Jason Garcia | Sentinel Staff Writer
October 23, 2007
The Walt Disney Co. premiered its latest film Monday: a seven-minute promotional video, set to a familiar Disney score, which will eventually run in airports across the country and U.S. embassies around the world.
The film, dubbed "Welcome: Portraits of America," was produced by Disney for the U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security as part of an effort to project a warmer national image and to boost international travel to the United States.
It will be shown starting this week at Washington Dulles International Airport and Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport -- two of the nation's busiest airports for overseas travel. Government officials said they will soon expand the program to include the country's top 20 international airports, including Orlando International, as well as American embassies and consulates overseas.
Both the government and Disney made sure to note that the movie, which the company volunteered to produce at its own expense, does not include any images promoting Disney theme parks or any other commercial entity. It is instead filled with sweeping shots of American landscapes and national monuments -- from rolling farmland and the Grand Canyon to the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge -- mixed with images of everyday people doing everything from riding horses to smiling, waving and saying, "Welcome."
But the film is set to music that will be familiar to many Walt Disney World fans: the orchestral score that accompanies "IllumiNations," the popular nightly fireworks show at Disney's Epcot theme park.
A spokeswoman for Disney, Jennifer Liu, said the company borrowed the song from the Epcot production. But she also said the music, developed by composer Gavin Greenaway, had been rescored somewhat to fit the video's shorter running time.
She also said travelers passing through U.S. customs lines in airports or visiting American embassies were unlikely to recognize the score as Disney music.
"This music will sound new to almost everyone," Liu said. "It's just a great piece of music."
A spokeswoman for Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, said she, too, was confident that most overseas travelers were unlikely to be familiar with music from a Disney resort.
"We don't think the music will present a problem," said Rena Pederson, the spokeswoman. "It's certainly not intended in any way to be promotional."
One of Disney's competitors was also unperturbed.
"Any measure which helps communicate the hospitality of our country and enhance the sense of arrival for visitors is a positive addition and a welcoming touch -- especially for our international travelers, who have likely experienced long flights and processes to enter our country," SeaWorld Orlando spokeswoman Becca Bides said in an e-mail.
Liu would not reveal how much Disney spent producing the film and the hundreds of accompanying still photographs that will be used in posters and banners.
The video is a part of a January 2006 initiative -- launched by federal officials at the urging of the nation's tourism industry -- aimed at countering perceptions that the United States has become hostile to foreign visitors since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
Overseas travel to the U.S. slumped badly after the attacks and the tough new border-security measures that quickly followed. A recent study by the business-backed group Florida TaxWatch estimated that Florida alone lost as many as 16.1 million visitors -- and $14 billion in related spending -- during the six years after 9-11.
In addition to the video, other measures have included beefing up staff and improving signs at airports, and streamlining some of the visa-application processes for those planning trips to the U.S.
Disney got involved with the video project through Jay Rasulo, the chairman of the company's Parks and Resorts division. Rasulo is also national chairman of the Travel Industry Association, a tourism trade group that has been aggressively lobbying the Bush administration and Congress for changes that would boost travel to the U.S.
"We are proud to partner with the U.S. government to extend a world-class welcome to America's guests," Rasulo said Monday in a prepared statement.
Jason Garcia can be reached at jrgarcia@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414. _________________ When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
--Walt Disney
an article going on about how the photos of Niagra Falls are the Canadian part...bummer to already have 'bad press' about something with such good intentions. Hopefully it won't cause too big a stir.
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