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As part of the “Art and Process of Entertainment Design” course, offered through the

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Students get the opportunity to take field trips to places such as Disneyland to learn more about

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.