|
|
|
|
 |
Toon Zone News Talks with Artist Toby Bluth on Presenting "Pinocchio" in Disney View
By Ed Liu
03-12-2009, 2:55 AM |
 Growing up in Utah, Toby Bluth and his brother Don were so deeply inspired by the films of Walt Disney that they've both developed careers in and around animation. Toby Bluth has done a variety of work for Disney, ranging from the fine art paintings inspired by Disney films, writing and illustrating Disney books, and serving as the art director for The Tigger Movie in 2000.
Bluth's latest challenge was "Disney View," a new feature debuting on the newly released Pinocchio Blu-ray edition that uses Bluth's paintings as a sort of mask to make the full-frame sized movie fit on widescreen high-definition television sets without stretching or cropping the source image. Toon Zone News was able to sit in on a roundtable conference call with Bluth and Disney to discuss his work on the new Blu-ray.
All images in the below roundtable interview can be clicked to enlarge to high-definition resolution.
MINDY JOHNSON: My name is Mindy Johnson. I'm with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Global Publicity Group, and it's my great pleasure and honor to represent the classic animated titles with the great library at the Walt Disney Studio.
Today, we're going to explore some of the great visual treats inside the classic film of Walt Disney's Pinocchio. And joining us today is Toby Bluth, a Disney artist and true legend in his own right.
TOBY BLUTH: Oh, dear. Hello, everybody.
JOHNSON: We are also joined by Evan Acosta who is a part of the Disney DVD Production Team and led the Pinocchio Blu-ray feature which became the very first Disney View feature. Evan is here to handle many of our technical questions. And, of course, we're here to take a look at the great work that Toby has done and to give you a sense of what the Disney View feature involves.
I'm going to start with a few preliminary questions to get the ball rolling for Toby. But then, please, jump in at any time. Please state your name, perhaps where you're from and offer up your questions.
Toby, tell us a bit about your lifelong history with Walt Disney. I know you have a tremendous love of his work certainly,
BLUTH: Yes, I do. I was raised on a farm in a little place called Payson, Utah, and we had one movie theater there. My brother, Don - maybe some of you know Don Bluth. He also does film. He and I would ride our horses into town and go to the Star Theater because there were no DVDs, no home videos.
If a Disney film came through, we would stay and watch it through maybe three, maybe four times. We were Utah dirt farmers. That means put it in the ground and you grow it and you dig it up and then you eat it. You just live right off the land.
And there just wasn't the magic that we saw at the Star Theater as when something like Pinocchio or Snow White came through. They were really quite magical. And that's where the romance started originally.
My brother Don was older, and being older he could draw better than I could and I thought his things were wonderful. When I was six years old, I was always very frustrated because he drew so well and he was so talented. But when I was six years old, I remember I drew a picture.
It was on yellow legal paper and it said, "Happy Birthday, Pluto" and I misspelled "happy." But I put all the characters there. Minnie Mouse was there, Mickey, Dumbo, everybody was there. And I think it's interesting that here I am all these many years later doing the same thing I was doing when I was six years old.
And I want to interject one thing about this particular film, Pinocchio. It was made in 1940 or released in 1940 and I was born in 1940. So, you know, I feel a particular affinity for this film.
JOHNSON: Well, good timing then. Evan, if you could, let's go back to how this idea came about.
 EVAN ACOSO: Sure. As you know Pinocchio is in a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you have a wide screen television or a high definition television your aspect ratio is 16:9, so, when you're viewing a 4:3 film or television show, you are forced to look at very plain black bars or gray bars (left), depending on your television, which sort of wastes the space that consumers see.
It was felt that we would like to bring Pinocchio into the next generation of technology by expanding the film into this new 16 x 9 ratio, all the while, respecting the classic aspect ratio that it was originally created in. So, we wanted to artistically add to the sides of the panels and we worked with Feature Animation and Toby was the perfect candidate considering his long history in the medium that the film was actually created in.
Essentially, by utilizing the technology in Blu-ray, we're actually able to place these panels in real time over the film. So it is an option for the user to turn this on or off. If you're a classic Disney fan and you wish to watch the film in its original presentation, you can absolutely turn these off.
JOHNSON: So, to clarify, it isn't embedded with the film but it's its own separate aspect of the screen.
ACOSO: Correct.
JOHNSON: Okay. So with that kind of a background, Toby, tell us a little bit about getting the call for this project and this idea...
BLUTH: Well, I got the call because I've worked at The Disney Studios for many years now. I was the art director on The Three Musketeers and The Tigger Movie and particularly older Disney. And then I've been working with Disney Fine Art. Disney Fine Art is called Collector's Addition and they do - or they had me do paintings and they reproduce these. They're called Giclées. And that came to the attention of the studio and the style that I work in.
