Disney’s classic animated short, “The Skeleton Dance,” is now in the public domain (Duke Law). Why is that such a big deal? Watch as Internet Archive’s Sean Dudley, a researcher specializing in the public domain, takes viewers on a tour of what makes “The Skeleton Dance” special, and why the film being open to remix and reuse is important for creators.
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Transcript
Hi, my name is Sean, and I’m a researcher with the Internet Archive. One of the most iconic pieces to become public domain this year was 1929’s “The Skeleton Dance.”
This Disney short is revolutionary.
Its synchronization of music and animation still holds up. Primarily animated by Ub Iwerks, the short feature skeletons turning into Lovecraftian monsters and getting down to some really cool beats.
This was in no small part thanks to Carl Stalling, who would later become famous for doing a lot of Looney Tunes music. And really being accented by the “Mickey Mouseing” effect of timing the animation to the music.
The beauty of this short is that it’s already building on the public domain with the music that it’s utilizing and taking inspiration from previous artists like Thomas Rowlandson for the skeleton designs.
And now because it’s public domain, you are able to remix, reuse, or do whatever you want with it. Because it’s ours. It belongs to all of us.
Chris, I don’t think your RSS feed is working properly for the IA blog. I’m using this URL:
https://blog.archive.org/feed/
and the last post I see in my reader is from November 1, 2024.
It’s great to see this classic cartoon get out of copyright jail. I did a bit of research on the co-authors mentioned just to see if musicians at IMSLP might be able to make use of this even if they reside outside the US. In many cases, particularly the ‘global south’ where life plus 50 terms dominate, the answer is yes. Iwerks died in 1970 and Stalling passed away a year later (1971). Unfortunately for those in the EU, the work is still likely in copyright jail until 2042 – assuming that Stallings was the last surviving contributor. Our main server is in Canada, which used to have a life plus 50 term but this was extended to life plus 70 effective 2022 (non-retroactively thank heaven) so Stallings, like Stravinsky, is from the last year of the out-of-jail people there.