Disneyland handmade has been streaming on Disney+ and YouTube since January 22, delivering stunning, raw, behind-the-scenes footage of the construction of Disneyland, the entertainment giant’s first theme park. It immediately differs from other retellings of the park’s origin story in that it relies almost entirely on never-before-seen footage of the process, without the extra polish or pixie dust you’d expect from Disney.
What made that difference was a painstaking editing and restoration process — one that director Leslie Iwerks describes as being less like traditional storytelling and more like investigation. While there is a template for how Disneyland was built, Handmade was not about creating a fresh narrative. It was about uncovering someone who was already there.
“And so, like I said, it was kind of forensics to try to figure out where the drama sticking points were with the footage,” Iwerks told me. “But it wasn’t until this film that when we saw the boards on the reels themselves that we knew, ‘Okay, this was this’ time frame and it was this location.”
Fortunately, the camera crews Walt Disney tasked with documenting Disneyland’s construction were good at dating the boards on each wheel, something that was pretty mission critical.
Iwerks and her team worked through about 65 to 70 hours of this material, logging the footage and lining it up chronologically, before the story could even begin to take shape.
“I remember being in the editing room and asking Moe. I said, ‘There’s no way this is three months out,'” Iwerks recalled. And he says, ‘Oh yeah, look at the board.’ So the boards have dates, right? So we were – we were locked into the reality of the filming.”
All footage was shot on 16mm film, and Iwerks deliberately chose not to modernize his look. Even as Disneyland handmade moved through a modern post-production workflow, the aim was never to make the images feel ‘new’ – only to make them feel honest.
“The footage had already been transferred to 2K,” Iwerks explained, noting that the footage for the edit was converted to slightly lower-resolution proxy files, and for the final cut, her team “brought back 2K” to overcut the work print.
From there, restraint became the guideline. “There was no coloring or anything,” Iwerks said. “It was already Kodachrome 16mm footage. When we went into post-processing, we enhanced the color, but only to keep it as natural as possible, right? There were no similar effects or anything that was created.”
Imperfections were also not completely erased, as dirt, scratches and grain were treated selectively.
“It was this fine balance of having too much grain and too many things that reminded you it was film versus, you know, it feels real, like you were immersed in it,” Iwerks said.
In an instant, the balance tips deliberately towards visibility. The film briefly reveals the sprocket holes in the original film stock – a choice that goes against most restoration philosophies.
“I purposely put the film frame — the holes in the film — in there,” Iwerks explained. “I wanted people to remember that this was actually film, this was being shot. There was a cameraman behind all this footage.”
The forensic approach didn’t just shape the editing—it also turned up moments that feel almost unbelievable when viewed in proper chronological context.
“And you know, even a month out, they’re still building Tomorrowland, and it was crazy,” Iwerks said. “It’s all wood! One month out.”
The line lands because the film never tries to soften the timeline of the construction, or the fact that it really was a race to the finish line. The timeline is not retrofitted to match what Disneyland eventually became; it is allowed to exist exactly as it was, uncertainty and all.
The same philosophy extends to the shots Iwerks chose to stick with. In addition to the wide construction scenes, Disneyland handmade repeatedly slowing down for details – bricks being cut by hand, boots pressing on the gravel, stones being laid in red asphalt. They’re small moments, but they reinforce the idea that Disneyland wasn’t assembled cleanly or all at once. It was built piece by piece, surface by surface.
These choices quietly hint at where the film ultimately lands. By treating the footage as something to be examined rather than recreated, Disneyland handmade let the physical work – and the people who do it – define the story. And in the process, the meaning of its title begins to come into focus.
I asked Iwerks where the title came from, and she shared that it came at some point in the middle of the editing process: “I’m just thinking, God, this is so handcrafted, it just feels like it’s — this should be called: Disneyland Handcrafted.”
You can see Disneyland handmade now on Disney+ and YouTube.
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