List of films with live action and animation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
A live-action/animated film is a motion picture that features a combination of real actors or elements: live-action and animated elements, typically interacting.
Contents |
History
The tradition goes back all the way to the earliest days of animation with Winsor McCay's short Gertie the Dinosaur, which shows a live-action narrator (specifically, a "live" actor, instead of a filmed one) interacting with an animated landscape and character (Gertie). In one scene, the narrator appears to throw a real orange which is caught by Gertie (the real orange is replaced by an animated one just as it leaves the narrator's hand), and the film climaxes with a scene in which the narrator enters the animated landscape (again, replaced by an animated version) and takes a ride on the famous dinosaur's back.
In the later days of silent film, the popular animated cartoons of Max Fleischer included a series where his cartoon character Koko the Clown interacted with the live world; for example, having a boxing match with a live kitten. In a variation on this concept, Walt Disney's first directorial efforts (years before Mickey Mouse was born) were the animated Alice Comedies short cartoons, in which a young live-action girl named Alice interacted with animated cartoon characters.
In the era of sound film, the 1940 Warner Bros. cartoon You Ought to Be in Pictures, directed by Friz Freleng, can be seen as a predecessor to Roger Rabbit. The animated sequence in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh in which Gene Kelly dances with an animated Jerry Mouse is one of the actor's most famous scenes.
The Disney Studio mixed live action and animation in several notable films (which are primarily considered live-action):
- In The Three Caballeros (1945), Donald Duck cavorts with several Latin-American dancers, plus Aurora Miranda (sister of Carmen Miranda), who gives him a kiss.
- In Song of the South (1946), Uncle Remus sings "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" in an animated field, and tells the stories of Brer Rabbit through the animated sequences.
- So Dear to My Heart (1949) features sequences of a similar nature.
- Mary Poppins (1964) is one of the best-known films of this nature, including a scene in which Dick Van Dyke dances with cartoon penguins as Julie Andrews watches.
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) features a hybrid sequence in which Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson dance together in an underwater nightclub, while Tomlinson must bear the brunt of aggressive, anthropomorphic soccer-playing animals in the latter half.
- Pete's Dragon (1977) does the opposite of its predecessors: it puts the animated dragon, Elliott, in a live-action setting.
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) from Disney and Amblin Entertainment broke new ground with its advanced special effects and "realistic" portrayal of the interaction of animated characters and live actors. Memorable moments include the piano duel between Donald Duck and his Loony Tunes rival Daffy Duck, Jessica Rabbit's entrance and Bob Hoskins handcuffed to the titilar character.
With the commercial and technological success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Space Jam , a number of live-action/animated films followed from other studios, including Cool World, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action - though none of them have had any major commercial success equal to Roger Rabbit or Space Jam.
There were also many previous films combining live action with stop motion animation using back projection, such as the films of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen in the United States, and Aleksandr Ptushko, Karel Zeman and more recently Jan Švankmajer in Eastern Europe. The first feature film to do this was The Lost World (1925). In the 1935 Soviet film The New Gulliver, the only character who wasn't animated was Gulliver himself. See also: List of stop-motion films
Ralph Bakshi combined live-action and animation in 1973's Heavy Traffic, 1975's Coonskin (a.k.a. "Streetfight") and 1992's Cool World.
The combination of live action and animation is very common in TV commercials, especially those promoting products appealing to children.
Techniques
Originally, animation was combined with live action in several ways, sometimes as simply as double-printing two negatives onto the same release print. More sophisticated techniques used optical printers or aerial image animation cameras, which enabled more exact positioning, and better interaction of actors and animated characters. Often, every frame of the live action film was traced by rotoscoping, so that the animator could add his drawing in the exact position.
In the penguin sequence in Mary Poppins, they filmed the live action part first, having the actors sitting in front of a painted background. Then the penguins were added, probably by using cel overlayTemplate:Citation needed.
With the rise of digital special effects, combining live- action and animation has become more common. The Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example, include substantial amounts of animation, though it may not be recognized as such because of the animation's realistic, non-cartoony appearance.
Live-action/animated films
1900s
- 1900 - The Enchanted Drawing
1910s
- 1914 - Gertie the Dinosaur
- 1917 - När Kapten Grogg skulle porträtteras [1]
1920s
- Alice Comedies (Live-action girl in animated surrounding)
- Out of the Inkwell (animated characters in live-action surrounding)
- 1925 - The Lost World
1930s
- 1930 - The King of Jazz (animation stagement made by Walter Lanz)
- 1933 - King Kong
- 1933 - The Son of Kong
- 1934 - Hollywood Party (animation stagement known as The Hot Choc-Late Soldiers)
1940s
- 1940 - Fantasia
- 1940 - You Ought to Be in Pictures
- 1941 - The Reluctant Dragon
- 1943 - Saludos Amigos
- 1943 - Victory Through Air Power
- 1945 - Anchors Aweigh
- 1945 - The Three Caballeros
- 1945 - The Enemy Bacteria
- 1946 - Song of the South
- 1947 - Fun and Fancy Free
- 1948 - Melody Time (with Amigo Lady from Blame it on the Samba)
- 1948 - Two Guys from Texas
- 1949 - Mighty Joe Young
- 1949 - My Dream Is Yours
- 1949 - So Dear to My Heart
1950s
- 1950 - Destination Moon
- 1953 - The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
- 1953 - Dangerous When Wet
- 1955 - It Came from Beneath the Sea
- 1956 - Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
- 1957 - 20 Million Miles to Earth
- 1957 - The Black Scorpion
- 1958 - Fiend Without a Face
- 1959 - Behemoth, the Sea Monster
1960s
- 1960 - The Three Worlds of Gulliver
- 1961 - Mysterious Island
- 1963 - The Pink Panther, just before the closing credits.
