Iwerks \u2014 the granddaughter of Mickey Mouse co-creator Ub Iwerks \u2014 is the director behind \u201cThe Imagineering Story,\u201d the Disney+ series that continues to inform and engage many Disney Parks fans. She surpasses that with \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted,\u201d which debuts Jan. 22 on the streamer as well as Disney\u2019s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n
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A craftsman works on the main entrance at Disneyland before the park opened in 1955. (Courtesy of Disney)<\/p>\n
The feature-length documentary opens with a stark juxtaposition. Iwerks presents footage of a successful Disneyland one year after its opening, followed immediately by an image of the empty Anaheim field that would become Disneyland, one year before its debut. It\u2019s a jarring reminder of how swiftly Walt Disney\u2019s dream came to life.<\/p>\n
Iwerks\u2019 documentary shows you how that happens. It does not tell, however. There are no talking heads here \u2014 only archival audio over images of construction workers building the park. A few clips from the old \u201cDisneyland\u201d TV show, in which Walt introduced his park to the nation, provide all the context a viewer needs.<\/p>\n
Walt hired a small team of filmmakers to record his park\u2019s construction over the year that it was built. Iwerks and her team, with a huge assist from the Walt Disney Archives, have reassembled highlights of their footage into a love letter to the people who made Walt\u2019s dream come true for hundreds of millions of visitors over the past 70 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHandcrafted\u201d is the perfect title for this work. It shows tight shots of workers carefully painting, carving and detailing park icons such as Sleeping Beauty Castle. It also shows not-so-careful moments, with workers tipping heavy machinery and using jerry-rigged lifts to work at height. It\u2019s the sacred and the profane of construction. It\u2019s also all manual, without any of the computer-aided design and manufacturing, or safety checks, that are common in the industry today.<\/p>\n
Walt\u2019s crew did not record sound, so Foley artists at Skywalker Sound recreated the audio of tractors, hammers, saws, trowels and paddlewheels that accompany the images. In a world becoming ever more polluted with AI slop, Iwerks\u2019 film honors the hard work \u2014 and reward \u2014 of doing things by hand.<\/p>\n
A business professor once taught me that ideas are worthless. It\u2019s the successful execution of an idea that has value. Countless entrepreneurs have had the idea to build a Disneyland in their communities. But no one has attracted more visitors and made more money from their theme parks than Disney. \u201cDisneyland Handcrafted\u201d takes viewers back to that moment when the people of the Disney studio turned Walt\u2019s crazy idea into now-cherished reality.<\/p>\n
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