Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1401019
m ot ion p ictu re s o u n d e d i to r s I 35 STEVE LEE: Mr. Bess, to explain to someone who has no idea, who just stepped o the spaceship… what is Zenimation? DAVID BESS: (LAUGHS) There's a little tagline—or motto—underneath the title credit that says, "refresh your senses with a moment of mindfulness." The idea is, using clips from the legacy of Disney animated fi lms to give the viewer a fi ve- to eight-minute experience where they can just relax and experience a moment of mindfulness through the characters in the clip. It's really an excuse—to be honest—to showcase some of the incredible visuals and sound from these fi lms, and to do it in such a way that you just might feel relaxed and have a moment of zen when you're watching it. SL: It really is wonderful. To give more of a technical explanation… you've basically taken scenes from these classic Disney fi lms, and fi ltered out the music and dialogue to just hear the presences and sounds of these wonderful locations, and what the characters are doing, to create a moment of calm by bringing it down to its simplest form, so that you're *there* with them. DB: That's right. SL: Amy, how did Zenimation fi rst come to your attention? AMY ASTLEY: This is what happened. It was D23 Expo 2019 (an all-Disney convention for the fans). David created a piece for our Disney animation booth. It's a busy, hectic day, visiting D23 Expo. It's so fun. There's a lot of sensory excitement around. And so he took a couple of clips from our movies and pulled out the dialogue and the music to create these little moments—that he called Zenimation, by the way, from the get-go! Just to play on the monitor in the booth. DB: Yeah, typically at those D23 Expos, the animation studio has a booth on the exhibit floor. And we usually have a couple of monitors. They're usually just running all day long. They'll have trailers, TV spots, playing on them, you name it. I was trying to think of something that might be a change of pace, knowing how frenetic and frenzied and exciting the D23 Expo can be. And I thought, maybe there's something that can be just a bit more calming, a little more subdued. Something that gives you a chance to breathe and sit, and take in a moment. I've always had a special fondness for scenes in our fi lms that take their time. Especially establishing shots. Or moments where the characters themselves are taking in the surroundings that they're in, and really soaking in the environment and looking around. Not saying anything—just appreciating the environment that they're in. Moments in the fi lm where nothing's really happening necessarily story-wise, but it's just to set the tone and to set the environment of what is about to happen—I love those scenes. I often wish that they played longer in our fi lms! Especially because you get to really look at the detail and the amount of work that has gone into creating that environment— whether it's visual or with sound. AA: I was starting to meet with Disney+ about what might be interesting to them, and what we're thinking about behind the scenes for documentary content, alternative content on the service. We proposed the idea (of making this a series), and Disney+ green- lit it immediately! And then we're working on it, and again, David just brings so much thought to the themes of each episode, and how he constructs those. I think one of my favorite examples of that is in Season 2. There's an episode called "Everyday Comforts," where through clips of diff erent moments, from diff erent fi lms of course, you see the course of a day from a character waking up, doing their daily chores, and at the end going to sleep. DB: I was kind of fascinated with that. I mean, the idea of people— whether it was combing their hair, or sewing, or crumpling paper—how that sound experience could be a calming thing for some people. So it was all those things that kind of made me think, we should show clips like that from our fi lms! So that's what we did! AA: My true favorite is an episode that is pure David Bess—called "Kindness." The fact that he wanted to pull out moments of kindness from these fi lms, speaks so much to how he thinks about these. So that sort of framing is what I so enjoy. And then, I will say for Season 2, Disney+ was such a gift! Because we were combing through what David had in his Avid for Season 1 … for Season 2, I could get on this very computer I'm speaking to you on now (for our Zoom interview) and go to Disney+, and look at all our fi lms, and I could go, "What about snow?" And I'd pull snow scenes as a suggestion for David—and David would masterfully put these episodes together. SL: Mr. Bess, culling through all these fi lms to fi nd the right clips must have been an enormous job. You probably re-watched all of the fi lms multiple times I'd imagine, but you probably had ideas of scenes already in mind. DB: Yeah, there were defi nitely some specifi c scenes in mind. Particularly from some of our more recent fi lms, from Bolt up until Raya. Just because I'm more familiar with those fi lms, having done marketing for them. But working in marketing you become familiar actually with all the fi lms. Whether it's cutting a montage or a promo for a re-release of The Little Mermaid Blu-ray edition or something like that. But for this I defi nitely looked back. Usually what I would do is fast-forward through them to jog my memory. But it's funny, now that you mention it … it took a lot of discipline, on my part, to keep moving—because I constantly