Geeking Out At ‘Rise Of The Resistance’

Speaker 1: 00:00 This is KPBS midday edition. I'm Jade Hindman this weekend the Rocky horror show opens at the OB Playhouse in Scripps ranch theater stages and early comedy from playwright John Patrick Shanley called Italian American reconciliation. Something else that opens this weekend though Disney's new ride Galaxy's edge rise of the resistance it opened today. KPBS reporter Beth Mondo was one of the first on it earlier this week and has more with Danny Beller Disney Imagineer and show programmer. Speaker 2: 00:29 We're here at the rise of the resistance and you are an Imagineer. Now, some people may not be familiar with what that term means. So can you define that? Absolutely. Imagineer. What a cool title. Right? So, um, I think that the original description, at least as I understood it was it's a combination of imagination and engineering. So it's bringing that creative and technical together, which is one of the things that I'm, I lead a show programming team and I think we are like that, that that bridge between creative and technical true Imagineers. So at riser, the resistance, the ride mixes a lot of different things together. Where does the, like where does this all start? How do you decide what's gonna be on the ride? What's part of it, how big it is, what the storyline is? How does that process go? I think that process, I mean there's a lot of iteration that happens in the beginning when we're building an attraction like star Wars, rise of the resistance. Speaker 2: 01:24 There's a lot of conversations about what is the story we're trying to tell? What's the best way to tell it? What's the technology that tells that story? It is the most technologically advanced attraction that we've opened at Disneyland. And that's amazing. And that secret is to figure out how to tell that story. So sometimes there's ideas that we don't have a way to tell. Those are for future attractions. And then there's some where we know exactly the technology to tell. And that's kind of the cool thing. And I hope when you ride the attraction, you guys rode, right? I hope when you ride it, you're not thinking about that technology. You're just immersed in the environment that we're offering. So that environment mixes a lot of different things. There are, there's production design and props and video, all those things. What is your role in terms of kind of integrating all those different elements together? Speaker 2: 02:10 Um, so show programmers, we bring all of the, like all of the disciplines work before us, the audio team and the lighting team and the video team, they all have all of their work. And I always say it's kind of like they've all worked on this for years and then we're the final tapestry that ties it all together. We cue those things together, we bring that figure finally to life because the audio animatronic has audio and the video is reacting to him and there's scenery nearby. And so my team does all of that timing to make that finally come to life. So while you were going through this process, was there a point at which you said, huh, can we do this and did it happen or were you told though, I know there are definitely moments in this process. One of the secrets I think of working in Imagineering is it's very collaborative. Speaker 2: 02:56 There's a lot of conversations that happen. There's a lot of, um, thoughts that we all sit down together and come up with the next step. Um, we had clear creative guidance from John Marina who is our creative director, but I think that it's also an opportunity for the team to say, what if we did this? What about this opportunity? There's a couple of things in the attraction that started as the same thing, but the timing adjusted a bit. We did a little bit of different logic in order to get a cleaner show for the guests. Now with something as complex as this, how do you build in kind of the confidence that this is going to run like hundreds of times every day for thousands of people? And like what's the complexity of, of that aspect of it? I feel like you're reading my mind. One of the things that I say is your programming's job is to deliver the creative show and make it reliable and maintainable. Speaker 2: 03:47 Right? So we build, we work with our world-class, um, maintenance teams and we start talking very early on about how can we get access to these things? How can we figure out how to make that better for them? So there's a lot of that conversation and especially on this project, they were part of our team very, very early in order to make sure that we're all talking and we're all working as one team. And in working on this, did you have a favorite part that you partook in or that you're particularly satisfied with? So I'm a bit of a nerd, so I really enjoy, um, logic and how it all works together. And for me it's the beginning of the attraction when you talk to Ray and then you go into the next step, and I don't want to give too much away, but there's three or four spaces you're in before we actually put feet on an on a vehicle. Speaker 2: 04:34 Right? That to me was a lot of fun working on figuring out the timing of that, how the show was going to carry through, how we have other shows that play if you get delayed in that show. So that was for me and my team, that was a ton of fun figuring that all out. So how many of these like delay videos did you have to create? There is, there's a lot of different places in the attraction where you can be paused before you're going on to the next thing. And there is a ton. I think, um, one of our animators said that, uh, we have animation for over an hour. You will not be in this attraction an hour, but there's a lot of different paths, there's a lot of different places you can go. So I think it's a really cool opportunity to see something slightly different every time. Speaker 2: 05:14 And coming through Galaxy's edge as a fan, what is it that you enjoy about it? For me, Galaxy's edge, I really enjoy the little touches. There is a creature that appears near the restrooms, which is one of my rights and it's just so great. And as a fan, I love seeing those little moments that remind me. And then I saw a recent film and I saw that moment I was like, Hey you guys. So that was really cool. But then also, you know, I have to say it's, it's the satisfaction from work of seeing. I walked through just about an hour ago and there was a little girl using the force to bring that creature out and it was amazing and the timing worked perfectly. And to see that is also really special to see people enjoying the work that we did. All right. Well I wanna Speaker 1: 05:58 thank you very much for talking to me about rise of the resistance. Absolutely. I can't wait for everybody to have a chance to experience star Wars rise of the resistance at Disneyland. Now. That was Beth Huck Amando speaking with Disney Imagineer. Danny Beller about the new rise of the resistance attraction at Disneyland. You can see video of the ride on Beth's Sinema junkie blog@kpbs.org.