'Steamboat Willie' - Interview with Disney Restoration and Preservation Team

I had the opportunity of speaking with part of the major restoration team for Walt Disney Studios about their work preserving Mickey Mouse's first appearance in 1928's "Steamboat Willie." Sarah Duran-Singer is the Senior Vice President of Post-Production with Walt Disney Studios. Dave Bossert is the Creative Director of Walt Disney Studios Animation, in charge of Special Projects and is also the Artistic Supervisor of the Restoration and Preservation Team. Joe Jiuliano is the Director of Film and Video Services with the Walt Disney Studios, and the Technical Adviser for the Restoration Committee.

You restored "Steamboat Willie." Give us a little background on that?

Dave Bossert: "Steamboat Willie" [is] a black-and-white cartoon. It's obviously one of the earliest Mickey cartoon[s]. We actually did a pristine restoration on that. We took the flicker out, we took the weave of the film out, and we cleaned it up. It was perfect looking and we all sat there and said, "This doesn't really look right," from an artistic standpoint. We wound up doing what we would refer to as a kind of wedge test. We backed in a little bit of grain, a little bit of light flicker, and a little bit of film weave. We did that in various degrees. We actually showed it to Roy Disney and explained the process to [him]. Roy absolutely agreed with us that you couldn't make it that perfect. That wasn't the way it was created, with the technology of the day, and it just didn't feel right [or] of the period.

You felt like it was too perfect? You wanted to leave some of the "classic" feel in it?

Sarah Duran-Singer: Yes, we felt like we'd taken all the character and all the life out of it. Then we said make it look the way the original filmmakers intended it. In this particular case, it just was such a different experience that we did all respond, like - eh, we have to back off a little bit.

Joe Jiuliano: To see that animation done in a pristine sort of digital way just didn't seem to match. I think in these movies, at least the old black-and-whites that were done in that style of animation, there's a part of history there that's captured on the negative that doesn't necessarily apply to the later color films or the Technicolor films.

Dave Bossert: It's the same if you look at a black-and-white silent movie, you know? It's the same kind of thing. If you try to make it look too perfect, it doesn't play well.

Joe Jiuliano: Yes, history is part of the equation on that.

Do you think that you will ever release a portion of it to give people an idea of what it looked like perfect?

Sarah Duran-Singer: I actually don't think we saved that pristine one.

Joe Jiuliano: It's hard to answer. At one side, we're saying we're going to make it as good as we can. Everybody in that room felt the same way, [though]. It just didn't feel right. Another good example is the cell shadows. We could have gone in and painted out all of the cell shadows. [Those are] the shadows that are cast by the lights on the animation camera by the actual character that's on the cells that's cast onto the background right underneath it. To take that out would really make it something different from what it was. It's pristine to a point, but we don't necessarily eliminate all the history of animation from it.

For more articles by Eric Shirey, check out:

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Eric Shirey is the founder and editor of Rondo Award nominated movie news websites MovieGeekFeed.com and TheSpectralRealm.com. He also served as a news reporter for the award winning movie website GordonandtheWhale.com. His work has been featured on Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! TV, Associated Content from Yahoo!, DC Comics, StarWars.com, and other national entertainment websites. Eric has interviewed and worked with iconic movie and TV actors like Harrison Ford, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Brooke Shields, Brendan Fraser, Gene Simmons, and many more. His personal website is www.ersink.com.