Cool new personalized WDW commercial

[Wilt Dasney]

I saw this a week or so ago. I kinda rolled my eyes at most of it ("One VERY SPECIAL person...whose name we won't utter"), but I admit I was impressed by the Goofy audio. It gave it less of a cheesy "YOUR NAME HERE" feel and actually surprised me.

 

[Disneyfan2000]

omgg i love it soooo much =D now does anyone know how i can save it>?

 

[hwdelien]

Well, sorry for sharing. Sorry I bored everyone.

I personally think that the Goofy part at the end is especially cool. I guess somewhere he recorded a long list of names and the website uses the ones it knows. (A hard or unpronounceable one will come out "our special guest".)

Can anyone confirm whether this is how the audio is done? (Especially since, obviously, "everyone" is capable of doing this, and it is so five-minutes-ago. Are we really that jaded? Sigh. Maybe we should just stop going to WDW altogether, since there is no more "wonder" left in the world.)

I enjoyed the video and sent it out to 20-30 people last week. Some of them were in IT and we were all impressed. It's one thing to superimpose words on a still object, but a completely different thing when it's a float moving down Main Street or footage that is being zoomed, etc. Even in million dollar movies you can sometimes see an artifact of the process that gives it away. This was as close to flawless as you could get. When Donald grabs the sheet music it's practically a still image, that would have been easy, the rest, no so much. Thanks for taking the time to share. I already knew about it, but had to come to your defense. I'll just sit back and wait for the arrows. Aim true dear friends.

 

[agent86]

Since it's so easy and Disney is behind the times, would you two like to share your homemade customizable videos with all of us? I'm sure we'd love to see them.

oh, and thanks, Paul! I enjoyed that and sent it around to some of my family members who wouldn't have seen it otherwise. :wave:

For the record, I didn't say it wasn't enjoyable or entertaining. The point of my post was in response to the OP's assertion that this was somehow a cutting edge, new, innovative thing that only Disney has done. If the OP has never seen it before and was entertained by it, that's all that matters. And even if many of you (myself included) have seen it before, but were still entertained, that's great too. I wasn't knocking or debating it's entertainment value. I was simply correcting the OP's belief that it was somehow something new. It isn't.

Also for the record, I am not the poster who stated it was "easy to do". I honestly have no idea whether it's easy or difficult to do, nor would I claim to know how it is done, because I am not a computer programmer. But again, that's not the point. There are many things that no longer are impressive, even if I can't tell you specifically how it is done. Something doesn't always cease being impressive just because you find out how to do it. Sometimes it ceases being impressive because you've seen it done so many times already. It's kind of like if you were to go to a magic show where all the magician did was two hours of tricks you've seen a hundred times. You might not be able to explain how he did all of the tricks, but you'd likely not come away impressed. It's basically the same thing here.

I think if Disney had done this a couple of years ago, before it had become an overdone gimmick, then that would have been cool. Part of what makes Disney Disney is the fact that they are often on the cutting edge of stuff like that. But to see them suddenly doing it now just has the appearance of them jumping on the bandwagon...a bandwagon that has already left the station, so to speak.

 

[agent86]

I enjoyed the video and sent it out to 20-30 people last week. Some of them were in IT and we were all impressed.

My girlfriend works in IT, and one misconception about IT people is that they all understand every aspect of computers. IT is actually a very broad field in which different job functions are very specialized. A network engineer, for example, might know everything there is to know about networks, but might not know how to create Flash files. Or a web developer might have incredible skills at creating impressive websites, but have no skills in basic programming.

My point is that just because you showed this to some IT folks and they were "all impressed", that still doesn't make this impressive technology. It's more likely that these are people who just happen to specialize in very different aspects of IT. And it's just as likely (VERY likely as a matter of fact) that this was the first time they have personally seen this because it's so separate from what they do or are interested in. I, too, was impressed the first time I ever saw it. I was also impressed the second and third times, but after that it got old. Then it got antiquated. Then Disney came out with their's. :lol:

 

[hardcard]

Since it's so easy and Disney is behind the times, would you two like to share your homemade customizable videos with all of us? I'm sure we'd love to see them.

oh, and thanks, Paul! I enjoyed that and sent it around to some of my family members who wouldn't have seen it otherwise. :wave:

I'm a software engineer with 13 years of development experience in web enviroments.. I design systems every day that integrate data with otherwise static information.. Using Adobe Flash CS4/Action script and integrating it with a URL querystring is about as basic as it gets, and I've done it several times....

Sorry, not impressed.

and for the record, I've done it with video, text, and pretty much any other web based media possible... Like the above poster, I didn't say I wasn't entertained by it, the technology just doesn't impress me anymore.. and as far as the 'goofy said my name'! Simply a process of prerecording a catalog of common names, thats it.. Same thing Paramount did for the transformers release on DVD..

 

[Toveck]

For the record, I didn't say it wasn't enjoyable or entertaining. The point of my post was in response to the OP's assertion that this was somehow a cutting edge, new, innovative thing that only Disney has done.

Just to put my 2 cents in. The post said nothing about being cutting edge, innovative or that only Disney had done this. The statement was that this was "the new PERSONALIZED video commercial that Disney is sending out" and that it was "waaay cool". Nothing about being cutting edge or anything like that.

It is new from Disney and it is cool, because my kids said so.

 

[prberk]

Just to put my 2 cents in. The post said nothing about being cutting edge, innovative or that only Disney had done this. The statement was that this was "the new PERSONALIZED video commercial that Disney is sending out" and that it was "waaay cool". Nothing about being cutting edge or anything like that.

It is new from Disney and it is cool, because my kids said so.

