5. The equipment

Image © Apple.

The Escape for Tomorrow crew used high-quality cameras, but they were ones that looked like a typical camera a family would bring to the parks so that they would blend in among the other attendees visiting the Disney parks. Because they had almost no control over the lighting, it was filmed in monochrome mode a.k.a. good old-fashioned black and white. Moore liked how the lack of color gave the movie a surreal, dreamlike feel, and how it would mean audiences would have no choice but to see the Disney parks in an unfamiliar way.

Maybe the most important tools used on “set” were iPhones, because the crew and the actors were able to look like regular attendees using their phones as they learned their scripts. They also used iPhones to record sound, supplementing the sound they got from recorders taped to the actors’ bodies.

4. Special circumstances

Because they were filming incognito, Randy Moore and his crew had a lot of obstacles that no other movies have. They had to scout out the places they were going to film almost a dozen times before cameras even rolled so that they could get in and out as quickly as possible. The rehearsals all had to be in hotel rooms, so actors were only seeing their “set” right before they started performing. They even charted the position of the sun so that they could predict what the natural lighting would be like at the parks.

3. After Disney Park shoots

The crew had to film some scenes, such as ones with a lot of tourists in the background, against a green screen. It was very obvious which scenes they used green screens on in the final product. Escape was then edited in South Korea so that Disney wouldn’t find out about it too early. Sound editing was extremely difficult, between the recorders taped to the actors’ bodies and the copyrighted music played on rides like It’s a Small World that they had to remove.

2. Disney didn’t interfere

Nobody really thought Escape from Tomorrow would get a wide release after it was revealed at Sundance, but Disney still has not commented on the film and will most likely not be taking legal action. That may be in part because the movie was billed as a satirical take on the Disney brand, and satire is protected by copyright.

1. Not the first

Image © Revolver Entertainment.

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 827 4715 Minnesota Life College 39 9 5790 12.256 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Escape from Tomorrow was actually not the first movie to film without permission inside a Disney theme park. Filming there has become a recent fad. Popular street artist Banksy filmed a scene for Exit Through the Gift Shop and managed to sneak the footage out even though he was briefly detained by security. In 2011 there was a viral found footage short film, Missing in the Mansion, shot at the Haunted Mansion.

Escape from Tomorrow probably won’t be the last movie shot in a theme park, either. By not dropping the hammer on it Disney may have opened the floodgates to more movies or short films made inside the parks. Whether that's good or bad we've yet to learn.