Downloaded from YTS.MX
[man narrating] On a warm California day at Pixar Animation Studios...
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
a familiar face has arrived for a morning meeting.
Let's go sit. Come on. We'll talk about the day.
-Hello. Nice to see you. -How are you?
-Come sit next to me. -I know...
[narrator] Bob Iger is the CEO of The Walt Disney Company,
which owns Pixar.
And these meetings,
the kind where he gets to talk ideas with his creative people...
are the kind he loves.
Well, I get to draw in the story. [chuckling] At least let me do that.
There are always new things on the horizon to talk about.
New concepts, new technology.
Wow, it reached the Philippines.
New possibilities.
I mean, the stories, by nature, are so hard to crack.
And you never know when an old story
about his days in charge of programming the Olympics on ABC
might be good for a laugh as well.
Everything starts to melt.
The bobsled run is melting.
And I've got nothing to put on, except maybe Sweden versus Romania in hockey.
[people chuckle]
[narrator] But ultimately,
he's always sure to remind his colleagues of their greatest objective.
A lot of what we do, what we make, is to inspire audiences,
but it's just as valuable to us and as fulfilling to us
when we inspire the people who work for us too.
[male Pixar employee] Yeah.
[Iger] First of all, I get motivated by great creativity.
-That's-- -[chuckling]
It's, you know, so much a part of what we do as a company.
I get motivated by working with an incredibly large and diverse group
of extremely talented people
that come to work every day with a passion for what they do.
[narrator] On any given day,
in so many different places...
you'll find countless ways that people at Disney,
the cast members as they're called...
contribute to a common mission.
[Ranft] The collaboration is where it's most exciting.
[Mylniczenko] We're very compassionate people.
You want to be able to solve problems.
[Roberts] I got in the habit to be optimistic.
[Goldberg] I never thought I'd be good enough to work at Disney.
[Lee] Every year for my birthday, I would ask to go to Disneyland.
[Gonzales] It was that idea of adventure.
[Baker] Star Wars was something that I never thought I would ever get to do.
[Meinerding] It is a joy that we get to work on stuff that we all love.
[Girdich] I can create something
that I never thought could exist in the physical world.
[Magudulela] I still get chills when I'm... [chuckles] singing.
I feel like we're giving them a gift.
[narrator] These are the stories of what they do...
and what it means to them.
This is One Day at Disney.
Walt Disney, the name so ingrained in the culture
it's almost easy to forget it once belonged to a man...
who in the 1920s began a company founded,
more than anything else...
on the power of imagination.
[Iger] Anytime a child goes to his or her first movie
it's a memorable experience.
In my particular case, my grandparents took me to see Cinderella,
when, I believe, I was four years old.
In Brooklyn, New York, seeing a classic Disney film,
I think, was maybe fortuitous
because it stuck with me my whole life.
[Brown] Iger is one of millions who can tell that kind of story.
But across every generation,
Walt Disney's original passion has endured at the company's heart...
animation.
[Goldberg] I'm one of the guys who gets to draw Mickey.
I take pride in the fact that the studio trusts me enough.
It's kind of like being handed the keys to the castle.
I remember the first time that I drew Mickey in a public forum,
Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, was with us.
And I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, my God, [chuckling] I better not screw this up."
When I was very young, the first Disney movie I saw was Dumbo.
I was just absolutely struck...
by how wonderful animation looked and made me feel.
It's life, pushed. [chuckles]
It's making something larger than life.
I was a very focused kid.
You know, knowing at a very early age what I wanted to do.
I've made my key positions,
and now I'm putting the positions in between to help flesh out the movement.
When I started making my Super 8 films,
my parents would willingly give over the dining room table,
and I would lay out all my cels, drying, you know, [chuckles]
and the living room would become where I would shoot the stuff
on my downshooter.
Put a new sheet of paper down.
I never thought that I'd be good enough to work at Disney.
Back in 1974, I applied to their training program.
And the response was,
"Well, you didn't make it, Eric. You're not good enough."
In the late '80s, in London, I was running my own animation studio.
It was a very successful commercials company.
But I was getting very stressed out working on commercials.
I go to an animation festival in Los Angeles, bringing my reel,
and there are a couple of Disney guys there.
One was Charlie Fink,
who just kept calling me once a month.
"You wanna jump ship yet, huh? You wanna join Disney's yet, huh?"
Charlie finally dropped the bombshell.
He said, "They're thinking of doing this film Aladdin.
And they're thinking of getting Robin Williams."
I just thought, "Okay, if I don't do this now,
I'm gonna miss the crest of a wave."
My first week at Disney,
and I'm starting to draw developmental sketches of the Genie.
And here we are.
If you look at Mickey, he's got this organic way of being drawn
where one line leads to the next.
Same thing with the Genie.
You know, you've got all these lines
that kind of add up to something whole.
So, I started doing Robin William-esque Genies in my designs.
John and Ron said,
"Why don't you take a couple of Robin's bits off his comedy records
and animate a Genie to them?"
But first, before we do the play,
I'd like to talk about the very serious subject of schizophrenia.
-No, he doesn't. -Shut up! Let him talk!
