All in all Mary Poppins 
is a wonderful movie. I’d never before watched Mary Poppins before looking at how it was edited. In Mary Poppins, there were a lot of scenes that made me wonder how it was done. Thinking to myself throughout the movie, I was pondering how this was done. Taking that I probably can’t make any of the amazing things that the editor of Mary Poppins did, even with all the effects software today. It just makes me think about how hard it was to do all the effects in 1964.
One of the things that made me wonder about this movie was when Mary Poppins was taking the items out of her carpet bag. The bag was obviously bottomless, but it was set on a table and there was nothing under the table. I had a theory on how Cotton Warburton, the editor, made this happen. But that theory went away when Michael, Mr. Banks’ son, crawled under the table. What I think he did was use green screen under the table and shot the scene two different times. Once when Michael crawled under the table and once when Mary Poppins was pulling things out of her bag. For her pulling the things out of her bag, I think they cut a hole in the table. But that is another theory that has to be wrong because Mary Poppins moves her bag to the other end of the table. I could be very wrong or I could be right. I may never know.
Another scene was when Bert, Mary Poppins, Michael and Jane jumped into the drawing on the ground. That whole scene when they are in the picture made me wonder. First when they actually jump into the picture, the effects are amazing. Getting that perfect must have taken a while, I can’t even begin to think about how I would do that. Throughout the picture when everything is animated and they are riding the marry-go-round and the horse come off, and they are riding the horses around the countryside. And how they are real people in an animation.
The part that probably made me think the most was when Mary Poppins slid up the railing, like people slide down railings, she was going up the railing and sliding across a flat surface. This happens twice in the movie, but the second time she is with the children and they are going down but they still go across the flat railing. How I think they did it was that they used stop motion on the parts when they are sliding across the flat part. When Mary Poppins is sliding up the railing, I think that they filming her sliding down the railing and just reversed it. But I again could be completely wrong.
In conclusion, the editing in this movie was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That’s the only way I could describe it. The movie Mary Poppins was greatly edited by Cotton Warburton.
-Randi 🙂