Interesting Stuff From 1982

https://archive.org/details/AmericanFilm198207/page/n53
Old July/August 1982 article "Disney Looks For A Happy Ending To Its Grim Fairy Tale" by Bart Mills

My how times changed since that time.

an interesting Chicago Tribine Article

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-08-03-8502210564-story.html
Chicago Tribune article from August 3, 1984 (Katzenberg arrived at Disney in October of that same year)

"The walls of the Animation Building at Walt Disney Studios are lined with reminders of the past. Original artwork from ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'' ''Pinocchio'' and various other vintage cartoon features are encased along the long corridors. Even the slightly musty smell, like that of an old school building, takes one back to the time when Walt Disney walked the halls as the head of this fantasy factory.
'
'It is different now than when Walt was around,'' said producer Joe Hale about the five arduous years it took to produce ''The Black Cauldron.'' ''But this is the first time we`ve been given the resources to make an animated movie that we hope will remind people of the richness of those early Disney films.''

Hale is hoping that the $25 million production of ''The Black Cauldron''--the most expensive animated film in history--will attract a large enough audience to justify the expense.

Based on ''The Chronicles of Prydain,'' a series of five books by Lloyd Alexander, the film tells the story of a young assistant pig keeper named Taran who must prevent the evil Horned King from taking over the world. His only method of destroying the king`s horrific kingdom is to eliminate the Black Cauldron. This ancient kettle has the power to resurrect all the dead warriors from all previous wars, allowing them to unleash their evil fury on the innocent kingdom. Taran must reach the cauldron and do away with it before the Horned King has it in his long, gnarled fingers.

Taran`s difficult assignment pales beside the real-life task Hale faced in bringing the story to life as an animated film. Although production began five years ago, preproduction work began in 1973 when Disney Studios bought the rights to Alexander`s books. When the financing was finally completed in late 1979, it marked a renewed commitment to the full, rich animation that had been Disney`s trademark.

That return to Disney`s roots in cartoon features was made necessary by the failure of such live-action Disney films such as ''Hot Lead and Cold Feet,'' ''Tron,'' ''The Devil and Max Devlin,'' ''Watcher in the Woods'' and
''Something Wicked This Way Comes.''

''The executives have been great,'' said Hale, referring to such people as Disney Productions` new president, Michael Eisner. ''They`ve left us alone during production and are supporting the film with a substantial advertising and marketing campaign.''

It has been a long journey for Hale. After five years, 2,519,200 drawings, 400 gallons of paint, 15,000 pencils, 300 erasers, 34 miles of film stock and more than a million hours of labor, ''The Black Cauldron'' has opened in theaters nationwide.

Hale, who started as a Disney animator on ''Sleeping Beauty'' in 1951 and subsequently worked on ''101 Dalmatians,'' ''Mary Poppins,'' ''Bedknobs and Broomsticks'' and ''The Fox and the Hound,'' said he believes that the key to a successful, long-term project is teamwork.
''It`s like casting a live-action movie,'' he said. ''If you cast the right people in the right roles, you`re on the right track.''

Unlike their live-action counterparts, animated characters must be created from the blank page. Once the physical characteristics are developed

--height, weight, coloring, gait--the filmmakers also must find the right voices.
''You have much greater control over the material in animation, but it`s a heck of a lot harder,'' Hale said.

When it came to selecting the voices, it was a team decision.
''We heard countless audition tapes before we even started the animation process,'' said Ted Berman, codirector, along with Richard Rich, of ''The Black Cauldron.'' ''You listen to voice after voice after voice until you get the one that`s right. It`s often boring, definitely time-consuming and, ultimately, absolutely necessary. If you don`t get the right voice, the character bombs . . . and if one character bombs, so does the movie.''

Hale picked up a small three-dimensional model of a pig from his desk.
''This is Hen Wen,'' he said, in the same respectful tone other producers might use when introducing an actress. ''She`s crucial to the film`s story.'' But at first, the Disney team hadn`t figured out how she should sound or how big she should be or even what color eyes she should have. They also were not sure whether she`d be able to speak English. In live action, questions like that are already answered.

''In animation,'' Hale said, ''we literally start from scratch.''
It took two years for Hale and his staff of more than 300 to decide about Hen Wen. They gave her blue eyes, a body in perfect scale with her companions and a voice that sounds like a pig. The animators had to translate the three- dimensional model of Hen Wen into a two-dimensional character.
''It all seems so simple when you see it on the screen,'' Hale said,
''and that`s the way we want it to be. But it`s not.''

The production team brings each single frame through an extraordinarily lengthy process: recording dialogue, drawing the layout, roughing out the animation, shooting the preliminaries on film, improving the drawings, shooting it again, transferring the drawings to clear acetate pictures called cels, mixing the paints, painting and shooting the cels and backgrounds, coloring, recording the sound effects and music and balancing the color. And these are just part of the process.

''The Black Cauldron'' has received a PG rating, instead of the usual Disney G. Like ''Snow White,'' which changed ratings from G to PG during its re-release, ''Cauldron'' contains some terrifying moments.

But the change in rating doesn`t signify a simple alteration in a rating; it represents a different direction for Disney.

''We decided to go back to the essence of the great animated features of the past,'' Hale said. ''We want real heroes and, to have real heroes, you need real villains. We wanted the Horned King to be as formidable as the wicked stepmother in `Snow White,` and I hope we succeeded.''
Disney Studios has been so optimistic about the future of animated features that it already has another due out next summer called ''Basil of Baker Street,'' starring Mickey Mouse as a Holmesian detective in Victorian England.

''Who knows?'' Hale asked. ''Maybe I`ll be around here for another few decades.''

"Mickey Mouse as a Holmesian detective in Victorian England"?
might be a joke an anecadote, or maybe misinformation.