Michael Sporn Animation - Splog

- There’s an extensive review of the music for the Disney animated features, from Dumbo on up through the Fifties. The article was written by Ross Care who is a composer and a film music historian specializing in animation. This was originally written for Cinemascore and can be found on their site - here.

The article gives reports on the music of composers Oliver Wallace, Paul Smith, Ed Plumb and Charles Wolcott. It talks about Dumbo and the post Dumbo features: Victory Through Air Power, Saludos Amigos, and The Three Caballeros. Make Mine Music, Melody Time, Song Of The South, So Dear To My Heart, Fun And Fancy Free, Ichabod And Mr. Toad as well as Cinderella, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.

If you have any interest in the history of film music, particularly applicable to the Disney films, this is worth reading.

______________________

- Here’s a review of the film music of UPA written back in the Fifties for Films In Review magazine. I don’t have the exact date of this article I’d saved for the past thirty years.

1 2
(Click any image to enlarge.)

- This week, I enjoyed posting the article by Ross Care on the music of Bambi.
I have been a film music fan almost as long as I have been an animation enthusiast. When I was 12, I bought my first soundtrack, the score to To Kill A Mockingbird, by Elmer Bernstein. What a way to start! This was almosts immediately followed by Lillies of the Field by Jerry Goldsmith. I subsequently bought every score I could find by either of them and stayed a devotee of both. (Animation fans might recognize Goldsmith’s brilliant score for The Secret of Nimh and Mulan or Bernstein’s for The Black Cauldron and Heavy Metal.)
______Ed Plumb in a break between
______recording sessions on Fantasia.___________I have spent quite a bit of interest
__________________________.________________searching down any bits and pieces of information written about film scores and film musicians. I virtually absorbed Roy Pendergast’s book, Film Music: A Neglected Art, with its interview with Scott Bradley and discussion wiht Gail Kubik (who wrote the score to Gerald McBoing Boing.) I subscribed to Film Score Monthly and Soundtrack Collector’s Newsletter, and I belonged to collector’s groups that would introduce Japanese versions of many scores that included cues that weren’t included in US releases or offered records that weren’t available here. In short, I was obsessed.

That obsession has quieted somewhat, though I still pay close attention to soundtracks and scores. Goldsmith and Bernstein are gone now, but there’s still Tom Newman and James Horner and John Debney (who did the score for my film, Goodnight Moon.)

________________________
Ross Care, who wrote the article on Bambi and has written and performed much of his own music - concert as well as filmusic - wrote to tell me that he has a concert upcoming in LA.
Letter to the World - Poets to Song,
Original Songs by Ross Care
June 8, 2008 2pm

First United Methodist Church
1338 E. Santa Clara St.
Downtown Ventura
805-901-2697
Suggested Donation, $15

Featuring the poems of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Christina Rossetti, Frank O’Hara, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, William Blake and A.E. Housman

Ross Care, Composer/Pianist
Diana Burdick, Soprano
Molly Kohler Pei, Soprano
Steve Perren, Baritone
Philip Vaiman, Violin
Maksim Velichkin, Cello

Notes on the Music
Care has always been interested in the fusion of music and poetry in a somewhat
neglected form, the modern art song. “Letter To The World” draws from both classic
and modern texts. The settings in this concert are written for voice and piano and
voices with piano, violin, and cello.

________________________

- Nina Paley is interviewed in depth on Film & Video’s site. The subject is how she animated a feature length film, Sita Sings The Blues, in Flash. The film just recently finished playing in the Tribeca Film Festival and will soon show at Annecy.
You can read Variety’s very positive review here.

________________________
- I enjoy Mike Barrier’s essays built around “A Day In The Life” of someone or some animation studio.

These are extraordinary little commentaries on moments in time. His most recent details a trip Walt and Lillian Disney made to New York in 1938 where they met a young Robert Taylor on the train.
Disney: June 20, 1938

These pieces really give you a feel for the time and place of the event. This is something too often left out of animation history and an aspect that I demand of good history (even if I have to supply it myself.)

________________________
- The fine blog, The Thief, has two excellent pieces on Roy Naisbitt. Roy was one of the keys to the Richard Williams Studio. The two posts feature some of the elaborate and exceptional art Roy did for Dick’s feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. Roy was probably the closest thing Dick had to a computer back in the ’70’s. The post calls him a “certified genius,” and I’d have to agree. For years I knew about Roy’s work; The Thief gives us some of his drawings.

There’s some amazing art here.
Roy Naisbitt pt 1
Roy Naisbitt pt 2

- The Mysterious Tadpole was another of the films I’ve done for Weston Woods which was also scored by Ernest Troost.

In 1984 Doctor DeSoto was nominated for the Oscar. For a full year from the date of the announcement I was without work except for one job from Weston.

The Mysterious Tadpole had a budget which totaled about $15000. That was it for the year. So much for the glory. The budget was such that I had to do the entire film with help from only Bridget Thorne, who helped render the artwork and prepare it all for camera.

