Festivals - GuadaLAjara Film Festival 2020 : Masterclass on Raya and The Last Dragon

By Mulder, 19 december 2020

Animation is a great place to create a pipeline for aspiring Latinx filmmakers in particular those who may have stories that need to live in a fantastical world to have a wider audience appeal. Animation is a larger platform to celebrate diversity and differences in culture, two examples are Coco and Moana, we were dropped into worlds that were culturally specific, but worldwide audiences were captivated by the beauty of these cultures.

During the GuadaLAjara Film Festival, Carlos López Estrada (co-Director) and Osnat Shurer (Producer) were present to a masterclass consacred to Raya and The Last Dragon. Raya and the Last Dragon is an upcoming American computer-animated adventure fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Animation Studios for distribution by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The 59th film produced by the studio, it is directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, co-directed by Paul Briggs and John Ripa, produced by Osnat Shurer and Peter Del Vecho, written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, and music score composed by James Newton Howard. Raya and the Last Dragon is scheduled to be released theatrically and on Disney+, with Premier Access, in the United States on March 5, 2021.

Ximena Urrutia : Hello, how are you ? I am very happy to welcome you all who join us here today at the Guadalajara Film Festival. I am Ximena Urrutia, director of the festival. And I am deeply proud today to be able to present what will be, without a doubt one of the main talks this year at the festival. It is not only a pleasure to have the speakers who join us today and who I will introduce in a moment, but it is also a pleasure to hear their vision with regard to the topic that concerns us today. Aspiration Through Animation is the title we gave to this Masterclass and to talk about it no one more expert than the people at Disney. And it is precisely them who are here, hand in hand with us speaking of this which is undoubtedly one of the most interesting genres for all those who are very young but also for all of us who enjoy these films. So it gives me great pleasure to present today Carlos López Estrada, director of the new and highly anticipated Disney film, Raya and the Last Dragon. Also here with us, Osnat Shurer, the producer of many films that I am sure many of you are fans. Lastly but not least, Julie Ann Crommett, she's here to moderate and chat with them about this which is one of the most famous genres at the box office. but it is also one of the genres that has put into perspective the stories told for children but also relevant to adults. How does this technology dependent world work? We will learn about that today. And with that, a warm welcome to each and one of them and deep gratitude from the festival for being here with us. Thank you so much. And welcome.

Vanessa : Well, on behalf of the festival, we'd like to welcome you. Thank you for joining us on this edition of, the 10th edition of FICG in LA, now the Guadalajara Film Festival. The festival's new mission is to share the best of Latin American cinema and open doors to Latinx creators with the intention of cultivating a borderless industry. Today, you will listen to a wonderful group speaking about aspiration through animation. And as we look at building the pipeline within the Latinx community, I think that this is a great chat to discuss how you can have a story with a stronger impact while going through animation. So we'll go ahead and let our moderator, Julie Ann Crommett, VP of Multicultural Audience Engagement, takeover.

Julie Ann Crommett : Great, thank you so much, Vanessa and Ximena for having and for that wonderful introduction. So I just say thank you to you all for organizing such a marvelous festival with an incredible mission that I think all three of us feel so strongly about. So thank you all very much. And everybody, who's watching, we are so excited to join you today, to have this conversation. We all gonna treat it as a conversation. We all three know each other very well. So hopefully this is a little bit of a peek into a shared living room, as they might say. Una sala. And you're getting to experience us joking back and forth, but hopefully sharing some insights, learning from each other and talking about the journeys of these two magnificent people that I get to work with every day. And truly, truly, I mean this, it is an incredible blessing on both counts. So thank you both every day for the partnership. Oh, absolutely. I'm gonna actually read their bios because they are so impressive that you deserve to hear all the detail. And I also like to embarrass them a little bit, so why not, okay? So we're gonna start with Osnat Shurer. She is the producer of the upcoming film Raya and the Last Dragon from Walt Disney Animation Studios, as you heard Ximena mentioned previously. She produced the 2016 Academy Award nominated "Moana." Huge fan. Shurer joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2012 as Vice President of Development, working with filmmakers to move features and shorts through the creative process. As producer of "Moana," Shurer helped manage the film through story, script, music, and casting and led the film's partnership with publicity, marketing and consumer products. She also created the films Oceanic Story Trust, a team of Pacific Islander consultants from the islands with whom production collaborated closely through the making of "Moana." And we're gonna talk a little bit about that later, 'cause it's an incredible process and one that's continued on many of our films, including Raya. Previously, she served as executive producer of the shorts group at Pixar Animation Studios, responsible for Pixar's short films. While there, she produced or executive produced a host of hit shorts, including the Oscar-nominated "Lifted," One Man Band and "Boundin." Her credits at Pixar also include video shorts like "Jack-Jack Attack" and "The Adventures of Mr. Incredible." At Pixar, Shurer was also responsible for helping to create several cutting edge multimedia shows, including MoMA's impressive Pixar: 20 Years of Animation, which opened in 2006 and went on to travel the world. The exhibit featured "Artscape," a widescreen projection space that provided viewers a unique digital artistic experience, and "Zoetrope," a dynamic 3D installation, modeled on pre-cinema technology, and used dimensional character sculptures to simulate continuous motion. Osnat, I did not know that. That is amazing. –

Osnat Shurer : You're going so deep. I love this, Julie Ann. Go deep. I haven't talked about the "Zoetrope" since that night at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that new gorgeous building, when testing the zoetrope, right? The guard came in and went, he was looking at the little green man going up and down and he kept going under it, looking to, where did they go, and we knew that it worked. I remember that. But you're taking me down memory lane. That's great.

Julie Ann Crommett : It was amazing. Like, what an incredible experience and absolutely. Just to witness that in real time, so cool. We're all geeking with you, Osnat, right now. This is amazing. Your duties, I'm going deep, your duty at Pixar also included, training production management, creating and supervising in-house documentary work for DVD bonus material, content and other archival materials. You also oversaw the development of commercials, theme park attractions for "The Incredibles," The Incredibles, everybody, you produced and directed Vowellet: An Essay by Sara Vowell, am I pronouncing that correctly ?

