High school students attend UCLA TFT’s summer institutes

It all began with some citrus fruit. Fifteen-year old Jessica E. became captivated by stop-motion animation after seeing British singer-songwriter Cavetown's emotional 2019 music video "Green," which features an animated lemon, lime and orange as its protagonists. "I fell in love with the artwork that went into it," said Jessica, whose last name is being withheld because she has been in the foster care system for the past two and half years. "That very day I begged my uncle to take me to Walmart so I could buy clay." Now, before she starts her sophomore year at the Los Angeles Unified School District's Innovative Cinematic Arts and Music Production Magnet School, known as iCamp, where she studies film and dreams of becoming an animator, Jessica is getting ready to spend two weeks as a participant in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television's Pre-College Film & Television Summer Institute, learning all about stop-motion animation. For Jessica, who lives in a three-bedroom house in South Los Angeles with her five siblings, attending the institute is an opportunity that wouldn't have been possible were it not for the full scholarship she received from The Nicholas Endowment. "I needed someone to pour cold water on me to make sure I wasn't dreaming," Jessica said of her reaction after finding out she was receiving a scholarship. The endowment gave UCLA TFT $40,000 in scholarship funding this year for talented underserved/underrepresented high school students to attend the school's programs, which includes the Theater Pre-College Summer Institutes.