Podcast link Toon Talk #21
Show notes:
Coming
Transcript:
Unknown Speaker 0:17
Hey everybody, this
Sandra Ni Chonaola 0:18
is Sandra. Welcome to show 21 of Toon Talk podcast. My guest today is Disney animator Dale Baer well known highly respected in the animation world. His work shows such amazing control and insight into performance and his love for the craft shines through every one of his shots. I wanted to talk to Jeff for many years, and I've had a fear between these but every time I chickened out, because I guess I just felt so much respect and admiration for his work. But I was worried words would come out of my mouth when I met him. But luckily for us, he's an incredibly approachable person who loves to talk about animation almost as much as he loves doing it, which made my job easier never was such a wonderful chat with Dale. But before we get into that, I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody for the support of the podcast, or the likes and shares, and especially the comments, it really helps get the show noticed, and hopefully will lead to more people becoming excited. and with any luck learning something new about the art formula. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation about animation. Whose deal there were saying we can say on the podcast and Okay. Thanks so much for actually meeting up with me because I know you're super busy. I know Really? Well.
Unknown Speaker 1:27
The last email you sent me
Dale Baer 1:28
you've got like meetings, two or three. Their meetings, but they're nothing. Yeah, it's not like I'm trying to get a bunch of work done in between the surface anything to do right now. No. downtime. Yeah, pretty much then downtime for a long time. Yeah, I mean, doing some passes. No. We were We were not even meeting some in the animation and things. It's, it's just meetings I have on the outside with people like you. There you go. It's a pleasure. Okay,
Sandra Ni Chonaola 2:01
so I wanted to ask you to set up because I know you did a podcast with clay Curtis and you covered a lot of the history. But I was wondering who was the first person to inspire you towards your creative path. And it doesn't necessarily have to be
Unknown Speaker 2:10
an animator. Oh, gosh,
Dale Baer 2:12
I you know, for some odd reason, I keep trying to delve back into my, my brain. What got being interested in animation, because when I was growing up, there wasn't the kind of material out there that people have today. There were no DVDs or videos, nothing, you know, you're lucky if there was some cartoon shows on TV before you went to school or when you got home, you know, and but my folks said it was me and my sister, my folks would take us to drive in movies is a lot easier to handle kids in a driving backseat of the car than in a theater, you know. So it was always the double features with the newsreel in the cartoon in between. So it make it through the first feature and watch the cartoons then go to sleep, you know, in the backseat. But for some reason, they just fascinated me. I didn't even draw that much when I was growing up, as I recall. And, but for some reason watching cartoons is to treat me. And then of course, disneyland had just opened up around 1955. And I was five years old at that time. So I think we went pretty much the first year that it opened. And so I just got captivated with Disney and, and the shorts that would see in the theater. And then Disney had his TV show on Sunday nights, I believe it was. And every now and then he'd have a whole hour of an animation. I was just like, glued to the. And so but for something like from the time I was about eight years old, I wanted to be here at Disney. And when I got a little bit older, I'm thinking that was sort of out of my, my reach, because I thought it was just, you know, you had to be really, really good to get here and you know, so. But my folks, nobody in my family kind of encouraged me to do this. They were kind of they thought I was being foolish about it. And of course they were from an era of practicality. You know you got a job to have a job. Yeah, not something you love, but you just get a job. They put a roof over your head and food on the table. And but my dad thought well, since you liked to draw so much why don't you go into drafting in high school industrial drawing and I'm thinking well okay, I'll try it. I mean, I was there where else was gonna go? So I took drafting, but then I thought then I found out that in order to to win, you take that course you have to take all these math courses. I can't do math. I'm very bad at it. My mother was really good at it but no like my mother used to I had Math teacher in the seventh grade in eighth grade, who was the most wonderful guy he ever met? And he knew like, I was bad at math, but you know, I'd like to draw. So he had me draw murals in the classroom. And he passed me with a D. You know, with that didn't sit too well, my mother should know, you've got to be doing that, you know, she would come in being literally in tears talking to this guy trying to figure out what's wrong with me, you know, and try to explain to her that it's just not my forte. Yeah. So when I got when I was 16, my dad passed away. And but he left me some VA money, veterans money. And so my mother, protect that in the bank. And then my, my dad's mom died about a year or so later, two years later, and she left me a small inheritance. So put that in the bank. Now, when I graduated from high school, it was time for me to make the decision when I was going to do, I knew it wasn't going to be drafted. As intriguing as I thought it might be to go into the aerospace industry or something like that. I don't think a rocket would have ever made it up into space with me designing it. So I thought, you know, I wrote, I wrote to Disney to find out where one goes to learn animation. And then they gave me Art Center for one and then should art. And so I contacted Art Center. They don't, they didn't do it anymore. So I contacted shannara. And so like, I found that they do it. So I spent nights and weekends putting together my portfolio on tape down there. Did you have any help? No. No, I had no idea. I was just doing everything. Yeah, to try to do everything. And so I finally had a interview with a lady just up the street from shannara. And they accepted me but I had to take a qualifying drawing class, because my my drawings were just way, way too tight. And I was trying to put in, if I was drawing a tree, I put every leaf on that tree. And that's not what they wanted to see, you know, so I take qualifying drawing with a gentleman by the name of Watson cross grade art teacher. And I got to do that for eight weeks. And I'm thinking, well, if I don't make it, at least I got eight weeks at shannara you know, which, you know, when you read about the history of it, that was where Disney sent all of his guys before Snow White, to teach them how to draw and and learn locomotion and stuff like that. And, and ironically, they when I finally did get into shannara, one of my teachers was Don Graham, who actually taught the animators that came in for Snow White. And so he was my composition teacher. But so I then I found that they were going to phase out the animation department there. So being first year student, they say, Okay, well, we know this is what your major is going to be. And so they put me into for the animation department classes there, and which I'm kind of glad because I only had enough money to get me through two years of school anyway. And I would never have made it to my third year to take my major, you know, so I finally got a taste of it. I don't know how these things happen. They just seem to happen. Just the right time, you know, for some odd reason. Yeah. Yeah, universals on my side. That's good. And so
Unknown Speaker 8:50
when I when I
Dale Baer 8:53
actually while it was going to shoot art, I was I would go up to a little studio called Murakami Wolf, and a little commercial house there. And all over the place. I was trying all over the place, you know, and even before that I had sent my, I had written to some studios and I wrote to filmation. This is before I got into art school. I met Lou Shimer at filmation who was courteous enough to gracious enough to, to look at my, my drawings, you know, and I was just excited to I'm in a studio in a real studio. A real studio head. This is cool. And it was just very encouraging to me, you know, and so I kept that in the back of my head, you know, and then when I went to art school
Unknown Speaker 9:41
and
Dale Baer 9:43
went through the whole animation program there And finally, it was time when I ran out of money, but the school is also shutting down out there to move out to Valencia to become Cal Arts and so I I'm sitting here thinking, now I got to get a job. I gotta find a job, you know? And I was scared to death to even try it. Honestly, I really was. And so I, I thought, this was on a Friday, I called Lou Shimer at filmation. I was naive enough to think, you know, talk to studio heads on the phone, they don't push you through. But sure enough, he answers the phone. They put them through, and I told him who I wasn't. He said, he remembered me. I'm not sure if that's true or not. But he said, he remembered me. And I said, you know, you know, I really want to get into business and I'm willing to work for nothing. I really am. And he says, No, no, no, no, don't worry about that. Just come in here Monday morning. So here I'm out of fresh out of high school. A call on a Friday, I have my first job on Monday morning and incredible This is. So I go drive down to the receipt of and got there before they even unlock the doors. And finally, somebody came in unlocked the doors. And I sat in the lobby and I was waiting because I didn't know who I was supposed to see. I'm just sitting there waiting. And then finally this gentleman by the name of Mike hazy. I became good friends with over the years came in and says are you Dale? And I said yes. Since the follow me, like kind of gruff looking sounding guy. Anyway, we go upstairs. And they they started me out in the layout department there, which I'm kind of glad because I didn't want to do Saturday morning animation, because that really is an animation to me. So I was happy to start in layout. I really was this background layer or character, background and character can do both. Okay, get it all set up for the background painter and the animator. But I want to putting in like 20 poses on a character. Anyway, so I didn't care. But But can you remember your first day on the job? Like what? Oh, gosh, yes. Thank you first, like it was first it was like it was like it was yesterday. Yeah, I had no idea in art school. I don't know, I'm sorry. But I have a feeling. It's the same way today. They don't teach you every little thing. I try to teach there now. And I keep trying to try to cover everything. And so they just sit me down and they start me on a show. It was the Jerry Lewis show. And I saw it start, I get my storyboard. So I just start drawing backgrounds and figure out what the character is going to be. And they nobody showed you anything. Nobody showed me anything. And then they check on me about our two later. And they said no, no, no, no, no. So they introduced me to field guides, which is what the area that encompasses what the cameras going to see, you know. And so I had to redo everything I started on, which wasn't all that much. But you know, you I learned the hard way there. And you know, and they weren't. They were demanding because you had to get a show out every week. So it was like, okay, and but I made it through there. I made it through there. And I actually was starting to do presentation pieces for them. And I was having a ball. I really was. I didn't care that was for Saturday morning. And he didn't I was a business. I was in the business. And I had a lady friend or a lady there that I got to know really well. And she was she worked at Disney back in the 40s. And so she was a pro and she's sort of cute. She would just be sort of laughing under her breath at times about me because she was watching me struggle on Friday reminding her of her first few days. And but then they had they had their layoff season coming, which is like I was there like a total of about seven months. And layoff season was coming I've never experienced layoffs. I didn't save enough money to to you know, make make it through, you know, and found out that everybody's secret was just suck it away. They don't go out to dinner. They don't do nothing, you know, because it's got to get them through Christmas. You know, and
