Starting the Discussion

More From Termite Terrace

Maltin, pp. 281-309; Klein, pp. 146-161

Maltin:

  1. Why was MGM often called "the Tiffany's of motion picture studios"? What shared goal of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising did the studio promise to further when they set up shop there? By the early 1950s, how long was the production time on the average studio-produced cartoon short?
  2. What were the strengths and weakness of Harmon-Ising productions during the 1930s?
  3. When MGM set up an internal animation unit, they lured Friz Freleng from Warner Brothers (for a short time). His comment on his stint at MGM was that "the budgets there were much larger than the Warner's budget, but it didn't help the pictures any because they had the wrong concepts to start with." What continuing creative impasse at MGM was Freleng pointing to in this comment?
  4. In the later '30s, Ising invented Barney Bear. Why didn't that series ever take off?
  5. What made the team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera work from the moment they got together? How were their backgrounds similar? What made them different?
  6. Your text gives you a lengthy discussion of MGM's most popular cartoon characters through the 1940s and early 1950s: Tom and Jerry. How did Hanna and Barbara come up with the team? What were the consistent strengths of the Tom and Jerry cartoons? How did their animators keep the formula from getting stale?
  7. Though he had a large role in developing such Looney Tunes characters as Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, Tex Avery moved to MGM during the World War II years. What were Avery's strengths as a director at MGM? How could his work be directly opposed to the style favored by the Disney studio during the war years?
  8. The Wolf was a character not much favored by the censors in the Hays Office; why not? Who did love the Wolf cartoons and in fact adopt him and his co-star as mascots? When did Avery first realize that the Wolf was a true success?
  9. How do the Wolf cartoons compare with the earlier Betty Boop cartoons? What made their respective heroines different? How were they similar?
  10. What other kinds of work were typical of Avery's output at MGM? How would you characterize his style?
  11. Wheras Termite Terrace at Warner Brother's was fairly isolated from the studio around it, the MGM animation unit was much more a part of the studio as a whole. How did this integration show itself in some of the MGM live action films of the mid-1940s?
  12. The largest such collaboration was with Gene Kelly in Invitation to the Dance (1953). What was the process by which the animators were able to pair Kelly up with a variety of animated dancing partners in an extended sequence?
  13. Like Warner's, MGM greeted the fall off of theatrical attendance of the 1950s by producing "cheater" cartoons. What were "cheater" cartoons?
  14. What became of the various animation personnel when they left MGM? Where did Hanna and Barbara in particular find themselves?
  15. How about Tom and Jerry: what was in their future in 1956?
  16. By the mid-1960s, Chuck Jones had his own production company, but did several pieces for MGM; what kind of work was he producing at that time?

Klein:

  1. In this section, we move further into the stylistic qualities of full animation, as practiced by such major studios as Disney and Warner Brothers. As you read, pay particular attention to the connection between live action and animated films during this period.
  2. To what extent were special effects of this period an outgrowth of animation technique? How did these special effects progress into the CGI available to us today?
  3. Looking back at the lecture last Thursday, what do we mean by "depth of field"? How was it being used in live action films like Citizen Kane?
  4. What made full animation at different studios and in different years so distinctive?
  5. How did the ability to manipulate individual layers or surfaces in full animation free animators to be more creative?
  6. What was the cost of the increasing drive at the Disney studio to achieve a full animation that mimicked the mise en scene and camera movement of live action films? How did the cartoonists at Warner Brothers achieve full animation differently?
  7. "At the heart of full animation is the conflict between self-control and explosion," Klein observes. You should be ready to apply his observation to the work of Freleng, Clampett, Jones and Avery.
  8. Why, by the way, was it impossible to move Mickey to full animation in the way Donald was moved?
  9. How did anarchy survive in the animated short, even within the drive for full animation? How important is this element of animation, present from the very beginning of the art?
  10. In Chapter 14, Klein provides an incredibly useful outline of the production line as it existed (with suitable variation) at the major animation studios in 1940. You should take this opportunity to review the increasingly complicated process of producing an animated short--as well as the way in which it has become both a group and an individual creation.
  11. As you review, you might also note how much of this process has been packed into the version of Flash you're using to create your own films.

In class, we'll be looking at the following cartoons and clips:

 

 

 

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