San Francisco – The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco's Presidio houses thousands of rare artifacts and memorabilia from Walt Disney's life and career. It is also home to the multiplane camera, which is one of the rarest pieces of innovative film technology.
“The multiplane camera is a unique device because of its importance to the history of animation, as well as its scale,” said Chris Mullen, marketing and editorial specialist at the Walt Disney Family Museum. .
“Animation was really limited to two dimensions, in part because until the advent of multiplane cameras, you couldn't separate the different elements of a scene into background, midground, and foreground.” says Mullens.
The multiplane camera was developed by Disney's Bill Garrity in 1937. The technology has been at the cutting edge of animation for more than 50 years, used in every Disney feature film up to 1989's “The Little Mermaid.”
“One of the most elaborate early shots used with multiplane cameras was Sequence 2 of Pinocchio, which was released in 1940,” explains Mullen. “It opens with the sound of town bells, birds flying around, and then a tracking shot entering the village and schoolchildren streaming out into the street.”
Several people were required to operate the multiplane camera. A ladder is attached to the side of the rig, and someone climbs onto the ladder to look down and operate the camera.
“It was actually quite a feat to install a multiplane camera in this particular part of the museum,” Mullen says. “The whole museum basically had to be oriented around installing a multi-plane camera in this space. The multi-plane camera started on his first floor in the museum store and moved up two floors to the main Reach his gallery.”
If you're interested in Disney's animation, live-action filmmaking, nature documentaries, and many theme park innovations, the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco's Presidio is the place to be.
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