www.themeparkinsider.com: People who work at theme parks throw around the word "magic" a lot. And they should, because that's exactly what the best theme park designers create. Now, I'm not talking about the sappy popular meaning of the word "magic" — I'm talking about magic as an act of stagecraft. It's a visual con, designed to make you believe that you are seeing something that can't possibly be in our normal, natural world.
16 comments:
This creation of Pandora is absolutely beautiful; and, the article’s commentary about how stagecraft creates magic is only enforced by the video given of Pandora. It’s really quite remarkable how much designers can do. It is one thing to modify on-screen pixels to display animations – which, admittedly, takes an incredible amount of time and effort – it is another experience to create a physical realm that reflects, in reality, the things in our imaginations. I honestly cannot wait for Pandora to open to the public. It’s an incredible idea and appears to be very well executed. These sorts of displays really make me realize just how little credit designers and crafters receive for the work that they do. In Trump’s America, the arts are not on the forefront of politics’ mind. However, art is what inspires the imagination, what allows children and adults to grow and innovate. And, innovation is ultimately what moves civilization forwards.
I think what makes theme parks like Disney World such a successful business is the park's ability to create a complete environment that leads to a very immersive, personal experience. This is all part of what leads to the "magic" that the author discusses in this article. Though Disney World definitely does this the best, many other theme parks are beginning to adopt this sort of style as well. However, Disney has definitely mastered this, especially in the last couple years. With the incoming Pandora section of Animal Kingdom, Disney will really take it to another level. This is not only an immersive world, but it is a world completely unlike our own. I am very excited to see how Pandora turns out, since there has definitely been a lot of hype building up to it. Additionally, the new Star Wars Land that Disney is building for Hollywood Studios should be similarly immersive and incredibly well executed.
This is exactly what I love about theme parks. They create a completely immersive alternate world. I think part of the reason why theme parks can work is because the audience comes with the intention of suspending disbelief, though obviously this willingness to be immersed in the world will only help if the world the theme park creates is detailed and realistic. It would be easy enough to walk around look for details like where the speakers are hidden (which I do), but most people don’t. As long as the world is internally consistent and seems natural in the sense that the how-it-was-made aspects are hidden, people will be able to allow themselves to believe in the world. The world of theme parks isn’t just created by those who design it, it is a collaborative process between the work the designers have created and the imagination of the guests. The product being an immersive world that feels real because everyone involved is committed to making it real.
I thought it was interesting that they were using the real world elements to contribute to a sense of realism, like creating an initial sight and sound impression of a rainforest and also by mixing real plants and the Pandora plants. Some of the movie world plants are made more real by association with the natural world. At least from the video, I thought it seemed almost too nature trail like, perhaps that was just because they highlighted the conservation efforts and had the kid learning about a spider in a container. But once I saw the image of the bioluminescent world, I was convinced of the “magic.” I suppose the experience was also designed to seem real, but allow for a discovery of different sounds and plants and such, elements that should not be there, and anything filmed is already focused, so I can’t really be expecting to feel that discovery.
To be honest, as someone who has had very little interaction with anything having to do with the construction of any sort of scenery or scenic design in general, I was excited to learn more about it in terms of how theme parks are designed and constructed, especially since we don't really cover any of that in the classes I've taken here and the short excerpt of the article kind of made it seem like it was actually going to talk about the craftsmanship it spoke highly of. Granted the author probably doesn't have much training in theme park construction, but nonetheless the shortness of this article made me want to search more information. I'm also excited to see more and more about this new Avatar park being opened, especially having known people from CMU have worked on it, as well having seen peers working on Hyperloop, which isn't exactly the same thing but still made me think of it. Although I do not intend on declaring scenic design, hopefully I will continue to learn more about this side of design and construction.
This article brings up a really cool topic. Theme parks do have the job of convincing people that these worlds that they have seen on screen can exist in the world we live in. This means that the creators have to work with the facts of our world to bring the alternative facts of the imagined world to life. One of my favorite parts about theater is the 'magic' that we create as well and all the time it takes to make these imagined things reality. I love hearing seeing new ways that theatre artists wow us with how realistic or believable they can male a production. I am interested in learning more about what this type of work is like for a theme park. There audience is up close and submerged in these worlds and it must take a lot of attention to detail to make those attractions successful.
I loved this article. I thought the article's author had a great platform of discussing the art of "magic" in theme and the obstacles involved with achieving realness in an interactive/up-close setting. Following the article, I watched the clip attached about Disney's new Pandora exhibit in the Animal Kingdom. It was incredibly fascinating to watch. I thought it was particularly exciting that the people speaking were not just designers or engineers, but scientist and environmental advocates. I think the idea of Pandora allows itself to be more accessible to reality than some Disney rides. The environment lends itself to be rooted in nature which is a very tangible thing. What I thought was most challenging was the interactive element of the exhibit. It is one challenge to make something appear real but an entirely new one to allow it to be real upon repeated interaction. I'm really excited to see this new addition at Disney, hopefully sometime soon!
I really like how Niles explores the psychology of what theme park magic is and how we have come to perceive it as such. I absolutely agree with him: Stagecraft truly is our own form of magic on Earth. It is really interesting to me about how we are unconsciously trained from a young age about what is possible and what is not. This is a prominent reason why the audience's’ ability, and willingness, to temporarily suspend their disbelief is such an interesting component of entertainment to me. Whether they are aware of it or not, the audience plays a key role in the collaboration team when it comes to entertainment, particularly when it is performed live. It is a reciprocity relationship between the creative team, performers, and the audience. They are all required to contribute to create successful entertainment. I really appreciate all the work the Disney Imagineering team has put into Pandora. I think that one successful quality that it will definitely have going to be how it slowly dissolves away the real world by easing you out sights and sounds that are familiar and gradually introducing more alien elements here and there until the viewer is immersed completely.
