Walt Disney Presents the Super Cartoon Camera (1937)

In 1937, Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios shot Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs with a new-fan­gled cam­era, the mul­ti­plane cam­era, which allowed car­toon ani­ma­tion to take a quan­tum leap for­ward. Thanks to this new “super car­toon cam­era,” ani­mat­ed scenes sud­den­ly looked more real­is­tic and three-dimen­sion­al. You only need to watch this pre­sen­ta­tion by Walt Dis­ney him­self (record­ed in 1957) and you’ll see what I mean. Dis­ney shot many of its clas­sic fea­ture films – Pinoc­chio, Fan­ta­sia, Bam­bi, and Peter Pan – with the mul­ti­plane cam­era, and it remained in pro­duc­tion right through The Lit­tle Mer­maid, filmed in 1989. Today, only three orig­i­nal Dis­ney mul­ti­plane cam­eras sur­vive.

A big thanks to Sergey for send­ing this vin­tage clip our way. If you see a good piece of open cul­ture, don’t hes­i­tate to send it our way…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Disney’s Oscar-Win­ning Adven­tures in Music

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)