[audience laughs]
[Goldberg] And I have to say, it's one of the great joys of my life
to have made Robin Williams laugh.
[screams]
-Oy! -[bones crack]
Ten thousand years will give you such a crick in the neck!
[Goldberg] I was in the right place at the right time.
Animation, all of a sudden, is hip again.
Aladdin was getting towards that peak of what people call the Renaissance.
Welcome to my wall.
[chuckles]
The Shanghai assignment was great.
They wanted to decorate a restaurant in Shanghai Disneyland,
à la Hirschfeld/Sardi's.
I even got to do modern characters like Anna and Elsa.
Whenever I have to draw characters from the Disney canon,
I always feel all those people who created those characters
looking over my shoulder saying, "Do it right."
[chuckles]
Often, they would straddle two drawings like this with Gaston and LeFou.
Every one of these movies has a theme and they're universal.
How many people of our generation grew up dealing with death
because they saw Bambi's mother die?
[calling] Mother?
♪ I've got no strings To hold me do-- ♪
[Goldberg] With Pinocchio, it's,
"Always let your conscience be your guide."
In the case of Aladdin, the theme was, "Be yourself."
And even though, yes, they do deal with serious subjects,
you always walk out of a Disney film delighted and feeling like...
"Yeah, that was great.
I think I'm gonna see it again."
[chuckles]
Walt Disney's name is the company's name.
I'm reminded every day that I come to work,
when I drive onto the Disney lot, of the company's heritage.
I never lose sight of not only the significance of that
but of just how fortunate I consider myself.
Now we want you to share with us our latest and greatest dream.
That's it. Right here.
Disneyland.
[Brown] When Walt Disney built Disneyland in the 1950s,
the park was designed to inspire a timeless sense of adventure
for visitors of all ages.
Look it. I got something for ya.
-You're gonna pin that onto your shirt. -Oh, you wanna wear that?
-Wow. You're gonna wear it on your shirt? -[Gonzales] That's a conductor badge.
Ours is not just a mode of transportation, as I don't like to think of it that way.
Come on in, guys. Welcome aboard.
Here at Disneyland, we try to recreate that idea of traveling
to get to somewhere new, somewhere exciting.
Just the sound of that whistle.
[train whistle blowing]
[train bell ringing]
The wood burner.
Big plume of smoke coming out through the top.
It never gets old. It will never get old for me.
You hop on that train set, and boom,
and you just automatically go right back in time.
It was that old idea of adventure.
That's one of my favorite parts of the job, actually.
Welcome to Disneyland Railroad roundhouse.
We have four different sets of tracks.
We're standing in front of locomotive number four.
This locomotive was built in 1925 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works company.
And it was brought here to Disneyland in 1958
and put on the line in 1959.
Part of our rite of passage when we first joined the railroad
is working night shifts.
At the end of the night, we'll have to polish any of the brass that you see here.
When I was two years old, probably one of my earliest memories,
my grandfather bought me a train set for Christmas.
And, of course, me being the little sneaky kid that I was,
I found it in the closet.
And I remember staring at that train set for almost a month straight.
And, finally, Christmas came, and you know, I opened it up,
"Oh, surprise, surprise. There's a train set."
I still have it to this day.
In high school, I used to sneak out...
get on the Green Line, go to the Blue Line and go to Union Station
and just study and do my homework in the terminal.
Used to just sit there and kinda take it in.
Think about the heyday in the '40s.
And the steam engines that were coming in and out of that station.
All aboard!
[Gonzales] Through college, I was working on cars
and taking apart motors and anything I could get my hands on.
Naturally, I came here when I was going to college,
looking to even get a glimpse of the steam engines.
Now I get to run them which is a dream come true.
People often say it all started with a mouse,
but I firmly believe it all started with a train.
Walt was coming out to Los Angeles, and that's where he drew up Mickey Mouse.
It was on a train that he did that.
Often, he would come out from his apartment
that's right here on Main Street,
hop on a locomotive and take it away.
Some people didn't even know they were being pulled by Walt Disney.
He was just, you know, a big kid playing with his toys.
[train whistle blowing]
Good morning.
It's unbelievable what I get to do,
be it I'm sitting inside the cab of a locomotive.
It's also the people, not only my coworkers that I get to work with,
which are like-minded and they're a lot of fun to work with,
but also the guests.
-Make sure you visit Mickey Mouse's house. -Okay.
It's satisfying everything I ever thought I would wanna do in life.
It's pretty neat.
I wanted to be a television news anchorman.
Twenty-five thousand tickets were sold in advance for the concert
which will feature the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and The Band...
I aspired to be Walter Cronkite.
I discovered early on that the likelihood of my being Walter Cronkite...
[chuckling] was pretty, pretty low.
And so I redirected and ended up in production.
[Brown] These days in New York City...
one of Iger's colleagues who fulfilled her dream
of getting in front of the camera...
-Morning. -Good morning, Richie.
-Good morning, Ms. Roberts. -You're on your best behavior, aren't you?
...wakes up long before dawn to be ready for work.
[Roberts] I love this job.
-What's up, Elvis? -Good morning.
I love saying, "Good morning, America."
Think about that. I get to set the tone. We get to set the tone for America.
All right.
