The 1979 low-budget short The Wizard of Speed and Time began life as a three-minute demo reel that Mike Jittlov made for two producers from The Walt Disney Studio, and like virtually all of his work before and since, it was made on a shoestring budget in Jittlov's home garage using a multiplane animation table that he built himself for $200.
In the mid-70s, Jittlov was a math/language major at UCLA, but he'd taken an animation course to satisfy an art requirement in order to graduate, and that's when something clicked. He began making films, first on Super 8mm, and he enjoyed the creative process. One of those films, The Leap, was enlarged to 16mm in order be able for Jittlov to participate in film festivals in the early 70s. Jittlov then entered his 16mm student film Good Grief into Academy Awards competition for short films, and it made it to the finals, the first of several of his short films to do so. Some of his other original film shorts -- including The Interview, Swing Shift, Animato, and Time Tripper (released separately and as a collection called Animato) -- began winning top short film awards, and were screened at multiple film festivals, bringing Jittlov to the attention of Disney's animation company.
In 1978, Disney brought him aboard to create a short stop-motion film, Mouse Mania, which showed
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hundreds of Disney toys speedily moving around a psychiatrist's office — it was the first time Mickey Mouse had ever been animated with this kind of in-camera echnique — and it was included on their two-hour TV special, Mickey's 50th. Since Disney did not allow usually individual creators to receive credit on their television productions (preferring a generic thanks to "the many Disney animators who made this possible") Jittlov put his and filmmaking partner Deven Chierighino's names on the toys in the final production number, where they couldn't be edited out. He thought this short film might lead to more work for Disney, and it did. Producers Phil May and Nick Bennion had liked his films, and soon Jittlov began working on a new short film for them, of an animated satellite shaped like Mickey Mouse's head (this effect was later reproduced for the special features of the DVD version of Disney's 1937 film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and also was shown at Disneyland, to the people waiting in line at Space Mountain; it's also shown to Disney employees during orientation). This little film led to additional work for Disney, and in late 1979 Jittlov's short film, The Wizard of Speed and Time, which first appeared on Disney's Major Effects TV special, a special episode of "The Wonderful World of Disney" which aired as cross-promotion for Disney's new studio film The Black Hole. Jittlov (left) with Joseph Bottoms (right) in a promotional still from the Disney TV special Major Effects (1979), where The Wizard Of Speed And Time short appeared in its first incarnation. Jittlov played the “Camera Wizard” in bridging segments during the special. The Wizard was filmed in around Hollywood, California (you'll no doubt recognize Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Sign, and the touristy Hollywood Blvd.), and on Maltman Avenue in Los Angeles, CA, where Jittlov lives. Jittlov plays the green-cloaked wizard himself, and he's seen speeding around the world and spreading magic until he ends up slipping on a banana peel, a classic comedy gag, which sends him flying straight into a pile of film cans, which he then proceeds to animate along with plenty of other film equipment. As one reviewer wrote about the film, Zittlov "wrote, directed, produced, audited, gripped, funded, cranked, cameraed, composed, googled, flamboozed, and starred" in this one, and cast not only himself and some of his friends, but also his mom. A few years after making the original film, Jittlov took his idea and expanded it into a low-budget feature, also called The Wizard of Speed and Time, which tells the story of a young filmmaker -- also named Mike Jittlov -- and his struggle to make a special-effects-laden short film for a TV special despite having few resources (i.e., money) while battling the Hollywood bureaucracy. The tricks of his movie magic are exposed -- stop-motion, speeded-up motion -- but so are the trials and tribulations of the independent moviemaker working around the heavily-unionized Hollywood film industry. The feature film’s storyline is also simply crammed with a number of interesting ideas and themes including -- and there are simply too many to mention all of them here -- subliminal messages (many are hidden in single frames during the "Wizard Run" sequence); a startling new use for a chrome bust of Mickey Mouse, the horrors of dealing with unionized labor; a few plugs for the Church of the Sub-genius; lots of deftly-employed stock footage; and the most terrifying "pizza with everything" you’ll ever see. And there's even an intentionally-horrible musical number about the creation of the universe, which is thankfully interrupted by a ridiculous Presidential announcement, and there's at least one visual homage to the Walt Disney Company itself, and one of Disney's original "nine old men," animator Ward Kimball, who makes a brief appearance as an examiner for the so-called "Infernal Revenue Service." The cast also includes a former Miss Virginia, the beautiful Paige Moore; Miami Vice's Philip Michael Thomas (TV producers later asked if he had ever played a police officer, and he replied "Yes, I was a cop in a feature film," which led to his being cast on "Miami Vice"); and Angelique Pettyohn, from TV's "Get Smart," and fans of the original "Star Trek" series might also remember her from "The Gamesters of Triskelion" -- if you don't remember, there's a poster on the wall in one scene of her Star Trek character "Shana," dressed in the aluminum foil bathing suit that she wore from the episode). There's also a cameo appearance by noted sci-fi collector Forrest J. Ackerman. The feature film was filmed in 1983, and released to theaters in 1989 (though it was never widely distributed), and although it didn't do great box-office numbers it has developed a cult following since its release on VHS videotape and laserdisk, and collector's regularly traded copies of the VHS tapes until the film was made available online. According to Jittlov, the film's co-producer, Richard Kaye, credited with providing additional dialogue too), allegedly made off with the film's completion money before the film was done: Jittlov considers the film to be only about 75 % completed. During the 1980s, the full-length Wizard movie began to be shown at sci-fi conventions around the country, gaining popularity and eventually giving Jittlov the opportunity to create a heavily fictionalized account of how the film was made, allowing him to create a spurious "making of" short film that contains some special effects that weren't included in the Wizard films.