Osnat Shurer : You are. but you are going so deep.

Julie Ann Crommett : I know. And then the "Making of 'The Incredibles,'" Exploring the Reef with Cousteau, with Jean-Michael Cousteau for director Andrew Stanton, in conjunction with the release of "Finding Nemo." We're going really deep,

Osnat Shurer : like that was so fun. That was a shoot in Hawaii

Julie Ann Crommett : So documentary, multimedia, animation. You were the consulting producer on the Golden Globe-nominated feature "Arthur Christmas." And then prior to joining Pixar, Osnat produced and directed film and television in various mediums, which we're gonna talk a little bit that today as well, live action, animation, live television, what we just talked about interactive. And you worked on documentaries and narrative films all over the world. India, China, Tibet, Japan, Europe, across all of Africa and Europe, and with directors ranging from Michelangelo Antonioni to Alfonso Cuaron, a name familiar very much in Mexico. Shurer was born in Israel, as the child of an airline executive, I did not know that, and you grew up in many parts of the world. And you are an NYU, New York University, grad. So with that, and we're not gonna able to hear it, but a round of applause for Osnat Shurer. Amazing.

Carlos López Estrada : Did You provide all of this information or ..

Osnat Shurer : I've no idea where she dug it all up.

Carlos López Estrada : But this is-- I am terrified to hear what you're about to say. Yeah, that's amazing,

Osnat Shurer : We went deep, we went deep.

Julie Ann Crommett : that's amazing. This is gonna go in a whole other, some other layers here for our filmmakers and the audience, wow. And with that, oh, Carlos, here we go. Carlos Lopez Estrada, look what I dug up. Here's what we dug up. Director Carlos Lopez Estrada is director, with Don Hall, of the upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios' fantasy action film "Raya and the Last Dragon" which we're gonna talk about today, which is set to release March 12th, 2021. Having joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in late Spring 2019, you're a member of the Studios' Story Trust, in addition to "Raya and the Last Dragon," Carlos also has another film in development. Lopez Estrada's debut film Blindspotting, huge fan, premiered opening night at Sundance 2018 and was subsequently sold to Lionsgate for a theatrical release. The film was produced by Snoot Entertainment and stars Daveed Diggs. Lopez Estrada was selected for Variety's 10 Directors to Watch for the 2018 List, and it looks like, Carlos, you were also nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for First-Time Feature Film Director of 2018. His second film, "Summertime," premiered opening night of Sundance 2020 and will be released next year. And we're actually gonna go a bit deeper into that film today, as it's screening, as part of the festival. On the TV side, you directed an episode of FX's "Legion" and have an original piece in development at a UCP, Universal Cable Productions. You're a prolific music video and commercial director, okay, now we're going a little deep, here we go. Music video and commercial directing, you're a founding partner of the multi-discipline production studio, Little Ugly. You won a Latin Grammy for an animated video that you directed for Jesse and Joy, which established you as the youngest director to win a Latin Grammy to date. Everybody, let's just take that in for a second. You've worked with musicians such as Billie Eilish, Father John Misty, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Carly Rae Jepsen, Capital Cities, Clipping and Passion Pit. The list goes on. And you apparently currently live in Los Angeles, which I knew, but with a jog Cous and a large family of plants. So everybody, a little round of applause for Carlos Lopez Estrada. Oh my gosh, I didn't know the half of that either. The two of you, this is extraordinary. And a little embarrassing. And so with that, we'll get off of your bios and maybe do a little bit of diving deep as, we're talking to some filmmakers today, they're on their career, they're on their journey here at the festival. Just to start at the very beginning, where did you grew up, what was your journey, and when did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker ? Like, when did that calling happen ? Maybe, Osnat, we'll start with you.

Osnat Shurer : I grew up, as you mentioned, as an airline kid all over the world. I'm Israeli, my parents were Israeli, fought in the freedom movement to free Israel from the British. So comes from a long line, but I grew up all over the world. That some of my childhood in Turkey, some in Africa, came back to Israel around 12, 13, and then finished high school, did my army service and came here to go to film school. After hitting the road, after a couple of years in between there of sort of exploration. I think for me, everything I did was always centered around storytelling. There are moments that stand out for me. My father was an incredibly avid photographer and filmmaker. He had a Super Eight camera and we used to film together and then we'd come back, and we were in Africa, so we were coming back from the Victoria Falls, we're coming back from something stunning, and we'd be recording sound and with the bathtub water running so then we'd have the sound of, and we made little titles, with those little white letters on a black background. So I was doing that and I was in the dark room, I was like eight, nine, and that was very close to my heart. Then I got into theater and acting. And then later, that led to wanting to be behind the camera. But I think every aspect, I did that, I did some radio, that's how old I am. Every aspect of what I did and then getting into documentary filmmaking had to do with, and maybe it's because I moved around so much. As a child, I moved from culture to culture. And I remember, at a young age, becoming aware that culture is a lens. There are others, I know. I get on an airplane and I go somewhere else and there's a different lens. Like going to a very British school where we were supposed to be like little ladies. And then going back to Israel where it's like, somebody did something to you, you out of them, you beat them up and there's no little lady, and you're eight. And you're like, oh, oh, I see, this is perspective. Sent me on this road of storytelling and culture and where the two meet and what they mean to each other, how we create culture through story and how story ends up being culture, they're interwoven, and that's still going on. That went on for me in documentaries, that went on for me in doing live television and it went on, and "Moana" certainly brought that to a focus in a way that I loved and enjoyed. And we can talk later about kind of the movement, from the indie world to the sort of Pixar, Disney world, because it's very interesting what happens with opportunities it creates. And it's still interesting to me. "Raya and the Last Dragon again, looks at," it's a fantasy story where we're always looking for the balance of inspiration, that comes from the culture and yet creating a new culture, creating a new story, something original. So I think that's an area of exciting curiosity and work for me. And I think filmmaking gives you a unique opportunity to do that with music and a mixture, and words and it brings something together that I love.

