this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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They used a lot of rotoscoping back in the day. Basically they filmed a scene normally with real people, then traced over every frame to give us those fantastic moments of fluid movement in things like Snow White, Mary Poppins, and Beauty and the Beast (which also used 3D by the way).
Fun fact, some of the more impressive examples from that era (like Mary Poppins) primarily used the sodium vapor process to get perfect mattes directly in-camera, no rotoscoping needed. It's a fascinating and impressive bit of tech: https://www.historicmysteries.com/science/disney-prism/39484/
That is indeed a fun fact! I am somewhat obsessed with sodium vapor lights and the bandwidth of light they produce. I would love to have seen the original camera rig and their special prisms, but apparently they only made three and they've been lost.
High intensity discharge lamps are awesome, can confirm. I miss when streetlamps were still HPS/LPS and mercury vapor, the lighting felt a lot more comforting than the harsh LEDs used nowadays.
Ralph Bakshi used it in the 1978 LOTR. It made the battle scene confusing.
Dude Ralph Bashki made things weird for fun. Maybe if I volunteer to watch the Bashki LOTR with my wife, who loves that movie, I can convince her to watch Wizards with me. I have been wanting to watch that.
Rotoscoping is quite old, too. I think it even predates ww1.