Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade Taping
For the second time in my life, I was able to take part in the taping of a very popular Christmas special. In 2007, Kimberlie and I were a part of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” and were showered with overpriced merchandise by a television diva. Other than that, there is only one other holiday television special that I would love to be a part of, and somehow I managed to pull it off this year.
This past weekend, we were invited to be part of the taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade. Basically, they entice you to come be a part of the crowd with free entry into the Magic Kingdom for the day. We were unable to make the Kris Allen (American Idol) taping on Thursday or the Celine Dion taping on Friday due to work and school schedules, so we decided to go down for the Jonas Brothers on Saturday.
The Jonas Brothers sang a three minute song called Summertime Anthem, but it took us four hours to shoot the performance. The director made them sing it no less than 10 times. Part of that was teaching the 5000 member audience to break out into a flash-mob style dance routine towards the end of the song. It was awesome! By shear luck, we ended up at the very front of the stage!
The parade taping was another grueling six hours, because performers had to perform over and over and over for the perfect camera angles. Steve Rushton (singer) and the Santa Buddies (dogs from a new Disney Christmas movie) were there and all of it was hosted by Kelly Ripa. No Regis this year due to surgery! And by shear accident, we ended up on center street, where the performers performed.
Of course I shot over 500 pictures and 3 videos. Here is a small sample:
Check out the video to see how close we were to the action!
Be sure to watch the parade Christmas morning on ABC. There is no possible way that they can show the parade without including some very good shots of us. You should definitely watch for the shot of Tristan and me dancing (above) during the “Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it” portion of the parade.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
[...] not exactly sure how the birth of Christ translates into Santa or Black Friday Sales or the Jonas Brothers or messy cookie-making kids, but it sure is fun, so we’ll take [...]