Tuesday, August 21, 2012

New Imagineering Video Unveiled WDW New Fantasyland Maurice's Cottage



Walt Disney Imagineering released a new video showing Maurice’s Cottage at WDW New Fantasyland. The video shows the whimsical garden and cottage theming which includes inventions created by Belle’s father, Maurice as well as others items participating to the theming.



But the reason why you have to watch this video till the end is to see the magic mirror which magically becomes a portal into Beast’s Castle. There is a real good trick here and after watching the video several times i still can't totally guess how they do it. Sure the pixie dust, lights and projection effects are obvious but the mirror is getting bigger little by little until it apparently becomes a door - the portal to Beast's Castle - and it's really well done. Have a look!




Picture and video: copyright Disney

3 comments:

Luke said...

I watched this last night!
At first I thought, oh projection, no big deal, then I just realized that the mirror was actually stretching! I was totally blown away.

Dejiki Nicholas said...

The Mirror portal reminds me of the Haunted Mansion's stretching room portraits.

There's two layers of the mirror's "frame" and the exterior layer slides to reveal the bottom layer (which is slightly smaller). Watch the video in 1080p! You'll see the frame's true edges and lines where the mirror extends out. It's very smoothly executed and the projection helps to mask the layers.

Matthew M said...

I think the wall under the chair rail is also a moving section of wall. the bottom section of frame is attached to it, and the whole section of wall, which is recessed right behind the upper section, moves down. the mirror piece or pieces are the furthest back layer. when the video switches from the far away to the closeup of the door, the mirror synchronizes with the projected door gap and the mirror opening shifts to center, then opens. as the previous com mentor noted, the majority of the frame is telescoping pieces. also note that the width of the mirror never expands past the outer thickness of the mirror when it was narrower.