The hours, as you saw, going to bed early.
I'm a sports hound and have to go to bed early and miss some of the late games.
Ah. It's a small sacrifice.
It's gonna be a magical day.
Sal. Getting ready.
-This is teamwork here. -What up, troops?
-Good morning, Robin. -Oh, my God.
I mean, I wish the camera could go all around to see
what it takes to put on a show like Good Morning America.
-What's up, people? -Good morning.
Teamwork, discipline, determination.
I took that with me from playing sports.
This is my glam fam.
This is Elena, Petula, D'Andre.
It helped that I worked at ESPN,
that I had this love for sports.
Sports, knew it cold.
I never worked a day in my life at ESPN. Shh, don't tell anybody that.
We're leading with the terrifying story, it's the Denver story...
Coming here to ABC, I loved that it pushed me.
I know. I got an e-mail during the show, and it was really good.
My knees were knocking under that desk
when I was sitting next to Diane Sawyer for the first time.
But then the athlete in me came through in realizing that I had done my homework.
[whispering] George Stephanopoulos. George.
I had earned the right to be there.
And I'm so grateful for the support staff that I had to help me.
-One Day at Disney. -Hi, guys.
[chuckles]
Optimism is a muscle that gets stronger with use.
I got in the habit at an early age to be optimistic.
[director] Five, four, three...
I almost feel like we are a Disney attraction.
Like, people really look forward to seeing us.
The news is very serious. The information that we're conveying is very serious,
but there's also a component of our program
where you can spend time with the audience.
-[crowd] Good morning! -How are you?
They've come from all over, not only the country but all over the world.
-Just got off the airplane. -Just got off the airplane?
And, boy, are my arms-- And, boy, are my arms tired?
I draw energy from them.
-Nice to have you all here. -Thank you.
I'm curious. Curiosity.
I never-- I never lose sight of that.
I'm always-- I'm thirsty for knowledge.
[Brown] So, every story is a chance to learn something new
and the best ones offer the chance for even more...
like the call she got from Washington in 2012.
There's word on the street that President-- then President Obama--
was going to change his position on marriage equality.
I was picked to do the interview.
So, I sit down across from the President of the United States of America,
and I say to him, "Have you changed--
Mr. President, have you changed your position on marriage equality?"
It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that
I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.
It was a very special moment to know that you are part of history,
so I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
We have a producer over to the side who has little blue cards
with little, you know, time cues and little notes and everything.
Did you discuss this with--
I think she's gonna say, "You rock! You're the best!"
It said, "Lipstick on teeth." So, when I said the statem--
when he made the statement, I had lipstick on my teeth,
which made me think of my mother's saying, "When you strut, you stumble."
'Cause I thought I was all that. I got the big get.
Got the big interview. "Slow your roll, Robin."
[Brown] The truth was that there was more on Robin's mind that day anyway.
After overcoming breast cancer years earlier,
she'd just been told that she had a rare and serious blood disorder.
I had... [clicks tongue] Wow.
I was at the doctor. No one knew that I was there.
This was before I did the interview. It was a day before.
So, after a long, long exam,
basically, a doctor said,
"You're gonna die in a year or two."
So when I'm sitting across from him and he's making this statement,
and it's making national news,
my mind is racing, "Am I going to even be around long enough to benefit,
as a gay woman, what this man just said?"
These two lines here, so it makes it easier to draw blood
and also to administer medication like the chemo that I'm about to have.
[Brown] She decided to film her battle
and bring millions of ABC viewers on the journey alongside her.
The fact that I was out of work for five, six months,
when you get a call from the very top of the company where you're working,
and Bob Iger was one of the first calls that I received
and had his full support, did not have to worry about my job or anything like that.
And I thought about people who go through something like this, who have to worry.
-Going home now! -[people cheering]
It's tough enough you're just fighting for your life.
[Brown] Hope in the face of adversity.
A theme right out of a Disney movie,
and the moral of the story that Robin Roberts lived.
Everybody's got something. Everybody's got something.
My mother used to say that to us all the time
when we were like, "Woe is me. Woe is me."
She was like, "Honey, everybody's got something."
Something that can be seen as a roadblock, I used as a hurdle.
Yes, you are. That's what I love about the morning, you never know.
[applause]
I didn't go through all this just to hang around.
A minute 30.
That's why I say I'm a thriver, not a survivor.
[male announcer] I would like to thank Robin Roberts for being here.
[audience cheering, applause]
I was at ABC Sports for 13 years.
When I moved from sports to entertainment,
you know, they were both similar in that
the most important thing about entertainment,
whether it was ABC or anywhere, was essentially telling a great story.
[Brown] After a long rise up the ranks of ABC and then Disney...
Bob Iger was promoted to CEO of the company in 2005.
If you look at Disney's storytelling, the quality of optimism exists
in almost every major story that's been told by this company.
One of the artists tasked with bringing these stories to life
is Pixar's Jerome Ranft.
While Pixar is known for computer animation...
every day at its headquarters, Jerome does things the old-fashioned way,
with his hands.
It's subconscious and innate. I just love to make stuff.
Being a sculptor just fulfilled that need.
I almost feel like it found me, like, I had this desire.