but there was some shows that you know, Louis travel was off to New York to sell and everything like that. So it was just a waiting game. So it was downtime. And I had to lady there two ladies there. One was the widow of a gentleman by the name of Charles Philip pi who was one of Disney's one of the best layout people Disney ever had. He did a lot of stuff on Pinocchio and Peter Pan, things like that. Or she was like the head of the paint department there. And then there was another lady Her name was Doris flower and she she was the other lady was Jane Philpott by the way And then but then Doris Pao was head of the assistance there. And but they both were Disney. People. Yeah. from before. So anyway, Doris and both Jane adores, said, you know this, you don't belong here you need to go to Disney. And I think if there's no way I'm going to get into that places where they got a training program, they're just starting up. And Doris was going to have lunch with a gentleman by the name of Andy Inman who ran the animation department back then. Very importantly, guy, very sweet man. Anyway, she brought me back an application from lunch that day, and I filled it out. Probably a week later, I was laid off, you know, but then I got a letter in the mail. And I still have it. I've got it in a frame mandia march of 71. Saying, please report to, you know, my office or whatever, you know, at your earliest convenience, or free help or letter was worded, but it seems you got laid off in November, you had to wait through to march to get no actually I started in August, at filmation in 70. So August, September, October, it was actually March, I was like I hadn't I had it all that I was here within a week's time on the training program. And the was interesting, too, because the guys here had no idea how to train people. They were fine with people that came onto their units, and then they've worked with them on a picture. But having a bunch of kids next year, there's only me and one other guy, two of us on the training program here, believe it or not, I was so lucky when I started in this business because nobody really wanted to get into it. People that were in it, were the ones that had gotten into it during the Depression. And that's who you had, you know, and, but there were six of the nine old men still in the studio. And they were told you guys have to start training, training people. And so they thought well, okay, and they weren't too happy about some weren't too happy about it. Some didn't care. Others, there's a couple that really did not want to do that. They wanted to take it to the grave with them. And so they started it. And the assignment was Willie rather than it was the director here at the time. And so he sort of took the lead on this training program. And he just says well have manmade goofy doing something was really used to be what they called the goof man because he would animate a lot of goofy shorts. And so, okay, that'd be kind of fun. Like Goofy, you know, he's pseudo human and pseudo cartoon, so you can get a mixture in there. And they can, it's a good character to test people skills on you know, and the other guy that was here at the time was named Ted keirsey, who became an effects animator here for years. And he left about two years ago, I think. And he had started in art props, there are promises like just a roomful of guys that just like go first I'll do anything, frame pictures of deliver mail, they'll do artwork for productions, whatever, you know, they need a sign that somebody is tacking on a tree, you know, in a movie, and they'll draw up this site. And so it was just him and me. As I recall, it was only a three week training. That's fast. It's very fast. And now that now the kids have three months, six months, whatever, three weeks to learn all the phenomenal men had to teach you. Well, no, they weren't teaching us we were just putting the room Okay, and we did a test so they could see what we could sue for or the
and I made the same mistake that I made when I did my portfolio for shanaar they, you know, I started drawing too tight. Here I took qualifying drunk or how to loosen up, come to Disney. Oh, I gotta impress these people, you know, so I'm going goofy with his hat on and his vest on and patches on his shirt and in every stitch on every patch and whisker on muscle, and I swear it was taking me forever. me forever. And I think maybe two days into it. I went to lunch and Andy engman got curious. And so he started walking around to see what I was doing. And so when I came back, I passed him in the hallway just said loosen up that word again. You know, so I went to the board because I wanted to see how would other animators here animated this scene. But the only the morgue is a is a place where they used to store all the artwork in the basement underneath the paint department across the street here. And so I went down there, and they just kept all the stuff in cardboard boxes and shelves. And fortunately they started they changed that system because termites started using the graphite on paper. So that's why we have the NRL where you have to use gloves to go look at artwork, and it's I'm going to control the rooms and stuff like that. So, but I was flipping through every scene, I think I spent an entire day down there. And it but they saved they never saved animators, roughly. So we saved the cleanup drawings. So I think but this is what I'm doing. I don't understand. How am I supposed to loosen this up? You know, I think it was on the very last scene and I'm flipping through because I was about ready to give up and out pops. JOHN sippy rough. JOHN Sibley was a really good animator here. And it was just a circle for Goofy's head shape for his muzzle two dots for eyes. Stick for us now. Long peripheral body, two sticks for arms and two circles for hands. I thought well, maybe this is what toy Xerox ended up. That was my model. So I went back to my room, and they chucked everything in the trash and started open. And blades sure saved me a lot of time. I got up so fast. And that's exactly what they wanted to see. You know. And so after I was supposed to show where they were supposed to look at my work on a Friday, and they got busy with meetings or something happened, they couldn't look at it. So it was like for the longest time. I took my lot when my own little walk around the back lot when they used to have it here. But I thought this is gonna be the last time I'm going to see this. Want to take it all in? And, oh, back Monday morning. I was here early again. You know, I'd get here at five o'clock and leave at nine o'clock at night. So I got here at five o'clock and I sat there. Nobody showed up till eight o'clock. You know, but I said they can I just want to just take this all in? You know, I don't know. So about eight o'clock. 830. somewhere around there. Don Buchwald who was I forget what his title was. Honestly, I forgot his title was he was above like Andy aim and people like that. And anyway, he came down to my room and is stationary actually would have Donald Duck on top of the block. Anyway, he was a really sweet guy, and he came downstairs. Come on, I need you to come with me. And I said, Where are we going? And we're going upstairs. And so we went upstairs to the second floor. And to really ride them in this way. Walk into Woolies waiting for him into his office. And there's Willie was Frank Thomas, all the John's generic class and john lounsbury note call, like forgetting anybody. There's six of them there. And I use the term I said it was like going to a mountain of distances of the gods. Because I was dumbfounded. Yeah. So you knew who they were? Well, there was only one picture in one book. And that was Jill Thomas's book on seeking beauty. Yeah. And it shows them all in the sweatbox. But this is 1957 This is no almost Well, not quite 20 years later, but so but every time I would when I first got here, everybody I'd pass in the hall. I don't know where any of these people were sitting. They just stuck me in a room. And I kind of just stayed there and worked everything out and
and Willie at one point aspects of the job seeker stuff up on the big screen. And I just, I just shook my head. He was like, That's odd. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Word lounsbury laughed and a few other people laughing is that so they welcomed me aboard and they started doing the system work for Frank and Ollie doing broken betweens and cleanup in betweens and anything that they could do, you know, and they said you can do your personal tests on your own time. So, come five o'clock, I stopped what I was doing there and I start doing some personal tests. And I was picking the scenes that I would see on some of commanders and sports upstairs in the story. Story. Something that would intrigue me I have a copy of my book. bounine animated, you know, and, and, well, he was well he was a very open person. You could go basically go in and see, anytime. You can't find the directors now. Yeah, honestly, we can't find anybody now. But back then the scope and well the Secretary was right there and say is this will you have time to look at something? If you'd see us standing there by Lorraine's desk and say, Come on in, come in, and you put it up on the wall and show him what you had, you know, he was very courteous and everybody else, there wasn't really a mentor program like there is now where you get one animator, as your mentor. You had all six of them, you know, to talk to, but it depended on who you're comfortable with. So I want to gravitate into john Malmesbury, and Eric Larson. And then there was one other gentleman. His name was help king, he wasn't one of the night Oh man, but he was one of the top animators there. And those are the three guys that I would go to, because you felt like you weren't failing miserably. And you felt like you were contributing, and they would just look at your stuff and see how they could plus it. They wouldn't throw it out. No, no, you had to do it this way. They were very fair, they would just, you know, look at what you had. And, and, and work with you. Yeah, you know, so you actually think you were, as you know, added something to the movie. And so that, my little stint here that time lasted about six years. How is that transfer over from the nine old men to the younger generation? Well, we'll get to that. Anyway, before I left here, my mentor, my who I consider my mentor, john, he passed away and things are starting to change because a lot of the younger people were coming in. Don Bluth was coming in. Now Don Bluth was a guy that I, you know, you can edit this out if you want, but he's a guy that I don't really get along with. And I worked with an ad filmation. And he was he was he was hard to, you know, to please, you know, and, but he is one of these guys that can get a following. It's like the Pied Piper, you know. And when he came here, he came, he showed up here three months after I did, you know, and I thought, oh, gosh, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I suppose. This is one of these guys that could convince everybody that he was he was wonderful. And they were actually starting to groom and to take over.
