The Making of Ratatouille: Presentation
Full transcript of the presentation given by Imagineers Björn Heerwagen and Beth Clapperton, at the Ratatouille Fan Preview Day
At 11:00 on Sunday the 22nd of June 2014, deep inside Disney’s Hotel New York Convention Center, Imagineers Björn Heerwagen (Show Design and Production Manager) and Beth Clapperton (Art Director) gave a 45 minute presentation about The Making of Ratatouille, Disneyland Paris’ new €150 million motion-based, trackless dark ride.
The presentation was delivered to an audience of 55 fans, personally invited by Disney from countries all over Europe, as part of the Ratatouille Fan Preview Day. And, as you might have figured out, I was one of them. The taking of photos and video was forbidden during the presentation, but nothing was said about Voice Memos. So, what follows is a full transcript of the Voice Memo I recorded. Just be aware that it isn’t 100% accurate because a small amount of what was said was inaudible.
The presentation was introduced by the two Disneyland Paris Ambassadors, Jonathan Rabeutte and Antonella Giallombardo.
Jonathan: Welcome everybody. We’re gonna switch to English, as you all come from all over Europe. Great diversity today. So as you know, today’s an exciting day, because after five years in the making — five years of watching construction photos, reading news and rumours — today we’re gonna ride Ratatouille: The Adventure, the newest attraction. But you’re also gonna be experiencing Bistrot Chez Rémy, an all new immersive experience.
Jonathan: But today, the opening of Ratatouille is continuing the tradition of the great relationship between Disney and France. Some of you know that, Disney’s ancestors come from Isigny-sur-Mer in Normandy. Walt was here at age 17, Great World War I, working for the Red Cross. And most of the Disney classics that you love, are inspired by French fairytales such as Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and so and so and so. Right?
Antonella: But, as you can imagine, once we open a land such as La Place de Rémy — with a brand new attraction, a restaurant and a boutique coming soon — we need the work of lots of Cast Members, starting from our Walt Disney Imagineers, who imagine and create stories about our parks. And today, we have the chance to have with us, two of them, who have been working on the project of Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy for five years now. So the first one…
Beth: Four years, four years.
Antonella: OK, so the first one started working in Disneyland Paris during the construction process, in 1990. And since 1995 she has been working in our local Walt Disney Imagineering creative team, as Art Director.
Antonella: While the second person started in 1991, and today is a Show Producer and errr… no, Show Director, sorry, and…
Björn: He’s an Imagineer.
Antonella: Yeah. So please welcome, Beth Clapperton and Björn Heerwagen!
Beth: So, I think we’re gonna sit down to do this because otherwise we’re going to be standing right in front of the image and that’s not so good.
Björn: So I’m actually the Show Design and Production Manager.
Beth: So, thank you all for coming here today. You haven’t had the opportunity to try the attraction yet, have you? Has anyone ridden it? So, how was it?
Fan: Yay!
Beth: Yay! We’re very excited to be here. We’re very relieved because it’s been a lot of hard work for us, but it’s been very exciting to see the feedback that we’re getting so far. So, we’re very happy to give you a very thorough presentation. We do a lot of stuff really well but we’ve been a little bit busy, so this one might have a few bugs in it. So please be patient with us. I’m gonna start and Björn’s gonna push the buttons.
Beth: So you all know about the adventure of Ratatouille. We started this attraction in concept six years ago, with Tom Fitzgerald, and we knew that this park wanted an attraction that was family-based, a big attraction, and we really wanted to tell the story of Ratatouille. And we wanted to tell it in such a way that it was gonna be family-based and an adventure. So it took us a while to figure out how we were gonna tell it, and once we did, we started work on models and construction; models four years ago, and construction two years ago. So, we always knew we wanted to use the Ratatouille film as our basis.
Beth: So as you know, the attraction, well the project, is made of three principal areas. There’s the attraction, which is L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy, the Bistrot Chez Rémy, which is a 370-seater restaurant, and the new Place de Rémy, which is a beautiful place and is based on Paris. So we’ll continue, thank you Björn.
