The Making of Le Visionarium
Transcript of the 28 minute documentary about Euro Disneyland’s Circle-Vision attraction
Discoveryland was once home to Le Visionarium, a 15 minute Circle-Vision 360˚ film that took guests back in time to meet Jules Verne. This high-tech show, one of Euro Disneyland’s 34 opening day attractions, combined in-theatre audio-animatronics, with nine 35 mm projectors, and an emotional score by Bruce Broughton; a tribute to the people, heritage and breathtaking beauty of France and Europe.
Unfortunately it closed after a 12-year run (on 5 September 2004) to make way for Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, as part of the on-going “Pixarification” (i.e. dumbing down) of the parks.
In July 2008, a 28 minute documentary The Making of Le Visionarium showed up online. This video contained rare interviews with some of the attraction’s cast and crew:
- Jeff Blyth (Director)
- John Badham (Executive Producer)
- Antoine Compain (Producer)
- Michel Piccoli (Actor, Jules Verne)
- Gérard Depardieu (Actor, Baggage Handler)
- Rémy Julienne (Stunt Coordinator)
- David Justice (Hot Air Balloon Pilot)
It was partly in English and partly in French, with no subtitles, making it challenging for some of us to understand. So I thought it would be useful if I transcribed and (with some help) translated the whole thing into English. The result is the following article, which aims to preserve this precious information about the attraction.
Jeff Blyth: Well it’s a round theatre. There are nine screens completely surrounding the audience. They’re standing. It was considered at one point to try to have seats, but unfortunately they’d be very limiting in terms of the angle of view. So people really liked to be able to stand, to look in all directions. The sound completely surrounds them as well. There’s a speaker behind every screen and speakers overhead. It’s quite a total environment that they’re in.
The robot in the theatre is a character called Timekeeper and he’s the one who’s actually operating the theatre. He’s the one who has sent this other robot back into the past, he’s the one who’s controlling everything we see. So the reason I say we have to program the theatre is that, every cut in the film, every place where we’re cutting from one location to another location, is actually Timekeeper manipulating the time machine. So all of that has to be programmed exactly precisely to match the film.
The experience that the audience has is that they’re not seeing a movie.
They have gone into a time chamber, which is operated by Timekeeper, a robot who’s actually in the theatre with them. And Timekeeper is going to send off this little camera system into the past, using this time machine, and what the audience sees on the screens are what she sees. She has nine camera systems, that’s why she’s called 9-Eye. And what 9-Eye sees, or what happens to 9-Eye, is what we see up on the movie screens. And the idea is that, unlike other CircleVision movies where we’ve tried to be invisible with our camera, in this case we’re making her part of the scene. More than that, in the theatre, Timekeeper is actually controlling the machine, and therefore every time there’s a cut in the movie it’s really Timekeeper throwing the switches to go to a new location.
In addition to that, there’s also some interactive things that happen in the theatre, like we take some people out of the audience and send them off into the future. And what we see on the screens is Paris, 200 years from now, with that family, this typical family of Disney guests, being sent off into the future.
Michel Piccoli: The story of this film is the story of Jules Verne who, as you know, was a writer who traveled into the future, who imagined a lot of things. He comes back to Earth and realises that what he had imagined does exist and work. So he’s amazed. In fact, shooting is taking place in Alsace, in Rouffach. Right now we’re in Rouffach, which means we’re in the middle of vineyards in Alsace; a little further you have the small mountains of Alsace. But it’s not a movie about Alsace. You know, the TGV nowadays, it passes through countries so fast. But in this film, you see the TGV and there will be another scene – in which, alas, I am not – where you see, from a helicopter, the TGV going through the vineyards of Alsace.
Antoine Compain: Today we’re shooting, as you do in the film industry, in the reverse order of what you’ll see at the end. We’re shooting a close-up of Jules Verne who finds himself stuck like a mosquito to the front of the TGV after being picked up in a tunnel, which Timekeeper had sent him to by mistake.
Rémy Julienne: Of course, Michel Piccoli will never be able to stay balanced on this surface, because it’s slanted and also very slippery. We had to make a cast so that he would be relatively comfortable. And this cast allows him to stay there and play his part of a man stuck on the train. Of course, it’s a model of the train, it’s for close-ups, extreme close-ups, and dialogue. But later this scene will be seen with a real TGV.
Michel Piccoli: He (Jules Verne) forgets about his past and lives again in the present. So, after seeing all these admirable things that have been created, will he still have the imagination to go further than that? I don’t know, the movie doesn’t say. In fact, there was also a quarrel in the movie, between H. G. Wells, who imagined that you could conquer time, and Jules Verne who could only see machines being used to explore the Earth. He didn’t believe that this machine that explored time could exist. It does exist! And it’s thanks to this machine that explores time that he shows up a century later, by magic or rather by the power of the Timekeeper, this extraordinary machine. So he is terrified and happy as a child at the same time, because he sees that everything works.
