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This Invention Made Disney MILLIONS, but Then They LOST It!

Corridor Crew · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Animation & visual effectsTech company stories & documentaries

What it is

Corridor Crew tracks down Disney's lost sodium vapor prism process, used for Mary Poppins-era transparency mattes. They explain how a narrow sodium wavelength and a beam splitter enabled better compositing than green screen.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended as a fun, informative rediscovery of a lost film-effects technique.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2025, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “is a fantastic watch.”

    Corridor Digital rediscovers Disney's sodium vapor process

    btown, 2025-12 · Strong recommendation · in “The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora”

  2. “(12 minutes long, but totally worth it).”

    Sodium vapor compositing used by Disney, a lost technology

    nuccy, 2025-03 · Recommendation · in “Walt Disney's MultiPlane Camera (Filmed Feb. 13, 1957) [video]”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: vfx, disney, green screen, mary poppins, beam splitter

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