Beth: The plaza, which I had called “the plaza”, which we know now is the Place de Rémy. This is an original visual, a rendering that was done about five years ago, and you will see when you go down to this place, it looks remarkably like this. And I know you guys are fans and you wanna see a little bit the process of what we use, and you probably know, but we always start with visuals, before we start imaging how something’s going to be, and then we pass them to the stage of a model. And we still use physical models. We use a lot of 3D models, but we still build the models. And then we go to colour boards. We do quite detailed colour studies of our projects. And then, for this case, in the facades, we actually built, this is a full scale model mock-up, so real skies with all of the textures and everything pushed into one space. And then, as you know, what we do is we carve all of the facades in place so there’s a lot of — 2,000 square meters of — carved plaster and then we paint it all. And it ends up something like this and you will see it completed later, but this is us painting at the top of the chimney, up there you can. That’s on the lift and I think there’s another photo Björn.
Beth: So it’s just interesting to point out that with these facades, I know you’re gonna ask, “well how did you make it look like Paris without being so close to Paris?”. Now, there were times, we admit, when we talked with Pixar, we said we gotta be nuts. We’re building Paris, 40 km away from Paris, are we being silly? But the way that we made it work, is we knew that we were building Pixar’s Paris. And so, Pixar’s Paris has got a slight twist to it, it’s still a celebration of the City of Light, but from a long shot, we wanted it to look like Paris, up close it was always going to be Ratatouille. And so that’s the balance that we did to find it. Now we used a lot of really noble materials when we built these facades, which I think is why they’re so successful. We used real slate and real zinc and all those things on the roofs. We used artisans to build this and I think that’s partly really helped in pulling off this trick. Now we also, as you know, because our inspiration was the film, put in two of the key elements to the Place de Rémy. We installed the Gusteau sign, so from the long shot of the street we know we’re not in Paris, we are in Ratatouille’s Paris. We put in the Gusteau sign high up above the restaurant facade and of course we put in the fountain. This was an early drawing of the fountain. And this is Björn on a rainy day trying to get it to work!
Beth: And here we are painting the fountain, our sunny day. So of course the attraction. You fans will notice that we have the old logo there, I haven’t had a chance to change that. Last minute changes happen even when you’re experts. Sometimes you like to make last minute changes and that was one of them. So, this was the logo up until a few months ago and then we wanted to change this to the new logo, which is just Ratatouille L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy.
Beth: So the attraction, you all know that we worked in close collaboration with Pixar. All of the characters in the film are in our attraction. The attraction is a 3D-based attraction, where you go through the certain sequence of theatres in a Ratmobile. And we worked with Pixar on creating all of the new segments of film, so there is nothing pulled from the original film, although the ambience is the same. All of the film sequences have been created for us. And we did this very specifically, because we were, our goal was to try and create a new immersive world, where we spend a couple of times with Rémy who is cooking us something, something to eat. And we wanted to, technologically, blur the lines between the cinema and the physical set pieces. So we put some set pieces into the film and some of the film pieces into the sets. So we wanted to blur these lines. So, I think we managed to do that, but we certainly worked very closely with all of these Pixar colleagues to make it work. And you’ll see, I think we have some, we took those of Brad Bird, who was involved from the very beginning of the project. And then this is Lou Romano, he’s one of our voice talents. We use some of the main voice talents for the recordings.
Beth: OK, now this is the really interesting part where I’m gonna hand it over, and Björn’s going to talk about our new Ratmobile. This is the new technology that allowed us to tell our story of Rémy in a much more dynamic and free way.
“The biggest difference is that Mystic Manor doesn’t have the same toric turn and tilt mechanism or vibration that we have.”
Björn: So, one of the beauties of what we’ve done with the attraction is we have a trackless system, so we’ve kind of given full liberty to the creative team, with what they can actually do. We have 36 vehicles on the track with one guests with disabilities vehicle. Each vehicle can contain six visitors per vehicle, apart from the guests with disabilities vehicle. We have a motorised piece on the bottom and we have the guest compartment on the top. This is us testing the vehicle in a factory in America. The vehicles themselves were built at the same time as they built the vehicles for Mystic Manor. The biggest difference is that Mystic Manor doesn’t have the same toric turn and tilt mechanism or vibration that we have. One of the things that this vehicle does, as you go through the attraction you’ll notice that there’s a vibration in some parts, where you basically have the rats who are scampering as they run around. So this vehicle can go backwards, forwards, left, right, spin around, tilt.
