Filming Sleeping Beauty

This picture was taken at the Walt Disney Studio in the late 1950's. They are filming the feature-length animated movie, "Sleeping Beauty".  The camera is at the top, looking down, but it can't be seen here. The drawings are held down with a plate of glass in a black frame called "a platen", and it helps the characters to not cast shadows.

Now, here's the same photograph, upside-down so you can see the drawings better. The scene is where the two fairies Fauna and Merryweather are having tea and cookies and discussing their problem. This movie was filmed in an ultra-wide screen process called Technirama 70. Look at the giant size of the cel that one (cute) fellow is holding! The whole movie was drawn and painted on thousands and thousands and thousands of these jumbo-sized cels. Of course, the backgrounds were just as big (if not bigger), and they needed to paint about 500 of those!

The character images are the property of their copyright holders.