Disney Animation Teaching Class at Local High School
The proverbial “They didn’t offer that when I went to school…” has never been more apt, at least in Sun Valley.
This year, Walt Disney Animation is teaching class and giving back to the community at the same time.
All Business (And Fun) With Disney Animation
The Los Angeles Daily News’ Bob Strauss reported:
#Disney pros start teaching the #ANIMATION business at Sun Valley High School: https://t.co/K7zk1rFMFg
— Bob Strauss (@bscritic) September 23, 2019
Disney came to Sun Valley High School last week, and while fun was had, it was basically all business.
This was the first of 20 planned presentations by Burbank’s entertainment giant to the advanced film course students of SVHS’s Media Arts Academy scheduled for this school year.
Sun Valley HS has an amazing Media Academy, where students are learning the ins and outs of the entertainment business. @abc7gabriela talks to students about the lessons being taught by @DisneyAnimation reps – https://t.co/VI0S4PACAs @LDNESchools @4deezkids pic.twitter.com/0rKdccHVIs
— Los Angeles Unified (@LASchools) September 23, 2019
“Today is the kickoff for the Walt Disney Feature Animation Program here at Sun Valley/Valley Oaks Center for Enriched Studies magnet,” explained Jamal Speakes, the academy’s lead film teacher for the last five years. “This is where all of our kids are going to be taught the business behind feature animation, from visual story development to lighting to sound to storyboarding, everything. It’s a 10-week program in the fall, and then a 10-week program in the spring.”
Walt Would Approve
https://twitter.com/abc7gabriela/status/1176213556447961088?s=20
The article and the video speak to the students’ excitement for the program. But how did it come to be?
Sun Valley’s animation classes represent a pilot program for the studio. Camille Eden, manager of recruitment and outreach at Walt Disney Animation, and Nicole Dial, the studio’s school relations representative, visited Speakes’ classes a few times before working out a syllabus with him and others from their company over the summer.
“We do a lot of school visits, we speak with educators across the world,” Eden noted. “We do that at the college level, but one of the things that we’ve noticed is sometimes when the kids are coming out of school, they’ve already decided what they want to do. The goal of this program is to plant seeds at a younger age in students that there are possibilities in the industry in all the different areas of the film process. It could be marketing, finance, legal, you name it. There are so many opportunities within the industry.”
Speakes hopes it will all lead to a long relationship between the school and Disney.
So do we! And certainly, Walt Disney himself would approve.
We are very excited about the partnership that Sun Valley High School has with @WaltDisneyCo. They are bringing in their animation team to teach our students. https://t.co/U0Yy11gETb
— LDNortheast-ARCHIVE (@LDNESchools) September 24, 2019
