The Illusion of Life, Chapter 6: Appeal and Dynamics

“We seem to know when to ‘tap the heart.’  Others have hit the intellect.  We can hit them in an emotional way.  Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group.  The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them.” - Walt Disney

Appeal is similar to Mood (Chapter 5) and is a key factor in making a successful animation.  In Chapter 5, the mood of the character is touched on; the importance of the body language and the ability for the audience to forget that they are looking at a series of drawings, or a computer animation.  I believe that Appeal and Mood go hand in hand, and you can’t have one without the other.  Take Pixar’s “Up” for example, there’s not one character in that film that a person couldn’t relate to in some way.  I’ve seen tons of people with the tennis balls on the cane, then you’ve got the boy scout without a father figure who finds it in Carl (who doesn’t have children because he discovers that his wife cannot - this is in a sad and very heartstring tugging series of scenes in the beginning of the film.)  And while we are speaking of a tapping the heart, as Disney calls it, I will go back to “Up” and sing it’s praises on the plot and character development; this is what causes the audience to be sniffling and attempting to bravely hold back tears within 10 minutes of the film.  

I don’t think that Disney is the only company able to bring this to the table, however; other companies work hard to do this to gain a customer base.  Hallmark Greeting Cards, for example had a string of commercials in the 90’s that were quite touching and I’m more than certain they sold a heap of greeting cards from these 30 second commercials.  Kodak sold film, and coined “Kodak Moment” as a thing to say when people were looking particularly happy or festive and a photo was taken (this was in the film days, I think nowadays people upload to Facebook or Instagram, and their ad campaigns are less touching I believe.)  I guess both Disney, and other corporations who use the tactic of “appeal” to sell their goods are doing their jobs correctly.  People flock to the box office to watch Pixar and Disney films because of the feeling they get when they watch them, people buy cards, and cereal because of the feeling they get because there is some sort of nostalgia, or a cute commercial, or money will be donated to a cute kid or animal (that was shown in a commercial).