Beth: OK so this is jumping around a bit but as you can see, this is me sitting on a stool in the model room back at WDI, which is where we built the model because we still use models very extensively to develop our projects. And yeah, I’ve got the same clothes on. It’s funny, I do! New T-shirt, though, I changed the T-shirt. So this was a really interesting tool to use, because this project was developed extensively with a man called Phil Bloom, who’s a well-known designer in 3D attractions particularly. And he was the one who came up with the idea of building this one-to-tenth scale model, and then putting these little stools on wheels so we could actually go through the model as we would when it would actually be in place. Which is much more effective than virtual 3D models. It just doesn’t work the same when you have a screen between you and the image. So, this was a really, really effective model. And when we actually built this, this is the Load as you can see, going out to Scene 2. When we built the actual set, of course then everyone came out and said, “it’s just like the model”, and it was!
Beth: So, attraction entrance again, this is just the process: study model, colour board, the piece in place. It’s themed as a theatre, a Parisian theatre, that’s how we set this up. The space inside, you will see, is fairly theatre-y and then we go and pick up our 3D glasses. We’re in human scale as we go through this. You all know that the attraction is based on us becoming small like Rémy, scurrying around from all the perils of the kitchen, but you have to have a transition somewhere and this is the transition. We come in from the outside world, go in to pick our glasses and boom, suddenly we come on the rooftops of Paris in the Load scene which we’ve already seen in the pre-show.
Beth: And here is the Pre-show, Paris rooftops, Gusteau, inviting us in, telling us he hopes we’re very hungry. Trying to get his star back. Again, this is a picture of the model. So, once we’ve left the pre-show, we pick up our glasses, we go on to the Load scene, and this is where suddenly we’re transported into the scale of a little Rémy. And of course, how we do that, we mainly use, we use all sorts of senses. As you know, Ratatouille is a multi-sensorial new attraction, we use odour, we use scent, that was the same thing, odour and scent is the same thing. We use all of the senses but mainly, how do you tell people that you’ve become small? It’s visual. So everything suddenly is gigantic, around us, that’s the really obvious thing that we use.
Beth: This is the ambience that the guests get coming to the Load, Rémy’s first discovery of Paris. Again, the model. And then we go, I thought you’d be interested in some construction photos, so you can see the complex shapes going on here. This is behind that scene, that chimney that we just saw. Because that chimney is partly between the dome, which is at our Scene 3, and the Unload, so it’s quite a complex architectural feat. There’s that same piece. All of the set pieces in here are mainly carved plaster. We built some of them off-site. We built all this in place, because it’s really construction. They’re sets but they’re so big that we had to build them in place, because it was gonna be so complicated to bring them, they’re like buildings. The things on the top, the chimneys, we built off-site with vendors, European vendors, but everything else we built in place with construction vendors, basically. Which was a bit of a challenge.
Björn: Part of the process that we have when we build an attraction is that there’s an interaction between the construction teams and the show teams and the ride teams. So we have to coordinate very closely with regards to what we do. There are certain elements that you can see in this picture that have to be constructed by a construction team, because it might be steel work, or plaster work. We then do add-ons such as the show sets, such as the chimneys at the top and the spike, the gutter which is here. So we have to coordinate very closely with the construction teams on what we have to actually build and what we’re gonna place. And you’ll see that further on in the attraction, where we had a major challenge in the cold room with regards to structural steel versus show sets to give the real feel of the show.
Björn: So this is a mix on the left, of, this is the construction team with regards to carved plaster work. And then plant-ons with regards to where you see the A4 paper with the chimneys, which came from a show set over in Europe.
Beth: And of course, one of the things you can see, one of the things we have to do well, is integrate seamlessly all of the technical gack that we have in our sets because we tell a lot of our story through things that we don’t wanna see, like lighting and speakers and special effects. But they all have to be integrated in a way that means that they’re invisible and seamless, and here you can see some of the integration going on. But that’s a big, big, big part of my job.
