Disneyland Handcrafted has been streaming on Disney+ and YouTube since January 22, delivering stunning, raw, behind-the-scenes footage of Disneyland, the entertainment giant’s first theme park, construction. It’s immediately different from other retellings of the park’s origin story, relying almost entirely on previously unseen footage of the process, without the extra polish or pixie dust one might expect from Disney.
What made that difference was a meticulous editing and restoration process – one that director Leslie Iwerks describes as being less like traditional storytelling and more like investigation. While there’s a template for how Disneyland was built, Handcrafted wasn’t about creating a fresh narrative. It was about uncovering one that was already there.
“And so, like I said, it was sort of forensics to try to figure out where were the drama pinch points with the footage,” Iwerks told me. “But it was only through this film that when we saw the slates on the reels themselves that we knew, ‘Okay, this was this’ timeframe and it was this location.”
Thankfully, the camera crews Walt Disney tasked with documenting Disneyland’s construction were good at dating the slates on each reel, something that was pretty mission-critical.
Iwerks and her team worked through roughly 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 is no way this is three months out,’” Iwerks recalled. “And he goes, ‘Oh yeah, look at the slate.’ So the slates have dates, right? So we were – we were, um, locked to the reality of the footage.”
All of the footage was shot on 16mm film, and Iwerks intentionally chose not to modernize its look. Even as Disneyland Handcrafted moved through a contemporary post-production workflow, the goal 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 for the edit, that footage was converted to slightly lower-res proxy files, and for the final cut, her team brought the “2K back in” to over-cut the work print.
From there, restraint became the guiding principle. “There was no colorization or anything,” Iwerks said. “It was already Kodachrome 16mm footage. When we went into the finishing, we enhanced the color, but only to keep it as natural as possible, right? There was no, like, effects or anything that were created.”
Imperfections weren’t entirely erased either, as dirt, scratches, and grain were addressed selectively.
“It was this fine balance between having too much grain and too many things that reminded you it was film, versus, you know, it feeling real like you were immersed in it,” Iwerks said.
In one moment, that balance tips deliberately toward visibility. The film briefly exposes the sprocket holes of the original film stock – a choice that runs counter to most restoration philosophies.
“I intentionally put the film frame – the holes in the film – in there,” Iwerks explained. “I wanted people to remember that this actually was film, this was shot. There was a cameraman behind all of this footage.”
That forensic approach didn’t just shape the edit – it also surfaced moments that feel almost unbelievable when viewed in proper chronological context.
“And, you know, even one month out they’re still building Tomorrowland and that was crazy,” Iwerks said. “It’s all wood! One month out.”
The line lands because the film never tries to soften the timeline for construction, or the fact that it was truly a race to the finish. The timeline isn’t retrofitted to match what Disneyland eventually became; it’s allowed to exist exactly as it was, uncertainty and all.
That same philosophy extends to the shots Iwerks chose to linger on. Beyond the wide construction scenes, Disneyland Handcrafted repeatedly slows down for details – bricks being carved by hand, boots pressing on the gravel, stones being placed 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.
Those choices quietly hint at where the film ultimately lands. By treating the footage as something to be examined rather than reimagined, Disneyland Handcrafted lets the physical work – and the people doing it – define the story. And in the process, the meaning of its title starts 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 just think, God, this is so handcrafted, it just feels like it’s – this is what it should be called: Disneyland Handcrafted.”
You can watch Disneyland Handcrafted now on Disney+ and on YouTube.
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jacob.krol@futurenet.com (Jacob Krol)
