Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Stay in LA: Sometimes We Have to Stay Here

I response to my last post, Bruce Postman from Columbia College Hollywood has offered the following counterview.


If you are from the L.A. area and want a career in the film and television industry, there are some very compelling reasons to stay in Los Angeles for your film school education.  While movies and TV shows are shot all over the world it is here in Hollywood that the majority of them are conceived, written, cast, shot, edited and distributed.  If you want to make films in the United States Hollywood is still the place to be. 
Internships have become one of the key ways film students launch their careers.  At the school where I teach, Columbia College Hollywood, almost everyone takes at least one internship, most take two and many have been hired for their first industry jobs off their internship.  Film students from around the country fly themselves into L.A. and put themselves up at their own expense in order to get these internships.  If you go to film school in the L.A. area it is as easy as hopping in your car or taking the bus to your internship.  Moreover, after the internship ends, if they like you, they might call you in for a day of work here or there before they commit to hiring you full time. This is possible if you are a car ride away. It is not possible if you are an airplane ride away. 
Networking for your career starts in college.  The pool of people who can help you is largest and most accomplished in Los Angeles.  Not only do you have the opportunity to meet more people who can help you, but there are more opportunities that they can find for you here.  If you go to film school outside of L.A. any meaningful networking will start after college when you move back.  If you start that process while you are in college you’ll be up and running in your career sooner. 
When you are in film school you want your professors to be working professionals. You want them to know how the industry works today.  The pool of people who are working in the entertainment industry is much greater in L.A. than anywhere else in the country. You will get the best and most useful education and guidance here.  Film schools in the L.A. area have their pick from the best of the best to teach at their colleges. I know that at CCH we have files of impressive industry professionals who want to teach. I know it is the same at other L.A. area film schools.  People with that kind of experience are much harder to find outside of L.A. 
Another way people get jobs is through their teachers.  At CCH, since all the teachers are working professionals, we often hire students.  I am doing a series of 10 educations films over the next year and my entire crew, production and post-production, are CCH students or recent graduates. And I’m not the only one. Steve Haberman, who also teaches here, was just nominated for an Emmy for an HBO Special with Mel Brooks. He hired one CCH student to cut it and another to do the color. Other teachers do the same.  We don’t hire students to be nice or to help the school. We hire them because we recognize talent and we trust them.  The pool of industry professionals who can do this outside of L.A. is much, much smaller. 
Because there is so much production in Los Angeles there is an abundance of equipment here.  At CCH we own a lot of terrific equipment (including two Red cameras and Sony F3) but we can’t own everything we need. We can, however, borrow or rent what we don’t own because of the abundance of equipment in town.  35mm cameras from Panavision, 3D camera rigs, and other expensive or hard to find pieces of equipment easily acquired here.  They are not so easy to find outside of L.A. The same is true for facilities and services.  We have more sound stages, cranes, actors, special effects make up artists, fight coordinators – the list goes on and on. 
Traveling the world is a good thing. It changes your perspective and introduces you to new people and views of the world.  But it is not a wise choice to move elsewhere for your film education. You will just move back here eventually and need to start all over. Save your travel for vacations and out of town film jobs. Stay here, stay focused and use the opportunities that are right in front of you.

Bruce Postman is a teacher at Columbia College Hollywood in Tarzana, California. He can be reached at bpostman@columbiacollege.edu


Thursday, August 16, 2012

Leaving Hollywood: Sometimes We Have to Go "There" to Make it Here.

For more than 100 years, stars and starlets from the hinterlands – places such as Nebraska, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Canada – have trekked west to Hollywood, to find fame and fortune in the cinematic arts. Packed into their bags were hopes, dreams, dancing shoes, good hair, killer cheekbones and raw ambition. Something else that many brought was a perspective on life and people who live outside the world of movies and entertainment. Arguably, knowing who movie audiences are and how regular people live regular lives enriches how they write, produce, edit and star in films.

So if you grew up in LA, is there something you’re missing?

Perhaps. It’s hardly the case that the Los Angeles-raised individual is handicapped at making a career in film. The opportunities to train in the industry are here, with acting and film schools drawing people from around the world. It doesn’t hurt to have an uncle, and high school classmate or someone you caddy for at the golf course to be in the industry, someone who can help you get your own start.

But entertainment in general and the movie industry in specific exist outside of Hollywood. The sheer size of Bollywood and its audiences is the most obvious example. A Website, CFNC.org, the College Foundation of North Carolina, encourages young people in that state to observe how on-location shooting and digital technologies undermine the assumption that a film career needs to be developed in Southern California.

Another example is the New York Film Academy, which has campuses in both Los Angeles (at Universal Studios) and Manhattan, but also at Disney Studios near Orlando, in Europe (Florence and Paris), Asia (Kyoto, Shanghai and Beijing), South Asian (Mumbai and New Delhi), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi) and Australia (Queensland).

School administrators say that studying abroad reflects both the film industry’s hot spots and traditions. But just as important, it provides an opportunity for students to get that experience of going “outside themselves.”