A lot of people have difficulty with water color, and I don't think it's that water color is so difficult. I think that every artist finds what his medium is. I just had an affinity for water color. I love the way it looks. I like the light and the air that come into it.
So they asked me if I'd like to do this. I might say, though, that it's a little intimidating. If you pick up a classic like Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia, or Bambi, these are the Disney gold films for me. They are the films the whole studio was built on. And to adjust or tamper with it at all, it needs to be done with great respect because it's a little intimidating. These were brilliant films and you don't want to distract from it.
The thing I had to watch the most was I want whatever I add to the film to look like it should have been there and to look like the film and in the style of the film. That's why it was all done in water color and I used the same medium as the film. Hopefully, the audience is not really aware that there's anything that's been done to the film.
JOHNSON: Let's go back to some of the Disney View frames where we get a chance to look at some of the pieces from the film. We'll sift through a few of these and perhaps as we're moving into some of these, Toby, if you could talk a little bit about some of the approaches that you took.
 BLUTH: What I did originally was I went back and looked very closely at the film. Whenever I was adding a design element to it, like the panels in the scene with Jiminy Cricket at the window (right, opening titles use the same design elements), those panels are wood carvings that are in Geppetto's workshop. I would take that element and utilize it then in the maskings.
These maskings are very much like theatrical or stage maskings, where you have wings that you walk into or to frame the thing. Or they're like a matting, when you have a picture framed and you have a matte with it. It's there to be in the style of the art, and to enhance and not to distract from it. So that's what these are.
And the borders around there, you'll notice the borders on this particular one where Pinocchio's on the steps (above), the wood carving on the left and on the right are like a matte. They frame the film, but I always tried to leave the center of attention where it was. It is just there to frame it.
JOHNSON: We've got examples of the some of the panels that you worked with. If you could, talk a little bit about your choices and decisions.
BLUTH: Well, the first time Jiminy Cricket appears in the film, he looks through Geppetto's window and the design there, with the little blue circles and the wood border around it, is that area of the window that Jiminy Cricket was looking through (above). So I used the same designs and same materials and the transition became easier.
Just before that, we're outside in the night sky, where we go down across the village, it's the same blue that is outside those windows. So as these panels cross-dissolve, they hold the mood of the moment and it flows freely from on to another. The bookshelf panel was at the bottom of one of the background's bookshelf, so I took that off and incorporated it. I turned it upright so it goes vertically rather horizontally and incorporated it into the borders of the frame (above).
The little village by day, that's the woodwork outside of the doorway when Pinocchio comes out of the house and it's Geppetto's door. So it fit, you know, the style of what they had used on the background.
Let's go through some of the other panels there. The curtains that I was talking about for Stromboli's stage (above), those are on the left. And a very important part of all of this was the lighting. In the early Disney films, the light source and the air were extremely important. And the lighting from here comes from down below. It's a stage and it has foot lights. So you notice the swirls in the curtains, all of that is part of the stage design that framed the Stromboli piece. Some of the pieces were almost amorphous, like the exterior in the rain. I was almost painting light and air because I didn't the item, once again, to call much attention to itself. If you go back inside of Stromboli's cart, the interior of the wagon, those were the beams that supported the wagon. I took that element and designed it and adapted it so that you would feel like the colors and the palette and the location of the wings.
When we get to Pleasure Island, it brought the carnival, and which is why the colors are bright, and there so many stripes and everything. Those were also items that could appear in like four or five or six backgrounds and I could just meld them altogether and take a piece one and a piece of another and incorporate them to create the locale.
And you see the cards in the pool hall panel (above)? Pinocchio was playing cards with a character name Lampwick and so I used the colors of the pool hall and the cards because they were playing cards to frame this. That was also the frame around the mirror that was in that room. When Lampwick starts turning into a donkey, he looks at himself in the mirror and kicks the mirror because he's so frightened. But that was the border that was used there, and you'll notice up above there is a donkey in the little frame. It's also interesting because they put a lot of symbolism in these things. The horseshoe is turned upside down and symbolically what that has meant is your luck has run out. So these kids are in deep trouble.
In the salt mines, that's a very amorphous, sort of outside, misty, light and air with stones and cliffs and boulders. But I had to be careful not to do too much background, otherwise it would detract from the action that was going on.
When you go underwater, you notice there's sort of that moiré look, like when you're looking at water, it starts moving around. And that's when Pinocchio goes down underneath the sea. This one looks like it's a little hard to tell what it is because it's light blue at the top and dark blue at the bottom, but this had to frame two different things. It has to frame when they were down deep in the water with Monstro the Whale and it was quite dark. It also has to lighten up because Geppetto and Pinocchio come up to the top of the water and then it was a light blue sky. So I made this transition in it. So those are some of the concepts that I used.
