Storyboarding at Disney

Abstract

The storyboarding practices at Disney, and more specifically the storyboarding of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), represent a key moment in the history of the form. Disney’s commitment to the story- boarding of this film redefines the production process within animation, but equally the practices employed at Disney can also be said to have made an impact on live-action pre-production via the work of William Cameron Menzies on Gone with the Wind (1939), which we discuss in the next chapter. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released while producer David O. Selznick was making important decisions about the planning of his spectacular adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, and Selznick reportedly became interested in the idea of story- boarding this project when his vice president at Selznick International Pictures (SIP), Merian Cooper, told him about Disney’s storyboards for Snow White.1