Julie Ann Crommett : Love that. It is beautiful. Carlos, yeah, you can jump in now.

Carlos López Estrada : No, I was just gonna say I didn't know so many of these things about Osnat and that there's a lot of parallels with sort of like my upbringing, I mean, your story is incredible, but there was definitely a lot of like early Super Eight moment for me. And my mom gave me sort of like my first camera when I was very, very young and me traveling with her and sort a like learning about the world through her lens. So I didn't know any of this. It's amazing.

Osnat Shurer : I was gonna guess that you're growing up already had digital cameras. Super Eight feels like, from my ancient. Not yet. But I'm so thrilled that your mother had that.

Carlos López Estrada : Not yet, I was, I think, part of like the transition. Like I definitely still a shot and like really, really old school cameras. And then as I got into like high school and college, slowly started becoming a part of the digital revolution.

Osnat Shurer : What made You wanna be a filmmaker ?

Carlos López Estrada : I was born in Mexico City and I was raised in this family that was like very dedicated to the arts, communication and the arts. My grandma was a theater actor. My grandpa was a journalist and he covered arts and entertainment. That's how they met. And both of my parents met in a television studio, in a big television studio in Mexico City. So I was raised in this family that after school, I would go to work with my mom. And then at night, we would go see my grandma at a play that she was in. I would spend the weekends with her, it's sitting backstage sometimes. And then my mom was also doing some theaters, so she got to travel a lot and I would travel with them whenever summers and like holiday vacation. So, I would bring this little camera that she had for me and would just film everything that I considered sort of like interesting or unique, important that eventually, I was in school, so I started bringing my friends along and we would start making a little movie and we would recreate scenes from Titanic was the big movie back in the day. So, none of the adult content in "Titanic," just like the, it was mostly the action. Like we had a little boat and we would put it in a pool or a lake and then recreate some of like the action moments. So I mean, that was before I even considered what a career in film could potentially be. I was just so young and I think just excited about getting together with friends and having a tiny little community where you can do stuff and save it forever. So, I think that was just like innate and who I was as a person. And then we moved to the states when I was 12. I did high school in Miami. And I think when I started doing high school and I started to just think a little bit more about my future and started taking classes that excited me and thinking where potentially I could go to college, I started getting really into art and I did photography, I did a lot of painting classes, I did theater. And when it finally came down to start applying to colleges, I realized that film, not only was it something that I had been sort of like practicing for a long, long time and learning about it through my family, but also it was the one discipline that would allow me to explore all of these different interests that I had. So there's a lot of theater and film, there's a lot of photography and film there's a lot of music and film, and there's also not a lot of math and other academic stuff that I didn't like. So I applied to film school, I came here to California and went to Chapman University. And I guess also something that I didn't hate in high school was that I played music with a lot of bands. So, when I was starting film school, a lot of my friends who I had been playing with, the ones that stuck to music, were starting to get like working for indie labels or getting their stuff sort of like, they started getting bigger opportunities in their young music careers and getting like tiny budgets to do music videos and that is sort of like how I started working. I would start working for my friends, who didn't have a lot of money, but wanted something, semi-professional looking so. And so they would talk to me, and my friends who, we didn't have a lot of experience and we didn't have much of a reel to show, but we, I was in a film school and we had access to equipment and they would let us use sometimes their stage, so it was a good exchange where we were mutually beneficial. Like they didn't have a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of experience, let's get together and do something. And that sort of like slowly started. As their career is starting, they would get bigger budgets, they would get signed by better labels. We would also just get more experience and start figuring out how to make things look better and make more sense. So both of our careers, my musician friends and my filmmaking friends that started growing at the same time and then they started sort of like, we would help them out make better videos, they would help us out get better opportunities with music and exposure. And that, essentially, just like snowballed into commercials. I did a few shorts, I did few digital things. And long story short, that led to my first feature, Daveed, who wrote and starred in it, with Rafael Casal. I had done music videos for them. I met them. I did a music video for Daveed for $1,000 and his rap group is starting to do really well. Then, anyway, we'll talk about our first projects. But that Just sort of like snowballed and then here I am.

Julie Ann Crommett : amazing. Well, with that, we should just snowball into that piece of the puzzle, right ? You were just kind of getting there in terms of, what was that break, what was that transition in the journey. And I love both of you, as you think about what was that flip moment for you, right, what was that break? Then maybe reflecting off of that, what's been the transition also, we have a lot of independent filmmakers in the audience, what's the transition or things you wish you would've known between, through the independent world and then working in a larger studio or with larger projects and sort of what you learned 'cause, goodness, there's a lot there.

Carlos López Estrada : We were Just talking about It and I think, Osnat, you're gonna have an amazing story and mine is gonna be, it's still happening and it's still unfolding. So I'll,

Osnat Shurer : He's referring to the age. This is a nice way of saying

Carlos López Estrada : I'll refer. No, no, no. Referring to experience. Do you wanna go first,

Osnat Shurer : no, I'm happy to. I think, I have a few examples. And I think, first of all, I'll talk about what struck me. I've done a lot of different things in my career, as mentioned. I'm quite old. And I've done more independent and then some things that were a little bit less, but they were still, when I say less it was a museum or National Geographic or something like that. And so for me, Pixar, and also it was move into animation, was the true first experience of going mainstream. And what do I mean by going mainstream is a few things. You'll recognize these, anybody who's a filmmaker, right? One, I suddenly moved from, well, I can promise you a bagel, to, hey, I can pay you and here's a credit, and that is a big (audio warps) crew, license, music, whatever. And that was really nice. That's really nice when you can offer people their true value. The other, though, the one that struck me the most is the first thing that, for me, that, just for some reason struck home is, I joined Pixar and we're towards the end of "Finding Nemo" and Andrew said, "Listen, no offense to these wonderful And I said, great, you're talking my language. I come from documentaries, but it means there will be a camera in the room. Like it's inconvenient, we'll own the footage, but, and he said, do it, let's just do it. He really wanted it to be alive. And then we pitched these other ideas. Like I was like, can we do something for the reef ? You're in the reef. I know I'm coming from the nonprofit world, which is another big part of my career, but, and so we pitched this idea. Everybody loved it. It was to work with Jean-Michel Cousteau. And he's trying to make a documentary, and he was so game, he's trying to make a documentary. And Dory and our characters are like, what do you mean, you mean Bob over there, like they're disrupting the doc for the DVD, and we ended up doing it. And I did a math that was the most conservative I could be of how many people saw it. 25 million DVDs of "Finding Nemo" sold into individual households.

