Attendees start their morning at the ABC building where they were served breakfast
Disney reps ushered us into one of their theaters (which featured a nice NEC projector, and some really comfortable seats. For the bulk of the presentation, one of the main producers who's been with Disney for 13 years greeted us with much enthusiasm, and wanted to show us some of the features on the newly released "Sleeping Beauty" Blu-ray disc, and exploring some of the BD-Live features. We ended up with 4 different producers/engineers of content on various Disney BD product in the presentation, and the discussion shifted to a feature called "Circle-Vision" that was exclusive to the "Prince Caspian" BD title, and they were able to produce behind-the-scenes content by using a series of cameras to capture a 360 degree view inside the castle, and the footage was was later stitched together so the user could move around and see things from all sorts of angles, and be presented with pods of footage and popup factoids as the user moved around the castle. It was a nice use of tapping into the potential of BD-Live for Disney, as all the producers stressed that their number one priority was to keep up with the entertainment factor on their BD releases, and not let the technology dictate how the presentation of content on their releases would unfold for the user. Much applause was heard for this expressed attitude for Disney's concern with the user experience with their BD releases. Also, Disney was committed to providing menus of extra footage and segments which provided ease of access to specific featurettes without having to slog through various point in the film as other studios have been apt to do in order implement featurettes without a menu listing of them.
-Patrick Sun
Of course, everyone in our traveling group knows that I'm a major Disney fan, but this is exactly one of the reasons why. They always pay particular attention to the details. They don't just slap something together. Even after all this time, they still try to maintain the direction and vision of the one who started it all. Not many people in the corporate world would do this.
-Russell Jackson
What a treat to see such a historic and beautiful studio! The folks at Disney were wonderful treating us to a studio tour and an informative Q&A and demo session with their producers and engineers. Folks will be in for a great experience with their current and upcoming upcoming Blu-ray DVDs! Wall-E and Prince Caspian will be must haves.
-David Whipps
To be clear: Disney has always 'gotten it right' where these extra features are concerned! Putting stuff that is designed to be interactive into compelling interactive activities is great. Putting static 'behind the scenes' stuff into an interactive environment (like some other, unnamed studios do) is BAD. Good on ya Disney, keep it up! The stuff shown yesterday was awesome as expected and we really appreciated your hospitality.
-Sam Posten
After the Q&A session, we were taken on a short but interesting tour of the Disney studios, although the lot is over 40 acres in size (and has its own zip code), we might have walked through an acre of the lot, but we did get to see some interesting things, such as a building with the 7 dwarves holding up the roof of it on one side of it. We also saw this space which had the equivalent of Hollywood Stars, but for Disney contributors, which was a square with their names and handprints, which then hung on columns that lined the space.
-Patrick Sun
(Left) Patrick Schneider (Top) Robert Fowkes
We walked over to the Disney Archive room, which was filled with all sorts of goodies from the decades of Disney-related memorabilia. I could have spent a long time in there if that was permitted.
-Patrick Sun
To sum up I think this was the best studio visit and presentation so far. But then, what do you expect from Disney?
-Joe Wong
Finally we had lunch in a shaded yard where delicious sandwiches were provided. The temperature was ticking up (mid 90s) so this was certainly a nice respite!
-Joe Wong
An invention of Walt Disney himself, this is the Multiplane Camera used in the animated creation of “Snow White and The Seven Dwarves” (1937)
