Basil of Baker Street, Part 4

First time director gives Vincent (Ratigan) Price the
background of his character at the recording session.

Vincent Price was perfect as the vocal embodiment of nefarious villian, RATIGAN!  Or as his character would remark, "... an extremely large mouse!" I usually didn't attend voice recording sessions because I really liked having only the audio in my mind when testing for new characters, unblemished by the live session although the expressions and physical traits could be helpful at times to study if we choose that person to provide the voice. You wouldn't believe the physical theatrics I've seen when someone was trying out for a role waving their arms, making faces and jumping around instead of concentrating on their vocal acting. A few times after such a session a director would be excited after what he thought was a great recording test only to find the rest of us who hadn't attended the recording less than enthused because we were able to concentrate solely on the voice. My other excuse was that I was usually swamped with work. When Vincent Price came in though, well that was different. As we all knew who he was mainly due to his horror themed later films and the booth was packed with most of our small crew. John Musker was directing the recording on the floor with Vincent Price when he asked for the same take one too many times.  We were dying in the booth, laughing and I'm sure John thought it was funny in time too. 

Me and my pal "Big Ben"

 We had a lot of fun in those days at Disney. John instigated the first of many Caricature Shows in the studio library where his wife Gail worked. Everyone at the studio was invited to contribute and most of us did.  At Halloween, the animation staff would wear their finest and strangest mostly homemade costumes. I'll have to post some of those around October.  And any Disney animation artist worth their salt could flip a pushpin into a facing wall or ceiling and hit the spot. It was a benefit of long hours of having so much ready ammunition around. We became adept with whipping out those tiny terrors of pintacular precision. 

Sometimes we used the wall, other times the ceiling. We could toss them with a curve or slight rise, like a baseball player on the mound pitching to a heavy hitter. On Basil we took it up a notch. We used to make blowguns out of pan cels and shoot special darts which were our solid lead pushpins from the 1930's and 1940's. We could hit the target from one end of the hall to the other. The pins hit so hard that when we pulled the softer lead, the steel points stayed in the back side of the closed door. Wonder what they thought after the animation staff left to relocate to Glendale? Must have looked liked a metal porcupine had farted cold steel quills!  Tons of silly sketches flew back and forth among artists during production a lot of which I kept copies of thankfully. A funny gag drawing could make a long day seem a lot shorter. A prop I had brought in for the Toyshop sequence was an old hand crank bubble machine I had picked up in an antique store in London.  I put it to good use when Musker had to leave his office across the hall to attend a meeting one afternoon. I had found some "Super-Duper Long Lasting Bubble Liquid"  for the fuel but when John returned, there were bubbles over his desk, moviola, floor, everywhere. Those bubbles just stayed, and stayed! Luckily when they finally went away they didn't leave behind any damage, only that springtime fresh clean smell, ahhh.

Our favorite little corner of the world

 The film was enjoyable to be a part of because it all seemed to work. The story and the crew were a good matchup. The directors were all top notch. I was lucky to work with people like Matt O'Callahan whose story sketches were great inspiration to all of us. Rob Minkoff and Mark Henn  breathed life into the violin playing mighty mouse of deductions and his trusty sidekick Dawson. Glen Keane was unleased for one of his best performances to date with his portrayal of the notorious Ratigan. Henry Mancini was and still is one of my favorite composers and I was able to work with him on other films besides Basil and he even invited me to his studio office early one morning for a chance to see and hear his latest magic. Then out of the blue, the title was questioned. Management decided to test market the name "Basil of Baker Street" to some small kids and came back to us that it wasn't working and that the children preferred the name, "The Great Mouse Detective" much better. 

