Walt Disney Studios Essay, Research Paper

The Walt Disney Company is a company that developed from the vision and work of only a small amount of people, mainly Walt Disney. Disney Studios became a big success because of the creativity, determination, and effort put forth by Walt Disney who never gave up and got upset when people wouldn’t work as hard as him.

In 1893, Roy Disney was born on December 5, and in 1901 on the same day, Walter Elias Disney was born. As children their father beat them, and it was said that the beatings always haunted Walt as he went through his career. In 1923 Walt and Roy left their home in Kansas City to try their luck in Hollywood, California. Walt only brought a few cartoon drawings, a used suit and $40. Walt did the drawing and creating and his brother operated the cameras and the accounting. Their careers didn’t begin smoothly but Walt was determined not to give up. Many times it looked like they wouldn’t make it, but in 1928 Walt created Mickey Mouse and saved the Disney Brothers Studio. They produced the world’s very first sound cartoon. From that point on Disney Studios continued to grow adding characters like Pluto, Donald Duck, and Goofy.

Walt helped design the studio because his main concern was to produce a self-sufficient, state-of-the-art production factory. There were separate buildings for the animation, inking, painting, and camera. The sound facilities included dubbing, scoring, effects, and voice recording studios. Most of the buildings were connected together by underground passages so that even in bad weather the production of films would not be disturbed. In the 1950’s the studio expanded adding sound stages and production craft facilities. The studios continued to expand as the need for new technologies increased.

Disney now owns many cable networks including ABC, the Disney Channel, the History Channel, A&E, ESPN, and Lifetime television. They also own the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. After Walt Disney died of lung cancer in 1966 the most creative people inn Hollywood no longer wanted to work for Disney. They decided to form Touchstone Pictures so that their movies would not only appeal to children and young families but as well as young adults and older audiences. In 1984 the Walt Disney Company hired Michael Eisner as it’s chairman and CEO.

Disney has become so large that they have organised themselves into many companies. There are companies to run the different aspects of the company such as a company to only work on feature-length films, one to create live-action, one manages Disneyland and other theme parks, one manages television stations, and there is one to handle the cable companies. Disney is a publicly traded company where people from all over the world can buy stocks in it.

Disney plays a large part in the media aspect of the world, being one of the largest companies to produce classical animation but it also play a large part when it comes to volunteering. Disney sponsors a program called VoluntEARS where employees of Disney voluntarily provide meals to the elderly, they help raise money for cancer research and they take part in community programs and work with children and young people at risk.

Many organisations are unhappy with Disney because of the violence that it shows on it’s television shows. Some people have accused Disney of “exploiting” workers in other countries because they hire people in third world countries to make their clothes for them.

The Walt Disney company has come a long way since Mickey Mouse first was created in 1928 and Walt Disney wanted his love for original animation and entertainment to live on. As Walt was growing older he said, “I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – it was all started by a mouse!” With many animated successes today and many other successful films, the Walt Disney Company has reason to believe that Walt and the other founders should be very proud of their success.