Björn: So this is the back of the Scene 3 dome. In this particular attraction, we have two Scene 3s, 3A and 3B, whereby we can maintain the traffic with the vehicles going through, to keep the attraction running fluidly, and have a good guest throughput. Just looking at this, one of the things I did about two years ago, I constructed in Glendale California all of the large screens that we have. So Scene 3 and 8 have exactly the same dome, so I built one dome. I built the Scene 5 screen, Scene 6 screen, Scene 4, Scene 1, Scene 2. And basically, in Glendale, for about a period of a year, I built this in a facility we have close to the office, and we ran wall-to-wall dailies. So we purchased in advance the video projectors that we were gonna use and then we worked alongside Pixar to do dailies. So it’s basically like a film where you have rushes, that they would send us media, and we would project it onto the screens that we built. Those plans, with regards to the screens that we did, were then communicated to our facility team, who then copied our plans that I had constructed in California and transformed over to Europe for construction here on-site. The other advantage of doing that, is that we can test media, we can test equipment, we can test screens.
Björn: One of the fun things that we did at one point when I was over there very early on is that we have 15 of the animators from Ratatouille who came down to Glendale from Emeryville, where they are normally based at Pixar, to actually look at what we were projecting image-wise onto the screens. You have to remember that Pixar are used to doing animation for cinematic projection, where you basically sit and watch an animated film. The biggest difference for them was the scale, because this, everything that you will see obviously, because we’re rat-scale, is now rat-scale including the projection. So everything is much, much bigger. And when the team came down they were really excited to see it, because they could see imperfections that you don’t normally see on the silver screen when you’re in a movie theatre and they’ve blown everything up. So it was like a three-day creative process at the very beginning, when they saw the rushes that they’d done projected in real-time, in real-size. There were big discussions about, “are we gonna change this, this doesn’t work, this is too big, this is too little”. So that was quite an exciting process with Pixar, where we actually had the animators of the film come down and do it.
Björn: Part of my job as the Design and Production Manager, and Technical Director, is that fact that we take the design from the creative team, or I take the design from the creative team. I then have to package that and buy it. So I split, basically, for the show set piece on this attraction, into five different contracts. And I try to split it out equally for economics and quantity, so that I’m not putting all of my eggs in one basket going to one vendor. Secondly, one of the other challenges for this particular attraction is the fact that everything is so big. So you have to find vendors who have capacity in their workshops to build some of this stuff. And you can’t put it all in one shop, because it’s just overwhelming in size.
Beth: And you can see how tight to the ceiling we are here already.
Björn: This was the third workshop that these guys took on because it was just getting so much, so much bigger. So we had five vendors who built the show set equipment. I also have to buy everything else, which is audio/video, media, video projection, special effects. Everything that basically puts the theme into the show and makes the show a show. The show control equipment, have it all built and shipped in. So this is the vendor who’s based in London and who had, basically, Scenes 0, 1, 2, 5, 9, 10. We had one vendor who just did Scene 4, which is the Refrigerator scene. We had one vendor who did Scene 7, which is when you go into the walls. And we had one vendor who did the restaurant stuff that we needed also. So that was on a show set standpoint. So once we’ve put it out a bit it, and we’ve actually bought it, Beth and I then spent one week in the office, one week travelling, one week in the office, one week travelling, for about two years.
Beth: It sounds glamorous but it sure isn’t.
Björn: This is the same vendor, who did all the chimneys. One of the other things that we have to do, like I was saying before about the construction team, I have exactly the same constraints as the construction team, which is the fact that I have to look after anything to do with structure, and structural calculations. I come from a theatrical background and typically you build a set for a theatre, for maybe a 6-week run. Or when I did The Lion King, we built something which is gonna stay there for maybe 5, 10, 15 years. Here we’re in a case where we have for build for 20 years. So everything we take into consideration, be it a show set or construction, has the same constraints that we all have to follow. Beth and I are currently working on something for Hong Kong Disneyland at the moment, and I’m kind of finding my feet because their structural constraints are very different, but we’re gonna be building some stuff for them. So everything we build anyway isn’t a temporary fix, it’s always a planned fix, and so all of the steel structures that you see inside have to be calculated with structural calculations, and then we have to coordinate so that we can fit in on to what’s being built by the construction team on-site.
Beth: So, we don’t have many images of the Scene 2, but you’ll see it’s a classic Pepper’s Ghost effect. And this the beginning of our adventure as we go into the next scene, which is Scene 3, which sets us up for the whole adventure. Scene 3 is the moment that we fall from the skylight down to the floor. And this is when we really start to feel quite confused about where we are. So, this is all a media scene. Anyone can do it, Rémy, you need to know your stuff. So this moment of peril is when we start our gauntlet adventure, almost crushed by wheels. Now this is interesting because, Björn’s looking at me, what is that?
