CA -- San Francisco -- Presidio -- Walt Disney Family Museum -- Gallery 08: Walt & the Natural World:
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- Description of Pictures: 1948–1960
Gallery 8
Walt & the Natural World
True-Life Adventures:
Walt’s affinity for nature prompted him to send a small crew to film the Alaskan wilderness. What the footage revealed fascinated Walt—in particular, scenes of seals in the Pribilof Islands. In 1949 Seal Island became the first in a series of award-winning nature documentaries for The Walt Disney Studios.
“I said, keep shooting!”:
Capturing nature’s wonders required months, sometimes even years. Under unpredictable shooting conditions, Walt’s cinematographers were reluctant to waste film. Walt recalled, “I had to sell them on the idea that the film was the cheapest thing.” The films would yield some of nature’s most spectacular moments ever seen.
Face-to-face with Nature:
In contrast to the typical nature education films, True-Life Adventures brought excitement to the screen. Walt’s innovative approach combined professional cinematography with intriguing storytelling to create a different kind of documentary—one that he believed would increase the appreciation and understanding of nature worldwide.
A Big Idea on a Small Park Bench:
Saturday was always Daddy’s Day for Walt’s two girls. “And we’d go to Griffith Park and there was a beautiful carousel there,” recalled Diane. While observing his daughters at play, Walt imagined a place where children and parents could have fun together—an idea he would later realize as Disneyland.
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- WDFM08_180714_03.JPG: Walt And The Natural world
One of the most unusual highlights of Walt's career was a series of nature documentaries, the True-Life Adventures. The first of these films, Seal Island(1949), set the pattern: Walt would hire a team of naturalist-photographers to spend months or even years in the wild, filming the animal life of a region; then the studio would edit their hours of raw footage into a theatrical film. The result was an authentic record of nature's wonders, presented with all the production polish of a major movie studio. The nature series ran for more than a decade and produced ten short subjects and seven features, winning nine Academy Awards along the way. The True-Life films also led to a second, similar series of travel documentaries titled People and Places.
"The biggest problem was getting [the photographers] to keep shooting. They would be too conservative with film because when they were working on their own they had to buy that film. They would cut the camera just as an animal would do something. I had to pound: Shoot, shoot! I had to sell them on the idea that the film was the cheapest thing [in our operation], and if they missed something -- it got to the point that they never dared come in to tell me something they saw that they didn't photograph because I would raise heck with them. Also, they would quit too early in the day. They'd think the sun wasn't right. I said, Keep shooting!" -- Walt
- WDFM08_180714_06.JPG: True-Life Adventure Globe
- WDFM08_180714_11.JPG: Have a seat!
- WDFM08_180714_20.JPG: Silver Saddle
- WDFM08_180714_22.JPG: Chris' Saddle
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- Wikipedia Description: The Walt Disney Family Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Walt Disney Family Museum is an American museum that features the life and legacy of Walt Disney. The museum is located in The Presidio of San Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. The Museum retrofitted and expanded three existing historic buildings on the Presidio’s Main Post. The principal building, at 104 Montgomery Street, faces the Parade Ground, and opened on October 1, 2009.
The Walt Disney Family Museum, LLC is owned, operated and funded by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, a non-profit organization established by Disney's heirs (including Diane Marie Disney, co-founder of the Museum). It is not formally associated with The Walt Disney Company, the media and entertainment enterprise. Museum co-founders are Diane Disney Miller, Walter E.D. Miller, and Joanna Miller Runeare; executive director is Richard Benefield.
Exhibits:
Exhibits in the museum focus on Walt Disney's life and career. The lobby displays 248 awards that Disney won during his career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and many Academy Awards.
There are ten permanent galleries:
1. Beginnings -- Material on Disney's ancestors, childhood and early adulthood. Included are early cartoon drawings and a replica of the ambulance he drove in France after World War I. The beginnings of his animation career are explained.
2. Hollywood -- Disney's California partnership with his brother Roy led to the success of Mickey Mouse.
3. New Horizons in the 1930s. -- Disney's success led to fame and significant improvement in animation techniques.
4. The move to features -- Original art from the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is on diplay.
5. "We were in a new business" -- Additional animated features follow, including Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi. Disney builds a new studio in Burbank.
6. "The toughest period in my life" -- Labor unrest and Disney's response to World War II.
7. Postwar production -- Disney moves into live action feature films, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
8. Walt + the natural world -- Disney concentrates on nature documentary films.
9. The 1950s + 1960s: The big screen and beyond -- Disney branches out into television and theme parks.
10. December 15, 1966 -- Worldwide response to Disney's death and his legacy.
Artifacts on display include Walt's original 1/8 scale Lilly Belle train (formerly on display at the Disneyland Railroad's Main Street Station), a series of still drawings demonstrating one-minute footage of Steamboat Willie and an underwater camera used for filming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. An early conceptual scale model of Disneyland is another feature.
Critical reception:
"It's a collection of ideas and documents, a diverse array of archival, filmic, and pop-cultural texts that historicizes Disney's work and compels us to think twice about how we appraise it. The museum energizes the fascinatingly charged scholarly debate that the Disney phenomenon has provoked, shaking the worn, staid, sometimes cynical images we have of Disney and his empire, bringing to them renewed color and motion."
"Given the heritage of the place, you expect to see a ride at the Walt Disney Family Museum . . . And in a way, there is one, since the museum does just what Disney thought a ride should do when he created Disneyland more than half a century ago: it tells a story. And while the museum is almost leisurely in relating its narrative, only here and there veering into uncharted terrain, and while children will quickly pass by many sections that will fascinate their elders, there are more than enough thrills for everyone."
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