Startling Statistics
Vol 1. No. 9 Date: 9/9/82
Filming Needs Extras Today
Cast call for extras to star in World of Motion filming. If you would like to volunteer, a film crew will be filming in World of Motion beginning at 4 p.m. today. To participate, call Rich Gilrane at ext. 5553 right away. Dinner will be served to all participants
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More Statistics: In constructing the nearly two million square feet of show space for Epcot Center, 54 million cubic feet of dirt was moved.
Visual focal point of the entire Epcot Center is Spaceship Earth presented by the Bell System. At 16 million pounds, it weighs more than three times the N.ASA space shuttle fully prepared for launch. The 11,448 shiny aluminum facets of its skin reflect light like a huge jewel.
Over one and a half million feet of film have been used to produce more than four hours of Epcot Center shows. These motion picture films, totalling more than 73,000 feet of finished product, represent the work of 16 production crews in more than 30 countries and nearly every state of the U.S.A.
While filming the China Circle-Vision 360 film, the crew carried its 300 pound camera up 4,500 steps precariously perched on the steep slopes of Haungshon Mountain in the Annui Province.
The roof of the Exxon presentation, Universe of Energy, has a one-acre area covered with 80,000 photovoltaic cells producing 70,000 wa.tts of power, enough to supply the needs of 15 single family homes.
For the primeval diorama of this pavilion, three men spent 5700 hours in a Hollywood soundstage painting a backdrop 32 feet high and 515 feet long.
While special effects for movies are designed to satisfy a single take which may last only a few seconds, those in Epcot Center shows are designed and built to be seen 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
The new Disney showplace features 274 special effects, more than five times the number in the Magic Kingdom.
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22 DAYS OUT
© 1982 Walt Disney Productions
COMMENTARY
Is anyone else as jazzed about spending six hours in one of the world’s most elaborate omnimover attractions!? And there’s dinner too! But, before you jump up and try to call the extension, I think we are all about 39 years too late to volunteer.
The statistics listed on this sheet are only a small sampling of the deluge of record-breaking, mind-blowing, and awe-inspiring facts that comprise the EPCOT Center construction project. Even by today’s standards, this three-year construction/production period is unparalleled in scale and complexity. To help bring this plan to fruition, new technologies were developed that was so advanced it was simply impractical to explain them to a 1982 audience.
One of these advancements was the utilization of wireless modems to control figure movements for “Journey into Imagination”. The opening scene turntable, which contained five continuously-rotating Dreamcatchers with multiple moving parts and two Audio-Animatronics for each, necessitated as much off-board control as possible. As a result, the computer-controlled/executed systems were kept off the turntable, with each of the identical scenes receiving electronic relays to perform the three-minute show. This means that Figment and Dreamfinder were among the first Wi-Fi devices created - three years before the term was invented in 1985! Yet another example that the 21st Century really did begin in 1982.
EPCOT Center Construction Site ~August 1982