They were also concerned over the recent box office failure of Steven Spielberg's "Young Sherlock Holmes" and wanted to distance themselves from that film. This totally ridiculous move by management led to the infamous memo that went out with new titles for all the classic Disney Animated features to date. One inside joke of course was that "Aristocats" was the sole title unchanged in the fake memo. This memo circulated throughout the company and internationally and the animation staff thought it was hilarious. Management was furious besides being embarrassed and called an inquisition to nab the perpetrator but to no avail. No one on the crew was going to rat out the culprit although we all knew the author. It's funny that decades later the current  Disney management team has renamed, "Rapunzel" to "Tangled"  somehow because "The Princess and the Frog" didn't meet someone's box office expectations (I thought it did well) and they are blaming both titles with attracting girls only. As the old saying goes, "... only the names change," especially at later day Disney.

     

Sherlock Holmes Musem London

  By this time Don Griffith had retired, along with Woolie, Frank, Ollie, Milt, and other great disney alumni. Part of the magic for me was seeing these guys and learning what I could from their immense talent. I also missed hanging with the veterans during break times or lunch and hearing some great stories of "the old days" with Walt. Brad Bird, Tim Burton and John Lasseter had also moved on and so the studio had lost even recently acquired top talent. In addition to the creative ranks being depleted, we had also been moved in the middle of production, to a converted warehouse in Glendale off the studio lot and out of the old animation building. I missed our old digs, the backlot walks, the morgue and its history. At this point I also decided it was  time to move on. 

Setting up what would become DTV

All the locations on Basil were set and the background keys were done. There was tons of reference we had collected and donated if anyone needed to go back to the source. I went to work for the Bagdasarians on, "The Chipmunk Adventure", and for Disney TV on their new small screen offerings, "Gummi Bears" and "Ducktales". Ken Anderson was also brought on board for the launch of "Gummi Bears" designing the main tree so that was a highlight to be paired with the maestro again if only for a brief stint on publicity concept art. Some of my former crewmates on "Basil", Ed Gombert, Toby Sheldon, and others soon joined the party at Disney TV which added to the fun we had over in North Hollywood.

Basil Wrap Party with me attempting to channel Miami Vice

        My wife and I were eventually invited back to the House of Mouse for the wrap party with the film officially entitled, "The Great Mouse Detective". We could each bring a guest so I brought Bill Frake and my wife invited his lovely wife Kathy. Bill had introduced us to Rowland Wilson and his equally talented wife Suz. We had quite the adventure one night at the Magic Castle which for time I won't go into here. Bill was a layout man I had known and worked with and he had contributed a bit to Basil and I wanted him there to enjoy the party . As the evening went on, two of the film's directors, John and Ron came by to say hi and catch up. As he sat down at our table, John Musker leaned forward and asked if I was interested in Art Directing a new film he and Ron were going to direct, something called, "The Little Mermaid."

Basil of Baker Street, Part 3

My wife and I made hurried plans for a trip to London to gather reference for the film.We contacted Eva Redfern who managed the Disney Studio in our London branch and she worked tirelessly to set up the things we requested. Paramount to our quest for reference was a trip inside Big Ben itself. Security was and probably still is very tight around Big Ben as it is not only a famous London landmark but is considered part of the Palace of Westminister. We took our video equipment up those steps into the bell chamber. In those days, video equipment was heavy and in multiple pieces (camera and recording deck). After trudging up never ending sets of stairs, we found ourselves literally standing behind the huge face of Big Ben's milky white glass face. 

A reference shot I took just behind the
huge white clock faces of Big Ben

When the unseen bells were struck by the hammers above us, the tower actually vibrated with the sound. After that treat we then crawled up and lifted a sort of trap door with a pillow on top and found ourselves face to face within the bell chamber including the big one, BIG BEN. While being up in the bell chamber, we only had about 10 minutes to snap pictures and run video before the bells would chime on the quarter hour. Being close to noon, we knew we were in for some real ear splitting harmony and the ear muffs were very welcome. We spent the afternoon going inside, outside and around the structure until we were sure we had plenty of reference material of the tower for my needs as well as the crew back home.