Unknown Speaker 27:44
And,
Dale Baer 27:46
and but then Frank and Ollie, and Milt. They all felt like they nobody wanted to go see them. Nobody wanted to get advice from them. Of these young people. They one of them Gary Goldman, actually, outright, you know, out loud said, can't wait till these guys retire, get out of here so that they can take over and do it their way. They all thought that they had the answer. You know, one of the problems was because the studio set of putting them through the training program where they would in between for people. They started, the management team started worrying that, that there wasn't enough time for that. So they just rolled out the red carpet, given the title animator, and that was all they needed to know. So now they know it all. You know. It's like a site, there's a big way that Cal Arts when the kids have portfolio day there. People from all over the studios from all over come in. They like what they see they put job offers on the portfolio. So now the kids come back and get I don't need this anymore. I got a job offer here, I can go out and get started in the business and and I got the wrong idea, you know, but that's what these guys did here. And plus there was this click going on that, you know, everybody would go into Don's room and they would close the door they'd have this little meeting. They were working on side projects. And peeps dragon was kind of my downfall on this in here because I just did not like the dragon. I could not draw that drawing. And I was I was not a happy camper here. Plus, no call left. Ali and Frank went upstairs to work on their books. lounsbury had passed away. Eric had gone upstairs to teach younger training program. So I thought maybe it's just time for me to go. It's not the same here. And you know when I came here, you still had the history here. You know, then the history left, you know, outside of error within history left and really wasn't directing anymore he was producing. So he never saw them very much anymore. And so this friend was lady friend of mine that was in my room when I started with filmation was working for a while back she at the time. And so I called her and told her, I said, you know, what, I didn't know what was out there. Once you're behind these gates here, you don't know what's going on in the world. You really don't it's like they they protect, you know, and you do you feel very protected here. But so I didn't know what was going on. She's, uh, well, we just finished a picture called wizards. And it's out in the theaters now, if you want to go see it and see what you think because it's a Ralph Bakshi picture. And I said, Yeah, okay, so we went, had some dinner and went to wizards. And was that my kind of movie, but I thought, wow, this guy's different, you know? Just so she was kind of encouraged me to just go up and talk to him. And they were going to start Lord of the Rings. At that time. This is like 1977, I think. And so, I did, I made a phone call to him, and he got an appointment to go see. And we actually hired me and doubled my salary. So that was a good start. You know, so I went back and I gave my two weeks notice here, and Don wasn't too happy about it. Don Bluth wasn't too happy about it. He says, Well, it was kind of kind of nasty. But he says, Well, you haven't worked on the outside very often have uses it might be good for you. But then he also had a little lecture thing he did every day. And would put out these papers with different little hats on him about you know, insisting that people wear different hats, you know, on a production Yeah. Which is fine. I don't mind that philosophy. But his one of his thoughts is you should be like a ballet dancers and draw to your fingers bleed? I don't think so. I got other things I want to do too. Anyway, he he told everybody there. So well, I guess you all know that Dale's leaving, but he'll be back. And we'll just have to start all over again. So when I heard that from a friend, I thought, Okay, I'm gonna I'll become a garbage man before I go back here. I really will. like this No way. And I don't think it was a year or so after I left that he left with 14 people.
So but then, but then I already gotten to like the outside. I really did. I spent a year and a half with growl on Lord of the Rings. And I like the responsibilities he gave me. And then when he was having a layoff, I had met Richard Williams, Richard Williams used to come in here and meet Frank and Ollie and Milton who was a big fan and want to come in and show them everything he was doing, you know, so I got to got to know Richard, during the early 70s here. So I called him and see if he had anything and sure enough, he did. So I kind of left and started doing commercials, which, you know, became my forte or later on. And I got to know, he was in a building called the Quartet building on Hollywood Boulevard. And quartet was another studio from back in the 40s and 50s that did all the early early, Tony the Tiger commercials and things and so I got to know Mike law and Mike law just to be an animator for MGM during its heyday with Bill Han and Joe Barbera, Hanna Barbera. And so I got to know him really well and pick up some Tony the Tigers from him and, you know, bounce back and forth. Richard was on one side of the stairwell and portet was on the other side. So I just go across the hall and, you know, when Richard didn't have anything, whatever. And then I I had, I was married at the time, and we had a had a house here in Burbank. And I don't know, which I think I think we were just sort of wanting to explore something else. So we left Richard and sold my house and started just doing presentation pieces. For some things that we thought might be kind of fun little projects to do. So I lived the money that I got from my house for a year. And it was kind of fun just waking up in the morning making some coffee, go sit in the living room and, you know, whatever it is you're doing and But that didn't last very long. So we started running out of money but but then I got a job with through a friend who worked with enterprises, which is not the, you know, the Disneyland stuff. And they had a job they needed done. And so he kind of let us know what it was and kind of let us know where our budget should fall. Because they were only going to look at three things. And pick one. They picked ours. So we did this thing called Atlas of the living seas. And started in between there too. I was picking up storyboard work from Hanna Barbera to which was a lot of fun. We did this Atlas of oveseas. And Bethany ran there for gosh 10 years or something like that. So they switched it over to Finding Nemo and stuff like that. I was in the living seas pavilion in Epcot. And, but then we sort of living off of whatever monies we made there, but then we started running out of money again, we're starting to go back into doing a personal projects and stuff. Like made your wife an animator to cleanup artist. Yeah. And so all of a sudden, we're starting to get desperate. So I started making phone calls and couldn't find anything the industry It was at that point, it was like LinkedIn is 87 I think that the whole industry was shut down. For some reason, you know, I couldn't find anything and, and all of a sudden the phone rang. And it was Don Hahn, who I used to know because he was an assistant director here for bullying. And so I knew him from 1971. On to Lima, when he's a producer out there. So he was working on Roger Rabbit. And I had seen the early attempts of Roger Rabbit when Darryl Van sciver was doing it. And it was, it was a very Warner esque looking route, a very stylized Warner aesthetic rabbit, and I wasn't too crazy about it. I thought, okay, you know, but they weren't offering me to work on it at that time. But then when I found out that Richard Williams was doing it in London, we got invited amblin universal, and they showed us the test piece that Richard had done. Oh my gosh, that was the most impressive thing I ever saw. I mean, had every, all the bells and whistles in it, you know. And so Donald asked if I wanted to work on it, of course, I said yes. If it wasn't about me think about it. Yeah, because I'm already desperate anyway. Yeah. So so we got involved. And then we got to went to portfolio reviews in our warehouse that we have they put us in on their way in Glendale there and started right in on that thing. Eight months of solid work and crazy work. But what was fascinating to me was that I'm used to working by myself. I had a desk in the laundry room at home in Laurel Canyon. And and that was that was about it, you know, now I'm having to to hit up 75 people. It was quite a shock, you know, to my system. supervising or directing, directing, and supervising animating. Done, you know, but I was just curious. Yes.
