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Walt Disney The Old Mill

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The Old Mill

77 years later and it is still as emotionally resonant, and artistically beautiful as ever. The feeling was so strange, marveling at the tone and storytelling of The Old Mill. I have never felt more driven than I had in animation. I wanted the Old Mill to stand tall when the storm stood still. The feeling was magical.

The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphony cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, and scored by Leigh Harline. The film depicts a natural community of animals, populating an old abandoned windmill in the countryside, and how they deal with a severe thunderstorm that nearly destroyed their homes.

During this time, animation is in a transitional period from the silent films of black and white, to …show more content…

Marking the first use of Disney’s multiplane camera, the film also incorporates realistic depictions of animal behavior, dynamic lighting and color effects, depictions of rain, wind, and lightning, ripples, and reflections, and the use of timed sound effects to produce specific dramatic, or emotional overtones. All of these advanced animation techniques learned in producing The Old Mill would subsequently be incorporated into Disney’s feature-length animated films. Walt Disney had a vision to fulfill. While Disney did not pioneer cartoon animation, he did broaden what animation can be – feature-length films to American audiences.

Without The Old Mill, there would not be Bambi. Without The Old Mill, there would not be Fantasia. And most importantly, without The Old Mill, there would not be Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Old Mill bears the weight of Walt Disney and his company’s future. There would not be Disney’s golden age of animation and who knows when it would be. There was a risk, but the prize was bigger. Animation would have stood still. Maybe the Fleischer Brothers would have started the new age of animation? The possibilities are …show more content…

Besides setting the groundwork for Walt Disney’s future animated films, the cartoon really enlighten the possibilities on how animation can be portrayed. Sure, Disney has held an artistic standard of realism in his cartoons, but never on imitating nature and its animals, capturing them in their natural habitat. In conjunction to the advancements to colored animation and sound, The Old Mill traditionally became a piece of art capturing nature in its worst state, a thunderstorm. Animation was originally created through imitating consciousness, and now nature. Interesting enough, Disney’s animators were assigned to study animals. Imagine the time and effort to draw an animal enough times to recreate the same of similar body structure in multiple angles. I cannot say anymore: The Old Mill really resonated me. It is a beautiful piece of art that still holds up in this modern age of animation. The techniques used to create The Old Mill, is commonly used in modern animation. While the size, space, and simplicity used to animate may differ, the techniques are there. I would also argue that The Old Mill was the forefront of a technological advancement. While multiplane cameras were used in the past, Disney’s multiplane camera allowed the use of seven panels of artwork and a movable camera. Multiplane cameras added a level of depth that was never before seen in animation and fluidity. Animating rain, wind, lightning,

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