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. We ve triedto take care of the whole plant in Pinocchio, he said, and there s where wegot into trouble.Not having a thing prepared.Trying to build a story beforewe ever even knew it.We didn t know the story.We had to live with it. 40ambi ti on s pri ce, 1 93 8 1 941 1 45 His remarks about Fantasia were very diªerent, and often far more am-bitious, in keeping with the scale of what he and Stokowski were attempt-ing.In a meeting on August 8, 1939, on the sequence based on Beethoven sPastoral Symphony, Disney spoke of the power of the screen s giving visibleform to what has only been imagined: When it s common on up here [ in-dicating brain, the stenographer noted] but hasn t been seen on the screen,then you have something.Then it hits everybody in that audience.Youcouldn t ask anybody these things, but the minute you see them on the screen,they know.There is some contact.Even an ignorant so-and-so like me Iget the idea. 41In May 1939, Stokowski recorded the rest of the music for Fantasia withhis old orchestra, in Philadelphia; Disney attended the recording sessions.Ata meeting on July 14, 1939, the artists working on each sequence listened tothe new recordings and suggested adjustments in the sound bringing it upor down, altering the emphasis given various instruments so that it wouldwork more eªectively with the images.42Musical comedies aside, music had always played a fundamentally sup-porting role in films of all kinds, even in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,whose songs were carefully integrated into the story.By elevating music tosuch importance in Fantasia, and suppressing sound of other kinds, Disneygreatly aggravated the danger that the film would resemble nothing so muchas a silent feature with orchestral accompaniment, except that most of Fan-tasia would lack a strong narrative.Let daylight slip between the music andthe drawings on the screen, let there be lost the sense of what Disney hadcalled action controlled by a musical pattern, so that the audience becameeven dimly aware of sound and images as separate entities, and the resultscould be disastrous.As Stokowski said in one of the early Fantasia meetings,on September 26, 1938, The big masses of people don t like concerts andthey don t like lectures and, it could be assumed, they wouldn t care muchfor a concert accompanied by extraneous pictures.43It was increasingly important to the Disney studio that Pinocchio be a hit.The studio s income went skidding down after Snow White: from $4.346 mil-lion in the first nine months of 1938, to $3.844 million in the next twelvemonths, to $272,000 in the last three months of 1939 lower even at an an-nual rate than in the pre Snow White years.The studio showed a loss in thatquarter.44 In June 1938, Disney floated the idea of paying his employees avery large bonus from the profits of Snow White as much as a million dol-lars, compared with around $120,000 that was actually paid that year in salaryadjustments but by the fall of 1939, he had spent the money Snow White1 46 a drawi ng factory had brought him.45 Money was still pouring out into Pinocchio, into Fan-tasia, and into a new studio in Burbank that was nearing completion.Sharpsteen said many years later that Disney s unease about Pinocchio,voiced so often during production, had grown into distinct misgivings bythe time the film was previewed in January 1940.The endless touching upcontinued even then, as Milt Kahl redrew the scenes at the end of the filmshowing Pinocchio as a real boy. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston drewthe inbetweens for Kahl s animation. As I recall, Thomas said, we had lessthan a full day to complete our drawings and get them over to ink and paint. 46In the meantime, as work continued on Fantasia, there was evident thesame attention to detail, but from diªerent motives, to burnish a jewel ratherthan rescue a mistake.Disney s commands sometimes added hours to ourwork in the inking and painting department, Marcellite Garner said, as forinstance in a scene from Fantasia, we did long sliding cels of mud bubblingup.Must have been hundreds on a cel, and we used about five diªerent shadesof colored ink, so close in hue that we could hardly tell them apart. 47Fantasia was the beneficiary and the studio the victim of a subtler formof extravagance.During work on the film, as the eªects animator CornettWood said, eªects techniques were invented on the spot, scene by scene, the eªects being things like the bubbles (for The Rite of Spring ). Every-thing depended on the needs of the scene, Wood said.48 Sometimes this con-stant improvisation extended beyond the eªects animator s own desk thecamera department and perhaps other members of the staª would be en-listed in the search for a certain eªect, which might not be achieved untilseveral tests had been shot
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