So, after spending a
wonderful morning touring the Roy E. Disney Feature Animation Building, we load
back up on our buses and took the short trip over to the executive entrance to
the Walt Disney Studios. First order of
business was lunch, which is good because it was lunchtime and, even with the
snacks from earlier in the morning, my stomach was beginning to grumble and
rumble. Lunch was set up for us in
Legends Plaza on what turned out to be one of the hotter days in Burbank, but,
with some umbrellas it was passable.
Nothing against D23, they can’t control the weather. But, the food was delicious. I have been the victim of many a buffet line,
where you’ll find a myriad dry over cooked chicken, tasteless fish, and tough
beef dishes. Not today! We had chicken dish that was moist and
succulent, and a marinated beef skirt steak that was amazingly tender and
tasty. And, the sorbet served for
dessert was more of a slushy, but that was to be expected given the heat. All in all, I was very impressed with the
meal.
While lunch was
being served, several D23 staffers circulated among the tables giving out
different colored wristbands. Yup, we
were being assigned to different tour groups again, but, with 100 people it’s
not surprising, on the three Studio tours I been on, the tour group range
between 15 and 25. After lunch, before
the tours began, each group assembled in front of the northern door of the old
Animation Building for a group photo, and then it was off to explore the
studio. My group’s first stop was the
Ink & Paint Department. In Walt’s
day, this was where all the cells that made up a cartoon short or animated
feature were created before going to the camera department for shooting. The paints of the day were toxic and took a
very long time to dry – as much as 8 hours.
Since the paint could only be applied one color at a time, it could take
several days to complete one cell, and a proficient paint girl could work on 8
to 10 cells per day. As the actual rooms
in the Ink & Paint Department are rather small, our group was temporarily
split in two. The first going in while
the second was entertained with a Q&A by one of the tour guides in the
hallway. In the first room, in reality
the middle room has walls of shelves with bottle upon bottle of colorful
paint. But, we were first headed to the
little room on the left, the walls covered in hundreds of small paint chips. This is where we learned that the Ink &
Paint Department is still active today, though today the studio no longer uses
hand inked and painted cells to do animation.
Today these very talented artists use the tremendous skills to produce
most all of the commemorative and limit edition cells available in the parks
and special piece upon request. In this
first office, an original drawing can be called up from the archive to be
reproduced. These drawing have all the
artist’s original notations for color specs, and here is where the paint chips
are pulled. In the paints room we learn
that today paints are an acrylics based paint which now dries in 5 to 10
minutes, making the production of their pieces today much quicker, though they
can still only apply one color at a time.
We got an explanation of how all the colors we see on the walls are
produced from a few base colors they receive from and outside vendor. There are no real formulas for mixed these
colors, someone mixes and compared paints to sample until an acceptable match
is achieved, at which time the bottle is marked CE for close enough. In the final room we meet to artists, one who
is demonstrating the inking, which is transferring the lines of a drawing onto
a cell (celluloid sheet). It is a skill
that requires a very steady hand. Once
the inking is complete and dry, and painter takes over applying each color one
at a time. The paint is applied on the
back of cell from front colors to back, and it is flowed on to the cell, not
painted or brushed on so as to not leave brush marks or minute blemishes in the
paint. It was actually quite impressive
that Disney puts that much effort in keeping the Ink & Paint craft alive to
this day.
We’re now off to the
old Animation Building on the lot, and up to the third floor theater next to
Walt’s old office. Those of you who
remember, this is my second visit to this theater. I was here two years ago during the D23
Disney & Dickens event with my wife, where we were treated to a few of Disney’s
holiday shorts and a featurette. Today,
we were introduced to some of Disney’s film preservation efforts by one their
Archivists (sorry remembering names is not my strong suit) involved in the
effort. He started out by telling us
that Disney is the only studio that has not lost any film, whether it be the
original film or a copy produced somewhere along the way. That by itself is a pretty impressive fact,
at least to me. Next he told us about
the types of film and the problems with preserving them. Before 1952 all movies were created on
celluloid nitrite, a very volatile substance not prone to stability and long
term storage. As a matter of fact, a
couple other studios had incidents of film vaults having an auto-ignite
event. The Walt Disney Studio still has
vaults on the lot that were used at one time to storage nitrate film. We saw slides of film canisters and the film
slowly decaying inside them, and were told of the challenges in transferring
some of these films to digital. The
recapture to digital is only one part of the process. After the transfer, these films need to be
restored to the quality when first screened.
Actually, because of today’s other digital improvements, these films
have to be restored to better than original quality to be marketable. We got to see some clip from 1941’s Bambi
before and after the restoration process.
The difference is really quite remarkable. We were told that the plan is to eventually
digitize and restore Disney’s complete film library, but, that they were
restoring in reverse order with the most popular features and short being done
first. I don’t know, because I didn’t
think of it at the time, but I would suspect that this preservation process is
neither quick nor inexpensive. If I ever
get another chance, I’ll have to ask those questions.
For our next stop,
after a short trip out to Glendale, was what turned out to be, at least for me,
by itself worth the extra cost of the ticket.
Our bus pulled up outside a nondescript mustard colored building not far
from another of Glendale’s more famous Disney operations – WDI (Walt Disney
Imagineering). The building showed no
windows from the outside and bore none of what would be considered normal
Disney frills. The building’s parking
lot stood behind a chain-link fence with a card key access gate. At the gate was a plain white sign with red
lettering, and there the only external acknowledgement of the building owner or
the contents there in – Disney’s Animation Research Library. At mid-building and set back about 20 feet
was the entrance and only glass, color or landscaping of this facility and it
wasn’t even visible from the street.
