Snow White... Behind The Scenes

Since I have been talking about animation I am going to talk about the first animated movie made. It is Walt Disney's Snow White. Disney's animation project started in 1935 when he dreamed of making the first animated movie and it made its first appearance to the public in 1937. In the first sketches of Snow White she had more of a resemblance to Betty Boop with big black curly hair, round eyes, and tiny waist but Walt Disney thought she looked to cartoon-like. He wanted her to look more human and realistic.

Photo credited to Google

Disney sent all of his artists back to school in order to bring this movie which was first of its kind. He set up a school of action analysis where all of the animators studied every piece of human movement to create convincing animation.The process begins with placing and laying out the script of the film in comic book form. They drew a total of 24 separate drawings for every second in the film. Each drawing had to be slightly different than the other so when they flipped through the pages consecutively it would look as though the character was moving. Just imagine 24 drawings per second! The film is 1 hr 28 mins, therefore, they had to draw a total of 126, 720 drawings!!!

750 artists used more than 500 miles of paper to make a total of 2 million drawing and sketches. Walt Disney literally invested all of his money and savings into this film making it vital for the film to be successful. It was because Disney went on to win an Oscar. In this photo Shirley Temple is presenting Walt Disney with an Oscar and 7 little Oscars.

Photo credited to Google

These two women are the ones that gave Snow White voice and image. The one on the top is Marjorie Celeste Belcher, she was the one that was hired to do all the movements for Snow White. The animators had her dance and they studied the way she moved and captured in drawing. How she danced was exactly the same on the film. The one on the bottom is Adriana Caselotti. Her role was vital because she was what was going to heard by everyone. Over 150 girls auditioned to be the voice of Snow White, but Disney wanted a more young and girlish voice. Adriana, who happened to be listening to one of her father's conversation with Snow White's casting director on another phone, started singing in a girl's voice and she was cast. At the time she was 20 years old. 

Photo credited to Google (Marjorie)

Photo credited to Google (Adriana)