Björn: It’s your kitchen?
Beth: It’s my kitchen. I don’t even cook, I don’t even cook at all.
Björn: Beth did this on Friday night, took a photo.
Beth: I thought it would add a little… Now this is how, the attention to detail, what Disney has always been known about, for it’s attention to detail, we hear this again and again. So has Pixar. So they made this, to use, before they put it into the film the segment that we will see in Scene 3, they made all of the dishes that they then created virtually in the film segment. That’s why it’s there. So Scene 3 is a huge big dome, you’ll see when you go, Björn’s going to talk about how that operates. They were basically big construction projects. We were quite finicky about the finish.
Beth: The food locker is fun. This is when we go into a physical scene, where we built all the sets and so there’s media involved in this too. But, these big over-scale sets that we have are fun to build; a big ham seven meters high and a big fish, big oranges and it’s all very, very fun. And you know, I just want to point out. You can go through Björn, I think I’ve got quite a lot of photos on this. That’s the model, we started with the model. The next shot is the real thing, in worklight. But here we are, all installed. Next are some of the workers, from the company that built the sets. Here’s the fish from the workshop. Here’s me sitting with the fish. We worked hard on getting that eye glance, I just want you to notice that when you go through Scene 4. Here he is, hanging in place. Oh, there’s me and the ham. You know that we sent two plumbers up to the vendor up in Holland¹ to plumb the ham, because we have to have sprinklers in it because it’s so big. So we’re building these things like, moving pieces, moving rooms so they were, you know, kind of complex.
“The ham, the salami, the fish, all have access hatches so maintenance can get in and climb in and verify all of the structural steel inside it.”
Björn: So something like that ham weight about 1.2 tons, and is suspended directly over you as you go through into the scene. One of the things that we also discovered, there are the animated props and the show action equipment that you’ll see in the show, such as the opening doors and the moving curtains, and the moving wheels in Scene 6, are also part of my responsibility. One of the things that we do, with regards to that, is we do due diligence, when we build it. The large doors that we have are five meters square, which basically is 25 square meters; a 1.3 ton door which moves in 2.3 seconds. One of the things that we saw in the factory when we tested it, because we do, we do due diligence, what we do is we run all of that sort of equipment for about 72 hours continuously. On these particular items we did it for 125 hours, because of the risk. They generate quite a big of wind, and what we discovered when we actually put them in and installed them, and started running them, is that the ham started to swing, like a pendulum. So we had to modify the attachment mechanism to the roof, for the ham particularly, on to a gimbal. So it basically free hangs, and we’ve allowed the ham to move as the doors open and close because it generates wind. There was, as Beth said, there was a request very late on, because of the surface area of the bottom of the ham, to add two sprinkler heads to it. So the other thing that we did is that where you see the steel pipe running through into the marrow, that is actually an access hatch that the maintenance team can get into the ham and switch off the sprinkler valves if they ever need to. Secondly, because of various changes in legislation in the last two years, all of the overhead items, such as the ham, the salami, the fish, all have access hatches so maintenance can get in and climb in and verify all of the structural steel inside it, because of the connection of structural steel to FRP, which is fibreglass.
Björn: So the ham is basically the only special transport piece that we did for this entire project, which came through from Holland¹ and had a special side-car with it to kind of clear traffic. And the broadcast team from Disney also picked up the ham coming through at about Meaux, about 25 kilometres away, and followed it on the motorway.
Beth: Now I put this image in just because it’s one of those things that again, detail most people won’t notice, but you will have seen in Scene 4, you will have noticed these shelves with this form, right? Now these shelves are actually show sets, but they were built by fabricators of steel, who are not show set people, they don’t know how to do this. We did this because it meant that we could use the shelves as structurally integrally as we, we didn’t have to put any sets. We made our structural steel and show sets. And I just put this in because it was quite a challenge, you know. It’s very easy for us to make, it’s easier for us to make sets when you’re working with people who know how to build sets, but when you’re working with basic construction industries or structural steel manufacturers, they thought we were nuts, they had no idea how to do this. And we spent a lot of time, bringing them along. Technically they could do it but they didn’t get that they were building a set. So, this was just an example of how innovative it was too, ‘cause they’d never done it, we’d never done it, but this is all structural steel and it was just another example of the amount of work involved to get the sort of detail that we look for in our sets. So this is here, this is a paint sample, and then I think the next photo is just, again, this is them around the top there. So all of that is structural steel, not set work.
