Storytelling – Filming and editing “Wilderness Explorers At Home” at Disney’s Animal Kingdom park.
Disney - Mobile App Media Production
📍 ON-PROPERTY AT WALT DISNEY WORLD RESORT, ORLANDOThe Digital Content team is a story and media production group spread across California and Florida. We create narrative-driven content in-house, and highlighting our various parks, hotels, and cruise ships around the world. I was brought into this team from my previous role in UX/UI and motion graphics, and have since gone from designer/editor, to manager and creative director of the team.
My Role
As of 2022, I’ve been Manager of this team, leading a production crew of editors, illustrators, and motion graphic artists, and tasked with ideating and pitching various content ideas for short-form video series, hosted and streamed in the Disney Parks mobile apps.
Among those content pitches, we’ve established partnerships with teams such as Disney’s Animal Sciences and Environment (ASE) to film, edit, and launch the series Wilderness Explorers At Home and Disney Parks’ Wild Sights. We’ve produced over 40 similar stories in partnership with Disney PhotoPass, Disney Institute, Resorts Technology, and Walt Disney Imagineering.
Digital Content – Team Show Reel
This body of video work has been featured by Disney across its blog and various social accounts multiple times.
Case Study: Earth Week Content Packages
This teaser was released across various Disney social handles and Disney Parks Blog to promote our in-app Earth Day takeover. My Role: I filmed this piece with Dr. Mark Penning, accompanied by one of our Comms partners, and edited the product for release.
Social Media Amplification
Our team writes, films, and edits Disney stories for web and social. Along with this example video, every new in-app episode of the Wild Sights series featured a short trailer shared ahead of release.
My Role
As the video producer for this piece in 2020, I filmed and edited media, working with our animal sciences and creative team to script the host narration. I then edited the final product alongside the accompanying stock music track in Adobe Premiere and After Effects CC.
Process
Filming Disney Parks’ Wild Sights, Ep. 3: Zebras. Shot on-location at Animal Kingdom’s Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction.
Selected Example: Disney Parks’ Wild Sights
Within the Digital Content team, I’ve collaborated (as IC and leader) on 30+ branded video series and over 200 individual video pieces. The process example below highlights the work on a video series I pitched and produced called Disney Parks’ Wild Sights for our parks’ mobile apps.
Production Pitch
A story-building process of about 3-4 months leads up to the first day of filming. Once I pitched the concept, my next task was to create a production scope to bring along to our partners at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Mission Statement
This pitch and scope document opens on the creative vision and high-level goals for this body of work. Focused specifically on animal care and conservation, I aligned our creative pillars to incite awareness and curiosity around wildlife and our natural world.
Brand Positioning
The way we design and position our media products at Disney is uniquely important, as we are committed to targeting distinct audience demographics depending on our delivery platform. In partnership with a creative colleague, we designed the visual language of this series to invoke a high-value documentary look and feel.
Episodic Format
When scoping this product, we needed to think through the pacing and format of each episode, to create a repeatable framework. This early breakdown later evolved into a longer format reaching 2-3min in length.
Scripting
As we identified camera-ready animal keepers in partnership with the ASE team, we held interview sessions to learn their background and conversational style, then scripted loose questions and topics to address on camera during film-day.
Impact
The Magic of Disney at Home
The onset of COVID-19 and Disney Parks closures around the world in 2020 accelerated our need to bring traditional Disney experiences beyond-the-berm. This track of work proved key toward this goal, and has consistently received praise among internal tech and operational leadership, leading to accelerating team growth in the past year.
Storytelling across Digital
The secondary goal of this content has been to make our digital properties more approachable and story-guided. Our work in capturing these in-park videos for mobile delivery has allowed us to share our parks and products in a more compelling and friendly way, while driving higher ticket and merchandise sales.