Jittlov has made the most of these appearances, dressed in his green wizard cloak-jacket and green shoes that he'd worn in the film. Jittlov later worked as a special effects technician on the film Ghost, and he has also appeared in fan films, including Darth Vader's Psychic
Hotline. Incidentally, Jittlov is not the only one who worked on the Wizard movie who went on to work in Hollywood: Cinematographer Russell Carpenter would go on to work on such films as The Lawnmower Man, The Indian In The Cupboard, Titanic, Charlie's Angels and the sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Shallow Hal and Monster-In-Law, and composer John Massari's résumé includes Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Skeletons, and Retro-Puppet Master. The film's musical score that plays during "the Wizard's Run" was also used in a trailer for the Toy Story 3 videogame.
Natashia Trethewey’s work Beyond Katrina reflects on the past happenings that befell her hometown as well as that of her own brother Joe. Her poem “Theories of Time and Space” offers a powerful statement that encourages readers to think long and hard about its relation to the remainder of the story. The focus being on the concept of home and what it is means to not only be a part of one but also to be able to return to said home. Trethewey establishes this concept well throughout many aspects of her book, especially in her title choices and the way she phrases her words.
It would be very hard to not have heard about Disney because he has released so many different kinds of animations, but during the 1950’s Disney began to become less involved in the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his main animators, the Nine Old Men, although he was always at story meetings. Instead, he started concentrating on other things. On a business trip to Chicago in the late 1940s, Disney drew sketches of his ideas for an amusement park where he envisioned his employees spending time with their children. These ideas developed into a concept for a larger enterprise which was to become Disneyland. Disney spent five years of his life developing Disneyland and created a new company, called WED Enterprises, to carry out the planning and production of the park. In March 1952 Walt Disney got permission to build Disneyland. Construction work started in July 1954, and opened in July 1955; the opening ceremony was broadcast on ABC, which reached 70 million viewers.The park was designed as a series of themed lands, linked by the central Main Street, U.S.A a replica of the main street in his hometown of
For more than hundred years stop motion has been around in one form or another. At a steady rate of speed a series of frames have been shot with each one being slightly different that the next one. The human eye perceives this as being an unbroken action and the brain seamlessly stiches the frames together and it appears like a moving image. The object is moved in small increments between independently photographed frames, creating the illusion of connection when the series of frames is played as a nonstop sequence. In its earliest form of stop-motion animation was objective manipulation. The stop-motion technique was created to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton were the first people to use the idea of a stop-motion film. In 1897 they created The Humpty Dumpty Circus, a film wher...
Disney partnered up with his older brother and old partner, Ub Iwerks, and began producing a cartoon short for Mickey Mouse, called Steamboat Willie. During the production of Steamboat Willie, Disney watched the Jazz Singer and became intrigued at the idea of synchronized sound.
Tim Burton has been known for capturing and using an eerily interesting form of set design/animation in his films and this own is the crown jewel of his artistic work. This movie originated from a poem written by Tim Burton that, over the years, was developed into a full length stop motion film and released to the public in 1993. This stop motion film was so good that it was
Chuck Jones was born on September 21, 1912. Jones entered the animation industry in 1932 as a cel washer at Ubbe Iwerks Studio after graduating from the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of Arts). He joined the Leon Schlesinger Studio, later sold to Warner Bros., as an animator in 1936. There, Jones was assigned to Tex Avery’s animation unit. In 1938, at the age of 25, he directed his first animated film “The Night Watchman.” Jones remained at Warner Bros. animation until it closed in 1962, though he had a brief stint with Disney Studios in 1955 during a break at Warner Bros.
