History of the sound a walt disney

The history of sound at Walt Disney.

Walt Disney is one of the most popular film making company’s in the world, creating hundreds of hit films for example Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Looking into the way in which sound in Disney has been developed has been helpful for me in understanding how sound has developed over time and looking into first animations and how they used sound.
Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’ (1928) was one of the first experiments in composing an audio soundtrack for an animation as posted on: http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs294-7/sp04/sp_04_presentations/Sound_In_Animation.pdf
Disney Fantasia was also one of the first films to be released in a multichannel format called Fantasound.
What i wanted to look at is how the films created sounds for different films, what I started to look at was the creation of film sound at Walt Disney studios, here i found out what different stages where used for when creating the sound.

Post Production SoundThe Main Theater is a state-of-the-art digital sound dubbing and screening facility that was first used to mix the sound for FANTASIA. Sound mixers blend dialogue, music, and sound effects tracks to the various levels appropriate for a movie theater. The acoustics are designed to simulate a theater that is three-quarters full. Although the theater is empty during the mixing session, extra padding in the seats and specially designed walls absorb and reflect the sound. This helps the sound mixers to know what the final product will sound like when it is released to the public.

Stage A, situated next to the Main Theater, was originally used for scoring. For many years, the music for innumerable Disney movies and cartoons was recorded here. In 1985, the stage was converted to a dubbing stage and theater. Like the Main Theater, Stage A is an all-digital, state-of-the-art dubbing facility.
Stages B & C were designed to provide sound elements for the animated films. Because of the Studio location near the Burbank Airport, special priority was given to soundproofing with "building within a building" design for noise reduction.

Stage B is known as the dialogue stage, where character voices were recorded for many animated classics including ALICE IN WONDERLAND, LADY AND THE TRAMP, PETER PAN, and THE JUNGLE BOOK. The tradition continues today, as Stage B is still used for such recent films as ALADDIN, THE LION KING, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. Today, that tradition continues not only on Disney films, but also with Pixar hits such as TOY STORY, BUGS LIFE, TOY STORY 2, and MONSTERS INC. Stage B accommodates Automatic Dialog Replacement (ADR), a process that allows the talent to re-record their dialogue. One such use is for scenes shot on location, where an talent's lines were destroyed by outside sound or noise, such as a plane flying over at the time of filming.

Stage C was originally used for the recording of various sound effects for the animated features and short subjects. Many of the unique sound-effects props and gadgets for these processes were invented by Disney technicians. Today, Stage C serves as a dubbing stage for film and television. It was recently renovated in 2001 and like the other stages it features an all-digital, state-of-the-art film console.

This gave me an insite to the way in which sound is created in big production films, it takes many different stages for the sound within a film to be created.

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