Since when do teens voluntarily show up in such earnest for an optional lecture on a Friday night? When the speaker is from Pixar Animation Studios and he is going to tell them how a movie is made.

Lucas Ives, a 25-year-old technical director from Pixar, was the featured speaker for the first Teen Inspiration Lecture, a new joint effort by the Saratoga Recreation Department and the Saratoga Youth Commission. And if the event on Jan. 14 is any indication of how this new series is going to go, the event's organizers are jumping for joy.

Ives kept his audience of nearly 150 local teens and adults captivated for more than two hours, telling them what it is like to work at Pixar. He explained in detail how their favorite characters from animated movies like Finding Nemo, a story about a group of fish searching for a missing baby fish, and The Incredibles, a tale of a family of aging superheroes, were made. And he should know, because he helped bring them to life.

"I worked in the character modeling group for Finding Nemo, so if it moved and talked, we had something to do with it, either on the infrastructure side or the software development side," he said. "I did a lot of work on the fins of the characters because they have to be both believable as fins, but they also have to use them kind of like fingers, like to pick things up. That was hard to do."

Ives also explained how he helped animate the characters in Pixar's latest box-office smash, The Incredibles.

"For The Incredibles I worked on muscle technology," he said. "The movie had all these big, muscle-bound, super-hero guys, and we had to make the muscles look convincing."

Ives surprised some of his listeners when he told them it takes four years from beginning to end to make a movie like Toy Story or Monsters, Inc., two of Pixar's other previous hits. In his big-screen presentation, he showed them a flow chart of the pipeline of a movie and how it is made, beginning with pre-production—when the story team and editorial departments hash out the plot and events of the movie—all the way to animating the characters, dressing up the environment or sets in each shot, adding in the special effects, and finally transferring the movie to celluloid before it is sent to be copied and distributed to movie theaters.

Adam Henig, recreation coordinator for the city of Saratoga who was one of the organizers and helped secure Ives for the event, says he feels the "movie-like feel" of Ives' presentation helped keep everyone's interest. Ives included many video clips in his lecture. They showed everything from how animators frequently film themselves and other co-workers to capture how humans move, what it was like to have celebrity Ellen DeGeneres—the voice of Dora in Finding Nemo—in the studio recording her lines, and what it's like to be in the audience when a writer-animator gives an official movie pitch to the Pixar executives.

"I've gotten a dozen emails and maybe a half-dozen calls from people wanting to know, when's the next lecture, or the next time Lucas is going to speak? He's a good speaker; it was a pleasure to work with him," Henig says. "He's not just delivering a lecture, he's presenting this 'movie' to everyone; it makes it easy for people to stay focused. That was the key to his presentation."

At the end, Ives took questions from aspiring young animators in the audience. Many middle school- and high school-aged students wanted to know what they could do to prepare if they wanted a job like his when they grew up. Ives advised them that a college degree was important, especially in computer science, and that an advanced math background would be needed, in subjects like linear algebra and computational geometry. He also advised them to research and stay up-to-date on the latest technologies in the industry.

"Expose yourself to as many things as you can," he offered.

With the Teen Inspiration Lecture Series getting off to such a great start, Henig is looking to the future and hoping to have a new lecture with a different speaker at least once per season.

"That was kind of our winter lecture; maybe we'll have another in the spring," he says. "We are hoping to get someone from law enforcement, maybe some more people in the high-tech industry, and possibly some professional sports figures."

Henig says the goal of the lecture series is "to provide new ideas to young people. I didn't know about a lot of this stuff when I was growing up; it's an enriching experience.

"Plus, it's free, so there's no real excuse. Not only is it a way to provide ideas, it's another thing to do on a Friday night. It's new, it's fresh, it's something different than just going to the movies or Starbucks. It's also educational, and it's inspiring. Saratoga kids are getting a lot this year."

For more information on the Teen Inspiration Lecture Series, call Adam Henig at 408.868.1272. Visit the Saratoga Recreation Department online at www.saratoga.ca.us/recreation.htm. Visit Pixar Animation Studios online at www.pixar.com.