That is more along the lines of what bothered me. The original post was to let everyone know "news" from the parks -- that they had a cool new video that I thought was cool as it was personalized (and well done, I thought). The response that bothered me was more like, since the technology had been done before it was worthless here. And I just thought that was amazingly jaded.

Much of the technology at WDW is dated, but was used very creatively and still inspires people to dream and create. The monorail was "innovative" when it was installed. Now its technology is many years old. But it is still cool. And still shows a sense of fun and thinking creatively.

Creativity and inspiration themselves are limited if we say that things can only be so by using cutting-edge technology. The original Lilo & Stitch movie went back to using water-colors that had not been used in years -- but in doing so, it created something nice and even new in its own way. The same with Beauty & the Beast, which combined computer technology with hand-drawn characters (both of which had been done before) to make that wonderful, memorable ballroom dance scene.

Anyhow, I am sorry if I was too harsh in my response as someone noted, but I just felt like it was fun and cool -- and then someone just cast it aside because it wasn't the newest thing on the block. Disney's sense of wonder and inspiration is broader than that.

And, as the last poster implied, it is always new to someone! We can always appreciate sharing things that might be "old hat" to us, but a nice new thing to someone else.

I thought it was fun, and wanted to pass it on.

 

[agent86]

.. and as far as the 'goofy said my name'! Simply a process of prerecording a catalog of common names, thats it.. Same thing Paramount did for the transformers release on DVD..

Exactly!! And basically the same thing that Universal Studios did for the end of the ET Adventure attraction when it first opened nearly 19 years ago! It's funny that this is the one element that several posters noted as making it especially unique and different,... and yet this is the most outdated and least impressive part of the whole thing. :lol:

 

[agent86]

Is Disney behind? Sure, but is this marketing gimmick working? You betcha! Many people have sent it to me and then those people who they send it to send it to someone else, etc. Viral marketing at its finest.

"Viral marketing at its finest"?? Not really. You mentioned that several people have sent it to you, but you're also presumably known by your circle of friends and acquaintances as a huge Disney buff. As viral marketing goes, I wouldn't put this one up there very high, and certainly wouldn't describe it as viral marketing "at its finest". I suspect the vast majority of people who receive this and pass it along to others are mostly people within the Disney fan circles. Now if I go to work next week and a bunch of people who aren't hardcore Disney fanatics (in other words, the majority of Disney's target market) are saying, "Have you seen that cool new personalized video that Disney is sending out?!", then I might agree it's effective viral marketing. But that hasn't happened yet, and I would not lay good odds that it will happen. Again, if Disney had done this a couple of years ago when it was new, then I think it would have gotten people's attention, and it would have been effective marketing. But I think it's very safe to say that most of the people who are impressed by it now, and who are passing it along, are the very people that Disney doesn't need to be marketing to in the first place. When that's what's happening, it's not generally considered good or effective marketing. And certainly not marketing "at its finest".

 

[agent86]

Just to put my 2 cents in. The post said nothing about being cutting edge, innovative or that only Disney had done this.

No, but you're getting caught up in semantics and overlooking what the OP clearly was trying to convey. In his follow up post (post #5 of this thread, which I've copied below), he does state that "most of the world still can't do this" (a statement which doesn't carry much more weight than saying something like, "most of the world can't build microwave ovens"...That doesn't make microwave ovens a new and impressive thing). He also refers to it as a "technical achievement" (the moon landing was a "technical achievement"...this is a gimmick, and it's an old one now). And he illustrates this as being cutting edge by stating that "we have come a long way since Forrest Gump!" (This is presumably meant to compare the "effects" to those used in Forrest Gump, where Tom Hanks was digitally placed into old footage of historical events. To suggest that this even comes close to that effect, much less that it surpasses it, is absurd).

I still think it is cool. And most of the world still can't do this. We are way to smug about technical achievements these days, I think. I tried to be nice and offer it here, especially as an easy way for non-passholders to enjoy it.

I do think that it looks pretty smooth. We have come a long way since Forest Gump!

So I think it's safe to say that while the OP may not have used the WORDS, "cutting edge", "innovative" or "only Disney can do this", it's pretty obvious that's the message he intended to communicate.

Prediction: Oh wait, what's this I'm seeing in my crystal ball? Oh, it's a future post from the OP stating that's not at all what he meant at that I misunderstood him. :hammer:

 

[agent86]

The response that bothered me was more like, since the technology had been done before it was worthless here. And I just thought that was amazingly jaded.

Once again, no one has stated that this is "worthless" in terms of entertainment value. If you think that's what people are saying, then you haven't really read any of our posts. You act as though all you did was post this link and state that it was just something for fun, and that in response people jumped all over you and said it was worthless because it had been done before. You're ignoring the fact that you yourself tried to pass it off as something new and innovative, and people (myself included) were simply pointing out that it was not anything new anymore. Another poster referred to it as being great marketing ("viral marketing at its finest" was the exact quote), and I think most people would disagree with that as well. While I wouldn't go so far as to call it "worthless", I would not call it great marketing, or really even good marketing. I don't see this video as really driving much, if any, new business that Disney wouldn't have otherwise gotten anyway. Since that's the very thing that marketing is intended to do (that is, generate business) then calling this great marketing is a misnomer.

Much of the technology at WDW is dated, but was used very creatively and still inspires people to dream and create. The monorail was "innovative" when it was installed. Now its technology is many years old. But it is still cool. And still shows a sense of fun and thinking creatively.

Creativity and inspiration themselves are limited if we say that things can only be so by using cutting-edge technology.

I couldn't agree more with this point. But once again, it's contrary to the point you were clearly trying to make in post #5 of this thread.

 

[Erika]

This has certainly taken a strange turn :lookaroun
New or old, viral or not, does it really matter? :shrug:

Anyway, in response to the original post, yes, I think it's very cool