New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Bill1978 » August 8th, 2020, 8:46 pm

And Disney+ has finally sucked me in...for a month. When I get around to having time to watch the 2 documentaries.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Ben » August 9th, 2020, 7:12 am

The magic of Disney. One way or another, it will get you in the end.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by gaastra » August 9th, 2020, 9:08 pm

Is Waking Sleeping Beauty on Disney+?
Yes and it's really good.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by EricJ » August 10th, 2020, 3:36 am

gaastra wrote:
August 9th, 2020, 9:08 pm
Yes and it's really good.
Arguably THE definitive documentary on How the Renaissance Happened, although they try to end on a high note after Lion King and leave off the question of whether it was Pocahontas or Hunchback that ended it.

Of the other docs, "The Boys: the Sherman Brothers Story" is also a little more bitterly revealing than you might expect, but I was left cold by "Walt & El Grupo", which has too much scenery and not enough Disney history.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Ben » August 10th, 2020, 6:33 am

I loved all three, but found that WSB, while fairly candid, was still the result of being a Disney product, and made by a guy who was in the middle of it all and wants to continue to be so (see: Howard), so it isn’t as quite as forthright and brutally honest as it might have been.

For those perspectives, see the SaveDisney-era Dream On, Silly Dreamer, as well as — if you can find it — The Sweatbox, about the unmaking of Kingdom Of The Sun and its painful transition into The Emperor's New Groove.

Dreamer was totally independent (though with a LOT of input from Disney employees past and present, as well as the rumored support of one Roy Disney), while Sweatbox *was* originally Disney Studio-endorsed (as part of its deal for Sting to provide the music, he was allowed to have his wife, Trudie Styler, create an independent doc on the process), but when the project went sour, so did the doc, and Styler's less than flattering honesty on the whole thing means The Mouse would rather suppress its candidity and stick with the WSB narrative.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Farerb » August 10th, 2020, 6:46 am

You can find the Sweatbox on YouTube:



I'll try to look for Dream On, Silly Dreamer. It sounds interesting.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Ben » August 10th, 2020, 6:50 am

And there ya go! Looks like someone uploaded the same timecoded bootleg I was able to snag some time ago...!

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by droosan » August 10th, 2020, 1:07 pm

When I visited the WDFA studio in 1997, they were then in-production on Tarzan .. but there were a couple of bulletin boards' worth of concepts and pre-production art for (what was then) Kingdom of the Sun on display, in one of the hallways.

I recall in particular several painted studies of Yzma by Andreas Deja .. looking very sinister, indeed! :twisted: His designs showed promise of a Disney villainess to rival Maleficent or Cruella DeVil; a far cry from the rather more-comic version in The Emperor's New Groove. :|

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Bill1978 » August 10th, 2020, 4:12 pm

Just while KOTS/TENG is being discussed and I don't want to derail the Disney+, technically if Disney decided to one day complete KOTS (you know just for me) and throw it up on Disney+ and money and time wasn't a issue etc. Could it be done? I've watched Sweatbox but I can never tell exactly how much of KOTS technically exists and what was unfinished. Like is all that's left to complete it is the animation and postproduction stuff like sound effects. Is the dialogue completely recorded for example, and what about all the in movie songs? I imagine a score would need to be written. Short form of my pondering - Would it be possible to finish KOTS or is there too much 'actor stuff' missing?

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by droosan » August 10th, 2020, 4:57 pm

If you've ever seen the "Work-In-Progress" version of Beauty and the Beast .. there almost certainly exists within Disney's archives a similar version of Kingdom of the Sun, which represents its state at the point that version of the movie was abandoned, in favor of the transition to what became The Emperor's New Groove.

The dialogue would almost certainly be complete (though perhaps not 'polished'), and there'd probably be a 'temp' music track for key sequences, especially the songs. Each scene would be represented visually at least in 'story reel' form (still drawings/paintings, with crude pans & zooms done digitally), with some scenes in various states of production (key animation, cleanup, FX; however far along they'd gotten, until that cut's date).

I highly doubt such a reel would ever see public release.

As for what it would take to 'finish' that version of the movie; well, it would depend in part upon how far along in production the various sequences were .. and what crew were available, etc. But there's almost certainly a zillion legal & contractual obstacles toward doing so, even for Disney. :|

As I'm sure you're aware, two of the songs Sting wrote for KotS were included on tENG's soundtrack album. IMO, we were exceedingly fortunate to get those (although there again, Disney might've been contractually obligated to release at least that much).

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Ben » August 10th, 2020, 5:25 pm

It’s an impossible dream.

Dialogue was recorded, but much was scratch tracks. The story was never settled — hence the switch to ENG — so there was never any "finished" workprint of KSUN. I’m unaware of *any* final color, so everything is pencil tests at the very best, and story sketches for most of it. It was during this process that the film was overhauled.

Considering that Disney balked at the price it would cost to complete the Soup Song sequence for a Special Edition of Snow White — and that had fully completed animation that basically needed coloring — then I can’t see them finishing the story reels, recording final dialogue (impossible given Kitt is no longer with us), editing that along with music scoring, etc, plus FX animation...you're talking about basically making a movie from scratch that never had its story problems solved. KSUN, technically, does not and, however sadly, can not exist.

Funny that Droo visited Disney at the same point he saw the Planet Ice concepts at Fox. I visited Disney around the same time, bumping into Roger Allers in the hallway and seeing what must have been much of the same KSUN concepts. Some wonderfully evocative stuff.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by droosan » August 10th, 2020, 5:39 pm

I was working at a variety of small-time vendors in the late-90s & early-00s -- mostly for commercials & TV VFX, but occasionally contributing to TV cartoons. I had several friends & former co-workers who were in feature animation, and was trying hard to break into that biz. :lol:

I finally got my chance on The Barnyard .. which (even though I wasn't completely unhappy, when working on it) actually kinda 'soured' me on pursuing feature cartoons, for awhile. :?

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by EricJ » August 10th, 2020, 7:06 pm

Ben wrote:
August 10th, 2020, 5:25 pm
Funny that Droo visited Disney at the same point he saw the Planet Ice concepts at Fox. I visited Disney around the same time, bumping into Roger Allers in the hallway and seeing what must have been much of the same KSUN concepts. Some wonderfully evocative stuff.
I remember when the Florida studio at the Parks used to have public tours, before the Eisner Ink-and-Paint Purge.

That would have been '02, during the second, Stainton-era flailing-about for the studio to rediscover its identity, and I remember the host talking about the work on Brother Bear, saying the animators believed lil' Koda would be, quote, "the next great Disney character".

(Yes, the audience pretty much reacted the same way, too: "Um... :shock: ")

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Randall » August 10th, 2020, 7:32 pm

I lived in Orlando in the 90s, so what I got to see in production was largely Mulan, which of course was Orlando-based. I always loved seeing the maquettes up close, in addition to watching the animators at work.

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Re: New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

Post by Farerb » August 11th, 2020, 12:27 am

I feel like that the process that TENG went through is similar to other films, except here we were able to see the process. I think that Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin went through the same process. Actually watching The Sweatbox, I found it very similar to the Frozen II documentary with the exception that we don't actually know what didn't work in KotS, but I did come to the conclusion that if Frozen II was an original film and not a part of a big franchise, it would have been scrapped - I think that's the main difference between the two documentaries: One had a version that didn't work so they came up with a completely different version and ultimately making a completely different film. The other had a version that didn't really work but they didn't really do anything about it, or at least they tried and were unsuccessful.

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