No special news today, so here is again an interesting article - previously post May 5, 2007 . It's about the first concept for the Walt Disney Studios Cinemagique attraction.

When the Walt Disney studios open in Paris in 2002, the Cinemagique" attraction was one of the best one, and still is. For those of you who have never seen it, the attraction is a tribute to cinema history. Here is the story line: The movie begin by a black and white 1920's sequence until somebody inside the audience is magically transport inside the movie - just like in Woody Allen's Purple rose of Cairo. Then, the man goes from one famous movie sequence to another - digitally include in the original shots, and funny and emotional things happen between him, the characters of the original sequences and a girl. That's very basically how it goes.

Now , some weeks ago, i was reading an article on the very good cartoon brew web site, talking about something called "Balloon movies" done by a mysterious director...just to discover that what they were talking about was one of the first and abandoned concept for Cinemagique!

In this other concept, we always had the famous movie sequences, but a facetious balloon - digitally include in the original shots with After Effects - was going from a sequence to another.
Not only it's perfectly done, but also funny or poetic. Here is what the director said in his own words about it:
“The main through line was a romance between a guy in the audience and a woman in the movie. The “every man” goes into the movie (right through the screen) and meets a beautiful woman there. There is a spark of romance. He is then chased by villains out of her movie and stumbles through many other classic films, lost and alone. The woman leaves her movie to go on a quest to find him.

“So — now you’re probably wondering where the balloon shots come in. Well they don’t. Not in the final show. However, just before we committed to film the project, we decided to go through a kind of wild card period. Float some totally different ideas. I thought it might be fun to do a nod to “The Red Balloon”. I did a few of these balloon shots at home and took them into the studio. Everybody enjoyed them. So we explored a possible version centered on that idea. I did more and more shots, took them in, hunkered down with the editor and stitched together a draft. We all got a kick out of it, but utimately decided that we missed the romantic comedy of Plan A. So after the diversion, we returned to our original course.

“So I had all these shots at home that I’d done on spec. I figured that since I did them and they contain no material from the studio, and I don’t reference the context we used when toying with them, they’re safe to post.”

Please note that he didn't say that it was in relation with "Cinemagique" , I did.

Of course you certainly would like to see how it looks, and here is a youtube video where you will see the different sequences all together, plus a new one on "Lord of the Rings".

And remember to look for the arrival of the balloon!

Here are the name of the famous movies :

Harold Lloyd
King Kong
Casablanca
The Wizard of Oz
Singing in the rain
African Queen
Buthch Cassidy and the Sundance kid
Once upon a time in the west
North by northwest
The Empire strikes back
Nikita
A" musical"
Gentlemen prefer blondes
Mary Poppins

Lord of the Rings

youtube videos by Cybershire
cartoonbrew web site at: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/