D23’s Disney Fanniversary 2012 Celebration kicked off its cross country tour on Friday night (April 27th) with two events at Disney’s historic Burbank Studio. Hosted by Jeffrey Epstein, D23 representative, and Steven Vagnini, Disney Archivist, the event was billed as a fan celebration for Disney movies, parks, and attractions celebrating an anniversary in 2012 “D23 will lead guests on a journey through dozens of unforgettable Disney moments that have delighted generations of Disney fans.”
After introductions by Jeffrey and Steven the presentation began. Pictures and short clips were shown on the theater screen and then Jeff and Steven would interject with additional comments and anecdotes. Guests were encouraged to clap, cheer, and wave their pennant throughout the presentation.
I won’t go into a detail of every segment here; instead I’ll try to recap interesting information or sections that were particularly fun, noteworthy, or poignant.
Starting off the presentation was the 85th Anniversary of the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Highlighting this portion was a story about the trade of sportscaster Al Michaels to Universal in exchange for the rights to Oswald. Apparently Al thought it was funny that not much was made about his trade but there was huge press about Oswald returning to Disney. The Disney Archives recently uncovered some original sketches of an unreleased Oswald cartoon featuring Oswald riding and subsequently getting in a fight with, a camel. The artwork was put together like a flip book to showcase how the sequence would have looked when animated.
The last attraction Walt Disney personally supervised was Pirates of the Caribbean, celebrating its 45th Anniversary this year. We were shown never before seen footage of the first ever ride through of the attraction while it was still half completed, including footage of some fire effects in locations that were removed before the ride was opened to the public. We were treated to several still photos showcasing a cocktail party for Disney executives held inside the attraction in the auction scene, before the set was flooded with water. One of the highlights of this section was some never before seen footage of the press event held on Pirates opening day. Before being walked over to the attraction the press was treated to a ride on the Columbia which was suddenly taken over by a pirate captain and his crew, including some pirates fighting with the local wenches! Once they landed on shore the pirates got into a skirmish with some local infantry, one of whom was shot and left for dead on the sidewalk outside the attraction doors. It was hilarious to see press and guests just stepping over the poor ‘dead’ actor to get to the ride. Of course, in true Disney fashion, the infantryman was revived and was shown mixing with guests outside the attraction later.
Also celebrating a 45th Anniversary is The Jungle Book, which was the last animated film produced by Walt Disney. The original version of the film had a much darker feel and was reworked which included scratching most of the films original songs to be replaced with songs written by the Sherman brothers. Richard Sherman described the evolution of the song I Wanna Be Like You. Mr. Sherman tells us how Louis Prima , who voiced King Louie, brought his band in for a recording session with the Sherman brothers and proceeded to improve the speaking parts in the song as well as all of the scatting. The Sherman brothers loved the fun feel Louis and his band brought to the song so they left those unscripted portions in the soundtrack.
For the 20th Anniversary of Fantasmic concept art was shown and there was an interview with its creator, Barnette Ricci. Ms. Ricci talked about her concept for the show and explained that it’s original title was Imagination!. Folks at Disney thought Imagination! was overplayed in the Disney lexicon and that they needed something more dynamic and exciting to describe the new show. Thus a new word – Fantasmic!- was created. She described watching the show on its opening night and when she described the roar and applause of the crowd she got a little teary eyed. Which of course made all of us get a little teary eyed too.
Of course there was a segment about the upcoming Epcot 30th Anniversary. We were treated to several never publicly seen photos of the park while it was still in construction as well as photos of the grand opening ceremony which remains to this day the largest grand opening of any theme park in Disney history. Also, Jeffrey announced an upcoming D23 event to be held in the park itself to celebrate the Ecot’s 30th.
The Main Street Electrical Parade’s 40th Anniversary was highlighted, and we learned how its concept was inspired by the Electrical Water Pageant created for Bay Lake in WDW. Footage was shown of its early days in the park and Steven brought our attention to the fact that in the early days of the MSEP most of the floats were flat much like the Water Pageant floats. For the opening of Hercules, Disney staged a Hercules parade in New York City and many MSEP floats were featured, including, oddly enough for a parade about Hercules, Pete from Pete’s Dragon.
There were several segments that surprisingly got a lot more cheers and applause than I think even Steven and Jeffrey expected. One was the 15th Anniversary of the Duck Tales television show. Being a ‘child of the 80s’ it was so fun to watch the opening of the show again. Jeffrey and Steven encouraged everyone to sing along if they knew the words, and the whole audience joined in on every Whoo Whoo! Several attractions were mentioned as part of the opening of New Tomrrowland in 1967, celebrating its 45th Anniversary. Getting a lot of applause were Carousel of Progress and Adventure Through Inner Space. Our emcees and the crowd joined together to recite some of the narration of Adventure and later Jeffrey lead fans in a rousing sing along of There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.
