoleum
Forest Lawn Cemetary, Los Angeles

FYI> Disney is opening a major Walt Disney museum here in
San Francisco next fall. I pass the construction site every
day on my way to the theater I work at.

Entrance To Disney Museum Construction Site

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 11-26-2008 11:00 PM

quote: Mark J. Marshall
Right, but I think the "cels" were either drawn directly in the computer or drawn on paper and scanned into the computer and then the shots were composed in the computer using the "digital cels". If that's the case, and they still have the "digital cels" then manipulating them for the other eye should be fairly straight forward because they won't have to artificially recreate what's behind the objects when they move them around.

Beauty and the Beast and all the other "traditional" animated Disney movies had animation that started out as hand drawings on paper. They have used a variety of methods in transferring those drawings to acetate cels for inking or into the computer. Nevertheless, the most natural way of getting the job done was in drawing it by hand on paper.

I still contend the end result of converting a 2D hand drawn movie into 3D will end up looking like a bunch of paper cut outs floating on numerous layers.

To get the effect to work correctly a team of animators would need to hand draw a 2nd eye/camera view to compliment the first eye and figure out how to do it right. I have the utmost level of admiration for Disney's traditional animators because I know that is just a damned hard job to do. You have to produce great quality animation by hand and do so consistently like clockwork. Not many artists can really do that. You need incredible drawing talent AND you need one hell of a work ethic. It's like you have to be obsessed with the activity and that's all you want to do when you're awake. And you have to approach it that way to maintain that level of skill. Adding in the task of estimating a 2nd 3D camera view of existing animation just strikes me as being a huge pain in the ass to deliver.

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