COURSE DESCRIPTION
Pixar – Story Matters focuses on the animated 3D films of Pixar Animation Studios, contextualizing this work in spheres of early and contemporary animation (theory and practice), popular culture, and developments in computer technology. It will also explore the creative process of story development, emphasizing the Pixar screenplay with its universal themes, compelling characters, and dramatic conflict. Film analysis of Pixar movies will delve into myth, fairytale, psychology, etc. The goal of the creative project is to take the student’s idea, which features animated characters, through the film development process from concept, to script & storyboard, to a final presentation that could be pitched to a family entertainment company such as Pixar.
INSTRUCTIONAL TEAM
Noah Lucé | Lecturer
Noah Lucé (he/him) is a multi-hyphenate theatre artist and storyteller. He is a lecturer in Drama at University of California, Santa Cruz and serves as Artistic Associate for New Canon Theatre Company. At UCSC he has taught the following courses for Performance, Play, and Design, Psychological Realism (THEA 21), Introductory Studies in Acting (THEA 20), Shakespeare-to-Go (THEA 155), and of course Pixar – Story Matters (THEA-80P). With John R. Lewis College he has also taught Academic Literacy and Ethos: Social Justice (CLTE-1).
Recent career highlights include: intimacy and fight direction for A Guide for the Homesick at Theatre Rhinoceros (America’s longest running LGBTQIA+ theatre), co-directing and intimacy choreography for NCTC’s Macbeth, associate directing EnActe Arts touring production of The Jungle Book; Rudyard Revised, assistant directing and fight choreography for An Iliad at the Jewel Theatre Company and intimacy directing the world premiere of The Formula; Santa Cruz Shakespeare.
Noah trained with Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, attended Cornish College of the Arts (BFA), received his Master’s Degree from the UCSC, and completed his MFA in directing/pedagogy from the University of Idaho. To learn more him and his work, please visit: www.noahluce.com
Princess Kannah | TA
One of three amazing TAs, Princess is currently an M.A. student in the Theatre department. With a focus on incorporating radical joy into classrooms and consent-based work, she is set to graduate Spring of 2023.
Amy Blondell Ph.D. | TA
Thrilled by the challenge of crafting compelling and regenerative narratives, Amy Blondell is happy to bring her expertise in visual anthropology to the UCSC course offering, Pixar – Story Matters. Working at the intersection of the social sciences, geography, and the documentary arts, Amy Blondell originally trained in urban visual anthropology at New School for Social Research in New York. After completing postdoctoral work in public health, she joined the research faculty at UCSF where she was a PI on an NIH-funded study utilizing mobile technologies to collaborate, over a two-year period, with migrating homeless youth documenting healthcare, housing, transportation, labor, and income-generating activities. Together they created and exhibited travelogues combining annotated migration maps with photos, photo-essays, and geo-narratives. Exploring the environments and urban social spaces that enable queer communities to survive, flourish, and create social change, Blondell has undertaken action research and social history projects focusing on the relationship between urban kinship, community, and political action. Social history projects include: the campaigns of homeless and marginally housed LGBT2QQ youth to create transitional shelter in San Francisco; the anti-racist and feminist political work of Black and White Men Together and Men of All Colors Together, New York; and feminist kinship and political mobilization in San Francisco’s Valencia Corridor, 1990-2010. Amy Blondell is currently an MFA candidate at UCSC in the Environmental Art and Social Practice Program. She resides in the Monterey Bay Area, with her wife, Andrea and their six-year-old, Jamie.
Saul Villegas | TA
Saul Villegas is a First-Year MFA student in the Future Stages cohort in the Digital Arts & New Media program at UCSC. Using art to create a revolving system from the mental, physical, and virtual environment, he invites people to participate in the viewer experience through digital mixed-media works. His practice seeks to use the virtual creative space to reimagine archives and extend a stream of consciousness to memories that helped inspire his work. Using AI and editing tools, he builds scenes with projections that mirror perception in altered states–eluding to traumatic events in his life. This virtual world-building portfolio stems from virtual work incited by OpenLab. Most recently, his work with the E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF inspired him to personify the element of fire in which his portrayal of The Sun has emerged in a Walking Tour & Happening at the San Francisco Public Library, where he read his poem “Rayos” as an experimental art performance.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.
If you would like more information on The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, please visit their new website at: amahmutsunlandtrust.org