The New Cinema School: Wave of the Future or Death of an Art?

For previous posts I have looked to the entertainment industry for material on the latest developments but this week, with the official unveiling of the new School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) building and the accompanying fundraiser for the four facilities still under construction, it appears that Hollywood's eyes are focused on USC. I will take this opportunity to follow suit. This weekend the new SCA complex was shut down to students and vamped up for its official coming out party. Celebrities, studio heads, and potential donors were on hand to celebrate with faculty, board members and of course our benefactor George Lucas (pictured). On March 26th and 29th Variety featured articles about the event. This past February, the New York Times also wrote about the new building, emphasizing that an "institution long known for close ties to Hollywood's movie and television business is demanding its place in the academic tradition." Founded in 1929 as a collaboration between the University and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the USC film school was the first program in the country to offer a bachelor of arts degree in film and has since remained on the cutting edge of the industry while continuously being ranked as one of the top institution in the nation. Nevertheless there is currently a growing concern that USC has become a sort of vocational school, training its students to become technicians in order to fill certain crew positions rather than fostering innovative filmmakers and encouraging the true auteur with an original point of view and a unique vision. The new edifice, an over the top monstrosity of technology reflects this growing issue and raises the question of whether USC will continue to produce the successful future filmmakers of America or if its emphasis on technology will stifle individual creativity and artistry.

Over the years USC has kept pace with advancements in editing and sound manipulation and will continue to do so in the new state of the art facilities. However, success has come at the expense of more traditional curricular offerings. Such a trend became alarmingly apparent this semester when a core course of the graduate program, CTPR 508, a class in which students are paired up to shoot two short movies on 16mm film stock, was changed to a digital HD format. There is no longer a requirement for graduate students to capture their own projects on the medium of film and it appears that the undergraduate program's comparable class CTPR 310 will suffer the same fate. Having personally taken this course and learned much from it I feel its absence will diminish the SCA student's experience. The cameras used in these classes do not record noise so it is the responsibility of the filmmaker to separately record, edit and mix all the sounds—footsteps, clothes rustling, breathing, special effects, et cetera—in order to create the world on screen. This course teaches students the power of the soundtrack, the importance of good visual and audio communication versus reliance on dialogue alone to communicate the storyline. By shooting on HD, the students record conversation and ambiance on set and are allowed up to forty percent of their film to be comprised of on-camera speech. In 2001, when writing about the Robert Zemeckis Center, the first SCA digital film building, journalist Rick Lyman contended that “digital data is much more elastic than film images, frozen on celluloid. A director can shift the perspective of a scene, add a fresh camera movement, alter an actor's performance, transfer the location from Red Square to Times Square, speed up time, [and] slow it down.” As a result of these capabilities the “we will fix it in post” mantra is heard far too often in film school rather than preparing students to effectively plan their shooting schedules or intelligently address problems that pop up on set. Lyman also spoke to Myrl Schreibman, an academic administrator at UCLA’s film school who believes “that creativity flourishes with limitations and restrictions, and if you give schools all the bells and whistles, they stop focusing on content and instead focus on what the bells and whistles can do.” Ability to shoot HD may be a valuable skill to master but SCA is a cinema school and film is still an art form, not just the medium around which an industry was created. Learning to shoot 16mm is essential in teaching students lighting, experimental filmmaking and good storytelling.

Sean Berens, a contributor to USC’s AngeBlongo writes that “the front gates of the new building[pictured] are deliberately meant to look like a studio. What those gates will soon be producing are people equipped to work in studios.” I agree that it seems that SCA, and according to the New York Times writer Sharon Waxman, most film programs, "rather than a breeding ground for auteurs, ha[ve] become a path to a professional career in Hollywood, a foot in the door and a place to make connections."The training we receive places greater emphasis on a given technical expertise rather than storytelling as a whole. I came here to learn how to fully express myself artistically, but over the years I have felt the growing pressure to focus on a specific skill set rather than learning as much as possible about the entire process. Currently on the “producing track,” I have found myself considering doing sound editing on an advanced project to ensure that I graduate with a marketable skill in a less competitive field than directing or producing. While I understand that the mastery of technical skills is beneficial for many film students who always hoped to, or after having taking certain classes decided to, pursue careers in editing or sound design, I feel it is premature for me to give up my dreams and already resign myself to being completely practical as I have been trained to do. While Dean Daley told the New York Times in February that the program and the new building is “very holistic,” and that “we’re not here just to train a cameraman” she was previously quoted in 2006 in the same publication as saying that "we would like to see every student who leaves here have an employable skill." So which is it? Is USC providing us with vocational skills or training the next Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola? Ideally we would like the education to teach both but with the new program changes in effect, finding a proper balance has not yet been achieved.

This is especially challenging on the undergraduate level, where students do not make thesis films that showcase their talents as writer/directors. Currently the most advanced course in the program is CTPR-480 (or its television based equivalent CTPR-486). Comprised of forty-eight students who work in crews of twelve to complete four twelve-minute films, each member has a specific position much like on a real film production, and the goal is learn to perform one’s function professionally. Each semester only four are chosen to direct and it is a highly competitive process, especially since most students come to school with the goal of becoming a director. Many who do not get this opportunity feel at a disadvantage when they are seeking industry employment. While USC requires that students wait until their second year to begin production classes, in other film programs like NYU/Tisch and CalArts students begin making films in their freshman year. As a result they are able to complete more projects and benefit from those additional learning experiences. Furthermore, according to Film School Confidential UCLA students begin crewing on upper division projects as first years as well as work directly in the industry when they are in their final semesters therefore they “come out with quite a few films under their belt and often some professional credits to their names.” UCLA seems to have reached a balance between content, technical skills and creating relationships with the industry. Lastly, Film School Confidential makes the assessment that USC is “heavily geared toward Hollywood-style filmmaking and focuses far more on getting jobs- on technical training and on pitching ideas to agents and studio executives-than it does on actually writing and directing compelling films.” While other film schools concentrate on story development and nurturing autuers, USC is about teaching the business and technical aspects, all of which are meaningless if you don’t have an engaging story to tell or the creative skills to flesh it out.

What is most interesting is how Lucas himself views this complex. At the unveiling he told the crowd "[w]e're now officially a legitimate school--at least, we look like one," and in February he was quoted in the New York Times as saying “[t]he only way you are going to get respect on a college campus, or a university campus, is to build something that is important. Schools and universities mainly understand money.” He felt this building would bring legitimacy to SCA and to film as a major but as I have argued above, it seems to be promoting more of a vocational rather than a creative agenda. Furthermore the students find the building impersonal and confusing. They cannot park their bikes inside, bring coffee into class, or smoke on the balconies. Until preparation for the unveiling went into full swing the walls were white and totally bare, making the hallways appear labyrinth like. The facilities are not working properly—the high tech projectors are not correctly calibrated and they warp the image one has worked so hard to capture. A trip to the editing lab generally involves changing computers at least once due to technical difficulties. The new building is glitzy but glitchy. These latter problems can all be remedied with additional work on the complex but the bigger issue of fostering vocationalism and promoting creativity simultaneously, and not one at the expense of the other, remains the greater challenge. Whereas at present the scale is tipped in favor of occupational skills over artistry, only time will tell what the new edifice will ultimately succeed in building for the future of the USC film program and its student body.