'One Day at Disney': A Story of the Company's Legacy

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work at the greatest arts and entertainment company? This documentary film gives us a look at the people who make the magic.

One Day at Disney is a documentary film that gives viewers a glimpse at a typical workday at the greatest entertainment company. Disney started out as one man who has an extraordinary imagination and created the original Mickey Mouse cartoons and expanded into a series of original animated and live-action movies produced by the company itself. The film also has a book and a short film series that is based on the title of the same name.

This documentary features animators and other workers at the greatest entertainment company from archived recordings and interviews. Eric Goldberg is a featured animator who worked on drawings of Mickey Mouse and The Genie from Disney’s Aladdin. he shares with the viewers how his failures during his career have shaped him into the person he is today. He shows us “his wall” of animated sketches of recognizable Disney characters. The sketches were part of his project where he had to help decorate a restaurant in Shanghai using original artwork. Eric Goldberg shares with the viewers how each original movie created by Disney Animation Studios has its own universal theme. This is the secret to how many Disney animated movies became popular today. Looking closely at Disney’s storytelling in movies such as Pinocchio, we see how the quality of optimism exists in almost every major movie made by the Walt Disney Company.

One Day at Disney doesn’t show viewers just the people who make the animated films and cartoons; this documentary features people who work at the Disney Parks, live-action Disney musicals, and news shows. Jerome Ranft, the sculptor who works at Pixar Animation Studios, shows viewers how he creates sculptures of Disney Pixar characters with his own hands. His brother Joe Ranft worked at the company as a legendary Disney and Pixar animator. When Joe died in a car accident in 2005, Jerome decided to live in his brother’s vision and career, carrying on the family tradition. The Walt Disney Company continues to grow, as creativity and imagination never end.

Though this documentary has been released in 2019, the storytelling continues even during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, there were news events that featured stories about racist attacks on minorities. In response to these racist attacks, the Walt Disney Company created, produced, and released movies that feature cultural representations of minorities to support the victims and spread the messages of representation of minorities and diversity among people to kids and families. Some of these movies include Encanto and Turning Red.

Overall, One Day at Disney gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the people who make the magic in arts and entertainment.