Björn: One of the other things we have to take into account throughout the attraction is, going back to the vehicle, is the vehicle is a free moving vehicle which is guided with a system of Wi-Fi/GPS type of thing. One of the concerns with regards to the vehicles is that they could go off track. So the vehicles are monitored with pucks in the floor and if they deviate by about 5 cm off the track, the vehicle will shut down automatically. But because the vehicles weigh about 2.5 tons, they have motion. So you can apply the breaks, but they still need to come to a stop. They can’t just stop abruptly.
Björn: So all the show sets at the lower level, throughout the entire attraction, so the bottom panel of this thing here, and the oranges, all have steel reinforcement in them. So that, if a vehicle ever goes off track and could potentially crash into something, they will basically be prevented from going any further beyond the envelope of the show sets itself. So we not only had to do structural calculations with regards to the size of everything because you have to support it, but we also had to take into consideration the deceleration and impact of vehicles, even if they have bumpers. So if you look at the front of your car, which has a bumper, if you hit something it’ll flex in. The bumpers on these vehicles are the same, but we have to be in a situation where guest safety is the most important thing. So basically what we’ve said is that if we trash the set, it’s not an issue as long as the guests are safe.
Beth: Scene 5 is a media scene. We’re still under the shelves. You will see this is where we use sensorial effects, when you do the attraction. This is the model, this is the physical model back at WDI. Again, this is the next scene where we use more sensorial effects. I don’t have many images of that, I want you to go and experience it. You’re gonna ask us later how we did that.
Beth: Scene 6 is the Dining Room. This is the moment when we have discovered that there are rats in the dining room. And this is a very simple set, but this was an example of how we placed in the first scene, in scene 3 where we fall down, we are under a cheese cart, what you see in the first scene, scene 3. So Pixar had to come to us and say “what’s that cheese cart looking like, how you gonna do this?” and we gave them our design and they put it into their movie and then we find it again in our physical design in Scene 6. And we did this a number of times throughout the show, where they would ask us for reports, or we would ask them for reports, so that everything matched. And all that was to try and blur the lines between the media and the physical sets, so they would really enter a completely immersive world.
Beth: In The Walls is again, this is where we change the scale quite remarkably and everyone goes into their own little mini-dome, and this is a perfect example of how much freedom we had in the new ride system to go from big spaces to tiny spaces. It’s very variant to this attraction and it really adds to the element of surprise. And when you’ve been with a pack of rats, because you leave as one of three rats, when you leave the load you’re one of three and you go through this attraction and sometimes you’re in the front and sometimes you’re behind. Very interesting way of moving. In this scene you suddenly find yourself in a little dome that’s your own, no-one else is around you. And it’s very seamless the passage from physical to media. It’s quite surprising.
Björn: Scene 7 was built by one company and they’re based in the UK. And we have single domes for Scenes 7 A, B and C, which are basically resin domes.
Beth: This was the early media as you can see, completely not rendered. And this is the construction. Again a lot of […] and here are your domes Björn.
Björn: OK. So the domes are, as you can see, reinforced in the bottom. One of the key things that we had the challenge of at the very beginning, even at the end, was to hide speakers, in these giant screens that we have. But also with regards to the domes. And one of the key things that we spoke about, almost four years ago when I started on this project, was the fact that there is a piece in the movie of Skinner that needs to have sound coming from the centre of the dome, which is a big issue because you can’t just put holes in this stuff because it looks ugly. So we achieved getting the sound centred from Skinner when he cries out, when you’re in there in the mini-dome. Basically we’ve attached transducers to the back of the dome. Transducers basically transform whatever you attach it to, into a speaker. So, part of the sound that you hear in these little domes is the actual dome itself vibrating, and transforming that vibration into sound. So, it’s a hidden gimmick. It’s extremely old. Transducers are from, like, 1950 or something like that. But it’s something that functions. But it’s part of the intent that we always have to hide stuff, so it’s not seen by the guests.
Beth: This is all very technical. Is this OK? Too geeky for you?
