I think I’m still kind of on cloud 9 after being out in California to attend both the premieres for Thor: The Dark World and Delivery Man in Hollywood. Going through the photos and memories I captured, I have to say that visiting the Disney Toon Studios was definitely one of the highlights! Disney welcomed us bloggers there for a preview of their latest home entertainment release, PLANES!

Just to refresh your memory, I actually visited the Disney Too Studios back in June to preview PLANES before its theatrical release in August! While there, I was able to chat with Klay Hall, the director, and Traci Balthazor-Flynn, the producer, about the film. What an experience! It’s not every day little ole me get to interview a Hollywood director. I was psyched when I learned that we would get to interview them again and catch up on what they have planned for the Blu-ray/DVD release of PLANES.

Klay’s father was a pilot with the Navy, and his grandfather was an aviator as well. When he talks about PLANES, you can tell that he’s been a lifelong aviation enthusiast! Growing up he often took trips to the air field to see the planes. As an illustrator, Klay always enjoyed drawing airplanes, even at an early age. There is no question that this love for aviation was definitely a driving force to bring PLANES to the big screen.

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Well if you’ve visited this blog in the the past few days, I’m sure you know by now that I recently had the privilege to head out to California to attend both the premieres for Thor: The Dark World and Delivery Man in Hollywood. However, that wasn’t the only awesome event I experienced while out there! Disney welcomed us to the Disney Toon Studios for a preview of their latest home entertainment release, PLANES!

Now some of you may remember that I actually was able to visit the Disney Toon Studios back in June to preview PLANES before its theatrical release in August! It was such an amazing experience to meet the individuals who worked hard on this film. I was super excited to learn that I would get to meet with some of them again on this trip out to California. I’ve seen the film multiple times and with each viewing I have a new appreciation for the film and always find myself in awe of aviation!

One of the presenations we attended was by the Pre-Vis Development department on how to give PLANES “its wings!” We met with Jason McKinley, the Flight Supervisor, and Thomas Leavitt, the Aerial Pre-Vis Artist. They were part of a specialized team that was formed to make the planes flying as realistic as possible. Both the the director Klay Hall, and executive producer John Lasseter, mandated that when the planes are on the ground they had to be characters, but once they were in the sky, the planes had to be realistic and were limited to realistic physics.

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