Movie Project - Day 40: Peter and the Wolf

Animation is a peculiar art form. With most other types of film projects, music is added to the film at the end of production, but with animation it's the other way around. Music is the first thing recorded and the animation is adjusted to fit.

In the case of this Disney Mini Classic, Peter and the Wolf, the music was not composed at the Disney Studios, but rather is a Russian symphony aimed at children composed in 1936 by Sergei Prokofiev. While the short is only fifteen minutes, the run time for the entire piece is under half an hour at twenty-five minutes.

Only Sterling Halloway's voice is in this piece as the narrator. Each of the characters have their own voice, but with musical instruments:
Peter - Strings
Bird (Sasha) - Flute
Duck (Sonya) - Oboe
Cat (Ivan) - Clarinet
Grandpa - Bassoon
Hunters - Kettle Drums
Wolf - Brass (trumpets, etc.)

Erini has already learned to love Fantasia, so this wasn't much of a stretch for her to understand. New movies always transfix her anyway, and good music helps too. I was very impressed with how the character instruments were described, and the animation style was very fluid and whimsical, matching the music quite well.

There was an Academy Award winning stop motion production of Peter and the Wolf done in 2006, but unless I get my hand on a PAL converter, we'll have to wait until there's a North American release.

I thought the cassette was rather short with only Peter and the Wolf, and I wasn't the only one, because everyone was a little surprised when another short started up, a Silly Symphony called Musicland.



Completely done without dialogue, this romance story carries itself much like Romeo and Juliet with the two star crossed lovers on different sides of a conflict of musical styles. Erini particularly liked the saxophones, as she thought they were quite funny.

By now, my wife remembered there was one more feature, staring Mickey Mouse and company, Symphony Hour.



Very fun, very cute, but my in-laws, my wife, and myself were wondering just how much was done by Spike Jones. There were some instances where we were all laughing quite hard, such as the donkey accordion.

One thing for sure, my daughter loves to laugh, as she demonstrates whenever we cuddle up together and watch some Pinky and the Brain episodes. NARF!