One of the hundreds of photos
I took laying on the ground to
get a "mouse's point of view"

We must have been quite a sight to the British as I was perpetually lying down on the ground trying to get Basil's 6 inch high POV of London with my Nikon lens. We performed the same antics in front of Buckingham Palace,Tower Bridge and everywhere else that our brave intrepid little mouse might travel. Patty and I spent a late night in the East End of London because at that time it was filled with dilapidated buidings bordering the waterfront dating back to the Victorian age and beyond which was perfect for the Ratigan section. When the tube stopped off in Whitechapel, Patty and I were the only ones to step off into a deserted station. During our quest we also crossed the footsteps of Jack the Ripper while taking our photos. We became uneasy as we realized that we were alone in a deadend rundown section of cobblestone. The cabs didn't come to this part of town so we starting walking to the nearest tube which wasn't as close as we were hoping. As our imaginations kicked in, our pace got quicker until we eventually found ourselves safe and warm in our B&B back in Kensington Gardens. We hit Toystores while in London and brought back a collection of wind up tin toys and Victorian styled dolls that would make your hair stand on end. I made a corner of my room at Disney into a sort of turn of the century toyshop complete with fake iron window mullions made of balsa and cardboard.

A rough pastel concept for Basil's domicile

We also searched for the home of London's most famous detective. Although the 221 B Baker Street address of Sherlock Holmes didn't exist when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the adventure, we were able to find the Shelock Holmes Museum which is situated in a 1815 house similar to the one described in the stories. We also spent the afternoon in the Sherlock Holmes Pub which featured an extremely detailed replica of Mr. Holmes' apartment along with his collection of oddities. Don Griffith and Vance Gerry had both tipped me off about this place and I was glad they did. 

The basic structure for Basil's flat came from underneath my house. I crawled under my bathroom to take shot photos of the plumbing and wood/concrete construction. The sewer pipe was a wonderful device to set into the ceiling for proportion. Items like that gave it the identity of an area UNDERNEATH another living quarters and not just a miniature Holmes flat. I kept the large nails and wood grain which enhanced the scale and turned a piece of short pipe into a framed window. 

After sketching out the layout of Basil's flat I built a fairly detailed model of it that could be viewed from all directions. I even sculpted small posable figures of Basil and Dawson to scale to place into the set. This technique of building small set models had been done at the Disney Studio since before Snow White as an aid to directors, layout, BG artists and animators in visualizing scene settings. 

Ken Anderson had built a mill model for Walt Disney's classic 1937 Silly Symphonies, "The Old Mill ,"with detailed movable parts before production on that Academy Award winning short for those reasons. It was invaluable to many departments especially layout and story in planning unique angles and lighting patterns. With Walt's encouragement he went on to build a model set of Snow White's cottage for the next film also with great visual results.

Basil of Baker Street, Part 2

It was a joy to arrive at work in the morning at Disney in those days. It was like a second home to most of us and we enjoyed the comradery of good friends who were all working towards creating something special. My wife Patty was an effects animator on the film (just off her duties on Cauldron) and created things from exploding feather pillows, menacing shadows to soap bubbles for Basil.

She was the first female to make full animator at Disney since Retta Scott in the early 1940's. Joan Lunden from Good Morning America flew out to the Disney Animation where she interviewed Patty from her office in the animation building. It was great working on the same production because we both were understanding when the other had to work late on a scene or two to get it out for the production. Rob Minkoff, future director of "Lion King" was new to the animation department and would hang out in the corner of my room releasing a constant stream of doodles of Basil, Dawson and other character designs. His designs would be combined with those of others like Matt O"Callahan, Glen Keane and many others. In animation, there is always quite a few people contributing to the final result through a lot of stages. Then of course you don't truly know if the design works until the animator breathes life into the form with his stack of drawings and with the added element of the voice. Bruce Morris was another Cal Arts alumni who was excellent in multiple areas, one of which was story development. He fleshed out Basil's motives and also came up with a Victorian twist to an elaborate mouse trap that would put Rube Goldberg to shame. The crew list could go on and on and I apologize for omitting anyone but I fear this will never get posted if I don't draw a line somewhere.

