I have been dying to see this and it has not screened anywhere near me. I guess I will have to wait for the dvd. The official website is here.
By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn’t care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. “Waking Sleeping Beauty” is no fairy tale. It’s the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits – “Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast ,” “Aladdin,” “The Lion King,” and more – over a 10-year period.
This is the kind of film that should be screening at comics conventions.
I’ve only done a few jobs for Disney, but I will always remember it as the best learning experience of my entire career. I don’t think the average Joe realizes just how incredible the artists in that studio are.
The pay was not great, I owned nothing.
The training was invaluable.
The DVD comes out November 30. I looked it up. Put it on my wish list.
Looks fascinating.
This should be shown together with Dream On, Silly Dreamer, the documentary about the unceremonious closing of the traditional animation department at Disney.
http://www.dreamonsillydreamer.com/
I agree that Disney has done some phenomenally beautiful work and amazing storytelling over the years, but they’ve also turned their backs on the things that made them great more than once.
That said, I’m glad you got so much out of working for them!
I had a great experience working directly with the artists. There was one fellow, Dave Pacheco, who was a principal animator on “The Little Mermaid”. He sat me down one day and ran me through my paces on the project I was working on. I learned more from him in one day than I learned on my own in a year.
Disney offered me a staff job. Had I not just bought I home, I would have taken it.
http://imagiverse.org/interviews/davidpacheco/david_pacheco_17_07_10.htm
Just a quick reminder… the re-re-etc.-release of Beauty and the Beast on DVD this fall (I recommend UPC: 786936793291) has the original work-in-progress print shown at the New York Film Festival. I already own it (it came with the laserdisc) and it’s interesting to see how the story changed in production.
The magic of Disney is that it not only produces amazing animation from talented people, it manages to inspire new generations, even when the executives forget the original vision.
GREAT!
Alas, I still have this big boxed set limited edition video tapes. Cripes.
I need to get my video library back on shelves, I’m not entirely sure what I have on tape and what on DVD. I think I have Beauty and the Beast on tape which is a good excuse to get the DVD edition that Torsten mentions.
I had the original special edition (video) and it came with a CD soundtrack, which was my excuse to buy a CD player at last XD I traded it to someone at a convention for a commission or something. Yeah, stupid me…
I just ordered that “Dream On Silly Dreamer” DVD based on Bodefan’s recommendation. Sound like awesome.
Of course now that theyre doing some animated stuff again it’s almost moot, but wow, what an implosion of stupid. You’d think they’d have learned after Black Cauldron that the answer is not “OMG ONOES animation is teh dead!” it’s “wait it out, it’ll come back better than ever”. Morons.