[ecrea] CFP: 30 years of Pixar Animation Studios – Symposium

With the usual apologies for *cross-posting*, please see the following 
call for papers for an upcoming symposium on Pixar Animation Studios to 
be hosted by King’s College London.

*_CFP: 30 years of Pixar Animation Studios – Symposium_*

*_Saturday 10th December 2016, King’s College London_*

On August 17^th  1986, Pixar Animation Studios premiered its 
ground-breaking computer-animated film short /Luxo Jr/. (John Lasseter, 
1986) to an enraptured audience gathered at the annual SIGGRAPH computer 
graphics conference in the Dallas Convention Center Arena. Screened 
alongside two other test shorts – /Flags and Waves/ (Bill Reeves and 
Alan Fournier, 1986) and /Beach Chair/ (Eben Ostby, 1986) – /Luxo Jr./ 
pioneered the possibilities enabled by new digital technologies and 
announced Pixar’s proprietary computer software as a landmark filmmaking 
tool. /Luxo Jr./ rapidly became a signature success for the company, 
marrying technical achievements in the field of digital technology with 
effective storytelling and strong characterisation, and is widely 
credited among animation historians as being as significant to Pixar’s 
early animated history as /Steamboat Willie/ (1928) had been for the 
Walt Disney Studio nearly sixty years previous.

Since this breakthrough tale of two desk lamps, the Pixar studio has 
garnered a reputation for producing quality computer-animated features 
with an unparalleled degree of commercial and critical success. The 
studio has released a total of seventeen computer-animated feature films 
and over thirty short films, as well as a range of digitally-animated 
advertisements, television specials and supplementary spin-off media. 
While Pixar’s feature films alone have made over $10 billion worldwide 
and won thirteen Academy Awards (including Best Animated Feature eight 
times), nine Golden Globes and eleven Grammys, their wider contribution 
to the industry revival of animated film cannot be overlooked. The 
release of /Toy Story/ (John Lasseter, 1995) on 22^nd  November 1995 
prompted a number of companies, facilities, divisions and subsidiaries 
to make the transition from visual effects companies offering customised 
services to computer-animated film production. With post-millennial 
mainstream U.S. animation seemingly in ‘good health,’ it is the Pixar 
studio that are universally recognised for their role in reimagining 
feature-length animation once more as an economically viable and 
desirable Hollywood studio product.

To coincide with the 30^th  anniversary of /Luxo Jr./ and following the 
recent cinema release of their computer-animated feature-film /Finding 
Dory/ (Andrew Stanton, 2016), this one-day interdisciplinary symposium 
invites proposals for twenty-minute paper, 5-minute micro-talks or video 
essays on any aspect of the Pixar studio that interrogates the qualities 
of its animated legacy. By bringing animation theorists and 
practitioners together with scholars of contemporary Hollywood cinema 
and popular media, this symposium will discuss the success, appeal and 
specificities of this critically-lauded animation studio, and explore 
the broader implications of animation’s digital shift. /30 years of 
Pixar Animation Studios/ seeks to collect a broad range of critical 
approaches to the analysis of Pixar, and potential paper topics include, 
but are not limited to:

   * The origins of Pixar and relationship to Industrial Light & Magic/
     Lucasfilm
   * Software (CAPS, RenderMan, Marionette), labour and computer-animated
     film production
   * Questions of authorship (John Lasseter, Eben Ostby, Bill Reeves, Sam
     Leffler, Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs)
   * Early Pixar ‘for hire’ and the studio’s commercial projects
   * Pixar, digital technology and the history of visual effects
   * The Pixar shorts
   * Case studies of particular Pixar films
   * Pixar on television (/Toy Story Treats/, /Buzz Lightyear of Star
     Command/, /Toy Story Toons/, /Cars Toons/, /Toy Story of Terror!/,
     /Toy Story That Time Forgot/)
   * Pixar and the landscape of contemporary Hollywood animation
   * rivalry with DreamWorks, Blue Sky, Illumination Entertainment
   * The Emeryville campus and the Pixar University
   * Pixar’s corporate history and the Disney/Pixar merger
   * Production culture and the Pixar Brain Trust
   * Pixar Home Media
   * Fandom and critical reception (The Pixar Theory, ‘Pixarification’)
   * Art exhibitions and installations (‘Pixar: 25 Years of Animation’,
     ‘The Science Behind Pixar’)
   * Pixar and film genre
   * Pixar, style and digital aesthetics
   * Ideology
   * Sound design and soundtrack (Randy Newman, Michael Giacchino, Thomas
     Newman)
   * Stardom
   * Pixar and animation studies

Speakers are invited to submit a *250-word abstract* and *short 
biography* to Dr Christopher Holliday ((christopher.holliday /at/ kcl.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(christopher.holliday /at/ kcl.ac.uk)>). The deadline for proposals is 
*1^st  October 2016*. Please do get in touch if you wish to discuss 
possible topics or have any questions regarding the symposium.

*Conference organiser:* Dr Christopher Holliday (King’s College London)


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