When a forger is trying to make a document look older than
it actually is, they'll sometimes use tea or tobacco to stain the paper that
this item is printed on. And when a furniture maker is trying to make a table or
a dresser look like an authentic antique, they'll sometimes beat on that item
with a length of chain in order to weather the wood.
But when it comes to making a brand-new animated shot look
as though it had been produced 85 years ago … Well, no one in Hollywood
had ever done anything like that before. So it was up to the effects wizards
who work at Walt Disney Animation Studios to come up with ways to artificially
age "Get A Horse!" Make this modern day Mickey Mouse cartoon look
like it had actually been made back in Walt's time.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
"That was the real challenge with this project. Making
the first two minutes of 'Get A Horse!' look like this cartoon really was some sort
of long-lost Mickey Mouse short that Disney had just been pulled out of its
vault," explained Lauren MacMullan, the director of this new WDAS
production. "I mean, when you look at the Mickey cartoons that Disney
Studios actually produced back in the late 1920s, there are all of these visual
cues — scratches on the film, gate weave, emulsion flicker, dust & cel
damage — up there on screen that then tell your brain that this animated short
really is 80-something years-old. So in order to get the audience to buy into
the idea that 'Get A Horse!' actually was made back in 1928 or 1929, we had to
create a bunch of ways to digitally simulate film damage."
And one of the main ways that Lauren & her production
team did this was by going frame-by-frame through "Get A Horse!" and
then deliberately picking a moment where they could then insert a pretty
obvious mistake.
"You have to remember that — back when Disney Studios
was originally making that first round of Mickey Mouse shorts — they didn't
have a whole lot of time or money to spare. So sometimes shorts with animation
mistakes in them just went out the door," MacMullan continued. "So in
order to make 'Get A Horse!' look like the sort of short that Disney Studios
made back when Walt & his animators were still rushing, we actually had to
tell our clean-up ladies to occasionally mis-register a foot on a
character."
(L to R) "Get A Horse!" director Lauren MacMullan and producer Dorothy McKim.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
Lauren and her "Get A Horse!" crew also adjusted
the brightness level in individual frames of this animated short to replicate
that flickering quality which you often see in
black & white films that were produced during this period in Hollywood
history.
"And there's kind of an interesting story behind that
flickering effect. You see, this was supposedly because — back in 1928 — the current flowing through Southern
California's power grid wasn't really all that steady. So when
these animation cells were placed under electrical lights in front of a camera
so that each individual frame could then be shot … Well, because the current
wasn't steady, the light levels between individual frames would then go up
& down," MacMullan stated. "So in order to make 'Get A
Horse!" look as though it had actually been produced during this exact
same period in Hollywood history, we then had to go through and adjust the
light level on thousands of individual frames of film. Just so our faux 1928
production would then look like the real thing."
Another way that Lauren & "Get A Horse!"
producer Dorothy McKim tried to trick audiences into thinking that this 2013
production was actually made back in 1928 was by pulling authentic audio off of
Mickey Mouse cartoons from this same period and then dropping these sound
effects into this short's soundtrack.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
"We found this company that could pull the original
sound effects off of those old Mickey Mouse shorts and clean them up, though
not too much," MacMullan stated. "You see, we wanted audiences to
hear some hiss & pop as they watched 'Get A Horse!' So that the audio &
the image came together to really sell the idea that this brand-new black &
white animated cartoon footage was actually something that had been created
back in the 1920s."
And when they couldn't find just the sound effect from that
period to drop into their new animated short, Lauren & Dorothy turned to
the Imagineers. Who — as it turns out — still have many of the sound effects
tools that Disney Legend Jimmy MacDonald used when he was adding many of those
distinctly Disney noises that you hear on the soundtracks of Disney animated
features & shorts.
"The staff of the Walt Disney Archives also played a
big part in getting 'Get A Horse!' just right. They're the ones who provided us
with those Walt Disney Studios Christmas Cards from the late 1920s & early
1930s. Which is what told us what the proper colors were to use for Mickey,
Minnie, Horace, Clarabelle and Peter," MacMullan continued. "Because
you have to remember that it wouldn't be 'til 1935 that Walt produced the first
color Mickey Mouse cartoon, 'The Band Concert.' So the only way we knew the
appropriate colors to use for these characters for a short that was supposed to
have been produced before 'The Band Concert' was by referencing those Christmas
cards."
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
And Lauren & Dorothy did all this work just so — when
(SPOILER AHEAD) Pete hurls Mickey & Horace through the screen and they then
become these full-color 3D CG characters — "Get A Horse!" would then
seem that much magical & startling to the people seated out there in the
audience.
"That's the only way that this animated short was going
to work. We had to take the time to properly establish our world. Put all of
this detail up there on screen that tells you that this animated short really
was something from the 1920s," MacMullan concluded. "If we didn't do
that, then our 'Purple Rose of Cairo
' moment — when (SPOILER AHEAD) Mickey
comes off the screen and is then stuck outside of the movie in front of the audience — never would have
worked."
Having seen "Get A Horse!" ( which will be shown
in front of "Frozen" when that new Walt Disney Animation Studios
production opens in theaters nationwide on November 27th) a couple of times
now, I can assure you that this new animated short really does work in a very
big way. Thanks — in large part — to all of the extra effort that Lauren
& Dorothy put into making this WDAS production look & sound as old as
possible.