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Simply Mad About the Mouse: A Musical Celebration of Imagination is a 1991 direct-to-video release showcasing top contemporary singers performing classic Disney songs. [1] Released on September 27, 1991, this 35-minute feature consists of a series of music videos available on VHS and LaserDisc. The music videos were exclusive to the video and the Disney Channel.
The disc features the following performances:
As evidenced in the descriptions of the music videos, while Simply Mad included new animation, it made great use of existing animated footage. Most new animation in Simply Mad is rotoscoped, a technique highly disregarded by Disney's animators, who, while sometimes referring to video footage for reference, prefer to create their character's motion from scratch.
The video begins in a set created of "the Disney Vault", where the camera pans around various objects and pictures, including "props" from the animated movies, such as Cinderella's glass slipper, or the submerged skull from The Rescuers . An animator's pencil drawing of Sorcerer Mickey slowly comes alive, and enchants five musical notes out of a baton; the notes proceed to whip around the room at varying speeds. The vault is entered through a dark and slightly industrial side; at the end, it exits onto an English garden.
Created by Garen Entertainment and Stellar X Productions, it was distributed by Buena Vista Home Video, the Walt Disney Company's distribution company.
An album of the music was created by Columbia Records, and released on LP, cassette and Compact Disc. Also on the record was En Vogue with "Someday My Prince Will Come" and Kirk Whalum with "Mad About the Wolf".
The title is not currently in stores but is available through digital download distribution. [2]
Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets (cels) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are either tradtional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms.
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated musical anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions, with story direction by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer and production supervision by Walt Disney and Ben Sharpsteen. It consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor acts as the film's Master of Ceremonies who introduces each segment in live action.
Silly Symphony is an American animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the Silly Symphonies were originally intended as whimsical accompaniments to pieces of music. As such, the films usually did not feature continuing characters, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts produced by Disney at the same time. The series is notable for its innovation with Technicolor and the multiplane motion picture camera, as well as its introduction of the character Donald Duck, who made his first appearance in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Wise Little Hen in 1934. Seven shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the 1960s when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated media from after the golden age, especially on television, were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited techniques between the late 1950s and 1980s.
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated fantasy drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, and illustrated by Helen Durney for the prototype of a novelty toy ("Roll-a-Book").
The history of animation, the method for creating moving pictures from still images, has an early history and a modern history that began with the advent of celluloid film in 1888. Between 1895 and 1920, during the rise of the cinematic industry, several different animation techniques were developed or re-invented, including stop-motion with objects, puppets, clay or cutouts, and drawn or painted animation. Hand-drawn animation, which mostly consisted of a succession of still images painted on cels, was the dominant technique of the 20th century and became known as traditional animation.
Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, live-action movie images were projected onto a glass panel and traced onto paper. This projection equipment is referred to as a rotoscope, developed by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer. This device was eventually replaced by computers, but the process is still called rotoscoping.
Traditional animation is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation of the 20th century, until there was a shift to computer animation in the industry, such as digital ink and paint and 3D computer animation.
Fantasia 2000 is a 1999 American animated musical anthology film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Produced by Roy E. Disney and Donald W. Ernst, it is the sequel to Disney's 1940 animated feature film Fantasia. Like its predecessor, Fantasia 2000 consists of animated segments set to pieces of classical music. Segments are introduced by celebrities including Steve Martin, Itzhak Perlman, Quincy Jones, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones, Penn & Teller, James Levine, and Angela Lansbury in live action scenes directed by Don Hahn.
Robert Fred Moore, was an American artist and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Often called "Freddie," he was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Despite limited formal art training, he rose to prominence at Disney very quickly in the early 1930s, due to his great natural talent and the tremendous appeal of his drawings. His drawings are still greatly admired by animators and animation fans.
Wolfgang Reitherman, also known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a German-American animator, director and producer and one of the "Nine Old Men" of core animators at Walt Disney Productions. He emerged as a key figure at Disney during the 1960s and 1970s, a transitionary period which saw the death of Walt Disney in 1966, with Reitherman serving as director and/or producer on eight consecutive Disney animated feature films from One Hundred and One Dalmatians through The Fox and the Hound.
Don Towsley was an animator working at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and later at MGM and Filmation.
The "Disney Vault" was a term formerly used by The Walt Disney Company for its policy of regularly imposing sales moratoria on home video releases of specific animated feature films. Each Walt Disney Animation Studios film was available for purchase for a limited time, and then returned "to the vault", unavailable for retail sales, pending some future re-release.
World of Color is a nighttime show at Disney California Adventure in the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Conceived by Vice President of Parades and Spectaculars Steve Davison, and designed by Disney Live Entertainment, the show has 1,200 water fountains and includes lights, fire, lasers, and fog, with high-definition projections on mist screens. The show is inspired by Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color anthology television series, as evidenced by the use of its eponymous theme song written by the Sherman Brothers.
Richard Huemer was an American animator in the Golden Age of Animation.
Mel Shaw was an American animator, design artist, writer, and artist. Shaw was involved in the animation, story design, and visual development of numerous Disney animated films, beginning with Bambi, which was released in 1942. His other animated film credits, usually involving animation design or the story, included The Rescuers in 1977, The Fox and the Hound in 1981, The Black Cauldron in 1985, The Great Mouse Detective in 1986, Beauty and the Beast in 1991, and The Lion King in 1994. He was named a Disney Legend in 2004 for his contributions to The Walt Disney Company.
The Haunted House, also known as Haunted House, is a 1929 Mickey Mouse short animated film released by Celebrity Productions, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. The cartoon was produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Celebrity Productions. It was the fourteenth Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the eleventh of that year.
The Castaway is a Mickey Mouse animated short feature released on March 27, 1931, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. It was the twenty-seventh Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the third of that year.
Live-action animation is a film genre that combines live-action filmmaking with animation. Projects that are both live-action and computer-animated tend to have fictional characters or figures represented and characterized by cast members through motion capture and then animated and modeled by animators. Films that are live-action and traditionally animated use hand-drawn, computer-generated imagery (CGI), or stop-motion animation.
Once Upon a Mouse is a 1981 American theatrical featurette directed by Jerry Kramer and Gary Rocklen of Kramer/Rocklen Studios, produced in association with Walt Disney Productions. It was released on July 10, 1981 on a double bill with The Fox and the Hound.