The film is both the artistic and practical extension of the Silly Symphonies, a series of seventy-five animated musical shorts produced by Walt Disney Productions between 1929 to 1939 (animation began on Fantasia early in 1938). Walt Disney conceived of the Silly Symphonies as a platform for animators to experiment with different processes, characters, and artistic styles. More to the point, the shorts were to pave the way for the studio's foray into animated feature filmmaking. Because of the Silly Symphonies, artists at Disney were able to test out a wide array of techniques and technologies. For instance, after securing limited exclusive rights to three-strip Technicolor, 1932's Flowers and Trees became the first animated film to use a full-color Technicolor process, which proved, to put it mildly, massively successful. The Silly Symphonies also allowed for the testing of a critical technical innovation that would prove instrumental in Disney's quest to achieve a more "cinematic" style of animation: the multiplane camera. Early forms of the multiplane camera had been kicking around since Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). However, the most famous multiplane camera was created by William Garity for Walt Disney. The camera was specifically created for use in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. But the technology was first tested in a 1937 Silly Symphony called The Old Mill, which was directed by who else but "Night On Bald Mountain/Ave Maria" director Wilfred Jackson. The multiplane camera was eventually rendered obsolete by its digital equivalent in the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) process. But the obsolescence was, poetically, not unrelated to the demise of Fantasia. If not the film, then the ethos behind it. Walt Disney had originally planned to keep Fantasia in a permanent state of release. The idea was that new sequences would intermittently replace old ones, yielding a cinematic experience that would never look or feel the same way twice. Ultimately, the idea was scrapped due to the project's unwieldy scope and Fantasia's unreceptive critical response, which admonished the film (among other things) for debasing classical music in an attempt to elevate cartoons.

Film

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