Finishing off the evening was a segment on the 75th Anniversary of Snow White. Early concept art was displayed as well as merchandise created for sale after the release of the feature. Did you know there was a line of ladies hats for sale that were inspired by the film? One particularly interesting one was fashioned after the Huntsman’s hat and included a jaunty feather. In advertisements it was modeled by a young Lucille Ball! Also shown was a list of the names of the Seven Dwarfs and some possible alternate names for them. Interestingly there originally was no Sneezy. Instead there was Deafy the dwarf! Never before seen footage of the premier at the Carthay Circle Theater as well as audio of Walt Disney describing the opening were highlights of the segment.
The Fanniversary event is scheduled to make stops in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Orlando, and Chicago. At this time, all locations are sold out. We got the impression that D23 is planning to hold Fanniversary events next year for the parks, rides, and movies celebrating anniversaries in 2013. The cost was $18 per ticket. D23 members received a felt pennant (like the one seen in the picture above and everyone who walked through the door received a Fanniversary button featuring Chip and Dale. If you couldn’t attend Fanniversary this year keep your eyes open for 2013!
Categories
Hybrid Tutorial – Trip Journal
Whenever I go to Disney World I like to make a trip journal to hold all of my pertinent information in one place. Today I thought I would share with you how I go about making one. For this particular journal I used Keystone Scraps’ Remember the Magic kit. I often like to use just one digital kit for each journal I make because then everything matches well. I start out by designing covers in PSE. I make a front, back and two inside covers. My journals tend to be about 5.5” x 7.5” in size. It is just small enough to fit in my bag, but not so small that the type is too small to read. Once I have made the covers I print them out on 32lb weight paper. I like to use paper that is a little thicker than copy paper but not as heavy as cardstock. It holds the ink well and is not as easy to tear as copy paper. You can find it at most office supply stores. I got mine at Staples. After printing and trimming the covers so no white paper shows, I glue them to fairly thin chipboard cut to 5.5” x 7.5”.
Once I have my covers done, I prepare the inside pages. I make the inside pages in Microsoft Publisher. Publisher allows me to make a mini booklet of sorts with my pages and I can keep the same page format from page to page with it. I found it to be the easiest program to use for this purpose. When I design my pages I include a half-inch margin on the left-hand edge to account for the binding. Some of the pages I include are my travel itinerary with flight and hotel confirmation numbers, park hours, dining reservations, and Disney phone numbers. I also like to include a daily highlights page for each day of my trip, so I can write down what we did everyday. This definitely makes it a great reference tool for my journaling when I get around to scrapping each trip. I also like to put in the scavenger hunt challenge list, so I can check off items as I take photos of them. Once I am finished with all of my pages I print them out.
The last item I make for my journal is a couple of folder pages. I use these to hold items like tickets to special events, post card stamps and photopass cards. They can also be used to hold souvenirs and ephemera on the trip home. I take some cardstock, cut it to 5.5 inches wide and make a fold in it at 7.5 inches, and then cut the flap above the fold at an angle so that when I fold it up an angled pocket is left. I also sometimes just cut the flap straight across, so that I have a straight pocket. I use tacky tape to adhere the right side of the pocket, and the left side is just hole punched and bound with the binding.
Once I have all of the pieces completed I begin the assembly of my journal. First I use my Xyron to laminate the covers of the book. This helps to give the covers just a little more stability. Then using a scrap piece of 5.5’”x 7.5” chipboard I use a Zutter bind-it all to punch holes in my scrap piece, so I can get an idea of where my hole punches are going to go and adjust my alignment if necessary. I then punch holes in the covers and each folder. I also punch about 5 pages at a time. Once all of the holes are punched, I assemble the journal. Once assembled, I take the front cover and flip it to the back cover, so that my binding teeth end up on the inside of the book. This way they don’t snag on things or pull apart so easily. I slip the bindings into the punched holes and use the Zutter again to pinch closed the binding. Once that is done, I flip my front cover back around and end up with my finished journal. If you do not have a binder like the Zutter then you can also bring your covers and pages to any office supply store, like Staples, and they will laminate and bind a book for you.
I hope you have enjoyed my hybrid tutorial today. If you try to make one for yourself I would love to see it!
