Interview with animator Steve Gordon

 Animation Addicts Podcast - Disney, Pixar, & Animated Movie Reviews & Interviews | Rotoscopers - 209 Interview with Steve Gordon on Stitcher

Interview with Producer Joe Hale

Skull Rock Podcast interviews Joe Hale for the 35th Anniversary of Disney's The Black Cauldron

Edit: If The Skull Rock Podcast site goes down, you can find the episode at this link: https://www.dix-project.net/item/5509/skull-rock-podcast-35-anniversary-of-disney-s-the-black-cauldron-with-producer-joe-hale

Lloyd Alexander's Unused Script

Excerpts from Didier Ghez' interview with The Black Cauldron's co Director Richard Rich

from the book Walt's People Volume 2

"DG: The Black Cauldron took 10 years to produce. What were the greatest ideas that were discarded through production?

RR: The story went in many different directions. They even had the writer, Lloyd Alexander come in and do a screenplay. They brought in another writer to do a screenplay But with Disney's animation approach at that time, the storyboard was key. It was more of a collaborative effort.

        Then Pete Young took that one and went to a room by himself. Pete died when he was still on that project. He was just a young guy in his late twenties.

He went in and brought lots of things and got people excited.

but [the challenge] was more in trying to find the approach to that film and to that story that would meet the Disney qualifications. The conflict was always about how far to push the darkness in it. in attempt to find a middle ground, it was probably too scary for kids but not too scary enough for the teenage market. I don't know that the balance was ever found, but it was an attempt to move off of the sweetness but still having the sweet qualities of Disney in there, with a love story, and Gurgi."

"DG: Why did you end up up not using the script by Lloyd Alexander?

RR: As often the case, animation is such a visual thing. The Lloyd Alexander script was extremely long, too long, Condensing the story into a seventy-five minute story was extremely difficult for him."

Storyteller Record Albums

Storyteller and read along from Disneyland Records (Walt Disney Records)  narrated by the legendary movie trailer narrator Chuck Riley 

                                                                                

When The Black Cauldron was in theaters in 1985 in Sweden.... It was even more severly cut

from  https://www.non-disneyinternationaldubbingcredits.com/taran-och-den-magiska-kitteln--the-black-cauldron-swedish-voice-cast.html

               

• Premiere (first dubbing) : 11/29/1985
• Premiere (second dubbing) : 07/01/1998 (VHS release)

• There are two Swedish dubs of this film. The first from 1985 and the second from 1998.
• Several scenes were cut out of the Swedish 1985 dub as the censors thought they were inappropriate for children. These scenes were not dubbed in the original dub. The scenes that were cut are in the third YouTube video.
• The original dub is unavailable for public viewing as it is being kept in the Swedish Archives. There are several extracts that have been uploaded online which are the only pieces to be publicly viewable.
• The second dubbing was made for the first sales (and only) VHS release in 1998. The reason for the creation of the second dub was to dub the scenes cut from the Swedish premiere.

                                       The Black Cauldon - Swedish Original Dub Scenes

                         The Black Cauldon - More Scenes from the Swedish Original Dub.avi

                                Black Cauldron - Removed Scenes in Swedish Original Dub

Bobby Driscoll

Walt Disney's Peter Pan (1953) turned 67 on the 5th of this February of 2020.

It got me to thinking about the Disney veteran, former child star, actor and artist Bobby Driscoll [1937 - 1968]

I remember when I was young,

my family and I would watch VHS tapes of Disney Sing Along Songs and the Disney classics.

Disney's Sing Along Songs: Zip A Dee Doo Dah (1986) had some clips of the popular songs from the Disney catalogue as well as the title song Zip A Dee Doo Dah from  Song of the South (1946).

While Song of the South was (and still is) permanently withheld from circulation,

Bobby's second Disney film  So Dear to My Heart (1949) was available at the time, so this was one of the films we watched a lot.

memories aside,

 here is a documentary about Bobby.

interesting articles not talked about in the documentary: The Role I Liked Best... (Saturday Evening Post; 1951-01-27) — DIX - Disney Index Project (relaunch β) (dix-project.net)

Driscoll Appeal Against British Court Conviction Is Lost - Disney Cancels Plans to Bring Child to England Next Year (Showmen's Trade Review; 1949-11-05) — DIX - Disney Index Project (relaunch β) (dix-project.net)

some photographs from Early development of Sleeping Beauty (1959) from the early 1950's with Bobby Driscoll and Kathern Beaumount

