When director Leslie Iwerks decided to do it Disneyland handmade Using archival footage to film the eponymous theme park built in 1954 and 1955, she had one lingering doubt: Would people be interested in a film about the construction?
And based on the amazing comments on YouTube, where you can watch the full film, the answer is yes. “I think new generations are saying, ‘Oh, it’s always been there,’” Iwerks says. “But they actually see its origins before they were born and see Disneyland in a whole new way.”
To produce the 79-minute film, which is also available on Disney+, Iwerks and her small team combed through nearly 200 hours of 16mm footage they obtained from the Disney archives. Most of the pictures were in good condition, but cutting them all down became a huge task: they were not in chronological order, and they were all silent.
Fortunately, Iwerks knows a thing or two about Disney history. Her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, helped design Mickey Mouse, and her father, Don Iwerks, spent 35 years as a camera technician at the company. I initially looked into Disney’s theme park heritage when I directed 2019 Imagine story. The first episode of this series details the emergence of Disneyland, but without focusing on how the deadline for its start was determined.
For this project, Iwerks wanted to immerse the audience in the park’s development in real time, so she structured the film as a (fairly uneventful) race against time to meet the company’s target opening of July 1955. The 10-month timeline follows the methodical artwork that went into the process. Iwerks worked with Bonnie Wild, a sound mixer whose credits include several Marvel and… star wars projects, to collect all the sound from scratch – every creak of metal, every step and hammer, and every tractor running through concrete. Some were sourced from archival audio libraries, others were created via Foley.
Instead of talking heads Disneyland handmade Uses audio interviewing from a variety of sources. Iwerks had nearly 100 watches to choose from. Many of the voices were recorded by Dave Smith, founder of the Walt Disney Archives, with additional commentary stemming from panel discussions and other documentaries.
“We’re already starting to see a common theme, which is: It’s been very difficult,” Iwerks says of the park’s rapid progress. “The conflict has already risen to the surface.”
Iwerks says the goal was to make a movie that anyone — not just Disney nerds — could enjoy. I’ve since heard of parkgoers pulling out Disneyland handmade on iPads to compare current interfaces with older snapshots.
“I wanted you to really live in it, with minimal pieces, all real,” Iwerks says of the final product.
This story first appeared in the June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.