No, it wasn't. No, it was. Well, we had been incorporated, but they hired us as subcontract not through my company name. Yeah, cuz we incorporated ourselves when we did the wedding, you know, the Disney World. But they weren't gonna hire us as a company. They like the state houses, employees, but that was fine. And so but I thought I really liked overseeing a project like that. It's only eight minutes long. But my gosh, it was eight months of intense work because I mean, it's complicated work, you know, but I really, I really fell in love with was sort of running like a little studio. Was there was nobody else there that was running it but me, basically, I mean, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Schneider would come in and check on things every Tuesday. Yeah, that would be about it, you know. And you delve back and forth with amblin and London, and stuff like that. And it was exciting to me. really was. And then the weird thing about that was once every department was finished toward the end, you'd come in the next day that room was empty. movers came in, you didn't have a chance to have the going away party. And then it wound up with just me there, and one other person to help out stuff. And putting little adequate they had in this warehouse. And then you go home, and it's like, it's just somebody just dropped a curtain. You know, it was done. Within a few months, few weeks later, maybe done on call, called me up and said, we're going to do two commercials in the Roger Rabbit style, but Okay, so we're going to bring back some of the crew from your unit. Great. So it's like, the whole week there, you know, because it wasn't everybody, but it was a it was a good sized little group. Maybe 25 of us to do with these commercials. And I did the first one. Cinderella Coca Cola spot, because they were going to rerelease Cinderella, VHS. Got to work with Kenny Marshall, which was kind of interesting. Now. She's not the Laverne. you're used to seeing on Laverne and Shirley. wholly different. She's a real taskmaster. Yeah, you know, she's not a very social person, you know, so, but it was interesting watching her work. And then when we finished that Don came over to me says, I don't like doing commercials if you want the other one. And I said, Sure. Fortunately, the producer of the next one was in house that day. So I got to meet her out of New York, and it was going to be the Disney campers, Disney babies camper spot. So we got to meet her, I got to meet some people over at a little studio called Apogee, which was going to do all the live action work and met a gentleman by the name of Tripp Gruber, who was going to shoot the live action on it. And he and I became very good friends over the years. And he was crazy. He couldn't he was the type of guy that didn't know if he wanted to be a film director or a rock star. So he dressed like a rock star, film director, so he had the best of both worlds. So that kind of started my company. Started fare animation, and commercials just kept on coming in. It was insane. You know, because everybody wanted this look, whether it be just traditional, 2d, you know, like Jolly Green Giant commercials and stuff, no live action, they still wanted the Roger Rabbit. It was a lot of work, you know, for something that simple. They wanted it, they paid for it and kept doing that for like at least 10 years. 10 years. Yeah. But then I, my wife and I got divorced, at coordinate in there. And, and I, I couldn't, it was hard for me working in there. And then I started freelancing around even tried to start a company again, but it didn't didn't pan out, as well. You know, his work was actually not many people wanted that kind of work anymore. And as more and more toward computers and stuff. So then at that time, I wasn't into computers and I had a couple of experiences with with a little stint with the boss films and a film called species where they had
the character of species was a doll, but it was motion capture now. And uh, but it was a little daunting Five Guys, four or five guys had were running around the stage maneuvering and nothing worked. I mean, it was like, totally bizarre stuff was duplicating itself in a very weird way. And and so I got a call from lady at boss. Can you come in here and look at this stuff because we can't figure out why it doesn't work. So I went in, I spent quite a few weeks, going back and forth with Marina Del Rey and about Palmdale, down the Marina Del Rey, that's a long home. But I did that for five, six weeks, I think. And there were like 25 scenes in that whole movie. And we had 25 animators and but it was when computers are really really, really slow. And they weren't, you couldn't move the character around like you can in the computer today was this little tiny wireframe at the bottom of the screen. Only one view and you're taking that shot, you know, but then you have to wait till That kind of renders itself. So the animator would just get up and leave for 30 minutes and he came back. And if it didn't work, start it again. And I'm thinking, I'm never going to get the most stupid stuff I ever saw. And then they wind up doing a stint with with DreamWorks on the very first Shrek. I liked the character development part, I did a lot of character development on Shrek themselves and the donkey early early on, you know, and then working with a with a guy who had a little laptop. And he had a rig built in there of Shrek. And so I did these poses for him to try to manipulate but it never worked. And I'm looking at this thing. People so interested in doing stuff this way, this doesn't make any sense to me, you know. And then they finally sent me on a trip to various studios out of town who were competing for the job of animating on Shrek I would go in there and I would look at the stuff that make no sense to honestly. And so DreamWorks finally picked a company, you know, as PDI, or something like that. And, and but they were only paying me for half a week. I couldn't live on half a week's salary. So and So finally, I got a call from Randy Fullmer at Disney wanting to know if I want to come back.
Unknown Speaker 46:42
You better believe
Unknown Speaker 46:44
so
Dale Baer 46:46
everybody was using this one lawyer out there to work their contracts at Disney because Disney was after the success of Lion King. Everybody was getting paid. Good, good. And, and they had contracts with one month vacations in there and whatnot. So but they you know that time they kind of stopped doing that. But they gave me the lawyers name to get out of my DreamWorks contract so I could get my Disney contract. So I went back to Disney on a film called candidatus son, which was the predecessor to Emperor's New Groove. And I was born and raised on Islam. And let the story wasn't satisfying the upper echelon. So they shelved it for I guess almost a year. You know why I wanted to reward and Roger allers is one of the directors he he left. He didn't want to leave at this level of production. Because he wanted a more serious historical type story and marked into was a co director on that one, as well. But Mark had another idea. So that became my personal group, which was probably one of the most fun movies I think I've ever worked on. There was mark for one thing, he knew exactly what he wanted. So it was you were never questioned as to what you had to do. Yeah, day to day. And so I wound up getting asked if I wanted after Andres left because he didn't want to work out anymore either. Because he wanted to do a serious wilderness character and not a comical one it may I take care of us, whatever you got, you know, and so they asked me if I want to do need that care. Better. Yeah. So I did that. And then that kept moving to another moving characters, and last night it was slim from Home on the Range before the studio decided to shut down 2d animation. And so then all of a sudden, we're all scrambling around. Okay, what are we gonna do you know, and Ellen Woodbury who was an animator here set up, set up a couple computer classes, it was able to arrange those you know, what to do wasn't about to foot the bill for training all of us, you know, but somehow somebody gave in and they did you know, so we want them doing whatever computer classes they had to offer it at night or during the day and just to learn it, and I wasn't thrilled about it, but it was the only thing on the table so so it did it. wound up doing two computer pictures for Chicken Little meet the Robinsons and meet the Robinsons was great because all of a sudden they came to me it wasn't we hadn't finished Chicken Little yet and they came to me and asked me if I wanted to lead a character on the Robinsons. So you guys have your Even though what I'm doing here is, well, you'll be fine, we'll be fine. So it's okay. Unfortunately, back then, you know, you had everybody would, would be there to help you, you know, so you never worry too much. And you're unmuted before you went into the computer. We did, we would do our wish list of how we would like the character. So when they were designing the character rigs that they would put the right controls in. But for some reason, they took it to a certain point. And they said, Well, this is the best we can do. And so you play with it anything. I can't do anything with this, I would like him to be able to move your shoulders up into up into his head, but you know, I can't even get them up like, you know, barely get them up there. You know. And so, some reason a bunch of really took a break one day, and we went to see Incredibles theater at Burbank, and I couldn't believe what you're seeing, you know, it was like, phenomenal. And come back. And then a few days later, the riggers say, guess what we can do for you? They were there too. So with their competition was and so all of a sudden, everything just just changed, you know. And now we got something that we can work with. It wasn't the best, but it was better than it was, you know, so we live with it. But I didn't mind doing it so much once I got used to it, because it learned a lot from everybody, you know, on your growth and stuff. And, and it turned out not too shabby. really did. I mean, it was fun. And
