Disney Live Action Reference

Someone known as lostvocals4 has taken live action footage from Operation Wonderland, a live action promotional piece that Disney made for Alice in Wonderland, and synched it up with the finished film.

Disney was shooting live action reference footage at least as early as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That procedure continued in the 1950s, especially because the budgets were tighter and the films had to be made more efficiently. Ed Wynn was filmed as the Mad Hatter and Jerry Colonna was filmed as the March Hare, with Kathryn Beaumont as Alice. What's interesting is that the audio from the reference footage was used as the final audio in the film.

The artists on screen, in order of their first appearance, are Les Clark, Fred Moore (at left) with John Lounsbery, and Ward Kimball.

If you want to see the entire Operation in Wonderland, which contains additional live action reference for the Walrus's dance and the march of the playing cards, you can see it here and here. Look for Walt Disney manning the animation camera. I doubt that he did that much after the 1920s.

(Link via Drawn.)