Destination Disneyland: The DIS Team Goes West

Shot on Canon VIXIA HF G10. Production Dates: March 13 - 17, 2013. Release Date: April 17, 2013.

Destination Disneyland: The DIS Team Goes West was my first major work assignment for The DIS. I joined the website full-time in February 2013 to assist with video production and audio engineering for their podcast. I was invited to join in on a content trip to promote Disneyland from March 13-17, 2013. The primary purpose was to bolster Disneyland content for YouTube as well as updated website content. My main focus on the trip was to collect B-Roll of the theme parks and attractions.

I was assigned one specific task while on the content trip - capture the first moments of a team member’s first steps into Disneyland. Knowing I had to do this, I also took it upon myself to film candid clips of the team when possible. The end result was enough video to make a behind-the-scenes/documentary of our team’s trip to Disneyland.

There was no real narrative planned going in to the video which meant I needed to find a structure. Rather than a straight montage, I wanted to look for a way to connect the days together. I chose to frame the story through Twitter, because we decided to document the experience on social media. This allowed me to jump to specific moments before falling back onto montages from the trip.

This was the most ambitious video I had made since college and I was looking to push myself every step of the way. The title graphics were created using clip art and basic animation in Adobe and was my first attempt at doing any sort of title sequence. Editing to sound was extremely important to the style and was possible because of the amount of B-Roll I returned with. I was limited with song options and their run time, so I also used the social media breaks to help alleviate any looping issues.

The video is extremely dated and I’ve learned a lot since creating it. I’m very proud of the work I did on it and wish I implemented some of the techniques in videos I currently make.