Julie
During our most recent Disney Vacation in March I was totally inspired by the new video from One Republic’s “Good Life.” We listen to the song often and we close our eyes and envision ourselves riding on Big Thunder Mountain, skipping through the park with Mickey or playing the drums with Donald. My inspiration was all the live footage inside a “photo frame” with live footage. I thought this would be a terrific idea to do with our photos in each of the 4 parks. This is what I finally came up with…
I posted these on my facebook page as we were vacationing and had a lot of people asking me “How did you do that?” Well, it’s not as tricky as you think. So let’s get started with doing your own little magic…
First have your family members stand on each side of the landmark and have them “pretend” they are holding a frame. I’m going to show you how we did our Hollywood Studios family magic. What is important here is that you want four fingers in the back and your thumb in the front like below:
Take this photo a few times both horizontal and vertical so later you can decide which photo is going to work best. Then take a photo of all of you in the same spot as a group.
Now comes the fun part of creating your family magic photo.
Step 1. Decide which “Pretend” and “Family” photo you like best and open them both in your preferred digital creative software. I use Photoshop Elements 9 so the screen shots you see below are from this software program.
Step 2. You will need to create a “NEW” page with a transparent background. I always create a new 12X12 page but for this purpose a photo size would be perfect. Let’s call this our “canvas” to make it easier to understand.
Step 3. I then re-colored the canvas to a bright green but you can recolor as you desire to makes it easier for you to see and work with.
Step 4…. result
Step 5. Take the canvas and drag and drop it onto my “Pretend” photo and resize the width to fit in the fingers of my subjects. In this case my son, John Wesley and my daughter, Adrianna.
Step 6. I like to also reduce the opacity to about 60% so I can see how it fits over their thumbs but not too much into their hand.
Step 7. Now you need to resize the green background to fit into their hands like below…
At this point it’s time to save your work as a .psd file so you don’t overwrite your original photo but yet can still continue to work on your project. I will call mine Good Life AK Magic.
Step 8. After saving you now need to grab the “Family” photo and drag and drop it over your canvas.
Step 9. You need to hit Ctrl-G which will group your photo in the shape of the canvas. If it doesn’t work then you need to go back to your Good Life AK Magic and ensure you have selected the canvas before dropping your “family” photo.
Step 10. I then resize the photo to fit inside the shape as I desire. Now it might not be tall enough or too tall so select your canvas and play with the height but be careful to monitor your width as you don’t want it to move from the fingers of your subject.
Step 11. You now need to hide the family photo by clicking on the eye which then disappears just like your photo.
Step 12. Now you need to click on your Canvas and reduce the opacity to 60%.
Step 13. Now it’s time to use your eraser and start erasing over the finger. I selected 8 px with the solid brush.
Step 14. As you can see below I erased the green that was over each finger. It’s important to take your time and do a little bit at a time and stop that way it’s easy to undo if you accidently erase to much you don’t have to start over with the whole finger just the last item you erased.
Step 15. Now you can increase the Opacity on the Canvas back to 100% to review your work.
Step 16. Click on the “eye” next to the Family Photo to reveal your family photo.
Step 17. Now you you’ll notice that it looks like they are holding a free floating family photo.
If you want you can stop here but if you wish you can add a frame as I did. I selected this great frame from Natalie’s Place Designs – Not So Spooky kit. It has great layering and I love the look it created for me.
Step 18. You now need to drag and drop your frame onto your project.
Step 19. Resize it to fit over the photo/canvas. I like to reduce the occupancy at this point as well because again we want it over the finger properly but not too much to give the right illusion.
Step 20. You might have some of the photo exposed either above or below the frame so you will need to get rid of it.
Step 21. Make sure you select the canvas before you start to erase. As you see below as you erase the bottom disappears. Be careful not to go above the inside of the frame.
Step 22. When finished you can see that the bottom is gone below the frame.
Step 23. Now you need to select the frame and erase over the finger.
Step 24. I selected 13px and what I call the fuzzy brush to erase the frame to expose the fingers.
Step 25. Repeat for the other finger. I adjusted it to 8px for her finger.
Step 26. Now increase you opacity on your frame back to 100%. Now it looks like they are hold a framed photo.
When complete simply save as .jpg and you’ve now created your very own “Good Life” Magic Shot! Hopefully I didn’t lose anybody through the process. Sometimes I never know if I provide too much information or not enough so I try to do too much just to be safe. Here is my cover for using my “Good Life” Magic Shots.
I can’t wait to see all those wonderful “Good Life” magic shots! Let the Memories Begin! Wishing you all a magical day!