Carolyn Mazanec grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where her sleepy suburban upbringing inspired the backdrop for her first short film, The Summer of Lexi & Dawn. In high school, she published a novel called A Pink House, which similarly explored themes of self-discovery and the critical role friendships play in a coming-of-age story — a thread that runs through nearly everything she's made since.
She went on to study Communications, English, and Film at Northwestern University, where she found her love for screenwriting. Her script Casey Blatt placed as a semi-finalist in the 2018 ScreenCraft TV Pilot Script Competition.
After graduating, Carolyn met Tiajha Nakahara and Genevieve Diaz in the post-production department at MasterClass, and the three of them started working on The Summer of Lexi & Dawn on weekends and lunch breaks — the script placed as a quarter-finalist in the 2019 ScreenCraft Short Film Screenplay Competition. Around the same time, Carolyn and Tiajha (joined by Kevin Lin) began Debbie's Dry Cleaning, a hand-painted webcomic following a magical seamstress in San Francisco.
Carolyn now resides in Oakland, where she works at Pixar and keeps building out an ever-growing slate of personal projects: The Bathroom Attendant, an AI mini-series made with her friend Mara MacMahon and inspired by her dog Gary; Poor Dave, an animated sitcom co-created with Daniela Dwek; The Coat, a 3-minute short film she wrote and directed, spearheading the creation of a new AI / animation hybrid pipeline; and a new web series in early development with Matt Silas and Mike Daley. Across all of it, she's using her work as a testing ground for blending generative AI with traditional animation. When she's not writing or directing, she's usually on a hike with Gary.
