Featurette from the Great Mouse Detective DVD
© Disney Enterprises, Inc, 2002

NARRATOR:  Walt Disney once said, "I only hope we don't lose sight of one thing:  This was all started by a mouse."  Over the years, new generations of Disney mice have followed in Mickey's famous footsteps.

ROY E. DISNEY:  I think mice are sort of in the family.  We've just done mice all our lives and I suppose we sort of are in love with them.

NARRATOR:  The Great Mouse Detective is based on the popular book, Basil of Baker Street, by Eve Titus, and tells the tale of a super-intelligent sleuth who, along with his friend and sidekick, Dr. Dawson, must match wits with the greatest criminal mind in the world, Professor Ratigan.  Some of the finest talents in Hollywood contributed their unique skills to planning, development, design, and creation of this comic caper, which was more than four years in the making.  The process of making a Disney animated film begins with the creation of a story and the development of its characters.

GLEN KEANE, SUPERVISING ANIMATOR:  When you discuss how these characters are going to relate, you're not talking about cartoons, and funny ideas, these are real personalities.  With Ratigan and the other characters, we developed what their history was — what was it like for them growing up as a kid, why did he go bad, why did Basil end up as this extremely intelligent guy but a social misfit?

NARRATOR:  Bring believability to these animated actors is a task shared by the animators and the performers who provide the characters' voices.

BARRIE INGHAM, 'BASIL':  As I look at the little models they made of Basil, I don't know whether I'm made to look like the model, or if he's made to look like me.

VAL BETTIN, 'DR. DAWSON':  We're all of us are Disney creatures, but I mean there's not a soul in the world that hasn't grown up with Disney — to be part of that, that tradition, that creative tradition.

NARRATOR:  There's nothing quite as memorable as a Disney villain, so when casting the voice of the evil Ratigan, the producers called on a veteran actor whose resume is more of a Rogue's Gallery — Vincent Price.

VINCENT PRICE, 'RATIGAN':  The first place Disney, you know, is a really magical name for me, and I have never been offered one of these parts and I just wanted to do it.  Ratigan is the ultimate villain; he has a huge sense of humour about himself, but a dead seriousness at the same time about crime.  He's a great actor; he's playing the great villain!  Besides being a great villain, he's playing the great villain and adoring it, which is all great villains, should be like this.  This is his theme — and mine, too.
      He's a hero, isn't he?  But a villain is always someone who has to poo you all the time.  He has many more facets of his character, many more sides to his humour.  He has to be charming, and witty, and decedent, and funny, and everything going on at the same time.  He's much more fun to play.  And you suddenly began to see the character, the animation, taking on your humanity, which is, of course, what they want because the more human the mouse is, or the rat is, the better it is for the picture.

NARRATOR:  In a departure for Price, the actor not only delivered Ratigan's dialogue but also sang, to music created my Academy Award-winning composer, Henry Mancini.  Grammy Award-winning artist, Melissa Manchester, wrote and preformed a song as a barroom mouse.

MELISSA MANCHESTER, 'KITTY':  I think I'm very attractive as a mouse!  As I was singing and imitating her movements, I guess I infused just my body language because I see some of my attitudes, very kitchy!  The shoulders are just jumping around.  Of course, she shakes her fanny around a little bit, too, which I must have been doing.  But I wasn't in a little blue costume with feathers I can tell you that.

NARRATOR:  For composer, Henry Mancini, animation was a new experience:

HENRY MANCINI, COMPOSER:  It was the first animated feature I've done.  Of course, Pink Panther was animation, too, but it was different for some reason working with, you know, these little figures up there rather than people.  One thing, everything goes so fast.  I mean the pacing and the story zips right along.

NARRATOR:  Through the years, Disney has been a constant innovator of animation technology, creating visual never been seen on the screen.  The Great Mouse Detective introduced another Disney first, blending computer-generated animation with hand-drawn characters.

PHIL NIBBELINK, ANIMATOR:  Once we've done the computer graphics on the screen, the computer, with a ballpoint pen and a mechanical hand, draws what was on the screen on an animation piece of paper.  And it will come out a drawing, just basically the gears, and with a new piece of paper I'll put on top of this, and I'll draw Basil, running for his life on the gears, so it makes a nice hybrid between computer graphics and character animation.

NARRATOR:  Combining tradition animation with new technology enabled the Disney artists to create an exciting climatic sequence unlike any that has been seen in an animated film.

PHIL NIBBELINK:  With the entire room, and architecture, and gears, and beams, and a clock face, all in the computer's mind, we could then move through the set just like a live-action camera could do, or even more like a helicopter could do.  So with the characters are running up like this up the gear, the camera is panning and moving along with them.  And these tremendous kind of shots that aren't normally possible in animated motion picture.  This is a kind of cinematography we're used to seeing in a Spielberg movie.
      It's very exciting to create this sort of footage because you feel like you're there — that you're actually charging up these gears, missing big teeth by millimetres and stuff — and so me, as an animator and a filmmaker, is very gratifying to create this kind of exciting footage.

NARRATOR:  While The Great Mouse Detective is certainly an impressive display of animation technology, at its heart is a funny and engaging story, loaded with loveable characters.  So Mickey can take a well-deserved rest, while his decedents carry on the great tradition of Disney's animated mice!