Carlos López Estrada : That's insane.

Osnat Shurer : And just like I went 20 years of documentaries, this little piece with like a licensed underwater footage, we didn't even go shoot it or recreate it in animation, you know what I mean. But it meant so much and it ended just with the website, 'cause the kids can go learn about the ocean and how just not putting junk in it is going to help revive the reef. So that was a big aha moment for me. And then after that, like characters that you've thought about coming to life. The whole thing of Moana catching, having a life of her own, I mean, so many stories of how that impacted. I also think that every story is worth telling. How many people see it is going to be the different opportunity that you have. But just the very expressing of our stories when we start out telling stories is enough of a goal in itself. That if you do that with enough focus and talent, like Carlos, telling stories in the capacity that he could, it kind of helped shift you into a bigger and bigger audience or a more and more specific audience for you. So I'd say, it's an organic process mostly. That would be my recommendation to most filmmakers. It's worth it because, especially for all you young people out there, it's worth it because you can affect the world with your stories, and so tell 'em.

Carlos López Estrada : I feel similarly. And that it's amazing to hear you talk about it because I'm still, as I mentioned, still very much a part, that's the transition that I'm experiencing right now. And I think the philosophy behind it is the same, obviously very different stories and backgrounds, but the philosophy kinda the same. For me, my transitions are like from hyper independent into the slightly more commercial world was when I made my first movie, which wasn't that long ago. I think we shot it maybe like three and a half years ago. But as I was mentioning earlier, I had done music videos mostly and these were like low budget music videos that eventually became not so low budget, but still like compared to most of the production that exists in the world, that we were still doing it for pennies and asking my friends would all crew in it, most times my friends would star in it. We would shoot it in our houses or in businesses that, my dentist's office or, it was like that kind of independent. And then eventually, we were able to start shooting with nicer cameras and shooting in smaller studios, but still it was very much, like the music video industry, especially now and when I was starting to do it, it really wasn't this glamorous thing where you were shooting in like private jets and like close. So to do it my friends and I did it. Yeah, we were shooting around LA with cameras running around. And I'm glad it was like that because I think it very much shaped the way my creative brain works. But I did this video for Daveed's group called Clipping. He has like a hip hop group. It's him and two more people. We did it for $1,000. We asked for every imaginable favor. But I did it because I heard the music and I remember hearing Daveed's voice and Daveed's words and I just thought that this was a brilliant man, and brilliant set of minds behind this. And I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen with this, but it's worth my time. And something tells me that Daveed has a lot to say. And we did this video, then I became good friends with Daveed. And the guys from Clipping, we ended up doing maybe like 10 or 11 music videos together, that I actually really like, and those guys are brilliant. And then Daveed got called to New York to do a reading for this musical called "Hamilton" and he kinda like explained it to me. And I was like, it sounds interesting. I think we had to push maybe a music video shoot because he was leaving to New York for a few weeks to do this thing. And then a few weeks turned to a few months, turned into years and the world changing forever. So he was part of the original cast of "Hamilton". I just have to say. - Yeah, he was incredible.

Osnat Shurer : He was so good. That what did I miss moment. Oh my God.

Carlos López Estrada : Yeah, he was incredible. And I'm so glad that the world witnessed it because I think he deserves all the recognition that has come his way. But I happened to move to New York around the same time that he did. And it was just by chance, 'cause I've always wanted to move to New York and I had a chance where my lease in LA ended so I moved to New York and he was there. So we continued working when he was there. He introduced me to Rafael, who was his co-writer in "Blindspotting." And essentially, what happened is the day that Daveed left "Hamilton," so he did his run and then he prepared to do new things, this group of producers who had been talking to him for years about this particular script came to him and said, if you have time, we think that we can help you do it. We can finance it and we can produce this movie for you. And because I had a relationship with him, and Rafael, and we had been working together for years on some theater projects and musical projects, and "Blindspotting" had so much of those two things, they essentially just invited me to join the project and it was very, very sudden. Like, hey, what are you doing ? The next few months, we need to, we have this script that is like seven years old, but we wanna workshop it with you. Can you come to LA? Can we work on it together? And potentially we can shoot it in the summer. So anyway, long story short, moved to LA, we workshopped the script together, we shot at that summer, that was 2017, and then it, we had a budget and we had finance, but it was still like a fairly independent project. And then premiered at Sundance the next year and it just kinda changed my life. I mean, there's a direct connection to here, being here at Disney because Jessica Julius, who is the Head of Development of Disney Animation, was at Sundance when it premiered, she saw it. And around that same time, Jennifer Lee, who is the Chief Creative Officer at Disney Animation right now, had just started on her new position and had said that one of the first things that she wanted to do was to bring in some outside voices to join the directing team of Disney Animation. So right at that time, it was just lucky timing. But right at that time, Jessica had seen my movie at Sundance, Jen had started looking for new voices in animation and they invited me to come for a coffee. We had a nice chat. They figured out that I was a lifelong—

Osnat Shurer : And then We decided He was a keeper.

Carlos López Estrada : Yeah. I showed up to my meeting with a Mickey Mouse backpack, not purposely, just 'cause that was my backpack. Really ? And We Just clicked. And anyway, long story short, I joined the studio like a year and a half, a little bit less than two years ago. And that was it.

Julie Ann Crommett : That's incredible, Carlos. And also, the detail of the Mickey backpack to the meeting is really, really something.

