David is very involved. I would seehim in my office every day in London, and I would play him my themesand demos. I write electronic demos, which are very, very precisethat sound like the final product and just need an orchestra to soundreally good. You can really tell against the picture which partgoes where, and the director can really react to it, so we spent a lotof time tweaking things at the studio. Then, we spent a lot oftime when recording with the orchestra tweaking again, trying to focusand make it more accurate. So, yes, David is very involved in everyaspect of his film: the special effects, the sound, and the music.
The Cauldron: Part 2 Scaricare Film
The first director attached to the project was animator John Musker after he was proposed the job by production head Tom Wilhite. As director, Musker was assigned to expand several sequences in the first act, but they were eventually deemed too comedic. When production on The Fox and the Hound had wrapped, several feature animation directors Art Stevens, Richard Rich, Ted Berman, and Dave Michener became involved in The Black Cauldron. When Miller decided too many people were involved, he decided Stevens was not appropriate to supervise the project so he contacted Joe Hale, who was a longtime layout artist at Disney Studios, to serve as producer. With Hale as producer, actual production on The Black Cauldron officially began in 1980. He tossed out visual character artwork submitted by Tim Burton and along with The Fox and the Hound directors Richard Rich and Ted Berman, they desired a Sleeping Beauty-style approach and brought Milt Kahl out of retirement to create character designs for Taran, Princess Eilonwy, Fflewddur Fflam, and the other principal characters. He and the story team (including two story artists David Jonas and Al Wilson that Hale brought to the project) revised the film, capsulizing the story of the first two books and making some considerable changes which led to the departure of Sisson who had creative differences with Hale and the directors. Animators John Musker and Ron Clements, also citing creative differences, were removed from the project and began development on Basil of Baker Street, later to be renamed The Great Mouse Detective. Displeased with Vance Gerry's concept for the Horned King, the Horned King became a thin creature donning a hood and carried a spectral presence with shadowed face and glowing red eyes where Hale decided to expand his role, making him the composite villain of the several characters from the books. Taran and Eilonwy eventually acquired elements of the past designs and costumes of earlier Disney characters, especially the latter who was drawn to resemble Princess Aurora.
The production of the film, which initially lasted from 1980 to 1984, represented the rift between the studio management of Walt Disney Productions and the newer, less-experienced animators of the studio's animation department. The second group - the newer, less-experienced animators - had always dreamt of working at Disney's animation department, were very enthusiastic about the film project, and really wanted to prove their worth by creating the film that would hearken back to the glory days of great Disney storytelling and filmmaking, as well as pushing the envelope of what can be accomplished in animation. They also felt that they're continually bogged down by the old guard (i.e. the studio management). The first group - the studio management - on the other hand, felt that the animators are spoiled brats and commanded them to follow orders and do as they were told. This has resulted in many instances of creative differences between the two groups and the final result is that neither may have gotten exactly what they wanted.
Invented by David W. Spencer from the studio's still camera department, the animation photo transfer process (shorten as the APT process) was first used for The Black Cauldron, which would enhance the technology by which the rough animation would be processed onto celluloid. First, the rough animation would be photographed onto high-contrast litho film, and the resulting negative would be copied onto the plastic cel sheets that would transfer lines and the colors which eventually eliminated the hand-inking process. But as the APT-transferred line art would fade off of the cels over time, most or all of the film was done using the xerographic process which had been in place at Disney since the late 1950s. Spencer would win an Academy Scientific and Technical Achievement Award for this process, but the computer would soon render the APT process obsolete.