And I took my first sculpting class when I got into college.
The first project was a life-sized self-portrait.
And as soon as I finished that, I was like, "This is what I'm gonna do."
[Brown] Jerome's passion has brought to life characters
such as Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc.
And even a fish called Nemo.
I usually get brought on when they wanna start fleshing out
what these characters will look like three-dimensionally.
And mostly what I do is pre-visualize 3-D design
before they spend the time and money to develop it in a computer.
This one.
You're part of that group of people
trying to solve aesthetic problems and make aesthetic decisions
that help make these things become finished projects.
I think Waternoose from Monsters, Incorporated--
I was very happy with that.
It was very, very complicated. Very, very challenging piece.
I'm never asked to do the same thing twice.
I've done three Cars films and not one of them was like the other.
This was during the production of Cars 3 early, early, early on.
At one point McQueen was gonna try to be in disguise,
so whatever disguise we did had to fit over this sort of chassis.
And this was the disguise.
This story point changed
and this whole exercise of making this sculpture became moot,
but, at the time, this was what this was being used for.
It's not so much pride. I feel humble, the fact
that this character's that's owned by the world now, by you know--
Millions of children have grown up with this character.
At one point, he was a drawing,
and it went in through my eyes and out through my hands.
My brother was working at Disney when I was in junior high school,
so I used to-- I remember going and visiting him at the Disney lot
and being completely blown away by these projects.
He says, "You heard him, code red. Repeat, we are at code red!"
[Brown] Jerome's brother, Joe, was a legendary Disney and Pixar animator,
who worked for decades on the company's biggest movies
including some with his brother.
Being able to work with him on any project was, sort of, a dream come true.
...see it, and he's like, "Ahhh!" and he starts...
I didn't realize how special it was until he had passed.
[Brown] Joe died in a car accident in 2005.
He was just 45 years old.
When he first passed away and I walked into this building,
it was really hard, and I was questioning whether I could do it.
He wouldn't have wanted that.
I have my own career and my own set of standards that I do this work to,
and I think that's what my parents taught us both.
He influenced me in ways I'm still sort of figuring out.
I just miss him. I wish he was here.
[Brown] Jerome's continued to grow his family's legacy at Disney...
but there are fewer and fewer sculptors working in animation today.
The role I've played here is changing.
In the early days,
the digital modelers they had here came from a computer background,
and now they're training artists to use the tool of the computer.
And there's incredibly talented digital modelers
out there in the world and especially here.
I wanna be a better sculptor.
That's never gonna-- That-- How can I even put it?
The impulse to be better at what I do is never ever gonna go away.
What this company is, more than anything,
aside from a collection of many talented people
and the legacy of Walt Disney,
is a-- is a great partnership...
between artists and technologists.
Jake definitely has his own personality and you can't help but love him.
When you get to meet him, and see him, and he's happy to see you,
it's a great feeling.
He's a maintenance droid. He loves his job. He's very dedicated.
Jake doesn't talk, so he's more like R2-D2.
He uses sounds and colors and lights to communicate.
He's got an eye.
Yellow, he's happy. Blue, he's sad. Red, he's angry.
Gray is, "Please, leave me alone."
[laughs]
So, how are you feeling about the design, Tanner?
[Brown] Ashley Girdich works in California...
It's looking pretty good. Ready for the field.
Okay. Is there anything we can do while we're...
as a member of Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development...
where she takes her knowledge of technology to create extraordinary ways
for guests to interact with the best Disney stories.
The day that he went live outdoors,
I was jumping, screaming, laughing.
Having a character roaming around freely,
people were blown away.
Everyone was trying to find how he was being controlled.
He was his own character, without a puppeteer in the background.
I think the unreasonable ideas are the ones we get the most excited about.
Things that we think are impossible or outlandish,
we do whatever we can to make that happen.
All of the operations partners I've talked to, that is a good time for them...
I think one of the biggest challenges is the reputation this company has.
You've gotta be top of your game.
We don't just go out and build a robot and say, "Now, what can you do with it?"
I take a character and say, "Can I make this character come to life?"
[people chattering]
-[Girdich] Come in the front. -[droid beeps]
When we were play-testing Jake in the park,
we had a couple of children who would put their hands on his shoulder
and just walk right alongside him.
They see him as their friend and immediately take to him.
Kids would come up and just give him a hug.
Sit, wrap their arms around him. They would give him a kiss.
-[child] Hold me! -[Girdich] And you realize the power
that these characters have to inspire wonder.
Hi.
-[chuckles] -[droid beeping]
We're constantly updating him.
And right now, what we're trying to do is refactor some of his code
so that he can work a little bit better than he has in the past.
More responsive, more reliable.
I want him to last forever.
You have to be resilient to try and introduce new things into the park
and find ways to solve challenges.
We would love to have our characters speak what we call natural language processing.
In the technology terms, it's still very difficult,
and especially in a theme park environment.
Very interesting challenge.
So, we'll see, we'll see.
[chuckles] We're working on it.
My dream would be to reintroduce some of our characters
the way they are on the screen, straight into our parks.
Dreams are incredibly important, I think,
because they can unify us to go after something
that, alone, we might have not been able to do.
