We all have our favorite fairy tales and childhood movies that we look to when we need a comforting watch, and for a lot of people out there, that means putting on a Disney movie.
In Once Upon a Dream: The Making of Walt Disney’s Masterpiece Sleeping Beauty, taken from a 1997 VHS tape by Patrick’s Movie Corner YouTube channel, you get a behind-the-scenes look at how this 1959 animated film came to be during a time when animation technology was limited.
In the first few moments, you’re met with none other than Walt Disney himself. “It’s always a challenge bringing a great story classic to the screen,” Walt Disney tells viewers, “giving visual form to characters and places that have only existed in the imagination, but it’s the kind of challenge we enjoy.”
In the early 1950s, Disney began planning for its third feature-length animated film, which was going to be none other than the story of Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Walt assembled a small team of people to begin adapting the classic fairy tale into a Disney feature.
You’re even shown some early black-and-white storyboards of the film, which are sketches of how the creators want the images in the film to look. But throughout that process, they realized that they needed to go a different route to put their own unique spin on this classic fairy tale.
“Walt took this on … as a special challenge. He wanted to make this film as special and as different as he could,” explains film historian Leonard Maltin.
What changes did the Walt Disney team make to the story of Sleeping Beauty in the end, and how did it all come together in the late 1950s? Watch the video to find out.
