The Living Desert was the first feature-length film in Disney's True-Life Adventures collection of docudramas concentrating on zoological researches; the previous movies in the series, consisting of the Academy Prize-winning Seal Island, were short subjects. The documentary was filmed at the Westward Look Wyndham Grand Resort and also Health Spa in Tucson, Arizona. Most of the wildlife received the film was given away to what would certainly quickly end up being the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The film was influenced by 10 minutes of footage fired by N. Paul Kenworthy Jr., a doctoral student at the College of California at Los Angeles. Kenworthy's video footage of a battle in between an arachnid and also a wasp interested Disney, who funded a feature-length production adhering to the lives of diverse desert types. Disney was extremely encouraging of Kenworthy's work as well as its impact on nonfiction filmmaking, mentioning, "This is where we can inform a genuine, continual tale for the very first time in these nature images."