Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Story: 1930s Cartoon "Script" Discovered
The family of animator Ray Patterson brought some artwork by the Archive the other day for us to digitize. Included among the material was this "script" for a Charles Mintz Barney Google/Snuffy Smith cartoon. It's actually not a script- it's a premise, but this is as close to a script as cartoon gag men got in the golden age. It fits perfectly into the first of my articles on writing for cartoons, so I added it. If you haven't seen this series of posts, check them out...
Writing Cartoons Pt 1- The Gag Session
Writing Cartoons Pt 2- A Continuity Emerges
Writing Cartoons Pt 3- Structure
Writing Cartoons Pt 4- The Rough Board
I promise that I'll pick up these posts again and continue through the process later this Fall.
We will have more exciting treasures to share with you soon courtesy of the family of Ray Patterson.
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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posted by Stephen Worth @ 6:38 PM
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4 Comments:
Steve This is the best post ever. I wish everyone in the current animation industry would read and applied this to animation production.
Thank you
I own several Tom and Jerry 'scripts' (the cat and mouse, not those earlier characters by the same names) which are basically capsule descriptions of visual content, very much like scripts for live-action films. Is this process not used anymore? If not, why not? Interestingly, some of the scripts are for re-releases, and identified as such, so I wonder why they (scripts) were produced that way, given that the shorts were already a known quantity. Don't know many animation collectors, but these seem unusual; I'd never seen anything like them before. In a separate comment, I may send some future info regarding an uncle of my mother's who worked for Iwerks and elsewhere.
...by the way, the items I have are basically like scripts: they're not single-paragraph descriptions. As T&J were frequently without dialogue, they're basically multipage, dialogue-free descriptions of the continuity of each cartoon as they would be seen onscreen. Definitely original, judging by the type of paper and printing used. So, if you consider T&J to be of animation's Golden Age, these items I've described are actually closer to script format than the single-paragraph plot description here, although the 1930s example is certainly terrific to see. (I'll send a scan when I unearth these from storage).
Hello Jim
I would definitely like to scan your Tom & Jerry "scripts" for the archive. Most likely they aren't scripts but drafts, written after the film was completed for library purposes. You can email me at sworth@animationarchive.org when you find them.
Thanks
Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
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