and then we then things would turn around and we wind up going back to 2d. We did a couple of shorts. We did an SC short, short, which was they were so much fun. But actually you're thinking I got I've been doing CG for five years now what if I forgotten how to animate? You know, once you start doing it just like, you know, we came back, we got I got to, they wanted us to learn how to draw on the computer on a Cintiq. And there's a new program called harmony or Toon Boom. And I actually fell in love with that thing. You know, I thought it was so easy to draw on that thing. It's so easy to make your changes and and plan your shots. And, you know, they mounted my Cintiq on my desk or my distance to be and I was I was in heaven. A lot of people complained about it because it wasn't like drawing on paper. We didn't have that texture. I didn't care. It was just so easy. It was my room was never so clean. drawings all over the floor, you know, and but then they they told us we couldn't use that anymore, because it was too expensive. Yeah, so we wanted what about the paper? Just Okay, fine, whatever. And
Unknown Speaker 53:02
kind of think,
Dale Baer 53:06
Oh, it was so some of us were thinking we're going to have to go on Rapunzel when it came time. So a lot of us thought okay, because we're going back to CG it also, we all start doing tests on it, you know, and but the whole atmosphere of CG people started changed. So they became a little bit more protective of their little area. And they really didn't like us being there. You know. And so we could you are getting the message before you got into a too deep, you know, and then finally Winnie the Pooh showed up. So we all jumped ship, and we went over fundamentally to work. It was a fun movie to work on. And, and so we did that. And then I think there's a princess in the frog that came next. I can't remember which one came first. Honestly, I can't. I think Princess, the frog that came after that. And I was like, Oh my god, a lot of us were just in heaven. And, but then things are just sort of, since then things have sort of changed, you know, it's done. More CG, they run for us us more in the development end of things. But we're finding I'm finding a little resistance there. You know, they asked us to do motion tests on characters. So to see how, how the character could move and and, and so we would do that. And but then it got to a point where nobody was asking us to do anything, you know, we would go in and ask them, would you Is there anything you want us to do? And then say no, right now so so I wanted to doing some I went to another gentleman by the name of Bill Schwab who is in character development. So I started picking up some stuff from him. But it becomes a piecemeal, you know, you're not really finding a niche there anymore. I'm not finding a lot of collaboration that much anymore, which is kind of sad. Know, because one of the six successful films they did was tangled because Glen Keane came in and did draw overs over almost every single shot, and push the characters push their dialogue push their poses, they even brought in people to sculpt the characters, because so you could get more artistic design to illustrate this against curves and, and that they were going to set that up. Yeah, well, they kind of were for a while, and Glen left, and they would have some animators come in, but they never put that kind of passion into the stuff like Glenn had done. And a lot of us would love to be able to do that. Once we started on marijuana, where they they asked us for our input when we mature, but they're telling us to be in marketing. Sure. So we went back and we start doing tests right over everything. And they were kind of hesitant on their critiques of it, you know, and then they were hesitant on asking for help in another areas of it and and and then when we go to dailies, now, dailies is a place you go to speak up back with john Lasseter, and a lot of us would never show stuff in dailies, you know, we'd rather just show the directors get their input and go back and fix it. Now, when john Lasseter took over the studio here. That was what he insisted you go to dailies, you speak up, you comment, you know, you say what you don't like, or like, you know, throw out your ideas, you know, and that became, especially on Amazon, consistent the product that became like, the most stimulating times, you know, because you were you were actually hearing ideas that you thought, Well, why didn't I think of that, and you go back and view that that idea, you know, and, and so that was a, it was quite a nice little, little collaboration of thoughts and opinions. And and it always boil down to the directors final decision, you know, so, you know, you could hear 25 or 30 different ideas, but the directors had no, keep it that way. Or Yeah, why don't you try that part, you know, but keep the rest of it this way, whatever, you know, so you're fine with it. And it created an energy that you don't normally get, you know, and
so, on marijuana, we started going to do this and, and speaking up. And all of a sudden, I'm called in and I know, the other guys were called in at various times, to speak, to say anything, because it was the animators time with the directors. And we were told we could we could speak if we wanted to go to rounds, but the directors aren't there. So we're up against the other animators. And if they, I don't think they would have agreed with some of our thoughts. So I will start doing drawings. Instead, I would just go back and see something and I go back and I do find the scene, I do a print out and I do a draw over. And I put them on the animators desk, and then it was called insane. You're bombarding the animators with drawings and they don't like it. So one of us just stopped going to dailies we stopped really involving ourselves. And I would find more satisfaction doing character development stuff with Bill Schwab and doing character poses and you know, ideas of how this character could move a kind of expressions his character and what kind of costumes it could have. And but then things started to sort of died down. I know, there's a lot of reworking on the story and stuff like that, but it just doesn't feel like you have a have a place there that you use to you know, where you had a character that you owned it. Yeah. And you, you had a crew when you could go through and you know, really feel involved in this picture, you know, now it's not, it's not like that anymore. It's like there's sort of a separation there. I don't know what it is exactly, you know, but no, there's a lot of things I know that directors are missing. When they see the CG tests, you know, john Musker would always say, were two D guys and we're not seeing this. We're not seeing that, you know. And I think at one point, I even offered to do a class on just what it is. I think John's missing. But that hasn't happened and I don't know if it will
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:00:00
Can you similar but do you feel is missing in CG animation? Can you sum up what you feel is missing from CG? I
Dale Baer 1:00:05
tried. But and that's why I've done draw verse and you know, why don't we do it this way open this up to this but but they don't. They don't like it. No, I, I know what it is I know it's that they're young, they're young people. They're trying to make their mark. They're trying to prove themselves but not listening to people who've already proved themselves seem strange. Well, I think this is like, it's their time, you know, they want they want to, they've got the idea. It's like, when Don Bluth and those guys came in, it was the same thing. You know, we know what we want to do we know how it should look, you know, you guys go away you go go and retire Go Go Fish, you know, something, you know. And, you know, we'll we don't we're doing but they definitely did. There was so much that was missing in the in the animation that came out of that new group back then that and it was for their downfall, they never quite made it or whether group one of coming in and because then when they left New START their place, you know, outside of maybe secret of nim, the film's never quite. Were up to par, you know. And so we went back to CG animation and 2d animation, what do you feel makes appealing and pose for you appeal in poses? Yeah. Gosh, I guess it's just it's communicating with the characters thinking, you know, without having to explain it. It's like the motion that the character is feeling can convey that in the pose and expression, making things read faster, you know, they complicate things too much. And an audience doesn't have the time to analyze what is going on up there on the screen. It needs to needs to be an instant read, because they've only got it a second or two. To understand what what's going on, whatever what the characters doing, how the characters feeling, all of that stuff, it's nice, simplicity. They're loose, they're making things more complicated. They're things aren't simple anymore. And it's really hard to know. And that's not what you want, what you want. And we want something that where that, you know, there's a composition and character staging and stuff that leads an audience's eye when you're dealing with a big screen. And you want the thing to look over here, you got to have stuff happening that leads everybody's eye right over there instantly, your eye can register things very quickly. But if you aren't expressing it strong enough, are quickly enough. You're going to lose the audience, and they're going to wonder what the heck happened. You know, what, what was wrong with him? You know, they're not gonna they're not gonna know. And that's what you kind of what's what's missing today, I think is, is that kind of posing, you know, that kind of thinking. And there's just too much. I don't know, I could be wrong here. But I think there's just too much attention to the detail that's going on in the character, the lighting or the texture that they're losing sight of, of just the simplicity of this stage. And yet people can register things a lot faster. It used to be there was an animator in the business that would hold the first drawing of seen on a cut for eight frames, because it took took the audience that long to register the cut. Well, you can't do that anymore. You know, when MTV came out, I mean, that was like that, that develop people's kids, especially young people's brains like to, I went to a friend's house one time and he had his son was there with his two daughters, and we're all talking in the living. I'm sitting at a point in the living room where I could see his girls watching TV, or just laying on the floor with the remote. And I'm just watching the they're hitting this remote. And the stuff is just changing so fast. I said, How can they tell what they're what they're skipping? Vaizey be surprised how fast they can register things since MTV came out. It's like, you know, that's kind of hone their, their mental registration of things, you know? So yes, you can but there's still a simplicity in the character staging and