Walt Disney started drawing at a very young age. When he was nine he sold paintings and drawings to his neighbors. He liked believing that the characters would come to life by making a flip book. When Disney was in high school he took animation classes, photography classes and drew animation for his high school paper. Walt was the kind of person who drove himself to make his dreams come true. He dropped out of school at sixteen and moved to Hollywood, California with his brother, Roy, and there they started their own animation company, Disney Brothers Studio, joined with Universal Studios. When the Disney’s moved to Hollywood they hired Fred Harman, Harman’s Brother, The Wrinkle family and Ubbe Iwerks. The comp...
From the book An American Original Walt Disney, you learn that in the early 1920’s, Walt began an exhilarating new road in his life. He started work at a company called Film Ad. It was there that he came up with the idea of some short animation called Laugh-O-gram. (Thomas 57-61) Animat...
He gained people's attention by making short films and expanding his company at an impressive rate . he made many characters such as Mickey Mouse Donald Duck. Some of his stories even became Legends such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He expanded the filming industry in many ways.Impervious to the bankruptcy, he aimed to set up a studio apartment in California .
The Theory of Relativity, proposed by the Jewish physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in the early part of the 20th century, is one of the most significant scientific advances of our time. Although the concept of relativity was not introduced by Einstein, his major contribution was the recognition that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and an absolute physical boundary for motion. This does not have a major impact on a person's day-to-day life since we travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects travelling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity states that objects will move slower and shorten in length from the point of view of an observer on Earth. Einstein also
Sergei Eisenstein was a Russian film director, that was born in Riga (now, Latvia) in 1898 (Hoobler 75). Eisenstein is considered the innovator behind the montage style of movies
Steamboat Willie (1928) was his creation, as was the first full-color cartoon, Flowers and carees (1932). He was also responsible for the first animated film that gave the illusion of depth through the use of the multiplane camera, The Old Mill (1937). The cartoon, as realized by Disney, gained even greater stature in 1937 when Walt released his first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He went on to introduce many more innovations to movie making, including stereophonic sound (Fantasia, 1940) and 360-degree projection (Disneyland’s circle-Vision 360, 1955). This remarkable man’s many achievements also include the longest-running prime time television series (1954-1983), the Academy Award-winning true-life adventure nature films. Walt had many great ideas that he needed to share with others. The was a great persuading leader,...
Filmmaker and theorist, Lev Kuleshov, is known today as the grandfather of Soviet Montage theory. His works include The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), Death Ray (1925), The Great Consoler (1933) and We from the Urals (1943). Kuleshov’s life work has had a profound influence on the filmmakers around him and filmmakers today. One of his greatest triumphs was cofounding the Moskow Film School, the world’s first film school. In a time when filmmaking was still in its infancy, Kuleshov was perhaps the first to theorize about the power of this new story telling medium. These theories and experiments would pave the way for future Russian film giants like Pudovkin and Eisenstein (who briefly studied under him).
Born on 30th of July 1970 in London United Kingdom to a British father and American mother. Because of that he has both British and American citizenship and has been living in both London and Chicago since his childhood. He found his passion for filmmaking at early ages and at age 7 he made his first short film with his father’s camera. Eventually just like most directors he did not attend film universities, instead he went on to study English literature in London, his hometown. One of his early short films which is probably his best also, is ‘Doodlebug’ which he made in
The theory of Special Relativity, written by Albert Einstein in 1905, describes the laws of motion at velocities close to and at the speed of light. It was written to make the laws of motion consistent with the laws of electromagnetism. Special relativity makes two postulates: the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers and the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, regardless of motion. One of the consequences of these postulates is that clocks run slower to an observer in motion, or time slows down. Special relativity also states that objects at high speeds always appear shorter in the direction of motion than they do at rest. However, length measurements transverse to the direction of motion are unaffected. Velocity addition is different for special relativity than for classical mechanics because according to special relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Also, in order to retain the conservation of momentum as a general law consistent with Einstein's first postulate, a new definition of momentum must be used at relativistic velocities. The twin paradox is the famous example that uses time dilation and length contraction. Special relativity is not contradictory with classical mechanics because at low speeds, all of the laws of special relativity reduce to the laws of classical mechanics.