Carlos López Estrada : Yeah, no, no. They called me back later and I had to come in to meet all the directors. And I mean, it was my backpack so I showed up with my backpack. And I had to go into the meeting and just say like, I want you all to know that I did not buy this for the meeting and I'm trying to-

Osnat Shurer : It's so Carlos to both come with the backpack and then disclaim it.

Carlos López Estrada : Yes, exactly. I Just Did it. Anyway, it worked.

Osnat Shurer : Yeah, it worked and we got to keep him.

Julie Ann Crommett : Yeah, no. And the rest is history, as they say, in a way, which we're gonna get into a little bit, that present history. And a small promo for those of you who are in the audience who are independent filmmakers and you're thinking, how can I get seen at Disney, what are the opportunities to connect the dots, a little bit of what, in a way, of what Carlos' journey was, but in a somewhat more slightly different modality. But in the short film space, we have Launchpad, which is a shorts incubator that my team works on in partnership with Osnat, Carlos, and many other creatives at the studios. Thanks for the snaps. And if you're interested and you wanna learn more, it's launchpad.disney.com. Really straightforward, launchpad.disney.com. And we can make sure you all get that website link. But we will be opening up the next application period in 2021. So really wanna hear from you all.

Osnat Shurer : And may I just? I just wanna say a word

Carlos López Estrada : here about to talk about You for the next 20 minutes

Julie Ann Crommett : Like I'm a huge fan. And Julie Ann has been working in this space of inclusion and of making sure the voices are diverse in many mediums for a very, very long time and very, very successfully. But the magical thing she does is she makes it fun. So just sayin', a big shout out to you, Julie Ann. You're amazing.

Carlos López Estrada : No, I will second that. And even though my time at Disney has been short, you have become one of the people that I get to interact with the most. And I actually love it because every single time, every single project, every single conversation that we have it feels like you find the ways to make them meaningful and to make them impactful. And to know that a company as big as Disney, as a person as incredible as you spearheading all of these initiatives, I think is really special. And Osnat has been directly involved with Launchpad in this first iteration. And I've met a lot of people who haven't, but I can't wait to be more involved in the future, as involved as you let me. But I know that everyone who's been involved with the project is just so inspired by just all the voices that come out of it. Yeah, I don't know. Can we talk about, or is it—

Osnat Shurer : Yeah, well, we can send, there's stuff, yeah, check it out on the website. It's an amazing program that keeps in mind, finding, creating, nurturing, helping voices, storytellers with the Disney resources behind making people successful. Now that's cool. That is like, just definition of cool.

Julie Ann Crommett : Yeah, I didn't thank you both. Gosh, thank you. You're making me, And Carlos, we've now recorded you saying that you wanna be involved in the next season of Launchpad. So this is great. I have it in, look at this, it's in video.

Carlos López Estrada : I was already scheming because you are working now with someone who I've worked with before in the music video days and this person is helping you in your team, so I've already sent an email just being like, hey, please keep me in mind when you do this next thing.

Julie Ann Crommett : There We go. I believe you're in a presentation somewhere. Your photo has already appeared.

Carlos López Estrada : Oh, really?

Julie Ann Crommett : Oh, oh, you see ? Walked by too slowly, yeah.

Carlos López Estrada : Okay, well, go have them then.

Julie Ann Crommett : So it's amazing. I wanna shout out to Osnat for all her mentorship work on the program in this first iteration. It's been really wonderful to see the voices. Really encourage all of you, throw your hat in the ring. As Osnat said, it's all about developing and nurturing storytellers who have something to say. And as you were saying, Osnat, every story is valid. And so it becomes about how are we helping to resource and showcase your story and your talents to the world really. So really exciting. Again, 2021 beyond the lookout for launchpad.disney.com. I always feel like an infomercial when I give the website.. But with that, and thank you both so much for your encouragement, your support and your mentorship, I wanna flip us a little bit into another part of the conversation. We talked a bit about Blindspotting, Carlos, but you do have another project coming up and it's a part of this festival with "Summertime," and that you wanna tell a little bit about it? And I think we have a clip to share. So I'd love you to talk a little bit about it and maybe set up the clip.

Carlos López Estrada : It's kinda crazy that these two projects came together, 'cause I was transitioning out of doing this project when I started working at Disney. So it was really sort of like the biggest contrast you could ever imagine in terms of like a true, true independent movie that we did for, with very, very little resources and a lot of heart to a Disney movie that also has a lot of heart, but we did it with a lot of resources and a great, incredible team of like 900 plus people. And that really did happen overnight. So it's crazy to be talking about these two things simultaneously. Summertime began as a collaboration between myself and my sort of like team that I had been doing a lot of music videos and commercials with and a nonprofit here from LA, they're called Get Lit. They essentially work with young spoken word poets, and through high school and into college provide all of these different programs that are meant to increase literacy and bring their curriculum of spoken word to their individual schools and bring their instructors into the program so they can allow to, they can teach the curriculum as a part, they're essentially now partnering up with like many, many, many LA district schools and essentially just started like this empire of like young spoken word poets. And they invited me to one of their showcases last year, early last year, 2019. And it was essentially just like two hours of back-to-back spoken word poetry. These young artists that were all, most of them were still in high school at that time, just got to share a little bit of their perspective of what it's like to be young, living in the city of LA and their very, very particular sort of like experience. And I remember just being so moved and so inspired by this very diverse group of people that was speaking like so beautifully about their experience and that was using whatever was unique and special and different about them to create it and turn it into art and then wanting to share it with as many people as possible. So essentially, I came back from that showcase and I told the director of the organization, who I had a relationship with, I told her, look, I don't know how exactly I could be helpful or I don't know exactly what kind of project we can do, but what I saw was very, very impactful and it really did move me in a way that nothing else has. And if I could be helpful, I know that you do a lot of performances, I don't know if this is like a theater piece or we do like a show or like, I'm not sure what exactly this could be, but I would love to try to brainstorm some ways for us to work together. And then I kept in the back of my mind and I kept sort of thinking like, what could we potentially do? And then the idea of making it a very, very low budget independent film pumped into my head. And I had seen a movie particularly called "Slacker" that was done in the '90s by Richard Linklater. It's essentially a day in the life of Houston, no not Houston, Austin, sorry, Austin's youth and essentially just follows different conversations that happen between different people. And you get to follow like two people having a conversation and then you get to stick with one of them as they go into the next interaction throughout the day, and then you're introduced to a new set of people and then so on and so forth. So I pitched to them the idea of like, what if we did our version of "Slacker" in LA and essentially every poet got to write and perform their own piece, which essentially what I had seen at that showcase, and then we worked together there as a group putting, like creating all the connections, the connective tissue between story A and story B and essentially through it tell the story of a day in the life of Los Angeles and see it through their eyes. So that was a really long-winded way of saying this movie is essentially a collection of poetry and a collection of 25 different stories that all take place over one day in Los Angeles in 2019. So that being said, I think we're gonna show a clip. And this is a poem that to, a poet by the name of Amaya and a poem by the name, Benet worked on it together and they were just trying to share their perspective of what home means to them…. Yeah, it gets me every time. So this is a very particular piece, but it follows this kind of structure where one of these two characters that eventually, this is like a slightly more dreamy piece, it's like a more abstract piece, but you essentially do follow characters, like going as they go into the metros, they go into their therapy session, as they go into work, as they meet their family and that's sort of the structure or the piece. And it's very unconventional, but I am actually very happy with how it turned out. And the community that we got to work with of young artists is really incredible. They've actually been coming in to Disney Animation to talk a little bit with the project I'm developing next and just sharing a little bit of their poetry. And it's the way all these worlds intersect is pretty exciting. That's all I have to say.

