Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 4

In my notes I found that Roger Waters was at the studio on one day while I was working on these scenes. I remember peeking over the desks when he was talking to Dick. I think they were discussing him doing some music for the film, but that never happened. Paul McCartney and George Martin were also visiting at another time, talking about writing the music, but that also fell through.

seq.10.3/sc.2x, 26-02 feet, I worked on it May 13 - 31, 1991Here is a rough sketch Dick did for this scene while he was explaining to me what he wanted. Most of this scene was based on Ken's work, but Dick asked me to add some business with the Thief feeling dizzy after getting up and almost falling off. Dick wanted to know the German translation for the word "dizzy". I wrote it down for him in the top right corner: "schwindelig".I also did the BG layout drawing, referencing an Errol BG for 10.3/5x (see below), the hand just at a slightly different angle. I think Margaret Grieve animated the palm leaves moving in the wind. On this scene and on the scenes that followed Hilary Denny, who assisted me on this sequence animated the flies. I was really happy about this as it allowed me to start on another scene instead of going back in to work on flies. Up to that point I had not only animated flies for my own scenes, but also for a lot of Dick's scenes. I think Hilary adopted my color coded method (see Sept. 5 post). Dick and Neil used another approach when they animated flies. They did them all at once in graphite and they didn't worry too much about following through on the individual flies as long as the overall shape was moving properly. We all used the tip of the heart shape to help with the direction they were flying in.


seq.10.3/sc.3x, 4-05 feet, I worked on this June 1 and 3, 1991These were pretty much just 3 keys with lots of inbetweens. Apparently I did the layout, too. I probably just xeroxed the Ruby Idol from another scene.


I'm not sure about the scene number for this one. I think I did a drawing of the Thief for a held cel.
In connection with this sequence I have s.th. from an earlier post:
"Roy later told me about times when Ken Harris was about to arrive for his seasonal stay in London and having been busy on commercials Dick sometimes had not prepared any work for him. In a hurry they would whip out BG and character layouts for the Thief character. Dick would just say "Let's make him climb up the mountain..." and that would keep Ken busy for a while." (see also this LINK)


seq.10.3/sc5x Redo 23-10 feet
This scene was considered a redo which meant that the footage could not be counted towards our weekly studio quota as it had been counted already. This reminds me of our production coordinator Ian Cook and how he would come by every week and ask "What is your footage?". This might only mean s.th. to my former colleagues, but the way he said this every week was funny. Ian has a very dry sense of humor. Dick had done this scene years earlier working over Ken's roughs and it had been painted and filmed, but now Dick wanted wind moving through the coat. So I took his drawings and animated the coat as overlays that were carefully matched to the existing cels.