061: Exploring Areas of Animation

Catalyst: A Creative Industries Podcast

Catalyst is a Creative Industries podcast, from Chapman University. Each episode features Chapman students who have completed a Podcasting course through the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries at the university. Students who had no podcasting experience or technical ability in the genre before taking the course were able to contribute all the segments to Catalyst this season with the goal being that they will take this ‘hands-on’ experience and carry it over to the launching of their very own series. Each episode of Season 8 will feature one to two different interviews conducted by CCI students, exploring different aspects of the Creative and Cultural Industries.

In our opening segment this week Lars C. Larsen, the set designer and rigger for Coraline and many other stop-motion films joins Livia Paschke to talk about how in college he used his engineering background to rigg crazy theater sets, and how that taste led him to want more in the film industry. Learn about how he started his career and its progression which led him to this niche wing of animation. Hear about what the stop-motion community landscape looks like today and what it was like to work with talented friends such as Guillermo Del Toro and many others!

The second half of the program features Zoe Warch interviewing Angus MacLane, director of Pixar’s newest film, Lightyear! They talk about Angus’ assent at the Disney company including some of his first assignments, which interestingly link back to how Buzz’s backstory came to be. They wrap up by discussing what happens with your movie when you’re done filming. This interview was conducted just before Lightyear was released in theaters, so tune in to hear Angus discuss all of the people who are working on it at that moment! You can actually hear people working on the movie in the background of the interview!