Dr. Stella Sung helps a third grader during UCF CREATE’s weaving and dyeing summer camp in 2018. In collaboration with the Academic Center for Excellence and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida, CREATE visited elementary students and taught them how to weave, tie-dye shirts and paint using pastels and watercolors.
Courtesy of UCF CREATE
In the 1970s, a young girl sat amid the rumble of percussion and the smooth timbre of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s strings, unaware of the seasoned composer she would become.
Those concerts helped launch Dr. Stella Sung’s love affair with music and composition.
Sung began studying piano at 8 years old, leading her to pursue degrees in piano performance and composition. After receiving her doctorate and completing a six-month study period in France with a musical mentor, Sung joined UCF as a full-time professor teaching music theory, composition, piano and voice.
Sung serves as the director of the UCF Center for Research and Education in Arts, Technology and Entertainment, also known as CREATE. Sung is also a faculty adviser for animation students in the UCF School of Visual Arts and Design, guiding them as they compose soundtracks for their student films.
What drew Sung to UCF was the freedom and opportunity it offered as a smaller institution back in the late ’80s, she said. She was able to continue exploring new projects and ideas — a philosophy she still embraces today.
“I can do different things and maybe use different talents that I didn’t even know I had,” Sung said.
Sung has long been drawn to pairing music with visual media.
“Usually they separate arts and sciences,” Sung said. “But now, with technology, a lot of it is coming together.”
JoAnne Adams, supervising faculty adviser for UCF SVAD, oversees animation students as they create films for their senior projects. Dr. Sung works with and advises young composers to score those films, working closely with Adams.
Adams said that audio is used as a storytelling device, you cannot have a film without music.
“The music is supposed to support the meaning of the story and the shot,” Adams said. “All our artistic expression is meant to communicate a feeling, an emotion and a thought process.”
While working with the animation department, Sung was invited to collaborate as the composer for the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance in Ohio. The alliance had received a “Music aLIVE” grant and was developing an animated short film.
First graders in Dayton were asked to submit story ideas. From the first graders’ submissions, UCF animation students created “Farmer Glorp,” a short film about an alien flower farmer whose crops are disrupted by a small alien creature. Sung scored the film.
When the project was complete, everyone involved was invited to a live screening, where an orchestra performed the soundtrack over the animated film.
In a vast auditorium, with over a thousand children at the same age she was when she first fell in love with music, Sung watched a live orchestra bring the children’s story to life — just as the Jacksonville Symphony had once brought her own dreams to life.
“It was wonderful,” Sung said. “The students got a chance to take a bow on stage, to be acknowledged for their work as filmmakers. It was really fun.”
At UCF, another opportunity for collaboration surfaced when a colleague connected Sung with underwater diver and filmmaker Annie Crawley. Together, they created “Oceana,” a three-part film pairing vivid images of marine life and human pollution with Sung’s original compositions.
The project aimed to raise awareness about ocean noise pollution and environmental harm. Sung said to her, it was musical activism.
“It is important,” Sung said. “I don’t have a voice, really … but if I can have the music speak, that would be important. That would make me really happy.”
When Sung joined CREATE she decided to make it an outreach program, she said, helping expand opportunities in animation and educate disadvantaged students.
Since 2007, Sung has led CREATE at UCF Downtown. But after COVID-19, CREATE has focused on helping the Parramore community in downtown Orlando and other underprivileged communities.
Through summer animation intensives, high school students come to learn 2D and 3D animation, collaborating to produce their own short films by the program’s end. UCF students and faculty mentor them throughout the process, offering technical training and creative guidance.
Adams also worked on the CREATE project with Sung. Adams teaches high-school students 2D animation during their summer intensives.
“Dr. Sung is world-class,” Adams said. “Very articulate, intelligent, caring, dedicated.”
For Sung, the work is about more than animation. It is about supporting and encouraging the next generation of artists.
“My parents always supported me, and that was really important, because as an artist, you need support,” Sung said.
Sung is now preparing to work with UCF’s Institute of Artificial Intelligence, she said. She will collaborate with scientists and engineers on an experiment exploring whether AI can surpass human creativity in music.
Sung encourages young people entering the art industry, as she once did, to always have another project on the horizon.
“Keep going, keep going forward,” Sung said. “Always have something you’re interested in, something you’re engaged in. Because if you don’t, you’re going to fall behind.”