You know, I think the film industry has a great quality, in the sense that it is able to travel. And that people from the film industry, whether they are Europeans or Americans, understand each other right away. Of course, it’s being made for Euro Disneyland in Paris, but who will come to see this movie? The whole world. Or Europe. But we all understand each other very well, in the end.
Gérard Depardieu: I met Jeffrey Katzenberg in Hollywood, who showed me a project of what he wanted to do in Euro Disneyland, here in France. And so, because I really like Jeffrey, he said, “if you want to have a part in it, we’d like that.” I said, “yes, yes, I’d like that, it would be an homage”. And so here I am, a baggage handler. It’s not bad. In the word “to handle”, there’s the word “euphoric”! And there’s Piccoli, my friend.
And I’m very happy that the Timekeeper is Robin Williams, who is also a friend.
And I saw that Jeremy Irons is there too, he’s a guy I really like, a great actor. So I’m very happy to be involved with this film. And also, I love the technology. I’ve seen 9-Eye, this camera with, well, these nine cameras in one, really. It’s really impressive. I don’t know how it works, I don’t know, I think Jeff, the director, knows how to use it really well, since he’s made five films for Disney, I think. It’s nice. As always, I’m working as a part of a family, and I must say I like being part of the Disney family too.
John Badham: Today we’re lucky to be in Paris at the Arc de Triomphe, and we’re going to have a big automobile pile-up, and motorcycles and cars all piling up around Jules Verne, who is almost 100 years out of date and finding himself in modern Paris and doesn’t know what to do with modern traffic and so on. But he’s totally fascinated by the new technology and seeing all of these things, instead of being frightened as you and I would be, standing in the middle of this terrible traffic that Paris has today. He’s really quite entranced by the motorcycles and the automobiles and the people and the noise and so on.
The approach has been with the idea that European audiences have a tremendous facility with languages, that they’re able to understand more than one language. And so we have let the languages sort of run rampant. There will be mostly French but there will be some Italian, there will be some Spanish, some English, and the languages will be changing quite a bit. But it is basically for a French speaking audience.
Antoine Compain: As soon as you try to emphasise Europe in its broadest sense, it becomes difficult to omit Russia. And since we have the opportunity to shoot by mounting the camera on this machine fifteen or twenty metres off the floor with a very, very beautiful panorama of the Red Square, with hot-air balloons, some of which are original concepts by Andre Heller, we couldn’t miss such an opportunity.
Marina Chakova: I think that the shooting for Euro Disney on the Red Square is a very good sign, at least it became possible now to do it here. And also I think that it has a very good human feeling behind it, because kids all over the world they watch Disney movies and they all love it and it makes us closer to each other. It shows that we’re all human.
David Justice: Hi. I’m David Justice, pilot of the Walt Disney balloon EARFORCE ONE, and today we’re standing in the middle of Red Square. We’re doing some filming here for Euro Disney and it’s quite a sight. I never ever believed that I would be here in Moscow with Mickey Mouse. So we’re going to be starting filming here in a few minutes and hopefully the wind’s good today, so everything will go well.
I think it’s the chance of a lifetime. I never in my wildest dreams believed that I would be here, much less with Mickey Mouse. And we have the Russian soldiers for chase crew, along with Russian army trucks for our chase vehicles, and they’re unpacking the balloons now. And it’s just an exciting time for all of us.
Jeff Blyth: This camera design goes back to the late 1950s and it’s quite a unique design. It’s got folded optics. The idea is that we’ve got nine cameras all seemingly viewing the scene from the exact centre of the theatre, which is impossible to put nine cameras there. And so this is why we’ve come up with this design which is folded, so to speak, with mirrors. And it’s very effective at putting an audience in a particular location, as if they were there themselves. The audience is able to turn and look in any direction and see exactly what the camera has seen.
Michel Piccoli: Preparing and reloading the camera takes a lot of time. It takes a lot longer and you can’t edit, with close-ups, medium shots, etc. It’s one shot and then you cut. So the work is much slower than with a normal camera. But the acting is the same. I imagine that there’s only one camera because, out of the nine cameras, only one is shooting me. So I imagine it’s only one camera.
John Badham: The director constantly has to be worried about, where is the audience focus? Where are they looking and where are we going to take them to next? And because it’s so big and so all-encompassing it becomes that much more complicated. It’s much easier in a regular movie where you know they’re only looking at one screen right in front of them, and they don’t worry about what’s behind them, or what’s to the side of them.
Michel Piccoli: I find it very nice to see this old man – because these famous people, they’re only ever shown as old men, aren’t they, since photography came when they were old enough to have a white beard – to see this man who comes back, like a child, and sees all these extraordinary things that he had imagined, and he’s amazed by what happens.
