Walt Disney Family Museum - March 20

Merry Mousketeer

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Feb 9, 2007
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I was wondering if any DISers plan to go to the March 20 event at the Walt Disney Family Museum.

March 20, 2010
Innovations: Ub Iwerks and The Nodal Point Camera

3:00 pm, Theater

The making of Darby O’Gill and the Little People presented particular challenges. Walt wanted the audience to believe that Darby was talking and singing with the King of the Leprechauns but the scale had to be perfect. To tackle this technical problem he turned to Ub Iwerks. Join Don Iwerks, former Disney executive, founder of Iwerks Entertainment, and son of Ub, as he talks about Ub’s creation, the Nodal Point Camera.


Usually, Paul Barrie of the Window to the Magic Podcast has a mini-meet at these events. The Mousetalgia Podcast hosts usually attend anonymously. If any DISers are going, maybe we can have our own mini-meet and show some DISpride!

P.S. I accidentally posted this under the Theme Parks thread. That's what happens when I post before breakfast!
 
As part of my St. Patrick's Day celebration and to prepare for the event at the Walt Disney Family Museum, I watched "Darby O'Gill and the Little People". Wow, that film really holds up after all of these years. There is a great "Making Of" feature on the DVD. It is remarkable to see how they made this film on the Disney Studios backlot in Burbank. The special effects developed by Peter Ellenshaw were so cutting edge that they were used for the filming of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy to make the hobbits believable. Isn't that amazing?
 
The presentation ended up being quite a surprise. Not only was Don Iwerks there to explain the Nodal Camera, but so was Harrison Ellenshaw to talk about his father's, Peter Ellenshaw, special effects work on the film, and a gentleman who is the last surviving crew member of the film.

Harrison was the primary speaker and very funny. He took us through how his father created the specials effects and matte paintings and what is was like to be his son during that time. He also delved a bit into his experiences working at the studio. As is always the case with everyone I've heard speak at the museum, he attributed the success of the film to Walt Disney's vision and creativity. The special effects were incredibly complicated. He said it looked so easy and believeable in the final film, that it was ignored by the Academy and not nominated for special effects as everyone believed it deserved to be.

Don Iwerks briefly explained how the Nodal Camera worked so that you believed these averaged-sized people looked like tiny leprechauns with humans. It was much more interesting that you would think.

Finally, the gentleman whose name escapes me is the last surviving crew memeber of the film, was in charge of lighting and ventilation. He spoke about the large 690 lights that were needed to light the sets so the Nodal Cameral would capture the special effects set up for the leprechaun and human scenes. It required large generators to run all the lights. The first time they turned on the generators, they caused a brown out throughout Burbank. It was such a problem that the Johnny Carson Show, which filmed just a couple of miles away, had to purchase a generator that they ran during the filming of Darby O'Gill so they wouldn't lose power and lose their feed to New York while filming the show at 4 pm. He said they finally discovered that if they turned on the generators sequentially they wouldn't blackout the city of Burbank. The lights generated high heat temperatures requiring giant fans to keep the soundstage cool, but they had to be turned off during filming. As a result, they could only take 1 - 4 minutes to film a scene with the fans turned off before it became too hot.

The program concluded with a showing of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People".

My one regret is that I didn't realize I was sitting next to Harrison Ellenshaw for twenty minutes and even chatted with him. He never told me who he was. I would've like to have told him that my wife and I have three of pieces of his original artwork hanging in our home. Can you believe I missed that opportunity!!

Overall, this ended up being a fascinating presentation. I hope more DISers in the San Francisco Bay Area will attend these presentations. You won't regret it!
 

Hi Michael,

Unfortunately, we have a very short time in SF.

Our tickets for the Disney Museum are for 11:00am on 4/21. Not sure how long we will be in the museum and then we leave early Thursday morning.

If you can make it on that Wed., it would be great to see both of you.
 


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