              Images from the 2008 "50th Anniversary Edition" of Sleeping Beauty (1959) DVD


Milt Kahl one of Walt's top animator's, who animated and designed Peter and Wendy, did character designs for The Black Cauldron (1985).
You can see Milt's drawings as posted by animator Andreas Deja here: https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/02/milt-kahls-black-cauldron.html






                                     

video with a short history about Bobby Driscoll who was buried on Hart Island. also in the video an interview with Black Cauldron special effects animator and current Disney animation film preservationist Dave Bossert.

you can also check out this Bobby Driscoll tribute blog here: http://rememberingbobby37.blogspot.com/

Behind the Scenes Pictures

Joe Hale, Art Stevens and Ted Berman

John Hurt and Ted Berman.

Photo from http://affichesdisney.canalblog.com/archives/2009/08/04/14630480.html

Elmer Bernstein conducting. Photo from the liner notes of The Black Cauldron soundtrack CD

                            Voice Actor John Byner at the storyboards. Photo from IMDB.com

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.

The Making of The Small One (1978)

(Note this is one of those posts where I go off topic and go on a different topic that happened at Disney. and this film was being made while The Black Cauldron was in pre production in the late 1970's)

in late November and December there are interesting holiday traditions involving TV and movies.
people sit and with their families and watch their favorite Christmas shows.
(Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Claus is Comin' To Town, The Grinch, Charlie Brown, etc)

 Before TV, the tradition was a little different. people used to listen to the radio for their favorite Christmas themed episode of their favorite show or a radio Christmas special.

the story (religious in nature), Charles Tezwell's The Small One. produced for The Kate Smith Show

from Wikipedia (UGH):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Small_One_(album)
"The Small One," one of the most touching of all Christmas stories, was first produced in 1939 on the Kate Smith radio show by Robert Welch, who later became a Paramount producer.[1] It was featured in Bing Crosby’s Philco Radio Time broadcast of December 25, 1946"

 

Bing Crosby - The Small One - Dec 24, 1946

"and Decca Records soon arranged to make a new recording of it. This took place on March 20, 1947. The album was released on September 2, 1947[2] and in due course it was ordered by more than 1,500 private schools in the USA.[3]

"Crosby researcher Fred Reynolds outlined the story:

This Christmas story is narrated by Crosby when, in Old Mexico at the hour of siesta, he sees the boy Pablo berating a disreputable looking donkey. He explains that what is mistaken for stubbornness in the breed is, in fact, the pride that was brought by one that fulfilled their destiny. He relates how, many years ago, a boy was sent by his father to take an old donkey (the "Small One") to the tanner and obtain a piece of silver for its hide; of how the boy first tried to save the animal by selling it to a new owner at an auction where he was scoffed at and re-buffed; of how, entering the tanner's gate he is stopped by a stranger asking if he will sell the donkey to him as he has to undertake a long journey and his wife is not well; of how, when the new owner is stopped at the town gate by a soldier and asked his identity, replies that he is Joseph, his wife is Mary and that they are on their way to Bethlehem. There, in a stable, a King was born and the Small One was envied for becoming part of a great miracle.

Bing tells the charming story with conviction and he is well supported by the other actors and the background effects and music provided by Victor Young with a "Silent Night, Holy Night" conclusion. The "hoofbeats" effects (the same notes that the angels sang in their rejoicing) are adroitly interpolated.[4]"

https://archive.org/details/78_the-small-one_bing-crosby-charles-tazewell-victor-young-robert-welch_gbia0020200

"Crosby repeated The Small One on his Philco shows of December 24, 1947 and December 22, 1948.[5]"

in 1947. The Small One was published as a book.

from wikipedia (Again?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Small_One

"By the early 1970s, several of Disney's senior animators had died or retired, but the continuous success of their animated features convinced studio executives that the animation department was still lucrative but in desperate need for new talent.[1] Veteran animator Eric Larson was selected to head the training program, in which he selected and trained graduates from colleges and art schools across the United States.[2] Eventually, twenty-five new artists were hired from 1970 to 1977.[3]

The idea for The Small One originated from story trainee Pete Young who found the book among optioned properties at the studio library. He developed the initial storyboards at home, and pitched it to Ron Miller who claimed it to be a story with "heart". To help polish the storyboard, Miller brought on veteran Disney storyboard artist Vance Gerry to collaborate with Young.[4][3] Larson had assumed he would be directing the film and brought Burny Mattinson to help re-board the story, as well as veteran animator Cliff Nordberg to help assist on the animation.