Living out your dreams in the way that our guests do in the park
really is a different way of saying,
"I can create something I never thought could exist in the physical world."
[woman] Ellen, you're not seeing the droid.
[Girdich] When you think about what the outcome is of your work,
it's millions of faces smiling.
I love this guy.
It's a great reason to get up every morning.
Usually when I'm just drawing,
it really comes from a feeling inside.
It kinda just flows out of my hand.
It's an emotion that I'm trying to put down on paper.
Some of the favorite things that I like to draw is my nephews.
I have all these great memories with them and experiences with them.
I hear them laugh, and I hear how they play with each other.
And that's kind of where my hand goes.
My parents came from Taiwan. My dad came here first in his early 20s,
on a business trip, and he fell in love with the country.
And so, he went back to Taiwan, and then brought me and my mom.
I definitely grew up as a Disney child.
I remember having one Disney book, and it was in Chinese,
but it was all Disney characters, and my mom would read that to me.
And so even though we didn't really recognize the reading,
like the pictures told the story.
And so we always had a fondness for images.
I started working in animation, and I was actually at a fork in the road
because I was thinking maybe I would go into teaching
because I love working with kids,
and I thought it would be great to bring art into education.
But as I was preparing for school,
I also just applied all over, Disney included.
And I remember I got accepted to all the schools I applied for,
but then I got a call from Disney, and it was just no question.
Like, I was-- I wanted to work at Disney.
As a senior illustration manager here,
I work with a team of artists and provide them art direction,
make sure everything's in line.
We take the art direction of the film,
and we create a style of our own for the books.
The first picture book that I worked on here was Sofia the First.
I really like this book because I got to add,
like, little flourish designs throughout the book to wrap around the text.
And it was really fun to be able to add the little hearts on the I's.
And it felt more personal.
It's something that I think, as a child, I would have done too.
I work with the most creative people that I know.
So, we have the Frozen middle grade cover.
And then, Winnie and I have been talking about special effects.
When a film is in production,
we start illustrating the books that go along with the films.
We're thinking, like, a burgundy color that will match Anna's lining.
So, it's got a very Frozen 2 color, so all the palettes are cohesive.
There's books that retell the film,
and then there's also books that are extension stories.
And as a manager, I guide the team of artists
so that they can illustrate a book that looks cohesive,
even though there are multiple hands on it.
So, this is for the Toy Story 4 extension book. And...
One of the things that I really like working on is extension stories
because you get to extend the life of these characters
that you fall in love with when you watch the movie.
Especially, like, when I was younger, and I would watch this film,
and I would always wonder, "Oh, what happens after they get married?"
Or "What happens after this adventure's over?"
We get this foundation to work with, but we get to take in so many directions.
Yeah, the book is really fun.
And it takes place in a carnival setting, so it's actually really appropriate.
I think these extension stories
develop this new type of relationship I have with the characters.
You experience them even in a closer way
because we get to tell, like, what happens next.
I'm helping Jeff with the Frozen 2 covers.
One of my favorite parts of the job is we get to collaborate with the filmmakers.
They're the ones that create this world and these people.
And to have this firsthand explanation of all this knowledge
is what helps us make our books so wonderful.
And we had decided on a cool silver ink, so it'll be shimmery.
And so it will stand out from the page.
You have everything working in a more analogous color scheme,
which is a more limited scheme,
but it's much more harmonious to the environment.
You immediately recognize them as Anna and Elsa.
I think it channels the Frozen aesthetic quite a bit.
So another one of my favorite books was Three Little Words.
I really love the message of this book, and it's to just keep swimming.
I think it's a great, positive message for little kids,
and it's also something that I tell myself every day.
What I love about art is it forces me to find my voice.
It allows me a way to express myself.
And I've learned to love myself
because I learned that everyone expresses themselves differently.
[Brown] For the artists, and the audience,
Disney creations are ways to connect with the magic of stories.
And for the man who oversees it all,
there's nothing more satisfying than seeing the biggest,
most ambitious creations come to life in almost unfathomable ways.
[Iger] When you can not only experience the story but live with the story...
that's a very, very powerful experience to have.
And it immediately thrilled visitors when it opened the summer of 2019
at both Disneyland and Disney World.
[Baker] Grand openings are always hard for me
because you're giving a huge piece of your heart to the world for the first time.
It's hard to turn it over that first time and to see how the world's gonna react
because you don't know till they come in.
The fans of Star Wars have been building Star Wars for 45 years now.
There's people that live and breathe Star Wars every day,
and this land that we've built
now gives them a place to live their Star Wars story.
I feel we owe them, to give them the best possible experience they can have.
'Cause this is something that, you know,
they've waited their entire lives to see this.
[Brown] And so, as Disney planned Galaxy's Edge,
Eric Baker traveled around the world...
hunting and collecting props
that would convince the most knowledgeable Star Wars fanatics...
that every detail in the park was just right.
[Baker] They're getting the thrill of a totally immersive world
that they're experiencing for the first time.
This is the first time that we're really putting it in front of guests' faces.
I mean, to be able to go 360 around something
and really look at it and study it, "There's that and there's that."
And seeing all these pieces they've seen in the films for years and years.
