BERKELEY - Surrounded by families honoring their loved ones amid a landscape bathed in the orange glow of marigolds and candles, Michael Capbarat took note of what lie around him.

There he stood, in the middle of a cemetery in Oaxaca, Mexico, captivated by the scene before him. On Dia de los Muertos, families line the graves of those they've lost in order to show respect and honor their spirits. It didn't take long for Capbarat, one of a 13-person group from Pixar Animation Studio on a research trip for a project that would eventually become the hit movie Coco, to understand and appreciate the cultural significance of the moment.

The group ventured into the homes of those celebrating one of Mexico's most revered holidays and the images were equally striking, as brightly colored ofrendas honored the memory of loved ones. The scene repeated in Guanajuato as Capbarat and his colleagues observed the rolling hillsides and multi-colored homes that created a one-of-a-kind setting.

"There was a feel about that location that was just a unique inspiration," Capbarat said. "I remember looking around at our production designer, our director and our writer and everyone's kind of looking around and nodding that there's something here."

Just like that, Coco began to take shape.

As the story manager for a film that would eventually win an Academy Award as the Best Animated Feature of 2017, Capbarat put to use a love of storytelling that grew roots as an undergraduate at Cal. An outfielder for the Golden Bears from 2004-2008, he majored in English and did everything he could to take advantage of his surroundings.

That meant applying himself in areas that far exceeded what took place at Evans Diamond. His exploits on the field included a key home run against Washington and helping the Bears to a top-10 national ranking during the 2008 season.

That, combined with one of the team's top grade-point averages and four years of work with the Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC), helped earn him the 2008 Pac-10 Sportsmanship Award. A weightlifting injury shortened his baseball career, but in the process of going through rehab he met Cal swimmer Emily Verdin. The two struck up a relationship and got married in 2016.
 

Balancing baseball and school has never been an easy proposition, but it presented an opportunity for Capbarat to develop skills that have transferred into the professional arena. The effort he put forward toward both endeavors didn't go unnoticed by teammates and close friends.

"Being a college athlete is a full-time job. Then you throw in academics at an institution like Berkeley and you're really juggling two full-time jobs," said Capbarat's Cal teammate Brett Thomas. "The workload from both is intense and so are the pressures that come with each. The time as a baseball player at Cal really prepares us to learn time and priority management, communicating on different levels both in the classroom and on the field, but most importantly is the skill of working with others and under a leader. Those skills prepare us to enter the workforce just focusing on learning the job itself and not needing to adjust to working with others and under a boss, managing our time, communicating with others or competing to be the best at what we do."

While he worked alongside his baseball teammates to succeed on the field, the Walnut Creek, Calif. native found his passion in other areas. He considered a Business track but, as someone who had always enjoyed reading and writing, English also held a certain appeal.

Having been encouraged by his parents to focus on what he enjoyed, Capbarat eventually chose the latter. He narrowed his studies on Antebellum American Literature and made sure to take classes that engaged the storytelling aspect that stoked his creative side.

"I remember going to I.B.'s on Durant, getting a burger, walking through Sather Gate towards Moffitt, sneaking my burger in and going down into the stacks and getting lost in writing essays," Capbarat said. "That sort of started to become my routine. There's a feeling associated with that, because you're not by yourself making that trip. You're in a river of students doing the exact same thing, following their passion. That fueled my creativity."

When he graduated, storytelling continued to play a primary role as he searched for a job. Introduced by a friend to the movie Ratatouille, Capbarat took the time to watch the extras that accompanied the film and gained a new direction moving forward.

"(Director) Brad Bird himself will say I wouldn't classify myself as an animation director. I just like filmmaking and telling great stories," Capbarat said. "There's a great DVD extra in there where he talks about that and I just remember thinking if I could somehow do that, work on a team and leverage my team experience but do it in a storytelling capacity, that would be it."

After getting turned down for a story production assistant role on the movie Brave, Pixar called back with a temp position that involved packing crates for trade shows. After a few months, a story production assistant position opened and he began to work with Bird on a project in development.

Capbarat's next step came as a story coordinator for Monsters University, a role that tasked him with supporting a story team of around 10 to 12 people as well as the story manager. His focus shifted with Coco when he assumed the role of story manager and began to focus on working together with the creative supervisor, writer, director and producer to keep some of the world's brightest creative minds focused in one direction.

Just as it had at Cal, the team setting Capbarat found himself in provided the most effective muse for creativity to flourish.

"There was a time on Coco when we were nine on the team and we would use those (baseball) analogies all the time," Capbarat said. "Who's our four-hitter, you need a leadoff guy, there's got to be a 7-8-9. Who's that going to be? It really is similar."
 
The trip to Mexico was only one part of a journey that will resonate a lifetime. Having seen each scene in the film in hundreds of different versions, Capbarat now looks at a film that captured the world's attention in a different way than most. He can recount the inside jokes that popped up along the way and smiles when explaining that those moments help form the lens through which he sees the film now.

The public loved what it saw. Coco became the 11^th-highest-grossing film of 2017 and won a pair of Academy Awards. The team shared in the success at Pixar's Emeryville headquarters as Coco took its spot in movie history.

"No one is surprised by Cabbie's success," Thomas said. "Cabbie is one of the hardest working people I've ever known. He is smart and communicative and you knew that no matter what he did he would be successful and eventually be in a leadership role. He is a natural leader, but knows when he needs to follow. Never would have put Academy Award as a guess of his future accomplishments, but nonetheless I'm not surprised in the slightest."



Capbarat reunited with Bird for Incredibles 2 as manager of the camera and staging department. These days, he is focused on the latest chapter of another beloved Pixar franchise as the manager of the animation department on Toy Story 4.

Even with the success of Coco or any other film he's working on, the stories Capbarat tells as he roams the halls of Pixar don't center at all on his own contributions. Instead, he talks about the incredible effort an artist put into a particular storyboard or the countless attempts to capture the perfect voice intonation of a specific character.

The same qualities he learned as a student-athlete at Cal continue to serve as a driving force at Pixar, and by putting those skills to use, Capbarat takes great enjoyment in the talent thriving around him that inspires him on a daily basis.

"I get fired up by the opportunity to look back at the end of Toy Story 4 and have people feel like they accomplished something for their own careers and their own growth over the course of the show," Capbarat said. "Being able to help foster that growth and help create a road map for those folks, that kind of leadership, teeing stuff up and getting out of the way, I love that. That's what keeps me motivated."