Imagineering your future
By Justin Bilow
Oct. 17, 2006 9:00 p.m.
Once upon the year 2001, in the land of Burbank, a man emerged
from secret halls where imagination turns into reality.
Never before this time had this man, nor any other, journeyed
through the pass called Sepulveda to a special training ground in
order to equip talented new acolytes in the secret arts of those
secret halls.
The training ground is a course called “Art and Process of
Entertainment Design,” offered through the UCLA Department of
Theater as Theater 146 for undergraduates and Theater 446 for
graduate students. The secret halls in Burbank are Walt Disney
Imagineering, and the man is Bruce Vaughn, vice president of
research and development of WDI and professor of this course.
During the three-part series, Vaughn teaches students coming
from diverse majors how to work as a team, how to communicate and
how to tell an engaging, imaginative story through the creation of
interactive environments.
Ben Story, a UCLA theater alumnus who took the course his junior
year from 2002 to 2003, said, “Every single week you’re
up there taking feedback, applying criticism and changing it for
the next week.”
This element of the class may seem common in humanities classes,
but currently, there are no other classes on campus that can say
they do what this class does.
During the first quarter, student teams develop a concept for a
themed attraction, then they find technology that will bring it to
life in the second quarter. In the third quarter, students produce
a working business plan for the attraction, and ““ after much
practice ““ get the chance to pitch their plans to top Disney
executives.
Story’s group came up with a restaurant attraction for
kids with the theme that a mad scientist used the eatery as a sort
of museum for the wacky discoveries he made.
Other projects included a combat video game set in modern-day
Afghanistan and an interactive cell phone adventure where
participants are secret agents saving the world.
The point of these projects is not only to come up with creative
ideas, but also to find ways to use available technologies, funding
and resources to create these interactive story experiences.
“Imagineering isn’t looking for ideas,” Vaughn
said. “That’s something it has plenty of. What
it’s looking for is the talents that will make these things
happen.”
This is where students in majors ranging from business economics
to biochemistry and from engineering to English come in. Some of
the most important resources available to students in the class are
their fellow teammates.
Students from all over campus are encouraged to apply for this
course, because people in each major can offer different talents to
the project.
“The class wouldn’t benefit from only theater
majors,” Story said.
Despite having been a theater student himself, Story recognizes
the value of working with students from diverse backgrounds.
“Their ideas come from a different point of view,”
Story said. “Engineers have technical know-how and are good,
for example, because they help calm skepticism that something
can’t work.”
But what would a student in, say, biology, want to do with a
theater course?
“You can’t fake everything, unless that’s what
your story is about,” Vaughn said.1
“If you’re telling an adventure story, which most
people associate with jungles, somebody has to be there who knows
about environments.”
By bringing industry professionals like Vaughn to teach the
students, the class ends up epitomizing the idea of what a
university no longer is: an academic institution where many fields
are brought together under one discipline to work toward one
goal.
According to Bill Ward, chairman of the UCLA Department of
Theater, his department is the best suited to facilitate such
collective endeavors.
“Theater has so many different forms,” Ward said.
“It’s not just live actors on a stage in some
performing arts center somewhere. Theater is the narrative core of
all entertainment forms, including visual media, including film,
television, video and themed entertainment.”
Vaughn said the course is in the theater department because, in
the end, the goal is to tell a good story, not just to sell tickets
or to build interesting structures.
The course is also a great opportunity for students to make
connections in the business world. Vaughn brings in top Disney
professionals like scriptwriters, lighting designers, engineers and
developers as guest speakers.
In some cases, these connections have lead to positions. At
least two students have gotten jobs with Walt Disney Imagineering
as a result of this course.
One of them is Story. His internship began in his senior year,
and now he works in Walt Disney Imagineering.
Another student, 2004 theater alumnus Asa Kalama, took the class
and got Story’s internship when he was done. He now works in
the research and development department at Walt Disney
Imagineering.
UCLA students may have been set back by student fee increases,
but the “Art and Process of Entertainment Design”
course moves forward as a new approach to funding and teaching a
university course.
“With all the recent budget cuts, here’s a case
where Disney is paying for the whole class and provides
transportation to and from Disney studios in Burbank, Disneyland
and Disney California Adventures,” Ward said.
“They pay for professors and the TA. It’s like a
win-win for students, professors and UCLA.”
1 This quote’s attribution was changed to specify that Bruce
Vaughn was speaking.