I mean, there's nothing like seeing the reaction on the guest's face
the very first time that they walk into anything that we've done.
It makes every minute of blood, sweat and tears we put into this worth it.
Um... Sorry.
[chuckles] I get choked up. I'm sorry. I'm emotional.
I mean, just in this little shop alone,
um, there's over 63 cages hanging from the ceiling.
And all these cages are made out of different things.
I mean, some of them, actually, are made out of studio lights from film sets.
It's an incredible, beautiful mess.
I grew up in a very small town in North Georgia.
We didn't even have a theater. You had to go to the next town to go to a movie,
so if you went to a movie, it was a special event.
I didn't see Star Wars till it had been in the theater for about a year.
I finally got my parents to take me, and it had changed my life.
I didn't know what I wanted to do,
but I knew I wanted to be in the entertainment industry.
Funny enough, I was at a party one night,
and there was a prop master from a TV show who showed up at the party
and saw some of the stuff that I had built around my house.
And asked me if I was interested in being a prop fabricator.
Going from film into the real world was building stuff
that's gonna last for the guests to enjoy every day.
When you build it for a film set, it's something that has to last one or two days
and then it gets thrown out.
When we were in England, we would go to aircraft scrapyards and stuff
because we were actually shopping for aircraft parts
to match stuff that was used in the films.
And suddenly, there's a 747 sitting in a cow pasture
that they're tearing the parts off of.
And you would go in and say, "I'll take all 57 miles of cable
and that seat and that seat and that control panel." [chuckles]
When a stormtrooper takes off his helmet,
does he hang it on a coat rack, or does he have a stand he puts it on?
Part of the fun for us was coming up with these things
that hadn't been seen on camera,
and getting to add to this lore that we've loved our whole lives.
My grandson thinks I'm famous now. [laughs]
He's like, "You're famous." I'm like, "No, I'm not. Not really.
I just make this stuff, you know."
I told my wife the bucket list is checked off now,
to work on Star Wars. [chuckles]
I'm getting chills talking about it.
[Iger] If Walt could see the company today,
I believe that he would be extremely proud of,
not only the fact that his legacy is still alive
and that the values that he infused in his stories still exist,
but that we've, in many respects, followed his footsteps,
which is to keep taking risks and chances and exploring new ground.
[Brown] The company covered new ground
when Disney's Animal Kingdom opened in Orlando in 1998.
Today, the park is thriving as much as ever...
thanks to a special brand of TLC behind the scenes.
[Mylniczenko] Peri is a prehensile-tailed porcupine.
She's been trained to allow us to do ultrasounds on her.
Giving us an opportunity to track her pregnancy from conception until birth.
That way we could tell that she was healthy, that the baby was healthy.
So, when there's a fetus, it makes it a lot easier to see.
And right now, we're just been able to see her urinary bladder.
And then you can see a hint of her uterus popping in.
Now we're just doing checkups on her,
but we're also going to be preparing for a second pregnancy.
Ever since I've been a small child,
I've just tried to help animals and help heal them.
And so that's just been an innate part of my growing up.
So far...
There we go.
I came here for a visit during a vet conference,
and I was just impressed.
I loved the facilities.
I loved the opportunity to care for the animals as well.
As I got to know all of the veterinarians, I just thought it was an amazing team.
And because of all of that, I was really enticed to come here.
I think that's what I love most.
We have a diversity of animals, both terrestrial and aquatic.
It allows people to really get close.
It allows people to understand the animals,
and it gives them an opportunity to care and bond with those animals.
We have folks that come up here regularly
that... know all of the different animals.
Like the gorillas. There are some people that know all of the gorillas by name.
And the guests will just visit them,
which is a unique opportunity.
We do routine examinations on many of our animals.
And today we did an examination on a southern stingray.
-...at 950, so we got a good mark on her. -Perfect.
This is a female that's been with us. Her name is Dexy.
pH is 8.6.
So, right now we're measuring the oxygen level
of the... area that she's in.
Today she's getting her routine exam.
And so, because of that, we need to do a little bit more.
Let's go ahead and look at her gills.
So, her cardiac contractions are great. Her rhythm and rate are great.
So, I have no concerns right now.
We took an ultrasound as well,
which gives me an excellent view of all of her organs
so I can determine health of her, you know, from the inside.
Yeah, it feels like it's actually healed.
A typical day can mean anything from doing a pregnancy exam on a scorpion,
to a bird gets an injury in one of our aviaries.
You do have to get quite creative.
Every day we have to figure out
how to put a bandage on an animal that wouldn't normally have a bandage.
So, how would you put a bandage on a fish?
Or a very tiny bird that has a broken leg? How do you fix that broken leg?
And so you come up with toothpicks and tape, sometimes, to make splints.
And then the conservation piece. Disney really cares about conservation.
All of us have an opportunity to work with conservation that Disney supports.
I'm particularly interested in working with gorillas
in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a program called GRACE.
And that's the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center
that cares for orphaned gorillas.
We can then have those gorillas rehabilitated,
and then placed into a family group of gorillas,
with the ultimate goal
of reintroducing them to a safe environment.
-[Mylniczenko] What do you think? -[keeper] Probably.
