An Interview with Imagineer Neil Engel
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The Hyperion Theater
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LP: Speaking of the Hyperion can you tell us about that theater a little bit?
NE: I can tell you about it from a design standpoint. I’m not real familiar with the show inside. What we wanted to do was create sort of a sound stage being dressed out to become a set. So when you walk in, again, it’s almost like you see "oh my gosh this is like this really super ornate looking interior." It’s very baroque looking interior with lots of drapes. Then you look at it again and it’s like you go these are just indications and you can almost see through them, in fact they’re perforated, did you know that?
LP: No, I didn’t know that.
NE: Yeah, they’re perforated because we wanted to make them very friendly to sound proofing. So apparently perforated metal surfaces are much better for sound attenuation than big heavy planer surfaces, so if you look at them they’re actually perforated. But you know, we wanted it to be a comfortable theater. It’s really a first of its kind for Disney which is an indoor, light controlled auditorium. Very comfortable for the Entertainment Division's kind of entertainment.
The Disney Animation Courtyard Gallery The first room inside Disney Animation is the Courtyard Gallery. While it's main function is to serve as a gateway to the other realms - The Art of Animation, Back to Neverland and the Sorcerer's Workshop - for many it is a destination until itself. Inside the courtyard you're surrounded by screens showing scenes from a Disney animated film. Some of the screens show stills from the film, some show animator's drawings and some show the film itself. The screens change to show several scenes and all the while music from the film plays in the courtyard and lighting effects are brought into play as well. When put all together it literally immerses guests in the film for a minute or so before moving on the next. The entire loop lasts around 20 minutes show approximately 20 films from Snow White to next year's Atlantis.
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LP: The Disney Animation Courtyard is something everyone is talking about. On the surface it looks like it’s not that complicated, but I suspect it is more complicated than it looks.
NE: It really is (laughs). But you know that’s the hallmark of Disney in that we go to a lot of pains to make something look very simple, just like an athlete. You say he makes it look so simple but there’s really nothing simple to it. It’s really a marvel of synchronization and visual harmony and I think there’s a lot of ways you could have pulled that off, but I think what makes it Disney is that we do spend that kind of time to be sure that the colors are going from warm to cold very softly and the music is working with it very completely and we go from one world to another with a strong contrast in-between so that again, it’s not just this sort of jarring - we didn’t want it to be a jarring thing. We want you to go in and appreciate animation, appreciate the art of animation, but also to be a very friendly place where you can just sit down and watch it for 20 minutes, a lot of people are doing that.
LP: Many times I've done that.
NE: Which is funny because when we were laying these spaces out we said, well, this is kind of like the holding area where they kind of wait for the shows to come up and people are just spending whole afternoon in there. It’s great.
Disney Animation
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