Beauty and The Beast

The film that I am going to choose to research the making of is Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991). Beauty and the Beast is a part of the Disney’s Animated Classic series. The story of Beauty and the Beast originated as a fairy-tale, the first published version of the story being in 1790 in French and the English translation was published in 1757. Walt Disney Pictures released their version of the story in November 1991, earning over $424 million in box office sales.  The film one won three golden globe awards, and became the first ever animated feature film to be nominated for a Best Picture academy Award.  ‘’ Later, when they announced the Oscar nominations, it was like an out-of-body experience: Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film ever to be nominated for best picture’’ (Don Hahn)

 

After the success of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 Walt Disney was looking to make other fairy tales that could be turned into feature length films, he came across the story of Beauty and the Beast, the story was looked at my Disney’s story team in the 1930’s and then again in the 1050’s but proved to be too difficult for the team and the project was then left until the 1980’s where Walk Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney reopened the project as he wanted to re-invent Disney animation.  The story-team at Disney then spent several months turning the fairy-tale into a feature length film and created a full-story board in London, but once complete the project was then abandoned as the story did not work. ‘’ Beauty and the Beast was one of the last great fairytales Disney hadn't done, so we spent about nine months developing it. It was the late 1980s and we were working with fantastic animators. I thought it was going OK. We flew to Florida to show it to Jeffrey Katzenberg and the other executives. When the lights came up, Jeffrey said: "Ay-ay-ay, this is not going in the right direction." (Don Hahn)

Later Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise were brought on the project as directors, even though neither had ever directed and animated film before and worked closely with the story team to figure out what was originally wrong with the story that made it not work. The team realised that they didn’t have any way of developing the characters as the original story only had two characters, Belle and the Beast, Disney added the house hold items to ‘bring warmth and comedy to the story’. ‘’This was my first film as a producer and it was horrifying. We brought in new directors and songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. Howard came up with the idea of having enchanted objects singing and talking, and suggested making the film a fully realized musical. This made it more of a fantasy, so more appropriate for animation. After that, it really took off.’’ (Don Hahn)

The story team developed Belle, as she is beautiful they wanted to make her a little bit different and unaware of her beauty. The team were unsure if the Beast was going to be a hero or a villain so they decided to make him a little bit of both, and introduce to the story the main villain Gaston who in the end tries to murder the beast. For the character of Belle, Disney’s main goal was to create a beautiful character that had both heart and soul, they made Belle to be a little eccentric and adventurous, she is a hero in the story. The Beast was a character that they wanted to portray his emotion using mostly his facial expression yet also capturing him as a beast. ‘’ "There's never been a character like him before, so there was nothing to fall back on. I began creating the Beast by figuring out who the character really is inside. He's a guy trapped between two worlds. He's part animal and part human and he's not comfortable with either. His design had to show the human side - heart, warmth and the ability to love. The ferocious, hideous animal side had to reflect his incredible power and agility. I filled my mind with all these things and began processing it into a final design. Numerous trips to the zoo, studying National Geographic videos and analysis of stuffed animals helped in the process." (Glenn Keane, animator )

Production of Beauty and the Beast was done in two years, they originally had four years but lost some time due to scrapping the original storyboarded version of the film. Most of the production was done in the main Feature animation studio in California, with some production also being done in Florida. Both hand-drawn imagery and computer-generated imagery were used to create the film, the ball-room sequence at the end of the film in particular is famous for its use of computer generated imagery. 

Whilst conducting research for the Beauty and the Beast project the animators visited Europe and visited the Chateau of Chambord in the Loire Valley of France, where they decided that this would be the home of the beast. “It was an ominous, impressive place with all of these spires and just standing there before us.  I mean I’ll never forget the morning driving up there through the mist and fog and seeing it there.  I thought this is the Beast’s castle.  This is where he lives.” (Glenn Keane)