While NYFA has its own LA film school campus – acknowledging that the majority of the industry’s base remains firmly ensconced on the West Coast – it encourages all students to rotate their studies from location to location, if at all possible. Yes, the Angeleno who takes a 3-, 4-, 8- or 12-week class in another city or another country will have to navigate the challenges of travel and housing, currency and language. But who doesn’t have to do that if they want to work on a world stage?

The experience of travel and relocation has an ability to strip a person down to his or her core, away from the social set they may have cultivated and the accomplishments that exist in their past. It was none other than D.H. Lawrence who said, “When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.”

Which is probably what Judy Garland (born in Minnesota), Brad Pitt (Oklahoma), Charlize Theron (South Africa) and perhaps even Zach Galifianakis (North Carolina) had in mind all along.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

NMA Seniors: Summer 2012 Assignment

NMA Seniors (Yes, you're seniors now!):

As I explained to you several times during the last few weeks of school, you have a summer assignment. When we come back from break, we are jumping right into the first project of the semester. We are also jumping into using Avid Media Composer for all the rest of your projects in the New Media Academy. But I didn't want you to be ill-prepared, so you have this assignment.


The assignment has multiple parts.

  • First, go to Avid Community and create an account.
  • Then, head to the Get Started Fast forum. This forum is designed for new users of Avid Media Composer. You can search for answers, post questions, and get connected with other new Avid users.
  • Optional: Join the Avid Student Facebook page to connect with other students of Avid software like yourselves.
  • Take a look at this post about tutorials and training. Here, you will find tons of available resources to help you get a head start on using Media Composer.
  • The particular resource you need to look at (in its entirety) is the Edit to the Future webinar series from ProMax with Steve Holyhead.
  • While watching the webinars, TAKE NOTES on what you're learning in a Google doc that you will share with me as soon as you create it. (Name it: P4_AvidNotes_Lastname) This document is going to be where you store all your notes about these webinars and all the lessons we will go through over the year to prepare you for the Avid Certified User exam.
  • After watching each of the 12 webinar sessions, check into our backchannel conversation on TodaysMeet. Here is where you can chat with me and all of your classmates to ask questions, answer questions, and keep up with how everyone is doing on this assignment.

If your personal computer meets the minimum specs, download the free trial of Media Composer. The tutorials and training post linked above also has info about downloading trial media to play around with. The webinar also has source footage to use while following along.

Of course, if you have any urgent questions, email me. The more you explore in the Avid Community forums, the more notes you take, and the more time you spend poking around the software, the more successful you will be this school year. Good luck!


Friday, June 8, 2012

Moviola Jobs Class

NMA Juniors (who are going to the Moviola class this weekend)

Please read these articles:

A Brief History of Film Editing Technology

The Story of Moviola


See you at 9:45 a.m.



Tuesday, May 1, 2012

A Better Life




Periods 1 through 5
Due Friday, May 4

In Google Docs, write a 250-word review of the film (double-spaced). Do not summarize the film, as I saw it with you and know what happens in the movie.

In the review, answer the following questions:

  • What events or moments in the film reminded you of a personal experience?
  • How accurately did the movie depict life in Los Angeles, at home, and at school?
  • Did the movie change your views about life for the undocumented in the United States?
For those who did not attend the field trip, please find the film on home video or any of these other choices to complete the assignment:
  • El Norte
  • A Day Without a Mexican
  • Under The Same Moon
  • And The Earth Did Not Swallow Him
  • My Family (Mi Familia)

Friday, March 30, 2012

Spring Break 2012 Assignment

ALL CLASSES

Take a break from all the spring cleaning, video games, and internet browsing you've been up to and watch a movie!

Choose a film from the 10th anniversary AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies list, that you have not seen before.

Then, using your LAUSD Mymail/Google Docs account, write a 500 word review of the movie. (Double-spaced please!) Share it with me as soon as you start writing (ajm4827@lausd.net). Please title the document "PX_Spring Review_Lastmame" (X is your period).

Click here for guidelines on how to write your review.

If you were wondering how to check your word count in Google Docs, look at this.

Email me if you have any problems logging into your account or have any questions at all.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Crew Positions

NMA Freshmen

Here is a link to the Film Crew Position slideshow:

Click here for more information and detail on film crews.

Video Production Handbook Chapter 2 Quiz on Monday

- A. Manriquez


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Final Cut Pro X Exam Prep Guide

NMA Juniors

Below is a link to the Final Cut Pro X Exam Prep Guide. It contains information about the Apple Certified Associate Exam you will be taking at the end of semester. It also contains all the Lesson Reviews from the end of the lessons in the textbook. Please download this PDF, read it, and keep it on your flash drives for reference. We will discuss this further on Monday.

Final Cut Pro X Exam Prep Guide

- A. Manriquez

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Audio Terms/Vocabulary

Periods 3, 5

Here is a list of the audio terms that we reviewed for your reference.

1-left
2-right
1/8” stereo
boom
cans
channels (CH)
duplex
female
fishpole
frame line
jack
male
phantom power (48v)
plug
power down
power up
shock mount
shotgun
unidirectional
windscreen
XLR

- A. Manriquez