Björn: It’s a secret! So the domes are basically made out of four segments in fibre glass, and then when we assemble them on-site, we then work on it. So what we do is, what we call “butter up”, which is where you butter up the edges and the edges just disappear, and it becomes one whole piece. And that’s then assembled. And above on the right-hand side of the projection platforms, we place the video projectors on, which actually project images into the dome itself.
Björn: Again there’s a mix, as we’ve discussed earlier, of show set elements and construction elements. So you can see the construction on the right-hand side, which has then been reskimmed with plaster and carved. And then above you have a pipe, and above that you see the planks and a big beam, that’s all show set piece, which we basically have to integrate into the construction of the building itself. All of it built off-site and brought in. So there’s a huge effort with regards to coordination. So for sizing and for attachment points.
Beth: This is the scene where we finally find ourselves in Rémy’s kitchen again. […] This was mainly a media scene, multi-sensorial. We’ve done a lot of big technical tricks in here, to make it very thrilling and very real. These are scenes from the original Ratatouille film.
Beth: Scene 9 is the ambience where we find ourselves finally in the balcony, just above the restaurant that Linguini has started with Colette. So the last two scenes of our attraction and the restaurant are in this space. And it’s pretty interesting because that space, that segment, existed for about four seconds in the original Ratatouille movie. But that takes up three major parts of our attraction and our restaurant, ‘cos it’s such a charming space. And you can see down in the lower image there, the rats sitting at their tables with the ivy and the christmas lights around them. And that ambience is what we’ve created for the last scene, so it’s very festive.
“We had four teams of people that we would call the ‘leaf team’ and that’s all they did for about eight months, they were so sick of it.”
Beth: This was an early Pixar rendering. Again, Pixar made all the hors d’oeuvres that were gonna be used in the actual film. They built them all, and then chose one, and put them into the film. These are, who can see what they are? What is it? That’s about one hundred titanium leaves, that have been rolled, and have yet to be painted. Rolled by a panel beater over in London, in England. And we built about 2027. We needed more leaves, we built a lot. Every one of the leaves you see in our last two scenes in the restaurant is hand-rolled, hand-painted and individually attached to a bracket. So, we had four teams of people that we would call the “leaf team” and that’s all they did for about eight months, they were so sick of it. But, it was a very effective way of getting that over-scale, festive ambience.
Björn: The leaves were a big discussion around four years ago when I first came on the project, ‘cos somebody had an idea on how to do these. And we went down a very brief path of that, and I said we weren’t gonna do it. So, we then went down another path, originally we were gonna stamp all the steel. That basically worked out to be too expensive and also wasn’t guaranteed to give us the effect. The creation of the leaves was quite an unusual story, because, we were in a factory where we fabricated these to do a leaf-bending exercise, and they weren’t quite getting what we needed. And at one point, the guy, the head of the company, basically says “hang on a second, hang on a second”. And he went and got somebody, and he brought this guy out. And he said “this is what we wanna do, get the leaf, we wanna bend it, do this”. And in about the space of two hours, he knocked out the first three leaves.
Beth: But this was after working for about, a whole morning, about five hours, trying to get the form that we wanted from a metal plate […].
Björn: And it turns out that the guy used to work at the RAF, the Royal Air Force, as a panel beater fixing royal air force aeroplanes. We then decided to go down this path, and there were four people who were gonna be laid off in the company, who basically ended up staying on and got full-time jobs, bending leaves. But it’s still a job. After they finished bending leaves they stayed with the company, and still work for the company, so it’s a nice little story.
Beth: So those are the same leaves being painted. And these are the cluster of leaves and some flowers. And this is the part of the leaf team.
Björn: These are the florists.
Beth: Looking kind of, uh.
Björn: With Mr Bloom. Phil Bloom, with the flowers.
Beth: Phil’s the developer of this attraction, the man on the right-hand side. Here we are in production of some more of the set pieces in Scene 9. These are the giant candleholders, and the furniture. We paint it and here it all is put together.