JOHNSON: These look fairly small, but what type of size were you working with in?
BLUTH: These are 18 inches tall and 4 inches wide.
JOHNSON: And just for everyone's general knowledge, the original artwork for these will be housed at the Animation Research Library with the Walt Disney Studios and become part of the permanent collection there.
Q: Can you remind me how many of these there are?
BLUTH: Around 11, I think. There was some that were painted that we did not use.
ACOSO: We ultimately ended up using 11.
Q: How exactly is it activated and switched off?
ACOSO: Off of the main menu on the Blu-ray DVD of Pinocchio, when you choose to select to play the film, there'll be a secondary option that shows up that asks you if you wish to watch this feature with Disney View. And from there, that's how you activate it. Otherwise, you can simply hit "Play Movie," and it'll play without the panels.
Q: Why to make panels? Why not to try to extend the scene of the animation?
BLUTH: The most important thing in approaching this was respect for the original material. It's an awful lot like a good movie score or accompaniment. You really shouldn't be that aware of the accompaniment because the song isn't the thing that's, you know, important there. When the movie is showing and you're aware of the emotions and what's going on, you shouldn't really think about, oh, isn't that a great piece of music. I'm there to accompany the film, and I'm there to be a background for the film. I reminded myself of that the whole time I was working on this.
There are certain films that need to be preserved and need to be reproduced as best as you possibly can and, once again, without destroying any of the original integrity of the film. You don't ever want it to look like somebody tampered, whether it's with the sound or whether it's with the color or the picture or the matting or the framing. It's all got to start from of point of great respect.
Q: How long did you work on it?
BLUTH: I think it took about three months, maybe a little bit more.
Q: Are you planning to go back to any of the other Disney classics and do something similar?
JOHNSON: Well, this is the first of its kind and we’re excited about this innovation.
Q: Has the audio has been enhanced as well on that particular format?
ACOSO: Yes, absolutely. We have two audio options. There is a new English 7.1 DTS HD master audio soundtrack, and then the restored original theatrical soundtrack. The 7.1 mix is only available for Blu-ray.
Q: Toby, was there any time where you felt that the panels were distracting and you had to start them over?
BLUTH: Yes, there was. There was one panel that I did and we all looked at it and we all knew that it needed something else. It wasn't the right piece. So, you can't win them all. And when you get it wrong, then you go back and get it right.
Q: Can you describe what those panels were and what scenes they were being used for?
BLUTH: Let's go to the underwater scene if we could because it was the first pass I'd made at painting the water underneath the ocean. People made comments like it looks a little bit like Dr. Seuss, I think was one of the comments. It just really didn't work. So I went back and picked up specifically that moiré pattern of water moving across the bottom of the sea. That's the only one that we repainted. But my first attempt at it, when I finished it...you know, when you do something that's not quite right, you usually know. And it was very important to everyone that we got this right and that we captured the moments for it.
JOHNSON: This was the first of its kind, the very first approach on this, yes? What kind of challenges did that present for you?
BLUTH: Well, I've done a lot of theater work. I've done over 100 stage shows, Broadway musicals usually, so I had a lot of experience with scenery. In approaching this, what I did was I approached it as if it was a stage set. You have you have the wings in theater, on both sides of the stage and they frame the picture there because the stage is not going to go anywhere, you know. All you can do is give a feeling or an ambiance of what's going on, the mood of the scene. I thought of these things as wings for a stage set. So it's like a matte around a frame or wings on a stage set.
Q: I know you were heavily inspired by Gustaf Tenggren and I was wondering if you were able to review some of his works that were in the research library?
BLUTH: Yes. I have quite a collection of Tenggren books, and Tenggren was one my heroes as I was growing up. I have a few original Tenggren's hanging on the walls of my house. So I was very familiar with Tenggren. You may not be aware, but when Tenggren was the art director on this movie, he was a Swedish artist who had been to Rotenberg, Germany. And the villages, and the towns, and some of the streets are just Rotenberg, Germany. I took a trip to Germany - to Rotenberg - expressly to see these villages. When you see the backgrounds in Pinocchio, you're really seeing a lot of Tenggren and a lot of Rotenberg.
Q: There was another Disney member that they credit with some of the European influence, Albert Hurter.
BLUTH: Yes. I like Albert Hurter's work but it didn't have the effect on me that Tenggren did. Tenggren was an illustrator and a book illustrator for starts. And so he was very aware of storytelling and environments and that kind of thing. Hurter had wonderful, incredible imagination. He did a lot of, like, the clocks and props and things like that. He had a real flair and a gift for that kind of thing, but he didn't do the overall look or the ambiance, the scenes like Tenggren did.
Q: Is Disney View an idea you might carry into the theaters if you release Pinocchio and these other movies theatrically?