According to Mattinson, the team left on Friday for the weekend, and returned on Monday to have their work tossed out because studio management had decided to give the project to Don Bluth to direct.[1] Then-animator Betsy Baytos claimed Larson, in reaction to the news, "just shook his head and knew that he wasn't being appreciated. He felt the old days were gone."

 In retrospect, Bluth stated, "Small One was something I directed to get the crew busy until Pete's Dragon...[Larson] might have [been involved] in the storyboard area. [But he] didn't get to direction. I think he elected to [teach]."[3] Given the allotted production budget, Bluth composed two songs himself with a third song composed by assistant director Richard Rich,[4] and recycled animation of Mowgli from The Jungle Book.[5]"


From Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's Blog
dragonslairthemovie.com/working-on-disneys-the-small-one/

There were 127 artists, camera operators and administrators involved in the making of this film, many of whom were not credited.

In those days, as a new animator, you had to have created at least 100 feet of animation in a film (about 68 seconds) in order to receive a credit on the film. If your employed position was below the level of a character animator, a layout artist, background artist, effects animator or a department supervisor, you would not receive a credit on a film. How times have changed.

Eric Larson, a legendary member of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” was a master animator and the mentor to many of us animation trainees. He had nurtured the promising story artist, Pete Young’s idea to bring the Charles Tazewell book, The Small One, to life as an animated short film. Working with veteran storyman, Vance Gerry, and with Eric’s guidance, Pete was able to flesh out the storyboards for the 30 minute short.

 Eric ushered the project into production with the intention of producing the little film and having his long-time animation assistant, story artist and animator, Burny Mattinson to direct the animation. However, the studio’s animation producer/director, Woolie Reitherman had begun nurturing Don Bluth to be the next animation feature-film producer/director.

Unbeknownst to Eric, Woolie announced to the crew that Don Bluth would be the Producer/director for The Small One. This caused much concern to Don and to the young turks in the Disney animation training program.

The trainee’s mentor, whom they had expected to produce the film and would have continued to tutor them on the film as well, would not be the producer of the film. There was a bit of anger and an effort to quash this decision by approaching the-then company chairman, Ron Miller. They made a plea to have Mr. Miller approach Woolie to reverse the decision. That did not happen. Don became the new producer/director.

Don, on the other hand, was surprised by Woolie’s decision to cast him in this position so soon after his debut as the Director of animation for Pete’s Dragon (1977). And, worst of all, the announcement was made without notifying Eric. But that was Woolie’s plan, to see if Don could stand the heat and handle the adversity. Don was very aware that Eric was involved with Pete Young’s presentation and that he had been mentoring Pete on this project for months. The challenge would be difficult.

                         Mel Shaw's artwork of The Boy and his old donkey "Small One" from Howard Lowry's auction site.

                                                   old VHS of the film from the 1980's

Mel Shaw's art for DIsney's The Black Cauldron

Jim Korkis’ Animation Anecdotes #265: When it came to doing The Black Cauldron (1985),
part of the five volumes of Lloyd Alexander’s The Prydain Chronicles, storyman Mel Shaw was given the task to read all the books and condense all the heroes,
villains and storylines into a workable cinematic story.
He made close to 250 colored pastel sketches of key dramatic moments and put them onto 35mm slides and then synchronized the slides to a recording of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (and some other music).
This resulted in a twenty-minute presentation for Shaw to pitch the story of a young boy’s quest for a sinister cauldron that must be destroyed.
http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animation-anecdotes-265/


images from Heritage Auctions 

The Comic Book of the Film

 The comic book panals follow a little bit close to that of the storyboards, with some abridged and altered dialogue.

some of the deleted stuff made it in the comic. And a addition to note: the dialogue has been dumbed down for this comic book, 

(like the 1985 Theatrical Cut, the violent parts that Jeffery Katzenberg and the Disney employees cut did not make it to the comic book)

http://gurgi27.tripod.com/~gurgi27/

here are some glimpses 

although  the some parts of the panels in this comic resembels the the earlier alternate fairfolk scene from 1983

the rest resemembels the finalized film

what was trimed

Like in the story boards these comic panels prove this scene was a bit longer

you might think it is strange to see deleted and alternate stuff in the comic book. 

back then it was common for comic book adaptations of movies to have such things, 

30 years later (on October 2015)

an event I never gone to

on October of 2015, The Black Cauldron had a showing at the El Captain Theatre

you can read the article here:
https://www.laughingplace.com/w/articles/2015/10/31/the-black-cauldron-at-the-el-capitan-theatre/

                 Don Hann producer of The Lion King (1994) and  Beauty and the Beast (1991) promoting  the El Captain Theatre The Black Cauldron screening event.

