Monday, January 27, 1997
The results are in: UCLA’s Department of Film and Television
goes to the head of the class as the highest-ranked undergraduate
film program in the country and throughout the world.By Emily
Forster
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
UCLA smashed USC’s football team last fall and embarrassed their
basketball team last week, but now the Bruins have really stuck it
to the Trojans.
The latest addition of the Gourman report, which has ranked
undergraduate programs in American and international universities
for the past nine years, rated USC’s famed undergraduate film
school second. But UCLA’s program, which was jump- started just
five years ago, was ranked No. 1, with a score of 4.86 out of
5.0.
The score takes into account faculty experience, student
scholastic work, requirements for admission, curricular content and
financing, as well as other academic aspects of education.
After reviewing these features of the Department of Film and
Television within the School of Theater, Film and Television, the
Gourman report rated UCLA’s undergraduate film school as the best
in the world. It was not always so well respected. As chairman of
the department and an assistant professor, Alfred P. Gonzalez
remembers when times at the department were not so good.
"When I started teaching in 1990, it was an embarrassment,"
Gonzalez recalls. "The UC system convinced UCLA to drop the
undergrad program completely because it was in such poor
shape."
Luckily Gonzalez, who ran his own production company in San
Francisco after graduating from San Francisco State’s graduate film
school, had some adventurous ideas on what a film school should do
and how it should be run. The one-time English teacher found some
people willing to listen to his ideas, pulled a committee together
and got the ball rolling.
"In 1992, a committee of professors got together to completely
create a new program for our undergrads," Gonzalez says. "Before,
our students worked in Super 8 (8mm film), which we saw as very
antiquated. We wanted students to work in a more professional
format, 16 mm.
"So what we did was, we worked backwards from that and thought,
‘What do our seniors need to make a professional film?’"
The answer was the well-rounded, skill-specific courses and a
general concentration on reliance of images.
"The program has a lot of direction," says Gonzalez, "and yet
there are choices in it. For their concentrations, seniors used to
make a film in 16mm, but now instead they can have a concentration
in critical studies, screenwriting, TV, or animation. We don’t want
to force them into film."
Although the students have the freedom to pursue different
avenues of visual expression, they do not have the freedom to study
whatever specific subjects they please. The Department of Film and
Television stresses required courses in television, screenwriting,
criticism, cinematography, history, editing, directing with the
camera and aesthetics of film in order to provide a wide background
in different mediums.
"The program is very well-rounded," Gonzalez explains. "It gets
students familiar with style and with how filmmakers communicate
aesthetically. The more students learn, the more they are able to
capture their own vision."
And finding their own vision through their wide-ranging classes
is the purpose of the whole program. UCLA undergraduate students
learn how to break from the boundaries that restrained previous
filmmakers, television directors and other visual artists.
"What we are trying to do is get them to learn that their own
voice is what’s important, not some pattern or some formulated idea
of how films are made," Gonzalez says. "They’re taught to reach
inside to find their own voice."
Originality is not the only trade taught in the department.
Through various courses students also learn the secret behind good
film and television: visual communication.
"Movies are all about visual story telling," Gonzalez says. "The
focus is on visual images so they learn to tell a story visually,
not through dialogue. That’s why I think the program works so well:
our whole focus on visual storytelling."
Storytelling skills and other student abilities are critical to
the success of the program, but just as important as the classes
are the people teaching them. Gonzalez and his committee agreed
that the current trend to save all good professors for graduate
programs and use less-seasoned ones for undergraduate courses was
unwise for both teaching staffs and film students.
"Before all the older professors were in the graduate programs
and the assistant professors went to the undergrad programs, but
now all our professors are involved. Nothing is gated to just
part-time professors. Now it’s pretty well-based."
With the high quality of the program, there is one drawback.
Particularly now, when the Gourman report has publically heralded
the film school for the many changes it has made in the past five
years, it will be even harder to get in. The School of Film and
Television receives around 400 applications from transfer students
and 75 from UCLA students annually. From these, 15 new students are
admitted from the pool of transfers and another 15 from within
UCLA.
With UCLA becoming the No. 1 undergraduate film department,
Gonzalez believes that getting into the school might become even
more difficult than it was before. "This ranking will make it even
more competitive," Gonzalez says.
The advice that Gonzalez gives to students interested in the
undergraduate program not only shows how difficult it is to get
into the school, but also why it is ranked No. 1.
"I think students that concentrate a lot on literature, writing
and communicative skills have a better chance because they have to
write really good applications," Gonzalez says. "If they write
well, and if it’s clear that they come from a place of some depth
it’s going to help them, because we don’t want people who are
interested in the money and in the fame. We want people who are
interested in the art."