American Cinematographer - October 1986 - 80

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emphasis was on
opposed to effects, no mul¬
tiplanes, no rotoscoping, and few ani¬
mation effects were incorporated. "This
was not an effects picture," stressed
Henn. "Effects were more supportive
than essential. We haven't skimped on
character

effects

-

as

we

used

a

lot of shadows,

highlights and air-brushed burn-ins. Spe¬
cial effects should be used just to give a
film that extra magic and believability.
They got carried away with them on
Black Cauldron, which

was more

dis¬

play-oriented. They thought it would
save the picture and hide the lack of
story. But you can't be more concerned
about the icing before baking the cake
A special
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first."
Shadow effects

were

created

by first establishing the light source in a
given scene. Then, during pencil tests
on a separate sheet of paper, animators
drew a shadow similar in contour to the
character. The outline was Xeroxed onto
a

cel, which

was

filled in black by ink

and paint. At the animation camera, the
characters and background were pho¬

tographed with 60%
was

rewound and

a

exposure. The film
second pass made

of the remaining 40% with the shadow
between the character and the back¬

ground. This

the shadow a thin,
transparent quality, since the back¬
ground over which it passed was only
gave

60% visible. It also added to the cost,
each scene must be photographed
twice.
as

The computerized ACES (Au¬
tomatic Camera Effects System) built for
The Black Hole, helped reduce the

shooting time and correct for gear back¬
lash. The motion control tracking sys¬
tem, now setup on the animation crane,
enabled operators to program intricate
moves and repeat them as many times
as necessary with great accuracy. Any
be mounted to it - 35mm
70mm. (Most of the studio's cam¬

camera can
or

employ the fixed-pin Bell & Howell
slapping movement whereby the regis¬
tration pins stay rigid and the film
moves in relation to them.) The camera
person must change the artwork and
type the exposure and track sheet infor¬
eras

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78

*

mation with the correct accelerations
and decelerations, right into the com¬

The system also works well for
shooting top-light/back-light mattes for
puter.

rotoscoping and "strip scenes." This
way, moving backgrounds similar to

multi-planes can be married with fore¬
ground characters, as well as soft-focus

Cable: GORDENT

October 1986

backgrounds accompanying extreme
close-ups.

character

The Great Mouse Detective

only marks the rebirth of the stu¬
dio's animation program, but also is the
first Disney film to use a new animation
system - one that the studio hopes will
help meet its deadlines.
Computers were used to
not

the climactic "rodent
dezvous" amid the geometrically
create

ren¬

grind¬
ing gearworks inside Big Ben. During

this dramatic two-minute encounter,

Ratigan and Basil fight in a room filled
54 moving gears, winches,
ratchets, beams and pulleys that were
literally drawn by computers. "We
started out with Matthew O'Callaghan's
story sketches," said Mattinson. "We
always knew from the beginning we
were going to end up on the face of Big
Ben somehow. Originally we were going
with

to

have the mice hold

balloons, but then

we

onto

individual

got the idea for

the dirigible. Once we crashed through
the face, it opened up a whole new
idea: Well, gee, what's inside there?

"That gained interest, so we
did

few

exploratory sketches and
thing led to another. None of it was
a

conceived. There

was

a

lot

more

one

pre¬

di¬

alogue originally (Basil and Ratigan
played a trivial pursuit game with each
other) which became too talky and
slowed the scene down. We thought,
wouldn't it be nice to move up through
these gears and feel like we were
adding some dimension to them? Once
we thought of the gears, the next ques¬
tion was 'Who's going to animate
them?' "

Character animator Phil Nibbelink was assigned the task along with
Tad A. Gielow, a specialist in computer

programming who works for Walt Dis¬
Imagineering. "This sequence rep¬
resents a hybrid of what the computer

ney

does best and what animators do best,"
said Nibbelink. "A computer is adept at

creating precise, geometric man-made
or inanimate objects. If an animator
tries to draw a gear or a car or a house,
it's imperfect. What we do best is fluid
organic character animation. By combin¬
ing the two, we get the best of both
worlds and hopefully create a more be¬
lievable and exciting world for the char¬
acters to

interact in."
He and Gielow spent several

painstaking months designing blueprints
for the interior of

Big Ben. They meticu-
American Cinematographer - October 1986

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