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Don Bluth's Garage Band

animationobsessive.substack.com

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Re: Don Bluth's Garage Band

#21

Post by jhbadger »

InTheArena wrote: post #13
Isamu wrote: post #7

This helps to answer some of the questions surrounding the decline of Disney animation after Walt died. In some ways you could blame the decline on him because he built an organization that depended too much on his judgment and guidance. The fact that so many core competencies were lost over the years is mostly on him. But then he started CalArts too.

It's a dirty, dark secret, but Walt and Disney were considering shutting down the animation studio near the end. It was simply unprofitable and expensive. Disney goes through massive cycles where they have boom and bust periods - that survives to this day. The leadership of the animation studio was a real issue here - they had no idea about how to mentor the next generation - it wasn't until Ollie and Frank explicitl…

Yes, and the 1980s the animation studio was on the verge of being disbanded before 1989's "The Little Mermaid" was a success and started the "Disney Renaissance" of the 1990s.

Re: Don Bluth's Garage Band

#22

Post by InTheArena »

allturtles wrote: post #17
InTheArena wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much hate as the Xerography process gets, this really wasn't true. The character designs for 101 Dalmatians were incredibly expensive, and they blamed the spots on the dogs. Part of the reason Bluth left was that cost control controls were put into place because of how expensive Dalmatians was. The real problem is that Disney movies boom or bust. The insane successes (Snow White, Dumbo) were offset by busts (Cinde…

> Cinderella was a box office bomb. Is that really so? Wikipedia says it was the 5th highest grossing film of 1950. [0] Quoting the same: "Walt Disney Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts. The film is the most successful the studio has made since Dumbo, and saves the studio from four million dollars in debt." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_in_film .

I meant sleeping beauty :(

My bad.

Re: Don Bluth's Garage Band

#24

Post by mrandish »

yterdy wrote: post #9

>As Bluth remembered, older technical tricks like the “shadows or the reflections or the double passes through the camera” were “evaporating before our very eyes.”1 The problem was bigger than that, too. Bluth and many of the other young trainees didn’t know how to make a movie, and they weren’t sure how to learn. According to Bluth’s colleague Gary Goldman, “We didn’t even know what questions to ask.” >“We were lear…

> When it comes time to pass it along to juniors, they either can't or won't...

Some are that way I suppose but as I was learning, many far more experienced, late-career gurus went out of their way to teach me. It does require asking good questions and showing some genuine interest and engagement in learning though. It's also important to be able to show at least some aptitude which helps convince someone to invest the time in you.

Over several decades and lots of hands-on experience, I eventually advanced to proven veteran status myself and I was pretty much constantly trying to teach the newer recruits the deeper work of not just how to do it but why and how to think about the overall process. I think I managed to do some good since several of the newbies I informally mentored have now become senior vets themselves. However, several times I was actually told by the division head to spend less time explaining to my staff and just do the work myself as quickly as possible.

Even though I'm now happily retired, I regularly volunteer as a guest lecturer at several university programs. Like many fields, full-time professors don't really have the breadth of practical experience or real-world skills themselves. The good ones realize this and rely on people like me who've successfully done it over decades to fill in the gaps.

Re: Don Bluth's Garage Band

#25

Post by Andrex »

Isamu wrote: post #7

This helps to answer some of the questions surrounding the decline of Disney animation after Walt died. In some ways you could blame the decline on him because he built an organization that depended too much on his judgment and guidance. The fact that so many core competencies were lost over the years is mostly on him. But then he started CalArts too.

This is something I've always worried about Nintendo, but they seem to be handling the generational creative changeovers well (for now).

Re: Don Bluth's Garage Band

#26

Post by hondo77 »

mrighele wrote: post #8
drewcoo wrote: post #4

Bluth's "garage band" was re-learning skills that had been off-shored. That's a piece of cont4ext that's sort of missing. Anyone interested in what happened when Disney's off-shored Italian animation team revolted should check out Allegro non troppo - a sendup of Fantasia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegro_non_troppo

Is there a longer story somewhere about this decline ? This piece is not really clear about the reasons _why_ younger talent wasn't being trained on those techniques. If you read the story it seems that everybody was looking forward at people learning and helping them doing so... so why was it not being done at Disney ? The link only mentions issues with the union, but it doesn't seem to me reasonable to think that i…

The film Waking Sleeping Beauty touches on this a bit.

Re: Don Bluth's Garage Band

#28

Post by yterdy »

mrandish wrote: post #24
yterdy wrote: post #9

>As Bluth remembered, older technical tricks like the “shadows or the reflections or the double passes through the camera” were “evaporating before our very eyes.”1 The problem was bigger than that, too. Bluth and many of the other young trainees didn’t know how to make a movie, and they weren’t sure how to learn. According to Bluth’s colleague Gary Goldman, “We didn’t even know what questions to ask.” >“We were lear…

> When it comes time to pass it along to juniors, they either can't or won't... Some are that way I suppose but as I was learning, many far more experienced, late-career gurus went out of their way to teach me. It does require asking good questions and showing some genuine interest and engagement in learning though. It's also important to be able to show at least some aptitude which helps convince someone to invest t…

>Some are that way I suppose but as I was learning, many far more experienced, late-career gurus went out of their way to teach me. It does require asking good questions and showing some genuine interest and engagement in learning though.

IME, reminding them of themselves is far more important than any curiosity, aptitude, or drive you may bring to the table (other than in that it reflects their self-image). That similarity often creates a pseudo-familial affinity which serves as the unconscious backbone of the relationship. This is the reason why cross-ethnic and cross-gender (and cross-class, cross-sexuality, etc.) mentorship seems to happen less often than when the mentor and prospective mentee are of the same gender and ethnic identity.

You got lucky and/or are a straight white dude in a field largely occupied by straight white dudes. What happens for the rest of us is usually one of two outcomes:

a) The mentor makes an effort to support the mentee, but holds them to unreasonably high standards per unconscious bias, generally causing the relationship to disintigrate over time.

or

b) The mentor is threatened by the prospective mentee's aptitude appearing in an individual that they can't bring themselves to relate to; they will withhold support, if not actively impede their growth.

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