Over at the hat building this afternoon, camera crews from South America were out front doing stand-ups tied to The Princess and the Frog, while displays for the movie decorated the lobby. Disney animators upstairs (the hand-drawn division) speculated what the opening weekend gross might be ... and crossed their fingers.
But TP&TF is over and done, and now in the hands of the movie-going public. What's happening inside hat just now, production-wise, is Rapunzel ...
"Half of Rapunzel's story has been approved and we don't have a problem with stockpiling footage anymore. Ninety-one feet has been animated, mainly teaser stuff going onto The Princess and the Frog's DVD, and most of the animators for the show have been hired. We're going to be pushing the pedal to the metal for the next nine months ..."
I talked to a sampling of Rapunzel's animators and they told me overtime on the feature has been going on for a few weeks now:
"We've been working Saturdays, and working ten-hour days Monday through Friday. Probably by February we'll be doing seven-day weeks. There's a lot of work to do ..."
According to one staffer, the picture is in good shape, the story kinks worked out: "Now we're tweaking things, like an action sequence that has to be plussed, with all the characters given stuff to do, things like that ..."
At the same time, Winnie the Pooh is rolling along, with animation soon to start. In case you haven't consulted your calendar, Rapunzel comes out next November, and Pooh next Spring.
And of course we'll know how Frog is doing at the nation's box offices in a matter of hours, won't we?
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It amazes me that a picture can be in development for ten years and everyone winds up working 7-day weeks in the last year to get it done. Oh, sweet animation...
Do you know who is animating which Pooh character? All I know is Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg are working on it.
Maybe someday Disney will get it's act together, but not anytime soon. The place is run like they've never made an animated film before.
Thanks Steve for news...
I hope Rapunzel will be a very serious movie with a lot of heart, not only a simply comedy... Disney must to create classic fairy tale with a lot of heart... Do you know something about the style of the movie?
And... another question: what about The Snow Queen?
A lot of the same sup's from TP and TF will be working on Pooh.
I heard that Chris Buck is directing Snow Queen. Is this true?
Rapunzel is a very classic fairy tale with some serious elements, lots of action, heart, and some comedy. It feels a lot like Beauty and the Beast.
So we won't be seeing anything from Rapunzel until TP&TF is released on DVD? I'm guessing this will be in March or April. Not too long, though I was hoping for a teaser trailer of Rapunzel attached to TP&TF.
I heard that Chris Buck is directing Snow Queen. Is this true?
Chris, I'm told, is the director of Snow Queen. There's no co-director as of now.
It amazes me that a picture can be in development for ten years and everyone winds up working 7-day weeks in the last year to get it done.
It's true that R has been in development for a long time, but to be fair, it's been development under different studio regimes and had a variety of incarnations.
It was a straight fairy tale. And then, after Shrek, Eisner wanted it to be more like that fairy tale.
Then it had another permutation under the David Stainton regime, and now still another with Lasseter in charge.
But yeah, animation sometimes has long development, But the 7-day production weeks have little to do with story development. They've got a lot of footage to do, and nine months to do it in. It's a production choice, and hardly new. The bulk of Snow White was animated in under a year.
Thanks for the reply Steve. My statement wasn't a dig at them - I know development has been weird. Unbraided, etc, although there are a few versions I probably don't know about. I'd love someday to see how the story changed over the years, but I doubt we ever will.
Anyway, it's just another one of those things that no matter how long or how much I follow animation I'm still surprised by. You follow a project forever, keep hearing about it on and off for years, get a greenlight and a release date, and it seems like animation starts a couple of weeks before the film's supposed to hit theaters. I know it's the way of the world (as you point out with Snow White), but it's still hard to believe. To the layperson it would seem like cracking the story would be easier and quicker than the actual animating.
I always say that most of the time I'm shocked that animated film exists at all. It's hard.
Yeah, I read that Chris was directing Snow Queen over at Blue Sky Disney. They also mentioned that Joe Jump is being done by Rich Moore. Any word on how that one is progressing?
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