As a result, I got particularly close to this film. When it came time for the music, I had formed a lot of specific ideas. I’d thought about it a bit too much. This made the job for Ernest particularly difficult; I was going to be hard to please.

When the music arrived it sounded completely different from what I’d expected. This was in the days before synthesized music, so the only way I’d heard it played was on a piano. It was a complete surprise to hear those final tapes. The orchestration was not what I’d heard in my head, and I’m afraid my disappointment was obvious.

After spending a bit of time placing the music into the film with Paul Gagne, who was co-producing the film and editing it, I started to warm to the score. By the time I’d heard it in place and watched the film with its score two or three more times, I’d fallen in love with what Ernest had done. My ideas were so simple, and he had done something complex.

That was a lesson to learn. When you’re working with someone whose talent you respect, trust that person. So often when hearing music for my films or when hearing an actor reading the script, I’ve had a surprise jolt getting something completely unanticipated. I have to say 90% of the time I’ve immediately recognized it’s positive. That other 10% of the time it’s often just an attitude adjustment I’ve had to make.

That’s not to say that there aren’t those times when I know it doesn’t work as well as it might have, but that doesn’t happen too often if I’m working with people whose talent I respect.

________________________________________

- Continuing to look at a couple of Sesame Street spots Ernest Troost scored for me, my favorite, by far, is Crocodile Smiles. This was done in 1981. Edith Zornow was the producer of animation at Sesame Street, and I saw her as my guardian angel. (I’ve said that before.) She always seemed to show up just when things seemed bleakest. The first three spots I did for her included this film and it really sold me on Ernest’s work.
I wanted opera, and he gave me more - cartoon opera. It really feels like this group would be playing in some 30’s cartoon. Again, the budgets for Sesame Street was always low. These two films had about $5000 total for everything from script/board to completion.

This film is available on YouTube, but I don’t like the resolution of that copy, so I’ve put it up here as a QT movie.

Crocodile Smiles

The Stranger was done a couple of years later. This is from one of the last films we did for Edith Zornow. She died soon after of Parkinson’s Disease. Since my father was also suffering from the disease at the same time, I was comfortable with it, though she seemed obviously uncomfortable. It didn’t stop her from going on right to the end.

The Stranger

- I think music is as important to animation as any of the drawing. (Even the lack of music, to me, is a musical choice in film.)

I’ve been very lucky to have worked with some incredibly fine composers in the films I’ve done. To that end I’ve come back to work again and again with the same few composers.

The first of those who seemed indispensible to the films we did together was Ernest Troost. We met way back on my first short film for Weston Woods. Ernest was on staff there, and we quickly became good friends.

That first score he did for me was the delicate Rosemary Wells Morris’ Disappearing Bag. This quiet little film was successful, but it wasn’t until our second collaboration that things took off - Doctor DeSoto.

Doctor DeSoto was an Oscar nominee in 1984, and I think it was as much for the music as it was the William Steig story, or Ian Thompson’s droll reading, or any of our artwork. The film was a hit and won a lot of awards and, to this day, still gets a lot of exposure.

As we were about to go into this film, Ernest had to write a score for an slide version of the book which Weston Woods was going to distribute. I suggested he listen to Stephen Sondheim’s score for the film, Stavisky. It was built around an infectious waltz and had a peculiar arrangement.

Ernest came up with something that took me by surprise. It was built off Stavisky but was so totally original in its sound that I had the first little shock that I’ve always gotten when music I didn’t expect but was excited and challenged with comes into my hands. This moment is always a great surprise and one of the pure delights, for me, of filmmaking. The only other experience it resembles is when an actor gives you a line reading that is totally unexpected, one you never would hear in your own head when reading the line. This is usually the best possible reading because it indicates pure character.

Ernest’s orchestral arrangements for this music reminded me of some small cartoon cabaret in Vienna in the early 1920’s. It worked perfectly for the cartoon Brooklyn in my mind for the film’s setting.

This is the pure character of a good composer scoring your piece.

Having the luxury of this original score prior ot the animation isn’t always a luxury an Independent filmmaker is given. It costs too much. But Weston had their score for the slide film, and I saw that this was going to be a great score for my animation. I worked with that waltz tempo.

When the fox was off screen, the camera moved in time with the waltz tempo and the limited animation also hit those beats. When the villain was onscreen, there was little to no camera movement cutting the picture to the tempos. Paul Gagne, editing, certainly helped out here.

The music not only was allowed to dominate the overall film, it was enhanced by this decision.

To hear the opening theme to Dr. DeSoto click here.

____________________________________

Ernest Troost also wrote about a dozen Sesame Street spots for me. Many of them were songs which he wrote with Maxine Fisher who did the lyrics. Two of these spots are featured on YouTube. I like the Crocodile Smiles spot which played at Annecy and is in the MOMA collection. Pirate Plan is a good song but my graphics don’t quite work.

Here’s another spot that is built around the music. For the very low budget, it was a big track for us, but Ernest pulled it off brilliantly. Obviously, he was parodying the John Williams’ scores for Indiana Jones.

Play Adventure above.