Anyway, since I have just discovered Nik Ranieri's Facebook page (took me long enough! ), I found two pencil tests by Ranieri. The first version was rejected rather spectacularly be Richard Williams, but first see the thing for yourselves:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=51434 ... JGrFg9jS61
The bolded part had me in stitches. Based on the tone of Ranieri's writing, I'm not sure he's forgiven Deja for this!Nik Ranieri wrote:Shot 121/18 was infamous for two reasons:
One, in its original state, Roger cursed. It was the only time in the film that he did that. Ironically, I was the one chosen to animate it (after a test screening a month or two later, test audiences balked at the amount of cursing in the film and said that they didn’t like cartoon characters cursing, so the majority of the language was removed).
Two, it was the time I learned the “Brief” lesson…the hard way. The original “brief” called for Roger to run down the stairs and out the door. The shot was too short for him to do that so I asked for advice. Dick was away in L.A. so I couldn’t ask him. Andreas suggested to make him hop out because, “he’s a rabbit but we never see him hop”. So that’s what I did. I liked the cartooniness of the hop and I thought Dick would too…I was wrong. When he returned from L.A., I showed him the shot and he just blew up. Again, heads looked over the cubicles – except for Andreas, who I’m sure was hiding behind his desk – as Dick screamed at me for not following the “brief”. When Zemeckis arrived later that week, we discussed the shot and determined that Roger should trip down the steps.
Here are the 2 pencil test versions of that shot.