the hurts some that's missing them is entertainment in, in the characters poses, you know, there's, that's I'm a big fan of movies from the 40s and some sometimes 30s because there is a carryover from silent days silent acting, that carried over into the those other two years. And that's what I find fun when you watch these actors is the broadness of their expressions, the broadness of their reactions to things, the broadness of their poses that they take. That's the entertainment to me, you know? And now it's just basically talking heads. And no, it's like, no, there's something more you could do with that, you know, those people go to kind of forget, go to movies to forget and be entertained, they don't want to think, really, you know, so you don't want to make them think that it's over explain things to them, you know, and then they're fine, you know, but you got to entertain them with what the characters are doing, how they're doing it, how they're saying something. You know, how they react to something. That's why I enjoy it. My favorite comedian of all time, was Red Skelton. And he had a TV show on in the 60s. And there's some DVDs out there with his shows, and but he started off every show with a pantomime routine. And it was just classic stuff. Yeah, you know, and he was, he was a brilliant mind. He really was, you know, and that's like, the best part of this whole show was just that. And that's what's missing these days is pantomime. You know, everybody's relying on the dialogue and stuff like that. And maybe action stuff. But they're not, they're not giving the acting parts of it is as much attention, you know, and you don't have to have as much dialogue, you know, they say, if you look at a Well done, well crafted movie, you could watch it without sound and know pretty much what's going on. And you can't do that today. It doesn't work, you know, that televisions kind of ruin that I think, for people. And those are just some personal opinions. I mean, I could be totally off off base with it, you know, and that could be, you know, I, I'm also judging things on this movie, and more and more, one of the early stuff that's being done, and you can't do that either, you know, they're in the experimental stage right now. And so you can't really judge it right now. But you can have, you can look at something thinking when we rough something out on paper, my guys were trying to think of every possible thing about it, mostly because we could put it down quickly. Whereas CG, you got, sometimes if they have the controls to manipulate something, they'll use them, but they don't, because it's early renditions of things. They're kind of limited themselves. But But then I finding out that there's certain aspects of anatomy of a scene that they can animate that it goes to another department animate, and I'm thinking how do you sell your idea? Yeah, if you can't lay it all out. It doesn't make sense to me. You know, but I
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:08:47
think Jamal badly done some for tangled, he drew the hair and how he wanted to wanted hair to
Dale Baer 1:08:54
exactly yeah, that's the other thing is that, you know, they, there's some things that they can't do yet, like hair. Yeah. And that sometimes is what sells the scene. Yeah, you know, and, or, or a piece of fabric on them or either, you know, a grass skirt on them, you know that, you know, you're trying to set a mood sometimes with certain things. And if you can't do it, you know, and that's gonna frustrate john and Ron a little bit because it's like, they're, they're used to seeing ideas on paper, right off the bat, you know, may not have all the eye blinks and all the dial up, but you've got the main body language working for you, you know? I don't know. I don't think I could do a CG animation. I don't want to do it. For one thing, but I don't think I could do it right now. It's just too competitive. You know, and there's too many well trained people out there that are coming out of gaming and things like that, that I couldn't keep up with. Those guys and I don't want to work that hard anymore for one thing, you know. And so I just hope that, you know, maybe there's more room for 2d investigation into things, you know, Sergio pablos is still doing surgery publice class. Yeah. And, you know, we kind of hope that it comes back to life right now. You know, I haven't even seen any shorts coming out of the place, you know, either, you know, we were doing quite a few there for a while, you know, and then all of a sudden, that kind of just stopped. Yeah. It's really sad. Yeah. So I don't know what the thinking is going on there. So
Unknown Speaker 1:10:48
I don't know
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:10:50
why I wanted to ask you about, you're talking about how the character does things and performance. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about breakdowns. And I know, there's no such thing as perfect breakdowns, so many different ways of doing it. But how do you go about thinking about your break down to making it the most perfect it can be for the
performance,
Dale Baer 1:11:07
even when you're animating something, sometimes it's up to an animator to put in pretty much everything, or at least indicate where you want certain things to have, you can't have a breakdown artists, in fact, they don't even think the category exists anymore. But back in the day, when you had small units that actually had the animator breakdown artist and in between, or they all work together, year after year, you know, that was when you could hone your skills, doing something like that. But now it's farmed out, you know, you get stuff done, they package it up, they send it to Canada, they send it to wherever Florida, you know, whatever, then you find out that it's it's it's single moms out there that needed a job that they're splitting a scene up in three, four different ways and handing them 234 different people. So you kind of have to think through your scenes, verbatim, you know, because it's not going to get better out there. It really won't. And, and a lot of the times, if there are fixes that need to be done, it doesn't go back to the people that made the mistake to learn from the mistake goes to the head of that little offshoot studio, who fixes those things. And that's not right, either, you know, but I know it's efficient. But plus, these people are scattered everywhere. You can't have the guy looking over somebody's shoulder saying no, no, you should have done it this way, you know, so I don't know, you know, to do a Disney picture like that kind of rubs you wrong, because it's not how it should be done. But with time and money and you know, schedules and stuff like that, sometimes you don't have much choice. Because you can't I don't know why. I don't know why they just don't build up if they're going to farm it out someplace build up your staff inside, but then you're having to pay people more. So there's always some one reason or another. Good breakdown artists has to know animation. That's why I used to work for cleanup gentlemen, over here by Nima Dale all over. He was one of these guys, we also had another gentleman by the name of Walt stanchfield. They both knew animation, but they didn't want to animate, they would rather take animation that needs to be pushed. And do that, you know, and make the scenes that are getting animated by somebody else to come off looking as good as they can. And, but they knew animation and sometimes like Ollie Johnston and it would leave, leave a dress or a veil or a tail or something like that for Dale all over to do because he would sit there and he would make sure that what's going to work, you know, and you know, you look at the drawings that deal over would roll. I mean, there was nothing left of that on the side, you know, where he's rolling the drawings, making sure all this stuff is working. And but a lot of times, you know, I have to go in myself and I have to do partials because sometimes once you animate something and you thought it out, you got to go through a straight ahead because you're realizing that your arcs aren't going to work or stuff is piling up too much in one area and popping over here to another See, sometimes you have to go back in and flesh it out yourself. But then you're having to indicate where you want a hand to be or knows to be on us on a breakdown. So you have to go in and do partials, you know, you don't leave very much for people to do anymore. You have to kind of Eric Goldberg, one guy Hill in between the whole darn thing himself. I mean, I don't think there's much for cleanup person to do on Eric. Because me he's very tight on top of it. Everything is there and times are clean. Yeah, I think they're just going through and like taking out little tiny, you know, specs or something I don't know what they're doing, or doing something, but he doesn't leave much for, or anybody else to know, so much of the standard way of doing things is gone. Yeah, it's gone. And when you're doing CG, there is no, there is none of that, you know, you're you're letting the computers in between stuff for you anyway, you know, unless you're changing. Are you planning yourself? Hopefully the simpler stuff, you let the computer do it, you know, but the more complicated stuff you're putting in yourself. So there's really you're not leaving anything for anybody. I mean, it's impossible to do that anyway. You know, I don't know how it would work. If you if you could, you know, I don't know how that would work. But so what makes a great performance for you? Oh, gosh, sometimes you got to just you got to find out what they're, they're trying to get across in the story.
