Notes on Dumbo

(1941)
Marc Hendry July 2014
marchendry91@gmail.com
Notes on the story-
The story is told in very distinct litle sections, sometimes with a transitional scene, sometimes
just with a cut or fade. I think the point is to get straight to the important stuf. Right to the
emotional statement without any fller

Dumbo is in every scene of the movie. Theres no B-plot, no unnecessary characters, nothing
that isnt purely what the movie is about. The whole thing is very smartly economised

We project ourselves into the mute Dumbo and with great sympathy, we go with him through
the story.
You would expect a 64-minute movie to feel as though you had been cheated out of half and
hour, but the story is told so well that its completely satisfying

Baby Mine is so efective because of the preceeding scenes before it. Establishing and spending
time on Dumbo and mothers relationship pays of.
Timothy Mouse is the voice of the audience. Which helps to get us, the audience, involved.
This is a timeline of the colours of the movie (a fltered image from moviebarcode.tumblr.com)
You can see very clearly the emotional arc of the movie, just represented in colours. The emotional
high-points of the movie are brighter, and the low points are darker. When Dumbo(and the audi-
ence) is feeling an intense emotion- joy when hes flying or fear when hes forced to perform - the
colours are more saturated. When hes depressed and put-upon, the colours drain out.
Story
1. Intro and the Stork fails to deliver
This is a pleasant and slow scene which takes a few minutes to draw the
audience into the flm. I think this is a beter approach than grabbing
the audiences atention with action
2. Casey Junior and the baby is delivered
This scene establishes a whole bunch of things.
First of, the colourful and tuneful scene of the train bouncing along lets
you know that the flm is going to be a lot of fun.
And later in the scene, Dumbo is completely established. His innocence
and helplessness, the other elephants prejudice and his mothers
defense of him.
Dumbo is mute which lets us project ourselves into him very heavily
3. Setting up the circus
This is kind of a transitional scene, but fleshed out a litle to show a
couple of things.
It shows that the animals are a working part of the travelling circus.
The human characters are kept almost in sillhouete to distance them
- leting you know that the human characters arent a major part of the
story and theyre really just incidental without any personalities. The
flm is going to be all about the animal characters
4. Parade and Dumbo plays with mother
A very fun, cute and light sequence which sets up a great contrast
for the following scene. Establishes seting and strengthens our
understanding of the bond between Dumbo and mother.
Strengthening the bond so that they can really break our hearts later
5. the kids make fun of Dumbo,
Mother defends him and is restrained
This scene with the cracking whip and the stomping mother elephant
feels very harsh and shocking in comparison to the preceeding scene.
6. Gossiping elephants and Timothy Mouse is introduced
Despite being seperated, Dumbo and mother are connected visually-
both swaying in the same way, mother with shadow stripes across her
from the prison bars, Dumbo against the stripes on the tent.
As an onlooker, Timothy is speaking for the audience. We immediately
like him because he is speaking aloud how we feel about the other
elephants.
7. Mouse tells the Ringleader about Dumbo in his sleep
Some visual cartoony fun.
Clowns introduced as silhouetes and the Ringleader is also just
incidental. A completely typical circus ringleader.
Again this keeps the interest on Dumbo and Mouse
8. Elephants perform and Dumbo knocks them all down
Some physical fun and physical action, some funny personality stuf
with the elephants climbing on one another.
Amongst the physical action we dont feel bad for the accident itself,
but that we know Dumbos self-esteem is being crushed even further
9. Everybody hates Dumbo
This short scene just salts the wound.
Makes us feel worse for Dumbo and hate the mean elephants more.
10. Dumbo as a Clown
Dumbo is put upon even more.
Further degraded and depressed.
The bouncing clowns really contrast it and rub it in
11. Baby Mine
The iconic heartbreaker scene. Extremely powerful and extremely
sensitive.
The song and the soft snoozing of the animals in the montage
completely draw you in and keep you fxed on the screen.
12. Champage falls in the bucket and Mouse pep-talk
A lighter, funnier scene, still with the atmosphere of an emotionally
draining night.
Gives the audience time to dry their eyes and take a breath before the
following scene
13. Pink Elephants on Parade
Not an emotional, storytelling, or even character-driven scene.
But it does serve a purpose in the story.
We have a lot of surreal visual fun which relieves us of the emotional
trauma from Baby Mine, and it puts Dumbo and Mouse up in the tree
without them knowing why.
14. Meeting the Crows and the magic feather
This is a big, long sequence and a lot of the characters story arc pivots
here.
The Crows come of as troublesome and rude when we frst meet them,
but they end up being key to Dumbos success.
Mood stays light and jovial with the song When I see and Elephant
Fly
15. Dumbo Flies
The emotional high point of the movie.
Although we might have seen Dumbo flying on the DVD cover, it is
still surprising and joyous when we see him do it, due to the efective
storytelling.
Proving that the audiences emotional involvement with the characters
is much more important than the plot points of the movie. Its not
about what happens, its about how the characters react to it.
16. Dumbo flies at the circus
In this scene he defeats the circus. He ruins the clowns act, spits
peanuts at the elephants who were mean to him earlier, and wows the
circus audience while hes at it. And it feels great.
great sink or swim moment when hes plummeting having dropped
the magic feather
17. Paper Montages, Dumbo flies to mother, end.
The spinning newspaper montage quickly passes time and glosses over
some emotionally unimportant stuf. As well as emphasising Dumbos
triumph a bit.

