in my book – DREAM WORLDS, PRODUCTION DESIGN FOR ANIMATION – the last chapter is about the DISNEY MULTIPLANE CAMERA. I asked the disney archives ARL to help me with some official photographs and learned there were only four left. since that time three years ago I have searched everywhere on the internet, in blogs and old magazine articles for more pictures from the old days, when the disney invented camera was in use for classics like BAMBI, PETER PAN or SLEEPING BEAUTY. following are the pictures I found so far…
© disney enterprises, inc
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 45 years I lived and worked in exciting places around the world. after 7 years of teaching in singapore I am back at my homebase in manila, working on a few more books.
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Hans, thank you for sharing this! These photos are stunning!
I believe there are a few more in the Herman Schultheis notebook at the Disney Museum, although they are closeup and more technical. Fantastic stuff in that book.
In that book there are also some great pictures of the far more utilized horizontal multiplane camera, and even a few of the circular/diagonal multiplane designed for Fantasia.
from hans –
unfortunately I have never seen the book, only a few pages reproduced very small. and I am a bit far away from S.F.
Hans Perk, on his site A Film LA, has posted many documents concerning William Garity and the invention of the Multiplane Camera. Three of these documents are extraordinary (as are the many photos you’ve gathered here.) You can see these docs here: 1, 2, 3
I apologize for taking up so much comment space, but I just found three more posts on Hans Perk’s site that include lots of photos of the multiplane camera, some taken by Hans, himself. These can be found here: 1, 2, 3.
I would’ve loved to learn how to use one of these wonderful machines! thanks for the wonderful pictures!
Here is a 7 minute YouTube video of Walt Disney explaining how the multiplane camera works. Filmed in 1957:
Thanks for such a great website. Seeing such a great variety of different illustration styles is always very inspiring
from hans –
thank you, I talked about that documentary before – it is THE TRICKS OF OUR TRADE. and it shows a lot of other
very interesting things.