Production
The layouts were done on computers, and the use of video cameras made a digital version of pencil testing possible. The movie is also notable for its early use of computer generated imagery (CGI) for a chase scene that takes place in the interior of Big Ben. The movements of the clock's gears were produced as wire-frame graphics on a computer, printed out and traced onto animation cells where colors and the characters were added. The Great Mouse Detective is sometimes cited as the first animated film from Walt Disney Pictures to use CGI; in reality, 1985's The Black Cauldron has this distinction.
Initially, Olivia was to be an older character with the potential as a love interest for Basil or even an infatuated Dr. Dawson, before it was decided that she should be a child to better garner audience sympathy. While visually, Basil and Dawson were based on Rathbone and Bruce, their voices and personalities were not. Basil's voice was modeled on Leslie Howard’s portrayal of Henry Higgins in the film Pygmalion while Dawson's voice was modeled on Disney animation legend Eric Larson.
"We didn’t want to make them simply miniature versions of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce," Clements affirmed. "Dawson’s not a buffoon. He’s a foil for Basil but also a warm and caring person."Disney decision to call the film The Great Mouse Detective and not Basil of Baker Street was unpopular with the filmmakers. Animator Ed Gombert wrote a satirical interoffice memo, allegedly by studio executive Peter Schneider, which gave other Disney films generic titles such as Seven Little Men Help a Girl, The Girl with the See-through Shoes, and Puppies Taken Away.
Read more about this topic: The Great Mouse Detective
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)