It turns out that watching spring – themed cartoons isn’t the same as watching Christmas or Halloween ones — they port much easier to late summer viewing – but next year I’ll try to time them better.
But before the cartoons, in brief Thunderbean news this week:
These weeks just before going back to the school are full of meetings and the usual emails setting up this and that at the school, and it’s funny that I think about them as interruptions to working on the Thunderbean things, but it’s should sort of be the other way around. The summer defiantly belongs to the work we do on these old films, and I’m always a little sad when it starts to come to sharing that time again. I know there’s a lot of late nights in these coming weeks doing both jobs— but happily so honestly. Being almost done with a few longer term projects is gratifying.
We’re working on final versions of all the films for the Rainbow Parade, Volume 2 Blu-ray set. Color grading is happening on the films now, though not done as of yet (!)— and when we have the set assembled we’ll be sending to colleagues to take a close look. While I’m tired, I’m really liking how the set is looking as we’re rounding the final corners.
The Bunin set continues, happily, with some new scans happening soon. Most of the material for this set is now final, and the feature is the last thing to finish.
The little Halloween set is rounding the corner as well. These three will be the next releases, along with about six of the special discs or so.
As we’re moving forward with some new opportunities, we’ll definitely be doing less special discs, if at all. It’s been a lovely run. We’ve got a new one up at the Thunderbean Shop for a week, but it will be one of the last of the current run. We’ll be in catch up mode for a bit, but I’m looking forward to sending a bunch of these early in September. Thanks to everyone that’s supported all these things through the years.
Now..a late summer show of two spring-themed cartoons!
When I was out in New York about a week and a half back, I got a chance to scan some more films- some for official sets, and some for the special sets. These two cartoons will be on the ‘Cartoon Seasons’ special set. I really enjoyed the contrast of the type of animation produced in 1929 versus 1949- and thought it would be a fun thing to put both these up, even though these are not the best prints.
In Springtime, we have the typical Disney/Iwerks Silly Symphony approach from that year. It’s really interesting to compare this film with Fiddlesticks, made the next year, and all the similarities in style and direction of Iwerks’ animation. Flip isn’t much different than the frog here— and an argument can be made that this is Flip’s first appearance. The print isn’t the best— a screen attractions print made for the European market I think, but it does have one really cool aspect – the original end title, and the end title being revealed with animation, missing from the later prints. I love this sort of thing, and you probably do, too.
In Spring Song, we have the usual Famous Studios approach, but it’s ne ver a bad day when Jerry Colonna shows up in a Famous Studios cartoon, even though it’s brief. I like the animation throughout, but the screen songs are, well, screen songs.