Theme park design, and themed entertainment in general is one of those incredibly involved fields that I know almost nothing about. It's certainly a very interesting and involved one--themed entertainment, at least from what I know about it, is arguably the most involved form of entertainment at least from a technical viewpoint. Not only does it have to be incredibly believable, since it will be seen from almost all angles, from a construction standpoint it also has to be very well made--as many theme park rides have to run for years the same way, much longer than most large scale shows run. It's something that interests me to a degree, but at the same time, parks like Disney don't interest me--they're very over the top, and very commercialized, which bothers me to some degree. But overall, this article was very interesting and informative, and I'd love to read more on this installation and how installations like this are achieved.
This is really interesting. I wonder what exactly happens psychologically that convinces us its real? In my opinion i feel that the mixture of real and expected with the unreal and unexpected really allow us to believe a space. something i always notice when i go to theme parks and the like, is that the attention to detail everywhere is so very important to keeping the magic going. No matter where a guest goes there should be detail and thought put into what they are seeing and what they are experiencing. Now in theater there is a certain sense of disbelieving. But i think that as artists we should explore and flex that. I think that we should see how real we can make the "magic" for our audiences. With the rise of immersive theater i can see how more and more artists are exploring this. i am eager to see the attention to details and worlds that we will be creating in the future.
I do think that theme parks live in this magical world in our minds, where we see stories we know in our heads come to life around us. I have to say that I think the biggest part of this magic though is not in the physical art created but just in the imagination of children. Kids accept whats around them as real much more easily than adults do, so if a child sees a flower that changes color from blue to red, they believe their is a plant that is morphing before them, where as someone a little older would take into account their past experience with plants and lights and draw a different conclusion that the plant was built with lights that shine through and change color. This is what theme parks play on the most, is that they have created this beautiful culture where adults go and turn off that logical part of their brain and just look at the environment through the eyes they had when they were a kid. I think it really is successful and adds an incredible joy to the place.
I remember the first time I went to a theme park after I started to learn about basic design and technology, and I became absolutely amazed. I went to Disney world and was amazed at the endless amount of advanced technology that they had. I am even more amazed that it is all simply to bring people into a world in which they typically do not see in order to make them have a fun time. This is similar to movies, but I continue to be amazed, but also happy, at the amount of time and money that can go into huge projects like these. I love that the article refers to it as magic, because before I began to learn about stagecraft, I was one of the people who did not care about how it worked but that it worked. And that it looked beautiful at the same time. Now, the main reason I want to go back to theme parks is to look at all of the tech. It is the same thing with haunted houses, I love to go in to be able to see what they have done to try and scare you for five minutes. I love entertainment like this and I love that the magic of it is something that I am learning to do.
This is a very cool topic for discussion. Theme parks have been tricking their audience into thinking anything but the truth for many years now and let me tell you, they have been doing a pretty successful job. For me, I think it Is the animated movies that really help attract their audience. Growing up, and even now, I still love Disney and all of its aspects. They really do a fantastic job attracting their audience and making people continue to come back to their parks. SO although a lot of how Disney is so successful is a mystery, most of it is pretty self-explanatory and is pretty obvious. Would I call what they are doing “fake”? No probably not. I would probably say something more along the lines of a dream, and after all, Disney’s say is… where dreams come true. So even though that might seem a little fake, I don’t think it is, I just think Disney has done a fantastic job with getting audience and keeping it nothing fake about it.
I agree that this is a very cool question. Growing up in Florida, theme parks were a huge part of my childhood. My family and I would make almost monthly visits to parks such as Disney World, Universal Studios, Busch Gardens, etc. Though they were all different, they each shared a sense of realism. They are amazing. Mainstreet USA (the first themed entrance of Disney World) immediately sets the tone for your visit. It is a fanciful little town that captures the essence of Disney World. It is happy and cheerful. I have always been fascinated by the process of creating theme parks. Cinderella's castle, for example , is perfectly depicted comparatively to the movie. I have been watching lots of videos of the new avatar world and I think that will be incredibly exciting and realistic as well. Overall, theme parks are great because they reassert the inner child in everyone and regardless of your age you can still take away a little piece of magic.
So confession time, I have never been to a theme park. But this video makes me want to go so badly. Theatre to a certain extent allows you to immerse yourself in a new world and experience the impossible, and that’s part of why I love doing what I do, figuring out how to create the impossible in the real world with real-world physics, but to be able to actually walk around an impossible world, and touch and feel and smell it, and still have it feel real? One part of my brain would be completely transported, completely immersed in the fantasy and living in the world and the moment, and another part of my brain would be whirring at 100 mph trying to figure out how it's done. One key element that I picked up on from the video was the integration of real world elements and “alien” elements and creating a gradual transition from a more real feeling world into the alien and fantastical. This allows the guests to gradually suspend their disbelief and live fully inside a world of magic, at least for a couple of hours.
I once went backstage at Disney world and it ruined the entire theme park experience. They are masters of sightlines and hide the run-down portables, warehouses, and exposed backs of roller coasters very well. The thing I could never let go about why Disney world is not as enjoyable to me as other immersive experiential type entertainment is the fact that you have to share it with a bunch of snot-nosed kids in mouse ears covered in sticky sugar and loudly narrating everything they see. At least when you’re in a theater, everyone mutually agrees that you should probably shut up and not wiggle but Disney world is like a zoo where all the animals were released and you’re wearing a suit of meat. That said, if Disney was an isolated bubble that you could experience alone or in silence, the fabrication they do is incredible. The quality of their work is what makes up for the company.
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