: The Little Mermaid This musical fantasy we all know and love made its debut in theaters on November 17, 1989. The film was based on the Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Anderson After the success of the 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Little Mermaid takes the credit for breathing life back into the art of Disney animation, marking the beginning of the Disney Renaissance. The Little Mermaid was actually supposed to be one of Disney’s first film in the 1930s, where he planned to do a package film of several Hans Christian Anderson tales. Howard Ashman, after contributing a song to Oliver & Company, proposed a change to the minor character of Clarence, a butler-crab, to a Jamaican Rastafarian crab after shifting his music style to reflect this. This is one of the many minor tweaks that the writing team has accomplished. Howard Ashman and, for the first time, Alan Menken collaborated together to compose the score for the film. Due to more money allowance for this film, the company actually opened a satellite feature animation facility in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, right within Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World Theme Park. This contributed to development of Roger Rabbit, and paint and ink support for The Little Mermaid. The notion of filming the actors as reference was revived while making this film. Mermaid’s supervising animators included Glen Keane and Mark Henn on Ariel, Duncan Marjoribanks on Sebastian, Andreas Deja on King Triton, and Ruben Aquino no Ursula. Glen Keane was actually asked to work on Ursula originally, due his previous work on large characters including the Bear in The Fox and The Hound, and Ratigan of The Great Mouse Detective. The character design and personality of Ariel was inspired by Alyssa Milano of Who’s The Boss?, and her underwater hair motion was based on footage of Sally Ride in space, and scenes of Sherri Lyn Stoner, Ariel’s live-action model, in a pool. Ursula was in fact based on drag queen Divine. The underwater setting required for the most special effects in a Disney film than any other produced before it, including airbrushing, backlighting, superimposition, and computer animation. It is estimated that over a million different bubbles were drawn for this film. An attempt to revive the famous Disney multi-plane camera for depth shots failed because of machine malfunction, thus these shots were done in an outside facility. The film uses 1,000 colors on 1,100 backgrounds. The shot of Ariel reaching out through the skylight of her grotto was the last shot to be completed. It took four tries to get the optical effects just right. This is the last Disney feature film to use the traditional hand-painted cel method. The films beyond use a digital method of coloring and combine scanned drawings developed for Disney by Pixar called CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), ultimately eliminating cels, multi-plane camera, and many other optical effects. The film gathered $84 million at the initial box office, and $211 million during its lifetime gross worldwide. The famous “Part of Your World” was almost cut from the film, due to a poor resulted test with an audience of school children becoming rowdy out of boredom. Keane kept pushing for it to stay until it was in more of a finalized state, which ultimately tested well. Jodi Benson actually recorded “Part of Your World” in the dark to get a more underwater feel. It’s a possibility that Prince Eric is related to Prince Phillip and Aurora, since there’s a painting in the castle of two figures who strike a very similar resemblance. When scuttle provides his “vocal romantic stimulation”, he is in fact squawking Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet”. HIDDEN MICKEY: In the opening scene where King Triton makes his grand entrance in the arena, you can briefly see Mickey, Donald, Goofy, AND Kermit the Frog sitting in the audience. MORE HIDDEN MICKEYS: One is hiding in the scroll Ursula has Ariel sign, as well as a woman on the wedding boat with black hair in two buns wearing a red dress.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 18:53:55 +0000