A Trip Through the Walt Disney Studios was a documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 made in response to requests from members of RKO Radio Pictures for a behind the scenes look at Walt Disney Studios

Walt Disney Studios (Burbank)

The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, United States, serve as the international headquarters for media conglomerate The Walt Disney Company. The Walt Disney Studio's house offices for each of the company's divisions along with creative spaces designed for movie production. The Walt Disney...

. The film was never intended for public showing; it was only shown to executives at RKO. However, footage from this documentary was recycled into a shorter featurette, How Walt Disney Cartoons Are Made, which was released to public audiences. It was shot in the first week of July 1937.

The film opens with the Walt Disney Studios sign with Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...

 on it. The camera then pans over to the studio building and parking lot

Parking lot

A parking lot , also known as car lot, is a cleared area that is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to a dedicated area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface....

. Before the tour

Tour guide

A tour guide provides assistance, information and cultural, historical and contemporary heritage interpretation to people on organized tours, individual clients, educational establishments, at religious and historical sites, museums, and at venues of other significant interest...

, Walt Disney is at his desk with a snappy outfit with a tie

Necktie

A necktie is a long piece of cloth worn for decorative purposes around the neck or shoulders, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat. Variants include the ascot tie, bow tie, bolo tie, and the clip-on tie. The modern necktie, ascot, and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neck...

 and a boutonniere

Boutonniere

A boutonnière is a floral decoration worn by men, typically a single flower or bud. The word comes from the French word for buttonhole, which is the British term....

, with a baby photo of him on the left, and models

Model (physical)

A physical model is a smaller or larger physical copy of an object...

 of the dwarfs on the right and right next to him is life-long secretary, Dolores Vought.

When you see the legendary animator

Animator

An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...

 Fred Moore draw Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse

Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...

, he is using a grease pencil

Grease pencil

The grease pencil, a wax writing tool also known as a wax pencil, china marker, , is made of hardened colored wax and is useful for marking on hard, glossy non-porous surfaces such as porcelain, glass, polished stone, plastic, ceramics and other glazed, lacquered or polished surfaces, as well as...

 instead of a normal lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

 pencil, because drawings with thin pencil lines wouldn't photograph well.

Some of the other Disney Studio stalwarts seen in the film include, but are not limited to, Norm Ferguson

Norman Ferguson

William Norman "Norm" Ferguson was an animator for Walt Disney Studios and a central contributor to the studio's stylistic development in the 1930s. He is most frequently noted for his contribution to the creation of Pluto, one of the studio's best-known and most enduring characters, and is the...

, Webb Smith, Jack Kinney

Jack Kinney

Jack Ryan Kinney was an American animator, director and producer of animated shorts.Jack Kinney attended John Muir Junior High School in Los Angeles, California , and attended John C. Fremont High School there with Roy Williams...

, Hamilton Luske

Hamilton Luske

Hamilton Luske was an American animator and film director. He joined the Disney Studio in 1931 and he was soon trusted enough by Walt Disney to be made supervising animator of Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.He directed many Disney films and shorts from 1936 until his death in 1968...

, James MacDonald, Les Clark

Les Clark

Les Clark was the first of Disney's Nine Old Men. Joining Disney in 1927, he was the only one to work on the origins of Mickey Mouse with Ub Iwerks.- The Disney Studio :...

, Frank Churchill

Frank Churchill

Frank Churchill was an American composer of popular music for films. He wrote most of the music for Disney's 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, including "Whistle While You Work" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come"...

, Leigh Harline

Leigh Harline

Leigh Adrian Harline was a film composer.-Career:Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, he worked for various radio stations before joining the Walt Disney studios in 1932 as arranger and scorer...

 and Oliver Wallace

Oliver Wallace

Oliver George Wallace was a British composer and conductor. He was especially known for his film music compositions, which were written for many animation, documentary, and feature films from Walt Disney Studios....

.

The film can be found on the DVD set Walt Disney Treasures

Walt Disney Treasures

The Walt Disney Treasures is a two-disc DVD set of classic Disney works. They cover work from the studio's earliest days to their more recent work...

: Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio. http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews2/wdtbehinddisneystudio.html It was also present (along with How Walt Disney Cartoons are Made) on the 2001 DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...

, the film being portrayed in the documentary.