Beth: Scene 10, same ambience. Still up in that leafy, giant balcony. And a pretty blurry photo of the vehicles coming through the Unload. And this is the view that we always wanted, and this is from our Unload into the Restaurant. So, that whole leaf ambience goes straight out from the Unload into the Restaurant, and we always knew that, when we started the concept of this attraction, that the moment that we would spend with Rémy would be in the kitchen, because we want to be around food. And so what better to complete your final scene in the attraction than looking into the restaurant, where you can actually go and eat. Rémy’s been preparing food, this was always part of our original concept. And here it is, Bistrot Chez Rémy. So as I said, rat-scaled furniture, we still are the size of rats, which is a very fun ambience, quite challenging to create, because it’s all functional.
Beth: Now this is the tale of the ratatouille dish, for the original film. The original dish is called the Confit Byaldi and it was developed by this well-known chef on the left, Michel Guérard. For the film Thomas Keller was consulted to develop a new dish, a new form of the dish for Ratatouille, for petit chef in the original film, Ratatouille. And this of course, Ratatouille, is available on the menu in Bistrot Chez Rémy in our park. Doesn’t look exactly like that.
Beth: On the same hand we also developed, we’re trying to develop local products, because we’re in France and we’re in Seine-et-Marne. So we’re using local cheeses and we’re working with a local “viticulteur”. And we’re developing new wines and champagne for the restaurant. So this was a bit of a big deal for our food staff. As this is a unique design we’ll flick through these pretty quickly Björn, because we’re running late.
Beth: These are fabulous. You can see these were challenging for us. Functional chairs, the development of a chair takes between one and three years, for an original chair. This was very complicated, but highly highly decorative. Our challenge in the restaurant was to create decorative pieces, decor, but that were functional and that people can actually sit on. Same thing with the tables. We have 11 different designs of tables. “What were we thinking?” I think now when I was building them all. And we had to, of course, test them out.
Beth: Here’s some more of the furniture. This was built by a vendor in Ireland. Here’s me saying “no, I don’t like that. Let’s try something else”. And here we are building the plates, and all those plates were built out of a material called corian, where each one of them is individually made. Here are they are in place. Again, logistics getting a bit […] here, always very complicated. Here’s some more vendors; these were in Romania building the giant prop menu that you see when you come in. Again another big prop. Looks like that’s the sculpt, and here it is finished.
Beth: The big colander, and there it is completed. Painting can do a lot of harm. It’s easier when no-one’s touching it. Here’s some more props in the restaurant, taken about 2 months ago, this was only about 2 months ago. And you’ll see the restaurant when you go through today, it’s made leaps and bounds. Of course we had to have Gusteau and Rémy’s “Anyone Can Cook” because that’s the core of the story, and even a rat can become a chef. Some more props. This is us laying down the giant tiles. We had to have a special machine come in from Germany because they were too heavy to move, they weighed 400 kg each one of them.
Beth: Here we’re in the process of putting in some leaves, more leaves, the leaf people are going crazy! Here’s me having a glass of wine with one of the manufacturers. Here’s a parasol. They had to spend all this time developing the parasol and the way that that was, because all of our products of course have to be code-compliant, in terms of fire safety, so it was quite a complex set of research.
Beth: And we here are, with some of our design team, in the completed restaurant. This was the lead designer for the facility in France, and David on the left who’s the projector director, Björn at the back, and Assam who’s the project manager. So we can see so far, our guests are just lovin’ this space. I don’t think anybody really knew what was gonna go on in this restaurant, and when they come in it was very very highly themed.
Beth: Now this is the boutique. I’m not gonna talk very much about it, because I’m not involved. But you’ll know that at the end of the project, we knew that we wanted to add a boutique because it’s always great to have something special that guests can take home. The decision was taken a little bit later so it’s going to be opening a little bit later, some time at the end of 2014. It’s also gonna be themed specifically to our Paris land, human-scale, not over-scale. And available will be all sorts of goodies to do with souvenirs from Paris, and yummy chocolate and bonbon confiserie.
Beth: So I think maybe if we’ve got time we’re going to have a Q&A Session.
Jonathan: Thank you Beth and thank you Björn for this fascinating Making of Ratatouille. Now it’s your turn to ask questions. ■
1. The Imagineers described the vendor (P&P Projects) as based in Holland. But technically P&P Projects is based in North Brabant, one of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands. North Holland and South Holland are also provinces, but quite often “Holland” is incorrectly used to describe the whole country.
Photos: Kris Van de Sande and @CafeFantasia
Voice Memos: @CafeFantasia and @DLPTreasures
Transcription: @CafeFantasia and @Mangsney
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