Sometimes, I think it's just
like with me, it was growing up with 30s and 40s movies, and seeing what people put into a performance, you know, and a lot of people would consider that. overacting maybe today. But to me, it was perfect acting. It's like watching a mime. It's a week had sent to see more Selmer so one time when I first started here, and we had the cheap seats were way up in the nosebleed section theater and, and Marcel Marceau was like, not even an inch high on the stage. But you could see everything he did, you could even see him exchanging his expression because of the way he had his face made up with white and dark areas around his mouth. And you kind of start realizing that that's what makes for good performances is the body language and something in fact, if you look at old Disney movies, the Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan, sometimes the dialogue doesn't really work. But it's all in the body. It's all in the way that they hold themselves, you know, and and so that's plus you listen to the voice, you get a good voice actor during the dialogue, they tell you, I mean, it's, it's obvious what that character should be doing. Plus, if you have a chance to go on a soundstage and watch them do their dialogue. That's about all you need there to It's like watching Eartha Kitt, you know, for ease minutes watching Craig Ferguson for hours, watching Randy Quaid for slim. These people put their heart and soul into that performance, you know, it wasn't like they were just going to, I got to go in and do a simple read. I'll be out of here in a few minutes, you know, kind of thing they Craig Ferguson went in, and he would read the dialogue verbatim. But then he would improvise, he would find out a funnier way to say it. And that's pretty much I think, maybe 95% of the dialogue and when poo was his improv, you know? And my gosh, I mean, and you watch him, and I mean, it's all in his body. And so in this case, you know, and you just take it in, you run with it, you know, and it's like, when I was doing the frog hunters and Princess in the frog, I was told that this is your tech savory moment, this is the time to go broad as you can be. And this is, it was very unlike Disney Animation, you know, outside of maybe word Kimball. But it was like, you know, you do something anything, I think I'm gonna take this a little bit further, I'm gonna really make this hurt, this hit hurt, you know, whatever. And, and so the whole joke was after dailies after the look at stuff I threw in there, they gave him their daily dose of violence that way, you know, and it was made it worthwhile because it was like something where you just pushed yourself. No, but it wasn't like pushing yourself and stressing about it. You're, you're having fun with it. You just see how far maybe I could push this even more. And I don't know. But you it was all in their dialogue to you know, it was all in the business. The fun comes out and let's get a good story man that puts that business in the sketches. Like bill Pete, who was running I thought one of the best writing in this studio ever had. It's like he wasn't an animator, but it's like he knew animation. And he would get attitudes in the characters that just sold the whole shot and it was just a nice springboard for the animators. They would just take it and refined it. Maybe Push up just a little bit more and, but he gave them a nice start to the thing. And I don't know, I think it's just in wanting to make something more physical, you know, physically entertaining. I don't like I can't do subtle stuff for one thing, I, my drawings get really tight, if I have to do something that's where a character is barely moving, I'm, I'm screwing things up, I can't, I can't draw that tight, he's got to move from one side of the frame to the other side of the frame that makes sense to me, you know, and,
Unknown Speaker 1:20:36
and.
Dale Baer 1:20:40
But that's, I don't know, you kind of have to, to take in every aspect of it, you know, from the story sketches to Yeah, sometimes I think a good layout, artists will, will encompass or give you props to play with, it'll give you an environment to play with, it inspires you there too. Donna Griffith, we used to be a layout man here years ago was I thought he was ideal for that he gave you the most beautiful little environment to animate. And you it just inspired you to look at this background. And so now all of a sudden, now you're thinking you got a stage to work with, you got this whole stage, you know, and I think theater going to theater too, is a good idea for people because, you know, you're not not everybody's going to be in the front row where they can watch the faces of these actors and actresses. And they're, they're sitting way in the back. And so it's all in the body. And all in their delivery, too. You know, that's the other thing too, is if you don't get a good voice person, that gives you a nice strong delivery, you're going to be lost, you're going to be you're going to be totally lost. Unless you really like doing subtle stuff, you know, I don't know, there's so many little facets of it, that you kind of have to take into consideration to get inspired by, you know, sometimes just the characters design tells you where you can go with this thing, you know, and it's like, when Bruce Smith did silly a and impresses the frog. He was scary. He was scary, you know, and he did a phenomenal job. And yet he was very controlling. But I don't know, but Bruce is very good at that very subtle control stuff. But, but he when he could move when in his move a character, he could move a character, you know, and make it dynamic, you know, and not slapstick, by any means, you know? There's so many different different things to take into consideration. Doing it. Yeah. So it's hard to put a, say, if you do this, this and this, then you're you're go pretty, you know,
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:23:03
I figure if I ask people these certain questions, and everybody gives you a different answer, you put them all together, maybe you get something that,
Dale Baer 1:23:09
you know, well, that's what makes that's why looking at early Disney films, before they would go or nowadays, or at least when they were doing CG, in the later years here, they they would have one unit that would handle one character. And it may have five animators on that one character, but that character became so controlled. You couldn't tell who did what. But in the early days, she could tell a john Malmesbury scene to award Campbell scene to a Frank Thomas scene, you could tell. And that's what to me made it more even more entertaining, because it was like watching this potpourri of talent, you know, especially even if they were enemies of the same character. It was so much fun to see how one interpreted that character from one section of the sequence to the other, you know, and there's nothing wrong with it. You know? We were doing this Winnie the Pooh and Tigger to back in the 70s. It was a downtime project. And Willie decided, you know, let's test our assistance to see who maybe has some chops for animating. And so they would hand out basically the same scene to five different guys. There could be good animators and there could be cleanup people, they would hand it out and they would see in dailies, they would look at them and they would pick the best one. And somebody under Woolley said Aren't you afraid that people are going to notice? Like this guy's Winnie the Pooh to this guy's Winnie the Pooh and says, No, you're paying a mortgage and put him in a Richard nobody's gonna know the difference and it's true. And people aren't. Yeah, they're watching a film and as long as the continuity takes you smoothly from one scene to the next, and through the story. You don't care you're not they're not going to notice that. Oh, That guy to the Winnie the Pooh his eyes oddly, but then you get a good cleanup people in there and that kind of pull things together just a little bit and, and you're fine. But I think it has the chance that does it. It's totally the to the charm of it all, you know. And that's what was always so much fun. Watch this stuff
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:25:23
that he was telling me about your story about your time at peanuts and how he felt like you're gonna starve to death because you paid per drawing and you couldn't handle him, they wouldn't give
Dale Baer 1:25:32
you they would hand out a scene, you know, and they would be like 30 foot scene. And at the top, they would give you have like four and a half foot credit. So you had to figure out how to put four and a half feet of animation into this 30 foot scene. And that's just like, it's just reusing little head Bobs and dialogue and eye blinks. And it would drive me nuts because you know, you're listening to the dialogue. It'd be funny if he did this. So you try that next thing you know, you're actually filling a scene with 30 feet of animation, and they're only paying you for four and a half feet. And they wouldn't let you put on on ones. No. Yeah. I couldn't do that either. Yeah, no, I was like, I was making like $300 a week. You know, when I should have been making like 1000s I couldn't I couldn't. I didn't last very long doing that. But I loved working with him. No, I love working with Bill Melendez. He was a he was a sweetheart of a guy and he had the greatest little studios a little help sound Larchmont of Paramount Pictures. And it was like, it was like a dream. It's like going to Jay ward. I went to Jay Ward when I was 16 on a little tour. And what was neat about it was it was a rainy, rainy day. Very dark and gloomy. You get there. You get invited in and it's the warmest environment there. People are sweet. You smell coffee. cookin was just these nice little antique desk lamps on people's desks. Nobody animated there. But they were right there. They would use storyboards there. But it was this little tiny house off of Sunset Boulevard, which is no a dog grooming place, but they kept the house. But you went down some of those stairs and they had their little grauman Chinese desk, you know, footprints or handprints and signature signatures and send that out. And then they had the big giant Bullwinkle holding rocky for evolved. But that studio, like stay with me. You know, that was the kind of studio you want, you want something that feels homey and welcoming. And you can't wait to go to work and you
Unknown Speaker 1:27:48
know, find that place.
Dale Baer 1:27:50
So the picture becomes what brings you to work every day with people, you know, some cases.
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:28:00
I was talking with some friends yesterday, a new name came up as somebody who managed to keep stay positive throughout your whole career.