To see Dumbo reunite with his mother is a great joy for us and it sends
us out of the cinema with a great feeling.
The Overall Visual Style is-
NOT experimental, apart from Pink Elephants
Not complex. No need for multiplane or many efects, BG paintings make great use of water
colour washes
A continuation of the 30s style. Round shapes, fluid inking, animation much broader than
Bambi
Character designs not terribly inventive, but the personalities are. Clearly experimentation was
not the primary aim, but APPEAL was. The flm has a very well-informed simplicity. They
were economising with a very strong idea of what to keep and what to exclude visually, as well
as in the story.

Some bold colour choices, especially in the circus.
Staged with a very strong silhouetes and poses that read in a snap
Design
Lets look at how some specifc scenes are composed and laid out. In this one Mrs. Jumbo is
expecting one of the air-dropped packages to be for her.
Before it enters the frame, the character is staged with
negative space and we expect to see something happen in
this part of the screen, just like the character does
When it does enter the frame it is the area of highest
contrast in the image so we follow it instinctively. Its
common practice for cartoon eyes to be quite bright so that
we can always see where theyre looking, which immediately
gives us a good insight into what theyre thinking.
With the colours averaged-out you can see that theyve
created depth by making the character in the foreground
warmer and the background cooler.
This coupled with great draughtsmanship in both the BG
and character greatly aid believability. We know that this
is not an elephant standing in front of a picture of a circus
tent. She is IN the place
Whats the most important thing in this scene? - Dumbos fear. How do you show that?
Put him dead in the centre of the screen and shine a
big spotlight at him. This puts the contrast right on the
character
Paint his
face white so
that we go
straight to
his eyes
Use colour temperatures to put him in a cold, stark spot
above ferce, red danger.
Tilt the
building to
make the
whole scene
precarious
How do you make a litle Elephant look isolated and lonely?
Move from a closer, more intimate shot
looking upwards with some detail...
To a wide-open, almost empty scene where hes very small on the screen. The whole thing
is washed out in cool colours and the highest point of contrast is still his eyes, which keeps
our concern with Dumbo
Staging Intimacy:
Obviously the contact between the
characters is the important thing here.
Everything supports that focal point and
the size contrast works great because
Dumbo is completely enveloped
Curved shapes wrap into the focal point
Also note that the low angle. Were looking at the scene
from roughly Dumbos height, not his mothers or the
other standing elephants.
Again the parents body completely
wraps around the cubs and were at a
low angle with them.
Tiger Stripes mostly lead
inward, towards the intimacy
Colour temperature used
to great efect too. A
warm cuddle on a cool,
calm night. All of the
animals in these cut-aways
are coloured with warm
browns
Staging Threat:
Clustered gang that are much much
bigger than Dumbo, who is looking
stark in an area of litle detail.
Mother deliberately kept out of view to
emphasise this (until she pops in to save
him)
High horizon line so that we are looking down on tiny
Dumbo, and the adult elephants look closer and bigger.
Trunks pointing down at him add to the accusing threat.
Staging Action:
Minimal background that contrasts the
character greatly. This allows poses to
read very quickly. If there were branches
and bushes behind him, we wouldnt be
able to tell what he is doing.
High contrast image showing how the scene is designed so
that you immediately see the characters body atitude and
his eye, which tells us what hes thinking, feeling and doing
in a split second.
Animation
First Ill be looking at this Ward Kimball scene with these dancing crows. You can see it at
youtube.com/watch?v=_v2exWrsGOc around 53 seconds in. Its about 7 seconds so, about
176 frames in length
Before I break it down Ive noticed the following about the scene in general-
-Its on ones. Cartoony stuf like this normally wouldnt be on ones, but the best reasons
I can think of are that A: Its a Disney flm, and B: as shapes they are making quite broad
moves around the screen, which might make twos very obvious
-Its set to music, so the keys can be on bars and accents, and breakdowns can be on beats.
- Very litle overlap except the hats and tails. Helps
believability while not complicating the simple
movements. The overlap also works on beats- a beat
behind the main action unless its interrupted to
support an accent pose
- Lip sync and facial expressions are prety simple.
The beaks will bend a bit to support the pose but
will otherwise are just open or closed. More complex
or subtle expressions would get lost in the broad