- 1963 - Jason and the Argonauts
- 1964 - First Men in the Moon
- 1964 - Mary Poppins
- 1964 - The Incredible Mr. Limpet
- 1966 - One Million Years B.C.
- 1969 - The Valley of Gwangi
1970s
- 1970 - The Phantom Tollbooth
- 1971 - Bedknobs and Broomsticks
- 1973 - Heavy Traffic
- 1974 - The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
- 1974 - Dunderklumpen!
- 1975 - Coonskin
- 1976 - Eraserhead (one scene)
- 1977 - Pete's Dragon
- 1977 - Annie Hall (one flashback sequence)
- 1977 - Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
- 1977 - Dot and the Kangaroo
- 1977 - Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (live action opening and closing)
- 1978 - The Water Babies
- 1978 - Laserblast
1980s
- 1980 - Xanadu
- 1981 - Clash of the Titans
- 1981 - Around the World with Dot
- 1981 - The Evil Dead
- 1982 - Tron
- 1982 - Pink Floyd The Wall
- 1983 - Dot and the Bunny
- 1984 - Dot and the Koala
- 1985 - Return to Oz
- 1985 - Better Off Dead
- 1985 - Pee-wee's Big Adventure
- 1986 - Dot and Keeto
- 1986 - Little Shop of Horrors
- 1986 - Flight of the Navigator
- 1986 - Dot and the Whale
- 1987 - Scruffy
- 1987 - Dot and the Smugglers
- 1987 - Dot Goes to Hollywood
- 1987 - Twilight of the Cockroaches
- 1987 - Evil Dead II
- 1988 - Alice
- 1988 - Beetlejuice
- 1988 - Moonwalker
- 1988 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1990s
- 1990 - Rockin' Through the Decades
- 1990 - Captain America (one scene)
- 1991 - Rock-A-Doodle
- 1991 - The Rocketeer
- 1991 - Volere volare
- 1992 - Cool World
- 1992 - Evil Toons
- 1992 - Back to the Future: The Animated Series (live-action sequences and animated sequences)
- 1992 - Braindead (one scene)
- 1993 - Last Action Hero (one character)
- 1993 - Son of the Pink Panther
- 1993 - Army of Darkness
- 1994 - Dot in Space
- 1994 - Faust
- 1994 - The Pagemaster
- 1994 - The Mask
- 1995 - Parachute Express: Come Sing With Us!
- 1995 - Jumanji
- 1995 - Casper
- 1995 - Balto (live-action opening and closing)
- 1995 - Tank Girl
- 1996 - Conspirators of Pleasure
- 1996 - Dragonheart
- 1996 - James and the Giant Peach
- 1996 - Space Jam
- 1996 - Joe's Apartment
- 1998 - Godzilla
- 1998 - Small Soldiers
- 1999 - Stuart Little
2000s
- 2000 - The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
- 2000 - Dragonheart: A New Beginning
- 2000 - Fantasia 2000
- 2000 - Little Otik
- 2001 - Osmosis Jones
- 2001 - Monkeybone
- 2002 - Stuart Little 2
- 2002 - El rey de la granja
- 2002 - Scooby Doo
- 2003 - Looney Tunes: Back in Action
- 2003 - Kill Bill: Volume 1
- 2004 - Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
- 2004 - The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
- 2004 - Fat Albert
- 2004 - Garfield: The Movie
- 2004 - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
- 2005 - Lunacy
- 2005 - King Kong
- 2005 - Son of the Mask
- 2006 - Happy Feet (live-action sequences)
- 2006 - Charlotte's Web
- 2006 - Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
- 2006 - Re-Animated
- 2006 - The Sparky Book
- 2006 - Miss Potter
- 2007 - Arthur and the Invisibles
- 2007 - Enchanted
- 2007 - Alvin and the Chipmunks
- 2008 - WALL-E (live-action sequences)
- 2009 - Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel
- 2009 - G-Force
- 2009 - Avatar
2010s
- 2010 - Alice in Wonderland
- 2010 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid (animated sequences)
- 2010 - The Last Airbender
- 2010 - Surviving Life
- 2010 - Jackass 3D (Beavis and Butthead make an appearance)
- 2010 - Pokemon: Apokolypse (theatrical trailer)
Future
- 2010 - Yogi Bear
- 2011 - Rango
- 2011 - Bunyan and Babe
- 2011 - The Smurfs
- 2012 - Sonic the Hedgehog
- 2012 - Roger Rabbit 2
- 2013 - Tom and Jerry (Live-action sequences)