It’s been a minute since I wrote a blog so theres a few things to catch up on.
First off, I spent last week at Disneyland Paris getting the last of my research photos done. I ended up with 10 potential areas of study that would give me a total of 16 posters in the end. There were a few things that were under construction, like Big Thunder Mountain, so I had to swap them around. And as of writing this, I’ve just finish the first poster, so it’s taking like a week to do each one! So I need to get moving on them to have enough time to do everything else!
One thing that I took away from that trip was how much repetition there is in the signage. I never really notice it before on trips, until you actually start documenting it, but there are a lot of fonts use across the park and a lot of style themes that pop up in a lot of different areas. I assume this is all a cost saving measure. Which brings me nicely to the second thing:
My interview with Sarah Heal. Sarah is a UK Themed Entertainment Designer, who I met through Rob Yeo. She’s a lot younger than me, and one thing I’m finding with speaking to people and reading / listening to stories from people doing this job, is that they knew they wanted to do it from childhood. Which is always hard to hear as someone who had a career change when they turned 30. I spent most of my 20’s trying to be successful as a photographer which didn’t go anywhere, and so I always feel a little on the back foot trying to get into this work. Similar to Rob, Sarah also acknowledged that not growing in California or Florida is always an issue as most imagineers grow up working at the parks. She did however go on the college program and work in WDW for three months and then interned with Scott and Debra Wren for a year. So she definitely had the get up and go mentality that I clearly needed for this work.
She hasn’t actually worked for Disney so we weren’t able to speak directly about that, but she is however a WDI super fan and has worked for universal and Europa park in europe so she gave a lot of invites. I’ll have to do a full summary of that interview in my notes.
The reason I say that lead on from cost cutting measures was that, Sarah said a few times that was such a big issue on so many jobs and also working full time for these places have so many up swings and full on work and then when it’s done, you don’t work there anymore! So she’s said it’s a lot better for her to be freelance so she can keep a steady job going and do all this on the side.
The last thing to talk about is the prototype presentation this week. I’ve obviously got my posters to show but I’ve made a first draft at the write up for the jungle cruise. A little background on the ride, where and when etc. and some notes on the design choices and why they may have been made in order to tell the story. This is a first draft so I will continue to add to this as I go.