animation anyway
When the Crows are struting into the centre-
Hats are part of the poses.
Not just an afterthought
accessory
Cool atitude shown by
hannging all the weight
down. Animation is loose
and bouncy
Though hed look dejected if
the head was tilted a bit further
down. Shoulders animate on a
double-bounce which keeps it
lively
Changes in shape and line of
action help to hit the beats.
use of clever spacing hits the
beats in time. With too much
easing he would appear to just
be wiggling without rythm and
with too aggressive a change,
the cool atitude wouldnt come
across and it would seem too
erratic
When they join together-
Biggest squash in the scene is this one when
they frst slap together.
They stick their wings out to make a wide
shape, to set up contrast for the following
pose-
A stretch upwards.
They catch their hats as they shoot up onto
the beat. Wings shoot down in a dynamic
change of shape.
The wings are slightly out of sync to avoid
twinning.
After they spin around on their toes, they land
in this great fnal pose. Which has a litle bit of a
moving hold. Fantastic line of action from the
Grey crows elbow down to their feet. Slight bulge
at his underarm helps show that the other crow is
leaning on him. Very clear silhouete despite the
visual fun with the two of them stuck together
dancing, which you might expect would be a
mess to look at
Next Im looking this scene by Art Babbit or the stork delivering the baby Dumbo. You can
see it here htps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI5n5ngaaHc starting around the 48 second
mark.
Ive noted the following things about the scene overall-
-Its 368 frames in length, making about 15 and a half seconds. A fairly long scene.
-Its almost all on twos, with the exception of one or two broader actions. Why? For a large
part of the scene, hes just siting looking at the map. Theres no need for ones there. The
character is also not very high contrast against the BG, unlike the crows, so theres less
chance of visible strobing.
-Only a litle squash and stretch here and there. Its mostly compression and distension,
with the characters bones considered.
-The lip sync is just open and close, like the crows. Again, it works fne. Its clear that the
idea of phrasing that Richard Williams talks about is how lip sync SHOULD work in
animation, and not with those mouth shape charts you see in other animation resources.
-The characters body is a contrast of hard and soft. His legs and beak agains his body and
wings.
For the frst 120 frames of
the scene, hes siting like
this. Why is it staged this
way?
Siting that way immediately shows the characters atitude. He is confortable with his rou-
tine proceedure. Its much more efective than it would have been if he was kneeling or
if his legs were together. Puting him in that place on the screen has a specifc efect too.
Were looking down at him, which helps us see his pose. Hes placed above the centre of the
screen and slightly to our right. This makes us expect something to happen in the empty
space. Were worried while hes happily unaware.
After that, theres a cool take when he notices the bag isnt there.
his hand goes down on frame 92
but the thought downt hit him until frame
104. This is something that adds a great
deal of belivability to the character which I
probably wouldnt have thought of.
Head squashed on that frame.
Then shoots up to a stretched expression
on 106 with only one inbetween. This is the
only use of ones in the scene.
And back to normal at 110
Then he jumps down and drags up the heavy bag.
When he reaches down, he makes a small,
compressed shape, which sets up a contrast
to...
...a big stretch upwards. The shape change
emphasises the force.
Overlaying the frames together, you can kind of see how the spacing is ploted. I had to
scale and move the frames to compensate for a camera move, so its not toally accurate, but
you get the idea.
Shape changes occur when the character changes the part of his body thats taking the
weight. So its prety clear here. Theres a shape change once the bag gets momentum, and
another when he catches the bag at the top of the arc, his back taking the weight.
Spacing is used to great efect here, when hes dragging the bag up, the spacing is prety
tight and slow. Once the bag gains momentum, he moves up faster, with wider spacing, and
then it eases out again when he starts to support the bag. Squash and stretch on the bag also
emphasises this.
After that he walks along to the edge of the cloud, struggling to carry the weight
This is shown in the passing positions with these huge leans left and right every time he
steps, to compensate for the weight of the bag.
Then when he leaps of the edge, expecting
to fly, he does so quickly, just a few frames to
get him into the air
He floats for a good half-second
Until the weight catches up with him and he
plummets down in 4 frames. A great use of
easing in and out.