JOHNSON: No, it's largely designed to facilitate the aspect ratio within technology of home entertainment. So the short answer is no.
 Q: Toby, is producing art for the Disney View any different or is it a lot different from your regular Fine Art Productions?
BLUTH: Not really. It's all the same thing. So whether you do it for prints and Giclées like I do with Collector's Edition or whether I do it for a film like The Three Musketeers or The Tigger Movie, it's all the same elements. You know, you have lighting, you have scenery, you have costumes. It's a very theatrical approach that I take to this. And the principles apply no matter what you're doing. It's the same principles.
Disney films were, particularly during this period -- Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia, and Bambi -- there was a lot of theatrical lighting. They would use a spotlight or a strong light source to let you know where to look. And that's very much a staged, theatrical type device.
JOHNSON: Lighting is a key part of what you considered in approaching this, certainly within the work and your designs.
BLUTH: Definitely was, and if you look at this picture of little Cleo and her fish bowl (above), you see that the light is coming straight on. They pointed that light right at the fish bowl and the rounded edge of the woods behind is in shadow and dark. So it's almost like it's got a spotlight on it.
JOHNSON: And that's also true in the blue fairy image.
BLUTH: Yes. As soon as she comes into that room they changed all of the lighting and brought up the lighting around her and consequently there's really no place you could look at that picture without looking directly at her. Everything else is totally obscured or upstaged by the light source. She is the light source. You know, there was an angelic character. It was a spirit character that came from a different world and she became the light source for the scene.
JOHNSON: And great care was taken in utilizing the panels. The Disney View feature is designed to reflect and to work with the art emanating from the film.
ACOSO: Right. If you look at Toby's panels, obviously they don't match the final output that's on the Blu-ray disk because we used Toby's panels as the base of where to start. Obviously the design stayed, but we really had to go in there and look at every single shot that these panels existed and adjust it according to the light source. For the example of the Blue Fairy coming into Geppetto's house, you'll see that Toby's original panel was brown, but in the image here, it is very much dark blue with slight highlights along the wood to sort of accentuate the light coming from the center.
We also took great care in the timing of how these panels are dissolved. Essentially the panels cross dissolve between each other programmatically using the Blu-ray technology. That allowed us to view through the timeline of the film to gradually dissolve between each panel. By doing so, for example, you'll notice before the blue fairy comes in the panels are very much dark brown. It's a night scene and as she comes through the window we actually dissolve in real time to this more blue colored panel with the light source coming from the center. The eye begins believing that there is a light source coming from the center of the screen and it's bleeding beyond the 4:3 frame into 16:9 panels.
Q: Toby, in The Tigger Movie, you used a style of water colors approach. Is that a similar approach you're using here or is that totally different?
BLUTH: Yes, the original illustrations were water color, pen and ink drawings, so I incorporated not only the water color, but a lot of the pen and ink feel to it because I wanted it to look like the original. You know, everybody loves Winnie the Pooh and here we are doing the Tigger movie and I wanted people to come out of that theatre and say oh, that's exactly the way I remember it.
JOHNSON: what does it feel like providing the framework of such masterful work? Is that a bit daunting?
BLUTH: It felt very intimidating. You have to step carefully and look closely. There was a feeling of real responsibility, and the only word I know is intimidating. I'm taking what I consider to be one of the five most important animated films ever made by the Disney Studios and I'm trying to adjust things. So I have to admit when I started out I thought should I be doing this or shouldn't I be doing this?
But I think through it all and we have such a great crew working on this. Nobody makes a film all by themselves. You know, people adjusted the lighting, people did all these different things. But it's definitely a group effort and we have such a great team working on it that they paid attention to all these things. With that image of Pinocchio on the steps, you know where that light's coming from and it throws that shadow up on the wall and it's very clear what's going on.
Q: If you had your pick of any other Disney films in the vault right now, what other films would you like to do this again for?
BLUTH: Top of the list would be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and hopefully we're going to do that. I hope that happens. I don't know. That's not my decision, but I would do it for Snow White. Well the five. Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia and Bambi. Like I said earlier, those are the gold that this studio was founded on. And still, I consider them the most important films they've done. Not that this studio hasn't made great and wonderful films after Walt was gone, but my love for Disney is usually for Walt Disney, and the period of films that he directed and oversaw and produced. That's what I like. I like Walt Disney and I want it to look like Walt Disney.
Toon Zone News would like to thank Toby Bluth for taking the time to speak with all of us; to Mindy Johnson and Evan Acoso at Disney; and Jackie Cavanagh at Click Communications for setting us up for the event. Pinocchio is available now on Platinum Edition 2-disc DVD and Blu-ray, although Disney View is an exclusive Blu-ray special feature.
|
|
|
|
|