Julie Ann Crommett : Amazing, Carlos. I'm still moved by the piece.

Carlos López Estrada : Oh, thank you. I will send you a link to see the movie, if you want.

Julie Ann Crommett : 100%.

Carlos López Estrada : It's done. Yeah, it's done. It's done. We premiered it earlier this year and then of course all the pandemic surprises happened, so we're gonna release it next year in the summer and see how it goes.

Julie Ann Crommett : There You go. Summertime in the summer. "Summertime" in the summer. It's beautiful, beautiful mixture of so much of your own spirit in there between the music and the image intersecting, and words. It's really beautiful, rhythmic work.

Carlos López Estrada : Oh, thank you.

Julie Ann Crommett : I really taken by it. I'm also a huge spoken word fan. So I have a complete bias toward anything that--

Carlos López Estrada : Oh, no. I'll send both you and Osnat a link when we're done with this.

Julie Ann Crommett : Yes, Osnat, we got a link out of the panel. This is great.

Osnat Shurer : Our work here is done.

Julie Ann Crommett : And with that, we're gonna turn it actually back to Osnat, 'cause Carlos just shared a bit about "Summertime," which is upcoming project. But you did some tremendous work that is inspired, and this is where I will say it has inspired my team and myself on the daily, but so many others, both in the industry and in our company around "Moana" with the Oceanic Story Trust and the care and consideration and partnership and impact that came both into that and out of it. I love you to talk a little bit about that work, why it's so important. and you reflected a bit at the beginning, we talked about culture, and then maybe tying that into a little bit of "Raya and the Last Dragon."

