Howdy,
Not long ago we went on our first proper field study to Orlando, Florida! Took long enough. After years of Covid holding us back, and a trip to California being cancelled earlier in the year we finally managed board an airplane as a whole class, well kind of – read more of that in my other post.
Anyways, we went to Florida to work on 2 projects; Effective Design and this post’s project Power of Imagination. This project was split up into 2 parts: 1st was the general planning, and 2nd was executing our plans down in Orlando. Although we did end up going to Kennedy Space Centre, all of my group’s footage was set in DisneyWorld.
The driving question for our project was “How do Disney theme parks create powerful emotional connections with visitors that can shape visitors’ memories and perspectives for years to come?” and to answer that I worked in a group with Noah, Gwen, Patrick, Faith, and Max L to create a Video-Essay on how Disney creates a personal connection between its merchandise and its guests and customers.
We started working towards our video by doing some research on each of our topics. My group chose to research and present how Disney creates a personal connection with their guests and so each of us set out to learn and then bring to class a chunk of information that related to our topic. Reluctantly our main topics within our topic were merchandise, food, community, and Disney adults. I won’t go into detail about each one of those because in the end we chose to focus on merchandise because you don’t need to spend a unholy amount of money to learn about the product you just bought.
DisneyWorld’s ”Community” PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) below👇
https://www.craft.do/s/pyJRmCEl4r22Cn
Just a few days before leaving the country, our teachers tasked us all the planning documents that we had to have finished before we set foot on the plane. That meant that an entire screenplay, storyboard, and series of call-sheets had to be finished in a timeframe of only a couple days. It was hard to do but we got it done. My group decided to split up into groups to be the most productive however as usual it had its flaws. Max worked on the storyboard, Patrick was supposed to work on call sheets, Noah, Faith, and I were supposed to work on the screenplay together, and I have no idea what Gwen ended up doing (im being as nice as possible). In the end Patrick struggled on the call sheets so I did 3/4s of them and helped write some of the screenplay. In the end it all worked out but I think that the time we were given through us all off.
The storyboards were basic panels that would describe what each scene would look like, sound like, and who would be involved. If I was in charge of making these you would have seen a few light drawings but since Max L and his artistic ego were in charge of this department he created a series of works of art in each panel. I’m not complaining though because it made our group look a lot more advanced.
The screenplay was the hardest part because the people working on this were the ones envisioning what our video was going to look like the entire way through. I thought this was hard because I struggled with figuring out what we were going to show next but luckily 3 minds work a lot faster than 1 alone. I did however manage to write a few solid scenes in our video that I believe were a strong component.
Finally the call sheets. To be completely honest, I thought these things were useless. Groups had access to their screenplays and storyboards so making an additional document that says what specific scene includes said person was unnecessary in my opinion. My group at least never called upon our call sheets to see who was supposed to be where.
Now that we were in Florida, all we had to do was film. This was a bit rockier than I thought because it’s the easiest thing in the world to get distracted at DisneyWorld. Also all of us ended up with way too much b-roll which reminds me I need to clear out some of my camera roll. Once again we all had jobs to do/film. Max and I probably had the hardest job because we had to ask random customers and Disney shopkeepers if they would be interested in being apart of a filmed interview. We ended up getting some quality interviews in. I managed to ask a worker at Disney’s merchandise store in Disney Springs a couple of inventory questions while Max interviewed a really nice grandfather from New Jersey who was happy to be interviewed as long as he wasn’t filmed which was fine by us.
Fast forward a couple weeks to when we returned to class after spring break we collected all of our footage and piled it on Noah because he volunteered to put together our video. Props to Noah for making this video all by himself.
Finally before I sign off again, I’ll answer our driving question which guided us throughout the entirety of this project;
- “How do Disney theme parks create powerful emotional connections with visitors that can shape visitors’ memories and perspectives for years to come?”
Disney uses its power of merchandise to indulge more people into the “Disney Experience”. Disney uses a series of strategies to create personal connection between its merchandise and the buyer by offering personal customizations, limited series, seasonal trends, unique everyday items, and more. I believe that the main idea of Disney merchandise is to create a souvenir without calling it a souvenir. What people do is they buy a stuffed animal for example and they take it home because that piece of merchandise tells a story of both the characters life or story AND the magical experience they had when they visited a Disney park and took this special item home. The stories and memories made at the parks and then passed on to the merchandise is so effective because everyone has a unique experience wether its how they spent their time at the park or how the view on of Disney’s magical stories.
When we returned home, our teachers gave us the chance to revise our individual contributions to our videos. I took this opportunity to expand on my section of the video and create a short clip about how and why Disney creates such a strong emotional connection with their guests using the power of their merchandise. I’m really happy with the way my video turned out so I’m grateful that I was given the chance to improve my work.
I really enjoyed this trip and this project as well because everything we learned about Disney’s strategies make sense and make me wonder about what other companies use specific methods to sell their products/experiences.
Once again thank you for reading,
Adios.