Digital Brush Gives ‘Fantasia’ New Life

In Walt Disney’s 1940 animated film classic “Fantasia,” there’s a famous segment in which Mickey Mouse, as “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” conjures up a spell with a broomstick, accompanied by the dramatic strains of French composer Paul Dukas. What audiences haven’t noticed--and it would be hard to spot given the speed with which the animated frames pass--is that in one frame, as Mickey climbs the stairs of the sorcerer’s chamber, he doesn’t cast a shadow.

At least he didn’t until now. Thanks to Jerry Pooler, head of a six-person team of digital artists restoring the movie at the Cinesite Hollywood special effects house, Mickey will indeed have a shadow in that frame when the studio releases a remake of “Fantasia,” probably in 1999.

Pooler corrected the problem with the aid of computer technology: He made digital copies of the shadow in the frames before and after the defective frame to create a merged image. He then inserted this new digital copy into the frame. Voila, Mickey got a shadow.

For the last year, this type of thing has become an everyday occurrence in Pooler’s life. His assignment is to clean up 55,000-plus frames of “Fantasia,” or four scenes of the original film, which Disney plans to include in an updated “Fantasia” featuring many new animated and live-action segments. Each day, Pooler and his team closely examine the frames for damage--scratches, tears, dust, and water spots--or an ancient flub, such as the missing shadow. Then they correct these defects digitally.

With traditional film restoration techniques, technicians typically cover up scratches and other damage by filling in the problem areas with a chemical mixture. But with digital technology, Pooler has new means to remove those flaws. First, technicians scan the cinematic images into the computer, where, transformed into computer code, technicians can manipulate the data on monitors. Cinesite stores these doctored images on a high-density cartridge, the contents of which can then be transferred onto film. The result is a pristine copy, Pooler says. “We’ve had people from Disney look at it and say it was better than [the] original,” he insists.

Restoring “Fantasia” is an arduous and expensive process for the studio. Before Cinesite began its digital restoration, Burbank-based YCM Laboratories spent three years manually cleaning parts of “Fantasia” frame by frame. Said YCM Vice President Pete Comandini: “Disney is the only one that can afford this kind of feature film restoration. They have the assets that merit it.”

“Fantasia” is Pooler’s third Disney digital restoration. In 1992 and ‘95, he led the Cinesite team that digitally restored two other Disney animated classics, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Sleeping Beauty.” As with “Fantasia,” Pooler perused every frame. “I’m the last filter before Disney gets to see it,” Pooler says. “What the artists don’t see, I have to catch.”

Pooler learned his craft on the job. After a stint in the U.S. Navy that included two tours in Vietnam, the San Gabriel native started in the late 1960s as a delivery boy at a Hollywood film lab. Pooler worked his way up at the union shop, advancing to become an operator of the devices used in the creation of traditional special effects. For 14 years until 1992, Pooler was an optical camera operator at Apogee Inc., a now-defunct Van Nuys-based production house, where he worked on TV commercials and feature films.

But it wasn’t until Pooler joined Cinesite four years ago that he got his first experience with digital technology. Since virtually no one in Hollywood had used these technologies, Pooler taught himself. “We faced a learning curve on ‘Snow White,’ ” he admits. “Everyone was learning it by the seat of their pants.”

Now, Pooler is an experienced digital hand in a field where supervisors can earn annual salaries of more than $100,000. Digital technology has made postproduction move more quickly, says Pooler, who advises aspiring digital artists to take computer software classes to master these new techniques. Now, filmmakers can make changes on film much closer to the release date than ever before, Pooler says.

One drawback to his work: Pooler says he’s developed an eye for detail that’s ruined cinema-going for him. “I can’t even go to a movie anymore,” he laments. “I just see dirt up there.”