                                 "The Way It Was Meant To Be Seen" on the big screen
                       
          the  July 1985 Theatrical cut,  not the 1984 work in progress cut.  please don't be disappointed

             
                                               

          footage from the panal discussion, (only the end part of it, with the alternate fairfolk scene.)    

Technirama widescreen and The Layout Man's Picture

                 short video essay by the Geroge Eastman House on the Topic of Technirama


Excerpt from Animated View's interview with Black Cauldron Producer Joe Hale:
http://animatedviews.com/2010/the-black-cauldron-producer-joe-hale-talks-munchings-and-crunchings/

AV: The film was shot in 70mm. Was that a tricky part of producing the movie?

JH: Actually, that part was not that difficult because we’ve been doing films in CinemaScope. It was a just matter of having a lot more animation and bigger backgrounds. So, it was probably a bigger problem for animation than it was for layout.

AV: Layout is somehow one of the most obscure parts of the animation process. Can you tell me about that not-so-well-known art?

JH: Basically, there were a lot of very talented animators. There were the Nine Old Men, and other animators that were talented as well. So, there was – God, I don’t know – thirty animators working at the time and I figured that I didn’t want to be an animator.

So, I got to my boss, Andy Engman, about getting into Layout. What the Layout man does is: he takes the storyboard and breaks it down into individual scenes. And then you draw, you “lay out” that scene and you make drawings of the characters. You work very closely with the director and you have a lot of input.

On Cauldron, being a Layout man, I was heavy on layout. Cauldron is really a layout man picture. What I wanted to do was show the audience the world that they’re placed in. So, I wanted a lot of long shots.

The way we approached layout in those days, like in the pictures that Walt was involved in, was we approached each scene as if they were a painting that you could frame and hang on a wall. We made each scene very attractive. The layout man is like an art director. He’s certainly like an assistant director combined with art directing.

Somewhere along the line, they started to call it Layout, but most people never knew what layout really meant. The Layout men are the unsung heroes of animation because nobody knows what we do. When you look a scene on the screen after it’s painted, the people say “oh, what a beautiful painting!”. The background men pretty much get the credits for it. But basically, it was all designed by a layout man with just a pencil, a black and white drawing that the animator and the background man could follow.

Special Effects:: computer animation and the APT process

Excerpt from:
Animating "The Black Cauldron"
by Brain Lowery
https://www.dix-project.net/item/3061/starlog-magazine-issue-97-animating-the-black-cauldron

"One of the problems we've had in the last few years," Hale admits, "is that Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and others have moved in and taken over special effects – they do in live action what we used to do only in animation. If we are going to have any kind of an impact and keep this industry going, we must go farther in animation than they have in live action."

Inspired by the CG the Disney animators were doing for "Basil of Baker Street" (later "The Great Mouse Detective"), Joe Hale asked them to do some computer animation for The Black Cauldron.

Excerpt from Computers in the 'Cauldron'
by  Patricia Berry
March 1985
https://www.dix-project.net/item/2926/enter-magazine-issue-2-5-computers-in-the-cauldron

This animated fantasy took Disney five years to make. All of the characters and most other moving objects were done by hand by Disney's staff of artists, But computers helped with the animation of solid objects,
 and with the filming process itself.

On many scenes, a computerized device, appropriately called the Animators' Helper System, assisted the artistic staff.
The Animators' Helper improved and speeded up the work, according to Cauldron's producer, Joe Hale. "In one scene, we have a boat that Taran and Eilonwy escape in," says Hale.

"First, the boat's just sitting in the water. But when the kids get in, it tips with their weight, and balances again.

"It takes a very long time to make that kind of movement look real by hand-drawing each frame," Hale explains. "If it's not done precisely, you get a kind of rubbery look instead of a fluid movement."
But with the computer, animators simply had to input the dimensions of the boat, its various angles, and the directions in which it was to move. The computer then printed outlines for each position of the boat.
The computer can do some fancy work that hand-drawn animation can't.

But Disney's animators didn't want to use the full power of the computer For example, in the boat scene, the computer drawings could show three dimensions of the boat,
including the inside ribs that you wouldn't normally see. But that would have looked very different than the rest of the animation.

