Trivia
This Disney animated feature became the last film to be shot in the Super Technirama 70 70mm widescreen system.
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During the beginning of the film when Dallben uses Hen Wen's magic to find the Horned King, the first image that appears in the water was a recycled section from "The Night On Bald Mountain" sequence from Fantasia.
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This was the first animated Disney film made in cooperation with Silver Screen Partners II.
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This was the first (and last) movie since The Jungle Book where the old multi-plane cameras were brought briefly out of retirement (with a few improvements this time). New technologies such as computer generated imagery now available to all studios have made multi-plane photography obsolete.
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The film took over 12 years to make, 5 years of actual production, and cost over $25 million. Over 1,165 different hues and colors were used and 34 miles of film stock was utilized.
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This was the first animated Disney movie to be filmed in widescreen since Sleeping Beauty. Movies released prior to The Black Cauldron and after Sleeping Beauty involved matting of the top and bottom of the filmed image in order to make a widescreen image suitable for the movie theatres.
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First full-length Disney animated film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to have completed scenes cut prior to release.
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The first Disney movie to not have "THE END" at the end of the film. Instead, it just goes straight from the final scene to the closing credits of the movie. A few later films, such as The Great Mouse Detective and Aladdin would have "THE END" appear before the credits roll, but this was for a special occasion usually.
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When the Horned King activates the power of the Black Cauldron the sound of a space shuttle launch was used.
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Tim Burton, who worked as a conceptual artist on this film, wanted to incorporate minions of the Horned King that were akin to the "facehuggers" from the Alien movie series. Some samples of his work can be seen on Disney's 2000 DVD of this title.
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The management team at Disney changed during Cauldron's production. New studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg screened the mostly completed film and was appalled by the darkness of the film. He suggested editing the film, and when producer Joe Hale protested (animated films are typically not edited in post production the same way live-action films are), Katzenberg himself brought the film into an editing bay and began cutting it himself, ultimately extracting three minutes from the final run time.
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The movie is based upon the first two books in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles ("The Book of Three" and "The Black Cauldron"). The Chronicles, in turn, are loosely based on the mythology of ancient Wales, a collection of tales known as the Mabinogion.
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Various members of Disney's "Nine Old Men" took stabs at making this film during the 70s, as well as Don Bluth.
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Another technological breakthrough in this movie was the development of the APT (Animation Photo Transfer) process. The first major change in the Studio's method of transferring the artist's drawings to a cel since Xerox copying replaced hand-inking over 20 years earlier, the APT greatly improved the quality of the animator's art. Dave Spencer was awarded an Oscar for his development of the APT process.
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Video cameras gave animators and directors an immediate and inexpensive record of what their efforts might look like. The dimensions and volume of the objects were fed into a computer and then their shapes were perfectly maintained as their movement was generated by programming.
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The production of this film can be traced back to 1971, when the Disney Studio purchased the screen rights to Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain".
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When Taran looks for Hen in the Forbidden Forest, we see him crawl under a small branch and weave in and out of a few small trees. This animation was recycled from The Sword in the Stone when Wart goes into the forest to retrieve Kay's arrow
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The redheaded henchman who shakes Creeper and yells "More women!" is a self-caricature of animator Phil Nibbelink, who also voiced the character.
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According to Former Disney Animator Mike Peraza, there were multiple openings that were conceptualized by different people. Mike Peraza worked with art director Don Griffith and artist Vance Gerry on one version that showed the Horned King and his gang burning down a village. Sweeping flames were used as transitions between scenes of destruction. Mike Peraza and the artists wanted a contrast to the peace and quiet of Taran's farm life.
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According to Animation artist Mike Peraza, when Disney started having screenings for the public at the studio theater to gather their reactions to the rough cut of this film, Mike Peraza knew that the "un-dead" section would most likely be revolting to some in the audience who would not expect to see a bunch of rotted corpses slowly fermenting. When the film reached the "un-dead" sections close to the end of the film, the doors opened and a mother was angrily leaving with her two wailing children. She was followed by another, and soon there was a sizable exodus of crying kids and upset parents fleeing from the theater. So the un-dead sections were quickly cut from the film.
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According to Joe Hale (Producer of this film): "When Katzenberg first screened the film (Cauldron) he told us to cut it by 10 minutes. Roy Disney and I got together and found some scenes we could get rid of that didn't affect the story that much." When they ran it agin for Jeffrey and the film finished he asked Roy, "Is that 10 minutes?" When Roy replied that no it was only around 6 minutes. Jeffrey stated, "I said 10 minutes!" Joe [Hale] continued, "Eventually he (Jeffrey) cut out about 12 minutes which really hurt the picture."
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According to Animation artist Mike Peraza, Disney showed this film to the public at the studio theater to gather their reactions to the rough cut of this film. But the reactions of the audience were mostly negative due to the dark content of the film. So some scenes were cut from this film.
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