A few of the endless designs and angles I did as concept art for Basil's flat

On Basil we employed the old unit system which had a director set up with his own little team within a team. I was thrilled to be in John's unit as I thought he had the most exciting sections in the film but everyone pitched in ideas or sketches to help the entire creative process. One of his sequences I was assigned to early on was the climactic fight on Big Ben. I had known of Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle of Cagliostro" and had copies of his storyboard and concepts. I was very impressed with his staging and idea of placing the characters amidst giant turing gears. When John Lasseter brought that film among others to show in the Disney theater I was really blown away seeing it on the big screen so when I read about the clock tower in the script, my imagination went into overdrive. At the time the original script called for the fight between Basil and Ratigan to take place on the hands of Big Ben until Ratigan falls to his demise but I wanted something more. I've always been a fan of big finales using interesting locales a prime example being Alfred Hitchcock's, "North by Northwest" on the gigantic and potentially dangerous faces of Mount Rushmore. I went into John Musker's office, and told John I had a new idea for the climax. Knowing John I expected a devastating but witty retort but instead he listened as I explained my idea of having the fight break through the face of Big Ben and continue inside amidst the menacing gears as a sort of homage to the Miyazaki film. John liked the idea and told me to develop it. Now all I needed was a way to make it all come together.

A corner of my old office at the Disney Studio
(This photo courtesy of the company newsletter)

Dave English and I met while I was creating some multiplane shots using his Academy Award winning computerized rig called ACES for Epcot and Walt Disney World. Unlike the old multiplane, we could repeat camera moves using the computer system which gave us more flexibility with layering. It was also set up like our old horizontal multiplane as opposed to the vertical one which gave us more room for trucking into the scenes. With his rig I created visuals that were later combined with audio-animatronic figures for the parks. I told him about Basil and my hopes for a computer sequence and he introduced me to a fellow at WED, Lem Davis. I would go over after hours (without permission) and we put together plot drawings of computer graphic settings for the gears turning and the chess board sequence. I chose those two setups because they were made up of simple (or so I thought) geometric shapes that we could easily reproduce in the new digital format. In those days, the computer systems didn't use a mouse and everything was input using a keyboard. Yeah, not easy. For the gears I had to get mechanical drawing made over in the machine shop on the backlot that would then be input point by point into the system. Did I mention that the system liked to crash? It did, frequently especially with the heat those machines built up. I took the colored line plots and sent them to our camera department to be shot with my animation poses exposed on top. After seeing the clips, John and Ron were enthusiastic over the possibilities. However the producer felt it might not fit into the look and it was dropped. Now I didn't agree with the decision but you have to understand that at the time it was a radical new concept and if not handled properly could indeed have stopped the visual flow so I understood his point of view.

I pinned the pastels and charcoals I had done next to the plotted line drawings and they were forgotten, for a while. At least until a visitor came in one afternoon, Roy Disney. He was showing Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg around the studio and came in to see what was up in our wing. During the tour, Roy was looking over my corner intensely and smiled, "Glad to see we're putting some computer images into the mix." After they left, I was given the go ahead to put the computer graphics into production. I remember John Musker's grin as he left the room was almost as big as mine.

Basil of Baker Street, Part 1

"The Black Cauldron" was to be a return of greatness for Disney Feature animation. There was a lot of fresh new talent alongside veteran Disney artists to bring it to the screen. Somewhere along the way as it slowly creeped through production, I just found it difficult to get excited about the direction Cauldron was taking. I wasn't as thrilled about it as I had been when I first saw Mel Shaw's dramatic pastels for the film. He had captured a tale of sweeping adventure and fantasy in brilliant colors. For me, that excitement had been watered down. I wasn't alone. There were others too who wanted to work on something else. That something else became, "Basil of Baker Street."