Once inside, we were instructed on the do and don’t while in the
facility, and the purpose for the Animation Research library. The ARL houses 65 million pieces of Disney
animation art, from maquettes (small scale models) of characters to cells,
matte, and sketches for a myriad of Disney shorts and features. Unfortunately, many early cells are
unavailable, as it was a practice in frugality then to wash and reuse cells as
many times as possible. Laid out for use
to view where several cell, background mattes, and sketches, and a couple of
vaults were open for us. In one vault
alone could be found, shelf upon shelf behind glass, character maquettes from
dozens of Disney films. In another were
several rows of large document storage cabinets, were a couple of cells were on
display with an archivist present to answer questions, and I assume protect the
art on display. As I walk out of one of
the vaults, the facility manager looked at me and asked if I was okay. All I could say is that I was in total
awe! All he could say was that he pretty
much felt that way every day. In the
back of the building was a design and layout room where archivists and designer
work together to build out the various exhibits Disney displays, like the
Treasures of Archives currently on display at the Reagan Presidential Library
in Simi Valley, and there was a mock up of the WDFM Special Exhibition with the
designs for the upcoming Snow White exhibit.
The last room on the ARL tour was the digital lab, where artists,
photographers, and technicians work to digitize and catalog in a database all
of the art housed in the facility. Here
we were shown three different high resolution cameras, which if memory serves
have a combination cost of nearly a half a million dollars. Whether it is individual drawings or
collections of drawing known as flipbooks, these drawings are being digitized
so that current artists at the studio can pull the talents and techniques of their
predecessors while still protecting the long term integrity of the original
art. At one station in the lab, a young
technician was showing us a digital flipbook that had been recently created on
a monitor that any computer geek would relish; it had to be at least a 40 inch
screen. Upon leaving the ARL I was truly
in a state of awe and wonder. What I
would give to be able to spend a week, a month, or a year there just exploring.
Upon arriving back
at the Studio lot, our last visit of the day was to the Archives, and a visit
with Dave Smith – Founder and now Director Emeritus of the Walt Disney
Archives. Dave retired last year, after
building the Archive for 41 years, yet he is still a regular fixture on most
tours. This visit made my 4th
to the Archive over the last few years, the most recent visit before this being
in June of this year, when I finally got to take my youngest daughter on a
Studio Tour. This visit was a little
different as a few of the items Dave normally shows are now on display at the
Treasures of the Archive exhibit in Simi Valley. So, on this occasion, we were treated to the
first ticket book from Walt Disney World, along one of the Olympic torches
designed by Disney Legend John Hench for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw
Valley. So I know that Walt got at least
two of these torches because one of them is on permanent display at the Walt
Disney Family Museum. Also on the table
in front of us were several Mary Blair originals, which I had to fight hard not
to try and sneak out of the building.
Not that I would have gotten away with it. And finally, a print of the Chernabog, the
devilish character from Fantasia. After
his presentation, I got to spend a few minutes with Dave and ask him if he was
getting tired of seeing my ugly mug around, and his kind response, “of course
not.”
After a long day of
visiting new places and learning so much more about the animation process, and
some of the real treasures of The Walt Disney Company, it was time for a little
shopping, and a nice evening reception with D23’s leader Steven Clark, Archives
Director Becky Cline, and our tour guides.
Since it was only a short time back that I had been in the Company
Store, there wasn’t much in the way of shopping that was needed. As we were
waiting for the reception to start I met up with my friends, and shortly
thereafter, the caterers had the hors d’oeuvre line set up and we were invited to begin. As with the lunch earlier in the day, the
hors d’oeuvres were very good. We had a
choice of a grilled shrimp on a skewer, a gazpacho shooter, a small salad like
spoon, and egg rolls, along with soft drinks.
As good as they were I, of course, had several pieces of all that was
served, it was good. As we all enjoy the
snacks and a cool drink – remember, it was a hot day in the burb, Burbank that
is – we talked about our experiences of the day. General consensus, it was pretty damn
awesome!!! Earlier in the weekend, my
volunteer friend from the Museum had express some concern as to whether the
cost of the Diamond ticket would end up being worth it? As the weekend moved along she was become
less and less concerned. But, as we
talked at the reception, I asked her if the event(s) had met her expectations from
the cost perspective. Expectations met
and exceeded, for me as well. If the
Diamond Level experience had been just for the events of Saturday and Sunday, I
probably would have forgone the extra expense, but, my anticipation was for
Monday, and I was not disappointed. As
the reception came to a finale, Steven made a little speech thanking us for
being part the day’s events, and then Becky had us come up by group to receive
a copy of the picture taken after lunch, and a Disney Fairytales Art Book. Then we loaded back onto the buses for the
long commute back to the Disneyland Hotel.
Of all the events
that D23 has put on, and that I have had the opportunity to attend, this was by
far the best. One of the things I noticed
throughout our jaunt around the lot was the number of different service carts
and trucks on the streets of the Studio.
It was apparently a very busy production day at the Studio, and we still
got on the lot to witness it. It really
was cool! I’d like to give my sincerest
thanks to all the D23 staff and volunteers, and all the other Disney Employees,
who made this a positively wonderful day.
And… a SPECIAL THANKS!!! to Laura, for her tireless effort to make this
such great event.
I’d also like to
thank my companions for both the weekend and Monday, you all help add to the
magic of the event.
Your comments or questions
are always welcome. If you have a
correction or something you think I should look at in my research, please feel
free to contact me at mr.grumpyguy@gmail.com