Dale Baer 1:28:08
If you see me outside of the place at home, then you can get pretty cranky. But a try. I mean, it's like when we had to go switch to CG it's a well, what are you going to do? I mean, I don't know anything else. This is only no and there was not many other places out there that you can go back to do a traditional so you just you take it in now. But then I met people like Mike belzer, who was a good friend of mine, who was a CG animator, and you actually did stop motion animation for Nightmare Before Christmas. But he was he was a guy that wanted to work with you. He wasn't afraid of you. He wasn't anything like that. In fact, he was he and Ayman Butler was another animation head and CG work both excited that us today guys, we're going to get involved in cheap because we are going to, we think differently. And I don't know what we put into it because we were struggling just trying to figure out the computers. We succeeded or not but but in a way, I think what do I mean? I know I'm Wilbur. I tried to push him as much as I could. Yeah, I don't have a good time. But you know, the computer kind of overwhelms me sometimes I can't. I can't figure it out half the time. I always had three people in there trying to get a break this time, you know, but I managed, you know, but it was nice to go back to a traditional animation is your comfort zone. But, you know, we want to help I mean, we don't mind working on a CG phone if we can contribute. We can do a motion test and somebody can capture that in a CG character. That's, that's fantastic to me. You know, why not?
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:29:59
And it's great for To see them, you know, to be still involved and yeah, it's to their place. Nobody wants it to go. No,
Dale Baer 1:30:06
nobody wants it to go. Yeah, but you know, it's a. But you know, it's funny as well after we did Winnie the Pooh this last one. They had a screening at the El Capitan at seven o'clock in the morning. As for D 23 people, and they all showed up, we're out in front of the theater probably at six 530 or six o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. And the lead animators, myself, Bruce Smith, or Goldberg, Mark Han, and Randy Haycock were up on stage. And each one of us was supposed to talk for five minutes. And most of the guys said, the presentations up on the screen, I didn't have anything. And then we're supposed to draw our character, down sugar. So fortunately, I was like, fifth one in line. So I got to see everybody else do and see how nervous they were just staring out in the audience. And there's over 400 people out there. And finally, it was my turn. And of course, I had to take the long walk down the stage, started to talk. And I said, You know, I really don't apologize for not having a presentation because my character was sort of here and there and stuff like that. And most everybody else's stuff was up on the screen longer than mine was. So I just started to talk about the old days when I started here. And why I wanted to do all because my mentor did all in early one of the pools and talked about the history of place and stuff like that. And then at the point where I realized I forgotten to draw, so I had to quickly draw out and then I sat down, and when we went down to the basement to, to do book signings or poster signings, only thing that anybody everyone could tell me was how wonderful it was to hear about the old days, because it's what they read about. Yes. And this the history that developed the movies that they've grew up with, and fell in love with, you know, and they said, We don't feel that way about CG movies is there's nothing here you wonder when you wonder what people an animator would go to talk about, because they've got a character that's designed by another guy who was animated by 20 other guys that basically looks the same, there's no, there's no difference in in or they can't sketch it, you know, do a quick sketch of something, you know, which is what intrigues people to just to be able to sit and draw something that fascinates people.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:44
Yeah, you know?
Dale Baer 1:32:47
I don't know. That's way down the road. I want to go on speaking tours and stuff like that, and talk about the history of this place, which is what still stays with people, you know, talking about films that still stay with people, even if I didn't work on Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty or Peter Pan, I mean, that's, those are films that stayed with people. But I knew the people that did them. And that's what's so exciting. And you learned from and so there's a connection there might be very brief, but there's a connection.
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:33:32
I know you have to go to lunches I do to the lungs crazy coming in. The Lance prusa coming. Oh, yeah. Yeah. let you go. Know what time it is.
2011 1220.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:48
Assuming
Unknown Speaker 1:33:51
we really love it. I
Sandra Ni Chonaola 1:33:51
just wanted one more question. And that is what is the greatest piece of advice anybody ever gave you? And who was it from? Oh, my gosh. Honestly, I don't know how to answer that question. I honestly don't know how to answer that. Do you remember one of the biggest things you learned? I get a rabbit?
Dale Baer 1:34:25
Oh my gosh. I never thought of that. You know, I would take it advice. But it would be advice on on a scene, you know, Nina with you. You know, everybody struggles with something, you know, especially younger people, they struggle with something. And how it came one time told me you know, I brought in a scene, a scene in and he was looking at it on a pencil test and he says you know what? There's 1000 ways we could do this. See, but let's take yours and let's make it work. Which made me feel good because it was like, I didn't totally screw up. Yeah. But he was going to show me how I could punch it here and there. And but he had that kind of outlook on things. It wasn't like carved in stone someplace, you know, Mike Frank and Ollie and Milt would probably insist it look a certain way, because that's what's in their head. But how can you lounsbury and even Eric Larsen would look at what he did, and just show you how you could plus it, you know, and not, not throw it out and say, No, you should have done it this way. But just, I mean, Eric was really good at it. I mean, Eric never really spoke very much Eric Larsen school frameworks, but he had, he would, you know, have you put your scene up on a movie, oh, and then you get up and he'd run it, and you run it a few times. And then then he all of a sudden flip it and reverse back up to something and then he go forward, and then he step through it slowly back and forth. And then he, there used to be pegs on the other things, he put a piece of animation paper on there for rotoscoping stuff. And then he would lift the paper and he would look at the scene, again, they need little paper down and need to sharpen a pencil to draw up where your head is, or your hand, or whatever, whatever was bothering them. And then he would flip a couple of frames ahead, and he would put the next one down, and you would move it back a couple more frames ahead of that, and you put that down the outside, you see, you see where you screwed up. You didn't have to say a word, you just saw it, it was right there. And he was pretty amazing about it, you know, I don't know, I just I, I kind of I didn't take away animation advice. Basically, from them, it wasn't there long enough to really understand their 50 plus years. Yeah, time six 300 odd years of experience that you've learned, you took away how to treat younger people, how to treat people that are struggling, and not, and not make them feel like they're failing miserably at something, but you just kind of try to encourage him, you know, I've had too many people there told me that, you know, you're never going to make it here, you might as well get out of here. Now, while you have the chance, you know, and just not to listen to people like that, you know, just, you know, just stand by what you're really wanting to do. That's encouraging to hear, because a lot of people get told me never gonna make it. My fiance and I, we're listening to, we listened to the stuff like the secret, and we're listening to the power. And they tell you don't let people tell you, you're not going to make it there. Don't let people tell you, you're not good enough, or you're not as good as so and so, you know, none of us are ever going to be like that person over there. And that person over there, you know, we're, we're individuals, and this depends on what we want to put into it. And it's something that we may eventually find out, it's not really what we want to do, you know, we'll just we'll move into something else, you know, based on what you put out there in the universe, you know, and, and, and as long as you put it out there and you're thinking holistically about it, it's going to happen. And if you think you're going to be successful with animation, you will, you will, might take you a little bit of time might struggle with it a little bit. But there's so many different facets of animation to this immediate Disney animation or DreamWorks Animation you can do UPA style with animation or word Kimble s type animation, you don't have to do what everybody else is wanting to do, you know, so many different things. There's so many educational things out there. I mean, a bunch more kids growing up, you had Sesame Street.
All these little are the ones that were talking about, you know, you know, I'm a bill, you know, going into Congress or whatever it was, you know, those little tiny Schoolhouse Rock, that's sort of what so it's little tiny, very simple, simple, little, little pieces of taught kids stuff. Yeah. I mean, there's so many facets, so many things you can do for different age groups, you know, the simpler your younger age groups, you know, you know, you could do something like that. There's so many facets that you want to do bad enough. I didn't I wasn't I wasn't that great. got in here, but you know what? Push yourself and your work by rabbit you learn and you keep trying and you never know what's going to happen. Always pleasantly surprised. And pleasantly surprised if you have one idea of what you want to do, but then something else better comes along that you never thought about and you grab it. You know, one thing I keep telling people is Don't ever say no that, you know, some opportunity comes up say yes to it. You don't know where it's going to take either. No, it's going to it may lead you down a path you never thought existed out there. And that's that's true. I didn't think I was going to I didn't know Roger Rabbit was going to come along. I didn't know Getting A Commercial studio was going to come along. I didn't know. I was going to even come back here. Yeah, honestly. That was not even on my mind. Then happened for the better.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:02
such pleasure to talk to you. I'm really grateful that you took the time now. It was my pleasure. My goodness. There's something on there. You don't like me only to
Unknown Speaker 1:41:12
re say it. I will write good. Maybe we can meet up another time. That'd be great. Sounds good to me.
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