-[Mylniczenko] Okay. -[keeper] I could leave it right there.
-Does that work? -[Mylniczenko] That can work.
All of our animals have bitey parts and scratchy parts. [chuckles]
Yeah, there are times when you just need to make sure you understand the animal.
But we also have keeper staff that really know the animals well
and can help us with safety issues.
Oh, yeah.
Good job.
They choose. Right?
They can make the decisions to come and participate if their--
with their medical care or they can choose to go.
Hey, girl.
-[Mylniczenko] What a good job. -[keeper] Good girl. That's very nice.
Sometimes what we do is really amazing. We get to see animals through birth.
-[Mylniczenko] What a good girl. -[keeper] Good girl. Good girl.
She's doing such a good job.
We get to see them overcome issues, and those are amazing things.
Being a veterinarian is probably one of,
in my opinion, [chuckles]
the most rewarding jobs you can have.
Sweetie. It's just for you. I know. It's just for you. Yummies.
[Iger] We're all, in many ways, in the--
not only in the same business but doing the same thing,
which is trying to reach people all over the world
in very compelling ways, trying to touch people's hearts.
[Brown] In Madrid, Spain,
they'll try to reach people's hearts today with two performances
of the widely-beloved stage version of The Lion King...
[trills tongue]
propelled by the gifts of some amazing performers.
Every start of the show gives me a different vibe, a different energy.
-Testing, testing, testing, testing. -All good.
That first call means a lot
'cause you find the public members screaming.
[audience cheering, applause]
But the minute you start that call, it's like total silencio. And then, boom.
[applauding continues]
I have their eyes on me.
[singing in Zulu]
[background singers singing in Zulu]
I still get chills when I'm... [chuckling] singing.
Especially the first song.
I just don't get over with that first song, "The Circle of Life."
[continues singing in Zulu]
I look at individuals amongst the public.
And the connection I feel with their eyes, even better when they are crying.
I'm like, "Oof."
[chuckles]
"I feel you."
I'm really proud. It's a very special role.
I feel honored that I was trusted.
[Brown] Zama's journey to Madrid began years ago in South Africa...
where she grew up dreaming bigger and bigger with every song.
[Magudulela] I think I was about five. I actually composed a song.
That's how much I knew that I loved singing.
And then, of course, at nine years, that's when I'm like, "I think I love singing."
'Cause I ended up copying my friend who sang better than me at that point.
She can sing, I can try and sing too. I'm going to be competitive.
I just sang and sang until I upstaged her.
[laughs]
[Brown] Zama eventually traveled to London to support her friend at a casting call.
She caught the eye of the director, who asked if she could sing.
[Magudulela] My first audition was not good.
At that point I just finished my first musical in South Africa.
There was a long queue, and I asked people, "Okay, what is this queue for?"
"It's, like, auditions, Lion King." I'm like, "What is that?"
I went to the movie store, bought myself that DVD.
I thought, "If I do The Lion King, am I gonna be a cartoon?" [chuckles]
[Brown] Four days later, she was offered the part of Rafiki...
despite having no acting experience at all.
I do have moments where I'm actually meditating.
[chuckles]
I close my eyes.
[chuckles]
-Clearing the mind. -You know?
I'm glad and grateful that I've been part of this journey.
Soy listo!
Being around this show teaches me every day to be a better person.
[singing in Zulu]
I mean, all the songs for me are special.
They tell a certain story.
And... for me, "The Circle of Life," I just connect with it.
♪ It's the circle of life ♪
It's like, "Wow, we're so connected on this earth."
We need each other.
Ooh... [sighs] It's just too much. It's deep.
[chuckles]
[singing in Spanish]
I just connect with it as when I came on this earth.
How my family was happy.
And what dramas or what problems we've been through.
[continues singing in Spanish]
My parents are no longer there.
I always feel they are still with me when I'm delivering this song.
Because, really, when I talk to that Mufasa,
I'm not talking to Mufasa, I'm talking to my parents.
That's why I'm grateful to be part of this journey
because, really, I've changed so many people's lives.
You know, knowing that there could be people who are coming here sad.
When we perform, then they leave happy.
It's an amazing reaction. I feel like we're giving them a gift.
It just makes me [chuckles] feel blessed.
[Iger] The Walt Disney Company is almost a hundred years old.
And it's pretty extraordinary when you think about a company
that's been around as long as ours
that is still extremely relevant in the world, that, in many respects,
doesn't look anything like the world that existed back in 1923
when Walt and his brother Roy started the company.
[Brown] Another company that's withstood the test of time is Marvel,
which Bob Iger added to Disney's portfolio in 2009.
Just like Bob Iger, Ryan Meinerding works in Los Angeles.
He got his start on Iron Man...
and has since risen to the head of Visual Development at Marvel Studios.
Ryan creates the first visuals
that ultimately inspire the characters' costumes.
One of the reasons I love movies is going on that journey the hero's going on
and trying to create the visual for that character
that's going to lock in the audience's empathy
and take them forward through the journey of the film
is something that I, you know, I'm always going to pick the heroes.
Marvel superheroes are powerful, not only because they literally have powers
but also because they have lots of flaws.