The Disney sound editors began experimenting with newly-recorded sound effects, beginning with this film, to replace many of the classic effects heard in many Disney animated films up until after The Fox and the Hound. This included newer, more-realistic thunderclaps (to replace the "Castle Thunder" sound effect used on most 1937-1981 animated Disney features), newer crashes and explosions, and more. A rare 1985 trailer of this film, however, did use many old Disney sound effects in it (particularly "Castle Thunder"), and The Great Mouse Detective (released the following year) made heavy use of the old Disney sound effects. After that film, the classic sound effects (including "Castle Thunder") were officially retired from Walt Disney Feature Animation. The Walt Disney Studios sound team, then, went back to experiment with newly-recorded sound effects and sound mixing in Oliver & Company, and has continued to do so in every new Disney animated feature film onward.
Shortly before the film's initially planned Christmas 1984 theatrical release, a test screening for the rough cut of The Black Cauldron was held at the studio's private theater in Burbank, California. After the film, particularly the climactic "Cauldron Born" sequence, proved to be too intense and frightening for the majority of the children in the audience (most of whom fled the theater in terror before it was even finished), the then-newly appointed Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered certain scenes from The Black Cauldron be cut, as a result of the film's long length and the fear that the film's graphic nature would alienate children and family audiences. Since animated films were generally edited in storyboard form using Leica reels (later known as animatics: storyboards shot sequentially and set to temporary audio tracks), producer Joe Hale objected to Katzenberg's demands. Katzenberg responded by having the film brought into an edit bay and editing the film himself.
The film was ultimately cut by twelve to fifteen minutes, all of which were fully animated and scored. As a result, some existing scenes were rewritten, reanimated, and reedited for continuity. Many of the cut scenes involved the undead "Cauldron Born", who are used as the Horned King's army in the final act of the film. While most of the scenes were seamlessly removed from the film, one particular cut involving a Cauldron Born warrior killing a person by decapitating him and another one killing another person by decapitating his torso created a rather recognizable lapse because the removal of the scene creates a jump in the film's soundtrack. Other deleted scenes include mostly shots of graphic violence such as the ones where Taran kills some of the Horned King's guards with the magic sword Dyrnwyn, while he and Eilonwy escape from the castle; shots of Princess Eilonwy being partially naked with her dress torn, as she's hanging for her life with Taran and Fflewddur Fflam; whole sequences involving the world of the Fair Folk; scenes of the Horned King with a flowing cloak; one scene featuring one of the King's henchmen being mauled by one of the Cauldron Born warriors, which causes him to form horrifically detailed lacerations and boils, before he rots away to become one of the Cauldron Born warriors himself (a couple of animated cels of that particular scene can actually now be found on the Internet); and a more action-oriented, dramatic, and intense climatic fight scene between Taran and the Horned King before the latter is sucked into the Cauldron. Had it not went through many last-minute drastic changes, The Black Cauldron would have held the distinction of being the only full-length Disney animated feature film and the first film released under the Walt Disney Pictures banner to be rated either PG-13 or R by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). After months of hard work, the final film ultimately received a PG rating from the MPAA, the first ever for a Disney animated feature film and the only one until Dinosaur, fifteen years later, in 2000.
The soundtrack was re-released in 2012 as part of Intrada Records partnership with Walt Disney Records to re-release several Disney films soundtracks. The album features a new expanded and remastered version of the score.
The Black Cauldron was released in North America on July 26, 1985. The film was also screened at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, New York. It was the most expensive animated feature made as of its release in 1985 with a budget of over $44 million, although some other sources suggests that the film's budget was at $25 million. The film, however, grossed only $21 million at the North American box office and it is considered one of the worst box-office failures from Walt Disney Pictures. It resulted in a loss for Walt Disney Studios and put the future of the animation department in jeopardy. It performed so poorly that it was not distributed for a home video release for more than a decade after its theatrical run. To make matters worse, the film was beaten out of the box office by The Care Bears Movie, which was released several months earlier, to which Disney call this the proverbial "rock bottom".
The film was the last Disney animated film completed at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The animation department was moved to the Air Way facility in nearby in December 1984, and, following corporate restructuring, became a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios known as Walt Disney Feature Animation (later renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2007). 2ff7e9595c
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