 "So we traced only the part you'd see from the front," explains Hate, "for the painters to fill in later"
In the filming process, computers helped Disney artists create depth of field. This is very difficult to achieve in the two-dimensional world of animation.
 By using a multiplane camera with precisely timed computer-controlled exposures, the filmmakers were able to get an image that seemed deeper and more lifelike.
Yet while computers have proved very helpful, there are certain aspects of animated filmmaking that are off-limits to these machines. For instance, says Hale,

 "we don't use the computer to add color [to the animation]. We do all that by hand. We even grind our own pigments."
Computers also do not play a part in creating the studio's memorable animated characters, Disney animators pride themselves on creating life-like characters — like the Horned King and Taran — out of pen, paper and paint.

"While [the computer] is great for animating solid, geometric objects that have [little or no] human characteristics, I doubt if the computer will ever be used tor animating personality," says Hale,

"The computer can save thousands of hours for us, but it's just a tool," he concludes. "The real work is done by the artists. A computer will never replace them."

Excerpt from Mike Pareza 's "Cauldron of Chaos, Part 3"

https://michaelperaza.blogspot.com/2010/09/cauldron-of-chaos-part-3.html

"A new process was also developed during Cauldron called APT which was meant to replace Xerography at the studio. Dave Spencer would go on to receive an technical merit Aademy Award for the process however it never did take the place of Xerox as foretold. Computers would eventually provide that little change."

Taran's Quest: Disney and Sierra's The Black Cauldron Dos Computer Game

                                                                  adverts for the game

                                                        youtube videos of the game

You can also check it out here at the DOS Games Archive

this internet archive link has the booklet for the game (with artwork from the end credits of the film and pictures from the film)
https://archive.org/stream/The_Black_Cauldron_Manual#page/n0/mode/2up

The Trailers

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                              Walt Disney Pictures - 1985 New Productions Trailer Showcase (35mm 4K)
                                             

                                   The Black Cauldron - 1985 Theatrical Trailer (35mm 4K)

                                                                                  

probably the most viewed Black Cauldron trailer on YouTube, the "Theatrical Trailer" from the bonus features section on the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection DVD of The Black Cauldron.

This trailer's music, it doesn't sound like the Elmer Bernstein score in this trailer. any information on whose music score in this trailer it is?

"Entire family"? 

hmmmmm

Do you mean "Family with teens of the late 1970's and early to mid 1980's who think they are too cool for Disney"?

                                                                

                                              

                               British VHS Trailer. This is similar to the "Theatrical Trailer"

                       one of the differences is this trailer it has Elmer Bernstein's music score

                A TV promo for a portuguesse dub with the alternate title Taran and The Magic Cauldron

                  start at the 0;22 mark on the video. 

                                               Bing Translate of the description  on the YouTube video 

"Trailer of the film Taran and the Magic Cauldron presented at the Disney Club Friends of March 19, 1989."      

                     

Taran and the Magic Cauldron (The Black Cauldron) - 1990 Reissue Trailer (35mm 4K)

                                            Taran and the Magic Cauldron - 1990 Reissue Trailer (35mm 4K)

                           

                                                             Taran and the Magic Cauldron -- Rare TV Trailer
      

                                                                                                   

1998 US Walt Disney Home Video trailer for the "Disney Masterpiece" The Black Cauldron VHS 
                                     
                                                                            

 

                                     Special Edition DVD trailer for The Black Cauldron.

              actually, it is The Black Cauldron 25 Anniversary Edition. it came out in 2010.

                                       I have this on DVD.   

on the DVD there is only one: the deleted alternate fair folk scene. 

When John Huston came to DIsney

                                                                image from likesuccess.com
When John Huston (voice of Gandalf from Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit 1977 and The Return of the King 1980 and Director of The Maltese Falcon 1941) came to Disney to record the narration for The Black Cauldron

excerpt from Jeremiah Good’s Laughing Place article The Black Cauldron at the El Capitan Theatre:
https://www.laughingplac...-the-el-capitan-theatre/

“One of those moments where you know you just heard a story that very few have heard came when Hahn asked Hale
how John Huston came about as being the narrator at the opening of the film
and Hale said, “Roy E. Disney suggested using him because he always wanted to meet John Huston.” But, as it turned out,
Roy never got a chance to meet Huston because Hale spent the entire time talking to him about his war footage he had shot.”