Spider-Man and Peter Parker are relatable because he has real-world problems.
He, you know, has problems with girlfriends.
He has problems with his Aunt May. He has problems in school.
I pitched the idea of having Spider-Man's eyes be emotive.
They would move and essentially be able to understand
what Peter is thinking under the suit through his eyes.
And that was one of the things that I'm most proud about,
having solved here at Marvel.
That's one of the best parts of working on this job too
is just working from those great icons.
I was trying to think of different ways for Thanos to attack Doctor Strange.
I was thinking, maybe he could destroy planets or...
A lot of us that work here in the Visual Development department are fans.
And just make it come through like portals or comets or whatever.
Just raining down on Doctor Strange.
[Meinerding] A lot of what the characters are about are sort of ingrained in us.
Being passionate about finding new ways of representing them
-in a storytelling context... -I think they're really great.
...just keeps driving me forward.
If I could talk to the 13-year-old version of myself
and tell him what I'm working on today, I don't think that he would believe me.
Having worked on a character like Captain America or Iron Man...
people love them.
And if you do justice by that character,
people will continue to love them, and I'm excited by that.
I loved these characters from when I was very young.
I started buying comics, probably when I was ten or 11.
And then all through the '90s, I was reading comics when I was a teenager.
So, I started pretty, pretty young with the characters
and I've, sort of, been fortunate enough to end up with a job
that really allows me to play into my fanboy tendencies.
It used to be that a person like me would be doing pencil drawings
that would need to be approved before something got made.
[Stegon] The final pose that we're interested in,
some of the initial pose wasn't dy-- quite dynamic enough.
He feels too stiff. Maybe he doesn't feel menacing enough.
Because he's a very powerful character, so he needs to feel powerful.
It's using computers and being able to get high resolution,
more finished images.
We're able to actually accomplish something
that's as close to the finished thing as possible.
All together, it probably took about 30 or 40 versions.
And the main purpose of that was to, essentially,
put it into a 3-D maquette, that was gonna be 3-D printed,
as a final sign-off for the directors and the producers
to see the character, and you know, be able to walk around it.
We're working on around three films a year and adding more projects to that as we go.
Finding ways of accomplishing that,
both from an artistic standpoint of actually solving problems,
design problems, artistically,
also working with my team to art direct and help them solve problems as well.
And working with visual effects and the costume departments
to really take our designs and help them get resolved in a really amazing way
is enough to keep me busy through the whole week
and into the weekends and-- [chuckles]
As an artist, there's also just a sense of wanting to do better than the last time.
Every artist wants to keep growing.
We're always having new chances to reinterpret the characters.
We're having new places for them to go
with the stories the filmmakers are coming up with.
And we're really getting the chance to push ourselves.
This is the Captain America hero costume from Captain America: The First Avenger.
It's, sort of, his culmination in that film
for blending, being a symbol and being a soldier.
It was also the first time I was trying to incorporate the stripes as straps,
turning them in, pulling them off of it, just being on the costume.
And turning them into something that was part of the utility of the costume.
So, to transition from the World War II aesthetic to the end of Cap's journey,
so he's already had, I don't know, probably six costumes
in between this and The First Avenger costume and this one.
One of the challenges we had on this suit was really making these scales work.
A lot of my job is hopefully inspiring people,
but it's also just letting people solve problems.
We did a whole bunch of iterations where it would look perfectly fine in the front.
But the moment that, you know, you would go into a three-quarter view,
those lines started to diminish and not look as great.
One of the things as an artist is failure comes as a fear with every brushstroke.
-Yeah, straight lines on a compound curve. -Yep.
[both laugh]
You're starting from a blank page and you're building it up.
And a lot of times, you'll take a misstep. You'll go the wrong direction...
There's, like, an odd banding shape.
[Meinerding] ...and have to course correct.
So, I sort of deal with failure at every moment, I feel, of every day.
When you see it on screen you just say, "Oh, cool, he's wearing the scales."
But the amount of engineering and artistry that goes into making these things
really come to fruition is incredible.
I had hoped it would look very good,
and it turned out better than I could have ever expected.
Every part of this ride has felt like,
it can't get bigger, it can't get more amazing.
And somehow the filmmakers and Marvel Studios make it all come together
into something that's even bigger than what came before.
It's nostalgia for me. It's really weird, the characters hold a lot of nostalgia
because I love them from when I was younger.
And now I've been working at Marvel for a little beyond 13 years,
and those memories are, you know,
things I'll cherish for the rest of my life.
[Brown] Every day, across the world,
in theme parks and studios, on stages and sets,
the people of the Walt Disney Company are all part of the same idea
that's guided the company since Walt himself dreamed it up.
[chuckles]
-They're telling stories. -Soy listo!
They're inspiring people.
And they're proving over and over again,
the power of their imagination.
I'm the same guy that I was when I graduated from Ithaca College in 1973...
that went to see Cinderella with my grandparents.
I love a great story.
I also happen to love what I do.
I just-- Look, I get motivated by the fact The Walt Disney Company
occupies such a special place in the world.
We primarily, in our storytelling, manufacture happiness,
is the way I like to describe it.
That's pretty motivating.