For decades, Walt Disney Studios was a pioneer in animation, but it would be the invention of the multiplane camera that would truly change animation forever!
Early animation filming was quite simple. Animators would use a camera to film a two-dimensional background. It would make for beautiful shots, but there wouldn’t be any depth to it. As the camera zoomed forward, everything in the painting would appear to grow larger, even the faraway objects in the back.
Animators wanted to bring the scene to life making it behave like a realistic piece of scenery. In reality, the things closest to you should appear larger while moving forward, while object in the far distance ultimately stayed the same size. In 1937, under the guidance of technical expert, Bill Garity, eighteen engineers would invent the Multiplane Camera, an innovated camera that split a paintings field of view into different levels. The camera measured at a whooping 14 feet high and needed five or six technicians to operate.
Separate levels or planes are used for the foreground (closest to camera), middle ground, and background (farthest from camera).
As the different planes were moved forward towards the camera, the background plane remained in place, giving the perspective of organic movement forward into the scene.
It took an average of 2 to 3 weeks to plan and shoot a single scene on the camera. This is because technicians experimented with different perspectives, proportions, lighting, and timing of a scene.
See a clip of Walt explaining how the camera works from an episode of “Tricks of Our Trade” which aired February 13, 1957.
The multiplane camera was first used in the 1937 Silly Symphony, “The Old Mill.” This was a huge deal as the initial start of the short had the camera panning forward towards the mill and the final shot showed the camera moving away as to provide a sense of closure to the story.
Here is the initial scene:
… and the ending scene:
As you can see, that poor little mill went through quite a bit between the beginning and end! Fans loved the short and it won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject in 1938. Walt Disney Studies was also awarded a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for the innovated technology! You can stream the film on Disney+ or watch it below:
After their success with “The Old Mill”, the multiplane camera would be used on future projects, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Bambi (1942) to name a key few.
The final Disney film to use the camera was The Little Mermaid in 1989 as the technology was surpassed by the newer CAPS “Computer Animation Production System” and other digital programs, which are used today.
Three surviving original multiplane cameras used by the Walt Disney Studios have been preserved and put on display. One cane be found at The Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank California, the second at The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco California, and the third at The Art of Disney Animation at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris.
These three displays highlight an important part of animation history and show the sophisticated technology pioneered by the Walt Disney Studio. It is incredible to see how animation has evolved over the past 70 or so years. With how vivid and realistic films are now, it is hard to imagine how technology will shape the next 70 years for the industry!
