ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Production Technologies //

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Disney has always been at the forefront of technology, embracing and evolving new technology and sometimes inventing them. In 1937 and 2020 has formed off of new film technologies themselves.

Rotoscoping - Using the video as the inspiration for movement in animation (basically tracing). Using a video i.e. of someone dancing and animating over it. Live action is filmed first which generates individual frames, this is then projected onto tracing paper and drawn over frame by frame.

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Cels - A cel is the transparent sheet which things were drawn or painted on, basically tracing paper, used in traditional, hand-drawn animations. In Snow White, there are 24 cels per second (24fps) whereas modern live TV, the frames are often between 30-60fps. In total, there are 200,000 cels in Snow White.

The animators would send the ink painters the individual cels which had been drawn then the ink painters would paint the back of the cels, blocking in the bold colours using gloves to glide along the cel. 

Walt said "For this film, he believed he was making ART, not cartoons".

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Technicolor - Technicolor is a dying process which combines 3 different film strips made up o different colours into one singular one. In the early 1930's, Walt was a huge believer of technicolor and had invested exclusive rights into technicolor. A lot of people had believed that coloured films take away from the true shadows and contrast and that movies involving technicolor made around the same amount as the movies in black and white. So in 1940, only around 12% of Hollywood films were shot using colours. 

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The Multiplane Camera - This quite literally translates to a multi level camera. This was a Disney invention, invented by Walt himself. They would layer individual cels and the camera at the top faced down creating the appearance of flattening the whole image. The levels could move closer or further away allowing for the depth of field. This is quite similar to the process of 3D for the 1930s. They would paint in oil on glass and feed it into the machine, using a wheel to direct the pane of glass.