Osnat Shurer : Sure, I'd be happy to. That's a topic you can't even, you have to stop me at some point. Well, like I said, I've moved around cultures my whole life and I come from a place that's the crux of cultures and we identified Israel with Africa, Asia, or Europe depending on whether if it's football or something we can win. But when I got on "Moana" and, as the head of development, Ron and John, first of all, I got to work with some of the gods of animation. We're talking about Ron Clements and John Musker, we're talking about "Little Mermaid," "Aladdin," Hercules, anybody? So that was incredible, especially since it was my first musical and they're just experts at that. There's a whole thing to talk about there. But there had been one research trip, then we started our first writer on the film as a Pacific Islander, Taika Waititi, who has since done a thing or two that people have heard of, bless him. Thor, anybody? Jojo Rabbit. We had reached out to him because of a couple of his independent films that we love so much like "Boy." Anyway, so we were working with a number of people from the region, but one of the things that became very, very clear early on is that to really connect with a culture so that it infuses the work that you do, we're making a work of the imagination, of course. I mean, it comes from the imaginations of like Ron, and John, and Taika and many amazing people that we had on the movie. But that it has the soul, the soul of the movie carries some of the inspiration from a culture, you need to continue working together. It's not a matter of just going somewhere, getting some research done and coming back, not just because you don't know everything as an expert, far from knowing everything; but also because it's an ongoing conversation, it's not something that you get and then you've got it. It happens in every change. You and I have talked about it. It's kind of an inconvenient truth a lot of times. You finally cracked this great joke right in the story where we need it to be funny. But guess what? It doesn't work, for some reason, that somebody wasn't aware of. In my case, it'll often be a question of how we help, how we work with our female characters. In this case, it had so much to do with that gorgeous, deep culture and history that we met when we went to the islands, and the love and the warmth of the people. You can't separate it. It comes with the traditions that infuse the culture. And so we went on a research trip, and when we came back we designed what, an additional research trip was also where we got to put our musical team together for the first time. So again, it was Lin-Manuel Miranda. Yeah, the guy who said he's working on a hip hop musical about the Founding Fathers at the public, and I said, oh, we'll have him in two months full time, right? That guy, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Opetaia Foa'i, who was born and raised in Samoa, moved to New Zealand at a teen age to go to better schools. Parents are from Tokelau, Tuvalu islands with a thousand people, a very, very small Pacific Island communities. And Mark Mancina had helped pull it together. So we were in New Zealand and there, we were meeting with our ethnomusicologist as well. There, we were at a festival that represented the music from all the islands. Each place we went, we worked with these amazing people that would work really hard in development to try and identify. There's quality of both expertise and immersion in the culture, as well as an understanding of how that can translate into a Disney animated movie, which, by definition, is designed to appeal to two to 92 all over the world, to find common language. So how do you work with finding the specificity that leads to a universal experience that doesn't alienate, that actually includes? And so we created this trust. We called them the Oceanic Story Trust. The key players in it were an anthropologist, who stayed with us. Every image went to her before it went for legal clearance from Samoa, Dr. Dionne Fonoti. We had an incredible consultant from Tahiti, who is both, somebody who is working to preserve the Tahitian language and culture in a nonprofit she founded and works for Berkeley University there in a field station. So it was that ability, people who are interested in how that translation work. And we met with our trust, depending on what we needed, with a master tattooist for approval on every Maui tattoo and how they move with, we had a group in the small village called Korova in Fiji. They don't even have electricity in their land, and yet their people are very happy. This just filled with this incredible richness to share with us, and they still navigate in the old place. And so we were able to help bring them over to the university and Skype with them. It was all generations. Everybody came to understand how those ropes work that we had designed on the boat that was built off of their knowledge and expertise. So it was an ongoing thing through animation, through products and through parks, through publishing. And we were also lucky enough to be able to hire somebody on the show, Kalikolehua Hurley, who is our Community Relations Manager, and she joined us on the show. She's also a native Hawaiian, so also carries a lot of that knowledge. Joined us on the show to really help make sure that we're always giving attention to the culture in terms of the respect that we're paying. And people were there to do that. They were in the room. Opetaia was the one in a note session after screening 'cause our system, by the way, is that we finish a script, we board the whole thing, we screen it, and then we tear it apart together so that we can put it together better. It's a crazy system, but it works. And we were in one of these sessions, and thinking about how we wanted to honor more all of these incredible things we've learned about the culture, and the tapa cloth and the coconut and then this place. And he just went, I've got it. He jumped up, I got it. We should do a song. That is what we can do. We can do a song there. And that became the village song, the consider the coconut, that one. So that we could just take a moment to celebrate a culture. And the reason we were struggling with it 'till then is that because Moana has to go out and help this world and we can't make that world as appealing as we're wanting to. So we're struggling with it storywise, and found a way to incorporate. So, I'm full of stories like that. But the bottom line was to find a way to have a continued collaboration, to commit together, all the filmmakers, to listen and hear and know how to incorporate that and not let that ever feel like something that's getting in the way of creativity, but it's something that encourages more creativity because we just have another boundary we have to consider, just like a lady has boundaries, and how to continue the conversation even when we finished the film, because that was very important to me. And a lot of these relationships became friendships, they continued to this day, allowing me to travel again and I can go visit my friends in Tahiti. And one of our partners in Tahiti had this dream, when we first talked to her five years before the movie came out, that this Disney movie could be done in Tahitian. No movie ever had been done in Tahitian because everyone speaks French. Less than 250,000 people will still speak the language, and it's a living oral culture. In oral culture, when the language dies, the culture dies. And so I got all excited about that with, given my background. And between us, and a lot of incredibly wonderful, generous people in Disney side and incredibly, incredibly generous and talented people in Tahitian side, the movie exists in Tahitian and it was shown all over the islands, never ever charged for it, and hundreds of DVDs have bounded to the schools and the kids can go back to learning their own language through a Disney movie. That kind of combination is thrilling to me. Cut to "Raya and the Last Dragon" and so much of the inspiration, it's a fantasy film, it's very much something created through the minds of these incredible storytellers and filmmakers, but it draws inspiration from the region of Southeast Asia. It's a large region with multiple, multiple, multiple cultures and very unique cultures. There's some exciting throughlines and threads, and certainly the people we worked with and the places we visited, which included Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Malaysia, and of course, Indonesia, particularly I went back to Bali once. The people that we met, some of them, became our, what we now call our Southeast Asia Story Trust. We have a visual anthropologist, allow visual anthropologists who works in the California University system, who's seen every single image and talks to us about how we can honor and respect the culture that inspires it more. Again, it's a fantasy. There's dragons, spoiler alert. There's magic. And yet every effort was taken by every one of the filmmakers and art directors and production designers and storytellers and animators to pay attention. We have a dancer from Bali
who helped with movement and how you hold yourself in respect. And architect from Thailand, who's helped us with the imagery and what feels like a design principle underneath it. So it continues. And for me, it's so exciting. It's hard. It's hard to maintain. And it's a really exciting thing to be part of. I mean, you do so much of this kind of work. For me, the two things that are like real pillars is the cultural inspiration and the strength, the new and maybe, sadly, but never before seen, I think, in each round strength of our female characters, nuanced, flawed, interesting, badass. Those two things, I hope, dear to my heart. Love it. And, Osnat, I see it every day.

Julie Ann Crommett : So it's so beautiful to hear you articulate it 'cause it's so true and it's so core, if you think about it at the end of the day, the storytelling. As you said at the beginning, right, it's the culture and the story intersecting. And I believe you have a clip to share with us from Raya. Should we go ahead and pop that up, take a look ?

Osnat Shurer : That's our new trailer.

Julie Ann Crommett : It's so exciting. It's such an exciting film for multiple reasons you just outlined, Osnat, in some of your thoughts and comments. I'm so curious actually from both of you, maybe starting with Carlos, we'll go back to you, Osnat, is what excites you about this film, from story to character, whatever you wanna talk about, what really drew you to it and also what's so exciting and continues every day you wake up and you're like, oh my gosh, that. –

