INSTITUTION RESEARCH
THE WALT DISNEY
The Walt Disney productions were introduced in1923 in California. It was an American cooperation which was best known for producing family friendly entertainment in the 20th and 21st centuries. It was one of the biggest media conglomerates with such remarkable holdings as ABC, Pixar, marvel entertainment and 20th century fox. The Walt Disney company began as a joint venture between Walt Disney and his brother Roy. Within three years the company had produced two movies and purchased a studio in Hollywood.
In the fist years of Disney’s, its career in animation began with the Kansas film ad company in Missouri in 1930. Laugh-o-gram film studios in Kansas City in 1922 were found and then the Walt Disney began producing a series of cartoons based on fables and fairy tales. Walt had made a cartoon in Kansas City about a little girl in a cartoon world, called Alice’s wonderland. Disney made his Alice Comedies for four years, but in 1927, he decided to move instead to an all-cartoon series. To star in this new series, he created a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Within a year, Walt made 26 of these Oswald cartoons. Unfortunately, pitfalls in distribution rights nearly sank the company. the Walt found an ideal piece of property on Hyperion avenue in Hollywood, built a studio and in 1926 moved his staff into a new facility . It was at the Hyperion Studio, after the loss of Oswald, that Walt had to come up with a new character, and that character was Mickey Mouse. He partnered with Ub Iwerks, a gifted animator. Walt designed the famous mouse and gave him a personality that endeared him to all.
The studio’s streak of success continued in the 1930s, culminating with the 1937 release of the first feature-length animated film, Snow white and the seven dwarfs, which became a huge financial success
In the 1940s, Disney began experimenting with full-length live-action films, with the introduction of hybrid live action-animated films such as The Reluctant dragon in 1941 and the Song of South in 1946. That same decade, the studio began producing nature documentaries with the release of Seat Island in 1948, the first of the True life adventures series and a subsequent academy award winner for the best live action short film.
The film The Reluctant Dragon was released in the middle of the Disney animator’s strike of 1941. Strikers picketed the film’s premiere with signs that attacked Disney for unfair business practices, low pay, lack of recognition, and favoritism. At one theater, sympathizers paraded down the street wearing a “dragon costume bearing the legend ‘The Reluctant Disney ‘“.Critics and audiences were put off by the fact that the film was not a new Disney animated feature in the vein of Snow white and the Seven dwarfs or Pinocchio but essentially a collection of four short cartoons and various live-action films. The Reluctant dragon cost $600,000 to make and returned $960,000 with $460,000 being generated in the U.S. and Canada. Disney released The Reluctant Dragon along with the short Morris and the Midget Moose and again the following years part of the Walt Disney mini classics-series.
The movie Song of the South grossed $3.3 million at the box office. Although the film was a financial success, the film netted the studio a profit of $226,000 ($2.83 million in 2017 dollars).
Disney nature is an independent film unit of Walt Disney Studios that produces nature documentary films. The production company was founded on April 21, 2008, and is headquartered in Paris, France.
The company’s nature films are consistently budgeted between $5 million to $10 million, with their distribution and marketing handled by Walt Disney Studios. The label’s event films are released. The eight Disney nature theatrical films have gross $151.6 million at the box office at an average $19 million with “Earth” the top earner at $32 million.
The continuing success of the studio emboldened Disney to make his riskiest move in 1934, when he began production on Snow White And Seven Dwarfs (1937). Although not the first feature length animated cartoon. That honor probably goes to lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures Of Prince Achmed (1926). It was the first to receive widespread release and publicity. As much of a sensation as Steamboat Willie had been, Snow White revolutionized the industry and proved animation’s effectiveness as a vehicle for feature length stories. Disney advocated a realistic approach to the medium, as opposed to the anarchic style of other animation studios. Scenes in Disney cartoons were composed and framed as they would be for a live-action film, and surreal aspects of the characters were kept to a minimum. Although this approach provoked the criticism that Disney discouraged experimentation and limited animation’s possibilities, there is little question of its success in Snow White and the animated features that followed.
. The feature-length cartoons Cinderella (1950), Alice in the Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953) were considered fine efforts, but many felt they lacked the panache and dimension of the early ’40s features. The Lady And The Tramp (1955) was a return to form, but Disney’s attention was by then increasingly devoted to live-action features, television productions, and his new theme park, Disneyland, which opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California. It was also about then that Disney established the distribution company Buena Vista Productions in order to ensure complete control over his films and their marketing.
Amna Faheem 