Special Exhibit Walt's Comedies: The Special Effects One of the glories of making animated films is that nothing is impossible. Want to make a car fly? Just draw it that way. Talking animals? No harder than talking people. But when it comes to live-action films, things get in the way of creating a new, and impossible reality. Gravity, for example is a major obstacle. And yet, Walt seemed drawn to basing many of his most successful comedies on one kind of special effect or another. This theme began with the first of them all, "The Shaggy Dog.: The basic plot of this film concentrates on a teenager who is magically turned into a large dog. Much of the humor from the film comes from the madcap confusions as the boy turns into the dog and the dog turns into the boy. But at least in "The Shaggy Dog," the special effect was pretty elementary. As time went on, Walt's fantastical creations grew far more complex. The flying dog and basketball players who brought magic to "The Absent-Minded Professor" weren't the easiest thing in the world to bring to the screen. Much of the footage of the car was created by using miniatures, large drawings, and other types of effects. As Leonard Maltin writes, "The filmmakers decided that such trickery could only be carried off in a black-and-white film. A decision repeated for "Son of Flubber." A few years later, the Disney technicians surpassed even these effects for "Mary Poppins," in color. The basketball game goes on at some length and even though the shots of the kids bouncing high in the air are really amazing, they start to wear thin. There are some good variations, though, such as the one play shown entirely in the eyes of the referee, whose openmouthed face follows the team bounce by bounce across the court. Undercranking (to make the movement faster) and even frame-cutting are ingredients in this sequence." "The Parent Trap," in its own way, had an even more convincing special effect. While audiences were required to suspend their disbelief when they watched the car fly into the air in "The Absent-Minded Professor," most viewers very quickly forgot that there was only one girl playing both sisters in "The Parent Trap." As one cameraman recalled in "The Disney Films" -- "They'd worked out this whole film using an English process, much like the old blue-backing process, to get the twins into various scenes. It involved double-exposure with the backgrounds and it was very complicated. Plus, when you were shooting, you could never tell the girl which light to look into or anything. I told them it was too complex and asked instead for a double. Usually, they sent relatives out for assignments out like that, but I told them this time I wanted a real double who really looked like Hayley. Finally, I found a girl who was the same height, had the same features – everything was the same except her eyes were a different color, but I was able to compensate for that. And at several figures away you couldn't tell the difference between the girl and Hayley. So, I did a lot of the over-the-shoulder shots and threw out most of the vapor shots. . . .But Walt made me put some of the trick shots back, because he …. liked technical things." Even when Walt didn't rely on science or sorcery to engage audiences with the magic of these fantasy/comedies, he frequently relied upon a whole variety of wild adventures featuring animals of one kid of another, including films like "The Misadventures of Merlin Jones," "The Monkey's Uncle," "That Darn Cat!" and "The Ugly Dachshund." And although "Swiss Family Robinson" can't properly be classified as a comedy, there's little question that many of the scenes in the film that drew the biggest laughs featured a whole zoo worth of living creatures. Walt was entranced with understanding how animals could be encouraged to cooperate so thoroughly. As actor Dean Jones recalled in "Remembering Walt: Favorite Memories of Walt Disney" -- "Walt would come to the set of 'That Darn Cat!' very often with the attitude of a tourist from Duluth, rather than the authority figure at the Studio, asking the pet trainer questions like: 'How do you train the cat to jump up on the ironing board, walk to the end, and jump up, and get the duck hanging from the rafters?'" Be sure to also visit: The Story of Walt's Comedies Exhibit Walt's Stable of Comedy Stars Exhibit Walt's Thoughts on the Comedies