Production
Originally Abe Levitow was to direct the film and Williams was only an animation supervisor. However, when Levitow became ill and eventually died, Williams reluctantly became director. He clashed with the producers over many aspects of the film, including the multitude of musical numbers and weak character development. Despite his misgivings the producers forbade him to cut a single scene. Eventually, like many of his other projects, the movie went over time and budget, and Williams was removed at the end so the film could be released on time. His name remained on the finished product. Besides Richard Williams, who by this time had already received a BAFTA award, an Emmy Award, and an Oscar for his work in animation, other talented animators also were enlisted. Hal Ambro and Art Babbitt from Disney, and Looney Tunes animator Gerry Chiniquy also worked on the film. The music was composed by Joe Raposo, the long time musical director of Sesame Street and The Electric Company.
Tissa David became one of the first women to animate a leading character in a major film when she designed and animated Raggedy Ann for the project. In a 1977 interview, David told the New York Times that she designed the Raggedy Ann character as "a plain Jane with a heart of candy — and she's all female."
Drawings from this film were used to test "videoCel", an early yet innovative CGI system developed by Computer Creations Corp.
Read more about this topic: Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)