One of two desks I used simultaneously during Basil.
Here I'm working out the staging outside the toyshop

Mel Shaw had also been sketching pastels for a new film with the working title, "Basil of Baker Street." Among the early participants were  Directors, Burny Mattinson, John Musker, Ron Clements, Dave Michener, animator/character designer Ed Gombert and storyman Vance Gerry and Don Griffith and I doing concepts. Don Griffith provided some excellent visuals for the Dancehall/Waterfront dive area and I likewise did my best to keep up with my mentor doing the flat, lab, and toyshop. The group was dynamic to say the least. Burny could make these gorgeous charcoal story sketches with lots of appeal and he was an upbeat person to be around. I knew John from Cal Arts days and he was a mark above most even back then with a satirically sharp edge on his drawings. Ron had heart, plenty of it and really studied film techniques as in the 3 C's. Dave was a true veteran of Disney, working close with Milt Kahl for years, and his draughtsmanship was impeccable. Ed was a keen talent in many areas whether designing a character or executing a story sketch and I enjoyed his offbeat humor. Vance was just an easy going mellow soul who was fun to talk to and he could knock out beautiful expressive story panels that nailed each moment in the story arc.

The story was based on a series of children's books by Eve Titus where a mouse fashioned after London's greatest detective lives just beneath that famous 221B Baker street address. His archenemy is Professor Ratigan, a nod to Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes world. At one point the little girl, Olivia, was older and a possible love interest for Basil but it was deicided a small girl searching for her father would gain more feeling between our leads in the story dynamic. Basil also plays the violin quite well in our movie whereas in the books he's horrible with the instrument. Basil was named in honor of Basil Rathbone who played the detective role famously for MGM and Universal studios for many years.

Ken Anderson had done a marvelous workbook for "Ben and Me", and I was using copies of those as a guide to workbooking for Basil. The productions hadn't been using workbooks in their planning for many years. I'm guessing because the older crew with icons like Don Griffith and Mac Stewart and others had gained so much experience that they could just go from story sketch to layout with a minimum of problems. Well I wasn't as experienced or comfortable doing that so I liked relying on workbooks to aid in the staging process. I did all my thumbnails and even full size layouts in charcoal, sometimes using a carbon pencil for tight detail line work. I also made what I called "Color Ribbons" in small thumbnails to show the progression of color which is so important to setting mood and having an emotional impact. I got that idea from Fantasia, where they had these great little charts showing the abstract color in a sequence and how it would flow through the story. These were then set using workable fixative.

A rather messy corner of my room at the old Disney Studio

In those days we were still in the original animation building where they had done everything from Pinocchio onward and thank goodness the windows could be opened. This way I wasn't asphyxiating myself or my crewmates although that fixative odor could really linger. John Musker would routinely enter my room and ham up his gagging when he heard me spraying. HA, HA, HA, what a card, sheesh, hey I had to do something to make that stuff quit rubbing off! The sequences I was mainly responsible for designing were the opening title, Basil's flat (Basil's introduction), the Toyshop and the climactic fight (chase across sky onto and into Big Ben). Gil Dicicco who was also an Art Director on Basil for a while and did Ratigan's Lair along with the final waterfront look with marvelous watercolor studies. He introduced me to using FW Inks which gave you these brilliant colors and had an excellent permanence in light. Sadly the FW formula changed from carbon to acrylic about 10 years ago and the colors are milky these days. Brian Mcentee did Mr. Sherlock Holmes' flat upstairs and exterior streets of London with wonderful pastels. He did a series of those pastels set in the early morning just after my toyshop chase as Basil, Olivia and Dawson trot homeward on the back of bloodhound Toby while the lamplighter douses the gaslights one by one. Henry Mancini set music to them based on Big Ben's bell chimes and the total effect which brought tears to your eyes. It had the potential of, "Feed the Birds" from "Mary Poppins", to my mind. Unfortunately it was cut. It's a shame because the pacing gave us a heartfelt piece of emotion and a breather between two chase sequences and I really thought that helped the overall pacing.