Carlos López Estrada : There's really so much about it. I think, for me personally, there's two levels, right? The first one is just, on like a professional and artistic level, getting to work at Disney and getting to interact every single day with so many people that are so talented, so inspiring. A lot of people work at animation were responsible for a lot of my biggest childhood memories and they're still there and you're still getting to talk and work and interact with them and that is just, it's sort of like a thing that I never imagined could be my life right now, that I'm getting to see designs for ideas that I'm having with people on a group, all of a sudden they're like materialized into these beautiful pieces of art. That is incredible. And just in terms of the movie and the story, and I think that the messages that we're trying to share with it, it just feels like a story that really does speak to many of the conversations that are happening today and many of the problems that are happening today, and it does so in such a creative, like imaginative and really, really special way. So for me, I think just to try to tie both of the conversations that we're having together, to be able to have the same spirit that I think that exists in a movie like "Summertime," the same heart, and to be able to see a group of 900 plus people working on something with just as much as big of a heart and being extra, extra thoughtful on every single detail and seeing how the smallest design or the smallest character element, the smallest story beat is really just trying to accomplish the same thing, which is just to create, create a connection between us telling the story, the people that are telling the story about it and the people watching it, it's kind of been really special to me. And the way I describe it is a story about the power of unity, the magic of unity, of people coming together and wanting to work together. And I cannot think of a more relevant theme or more relevant idea to just what we're experiencing today in so many different ways. But we thought the movie was relevant a year ago and then all of a sudden we had to work on this movie from our homes and we had to somehow create this sense of community, this sense of like partnership while each of us were so far away from each other. So the movie just, to me, became relevant in more than 100 ways. And now we're about to present this movie to the world that speaks about the power of unity in a time that I feel like could not be more significant and could not mean more. And it means a lot to us as a team, it means a lot to the studio, just as a community. And hopefully people who watch it in March 12th feel similarly. It's a story about people from very different backgrounds, from very different ideologies coming together and finding the common ground and understanding how much they could accomplish if they see eye to eye and they decide to work together. And it's just incredible that we can, I can see the same sense of purpose in a tiny independent movie that we did for no money with non-actors running around a camera, with a camera in LA, and then with this incredible production that was gonna travel the world and hopefully be seen by millions and millions of people. So anyway, that is what excites me the most. Osnat, I don't know if you, I'm sure you know.

Osnat Shurer : I do. And also, I can't wait until Carlos has that experience, when you first, that first experience, Carlos, when you walk by and the child is holding like a Raya action figure, I wanna be there 'cause you're just gonna burst out crying. It's just this incredible feeling of like, it has a life of its own. For me, it was the moment on "Moana" where my great niece in Israel, she looks a lot like Moana and she has the same kinda mocha-colored skin, big cascade of curls, and she would pose in her Raya costume, no, in her Moana costume with her oar in the morning before going to school in a warrior pose. This was her doing her princess, but in a warrior pose. And I just burst, I just lost it. It was just like, yes, , this is so good. I guess, for me, there were a lot of things I'm excited about. I've been working on the film for, it'll be close to four years by the time the film comes out and it's gone through many iterations. But always at its heart, its had a really, really strong, interesting, unexpected, and I don't think we've seen her before, female protagonist, and relationships. And when I say I don't think we've seen it before, it's because when you're working on a movie, you're looking at what are comps, what can excite, what's interesting, what are shorthand for us as filmmakers? We're in the storeroom and we'll go, the Indiana Jones of at all. And it means we want some really cool obstacles. You can shorthand some things. There aren't yet enough films you can shorthand for any kind of interesting relationships between two female leads. This is a really, yes, we've got sisters in "Frozen", again from animation. We've got Moana, I can't tell you how many times I was asked, why she doesn't have a love interest, I think. She's 16 and she has to save the world. Who's got time, people ? So that idea of females as strong, full characters, in this case, the dragon, the magical creature is also a female, and the antagonist, who, let me tell you, is bad-ass. I can't talk much about her yet, but just you wait 'till you see some of the martial arts between these two women, both really capable, both really strong, both with flaws in their thinking, but their heart is in the right place. So to me, that's super exciting. It shouldn't be groundbreaking, but let me tell you, people, it still is. And then what Carlos was touching on, we all have to set aside our differences to work for the greater good. It isn't a question anymore. It's just a question of when we'll wake up and do what we need to do. And that's what this film is about. And it takes some acts of trust that are really hard for us and they're hard for our characters. But guess what? Hopefully, people will leave the theater going, we can do this, 'cause we have to. amazing. I, for one, cannot wait. And I've had the privilege of seeing it a few times along the way.

Julie Ann Crommett : But I cannot wait to see the finished moment in March of '21. And, Carlos, I think we all are gonna have to be there when you see the doll, the action figure, the costume, the girl in a costume, posing like your great niece, Osnat. I mean, those are the moments. That's the beauty of what as storytellers.

Carlos López Estrada : We released the trailer, the first teaser trailer, a few months ago. And everyone in the crew was so excited because their work finally got to see the light of day and people were talking about it. And we were sending back and forth all these reaction videos of people watching the trailer for the first time, particularly Southeast Asia, particularly people from the community and just sharing sort of like their reactions of seeing people who look and act and feel like them, on a major animated feature. And there's some really, really beautiful, emotional moments of people who are just like cannot contain themselves and are just so incredibly moved by what they're seeing. Just real reactions. Sometimes wordless, just seeing their eyes full of tears, of saying like, little girl saying, like, that's me. We got a video from a mom filming her daughter, whose name is Raya, seeing this trailer, it's just moments that I don't really think I would experience anywhere else. And it's been so, so meaningful. Yeah, I can only imagine once we start, hopefully, we'll be able to travel soon and seeing the experience and seeing just what this movie means to them.

Osnat Shurer : It's something that's come up a lot. A lot of key creatives on the movie are of Southeast Asian origin, the two writers, Adele Lim's Malaysian, Qui Nguyen is Vietnamese, our head of the story, Fahn grew up in Thailand. People talking to them about how that feeling that you get when these great loves, their love for Disney, and their great love for the cultures that they come from come together on the screen. Fahn, I think, described it as this incredible dream I didn't know I had.

Carlos López Estrada : Yeah, there's so many people from the region that we're working with. And even them, who created so many of these pieces and came up with all these ideas, whether it's music or the props or the locations, they get to see some of these. Because right now, we're about to finish the movie and we're getting to see the shots finalized, like with lighting and sound and music and all these people, who are very, very close to it, see it and they have this emotional reaction of just saying, I have never seen my cultur