| By Greg Reifsteck Big bucks and bigger and better technology have killed the auteur star. Think about it - when was the last time Woody Allen had a hit film? And why did Sony Pictures release Spike Lee's last project She Hate Me through its Classics arm? The staggering reality is conglomerate-owned studios are finding it harder and harder to meet their bottom lines with these more personal films. And that's helping to transform what was once the art of making films into more of a manufacturing business into which anyone willing to train at a film school can gain entry. Likewise, the incredible technological revolution in the past decade has, for better or for worse, transformed the art of filmmaking into a true trade while simultaneously attracting technical trade people to film. Producers know dramatic arcs and clever symbolic references to a director's childhood tend to not sell as many tickets as the bells and whistles of big sets, CGI (computer generated images), and mind-blowing visual effects. Filmmaking is quickly becoming an actual hands-on and computer-based craft. Directors now have to make split-second decisions dealing with things of which most everyday people have never even heard, such as rotoscoping, layering, blue screens and texture maps. These winds of change have altered the paths of the filmmakers of tomorrow. They are pushing the modern day film student away from the cerebral side of filmmaking and closer to building the spectacle from the physical side. The age of yearning to be the next John Ford or Fellini has changed to one of aspiring to be the next Roland Emmerich. Bitten by the Film Bug Technology and business used to be the cornerstone upon which our fathers and grandfathers built their dreams in the '50s, '60s and'70s. Trade schools like DeVry and ITT, as well as many junior colleges, offered the opportunity for a certificate in a vocation of choice. That could potentially land you a solid mid-five-figure job with assistance from the school's job placement program. This gave the average Joe or Jane a large enough salary to buy a car, move out of the parental unit's home, and raise their own family. In Middle America it was just what you did. Meanwhile, out on the West Coast, nepotism and networking were running their usual Hollywood course. Fathers and uncles were getting their sons and nephews jobs on the lot. Film programs had already existed at colleges like the University of Southern California - where Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, and Irving Thalberg were on the faculty - since 1929. But for the most part, directors didn't go to school and train to be a director - they were brought up to be one. Or they barged their way into the fabric of filmmaking with a combination of dedication, luck, and a compelling personal vision for a style of film all their own. Fast forward to 1977 when maverick USC grad George Lucas directed an "independent" film every teenager wished they could have made, Star Wars. Eye-popping special effects and a spiritual path called The Force inspired a new wave of filmmakers. After seeing the wild-eyed wizardry of Lucas' work, trade and vocational school students suddenly wanted to turn off their Tandy TRS-80s, drop their shop classes, and follow loftier creative ambitions. They wanted to use their minds. They wanted to be a writer, an artist and, dare they say it, a filmmaker. Soon these so-called creative dreamers followed their Lucas straight to Hollywood. Everyone wanted to take his or her father's Super 8 or bulky camcorder and make the next film to break the box-office ceiling. But what the dreamers didn't yet realize was the ancillary trades they practiced would also be needed in the world of filmmaking. Sets needed to be built, costumes needed to be made, and computer-generated backgrounds needed to be programmed. To respond to this new slew of directorial devotees, film schools began popping up across America, not just on the hip coast towns of LA and New York. Not everyone would get to be behind the camera after film school graduation, or had the gift of storytelling to make the next Star Wars. But film schools still needed to sell the dream of commanding the more prestigious jobs if they were going to be charging up to $24,000 a semester for classes. And they needed to get this dream into their future student body early in the development process. Starting Them Young The fact is, thanks to the digital revolution, film school has become a very a big business circa 2004. Digital video cameras are new Super 8 of this era - they are cheap to use and their footage is inexpensive to edit. These cameras are allowing working-class parents to introduce filmmaking to a new generation, and at a younger age than ever before. Instead of mastering the calculation of the square root of pi, parents now have to know what aspect ratio their child's Canon XL-1 needs for his or her homework assignment. Trial programs such as The Screen Education Center sponsored by AFI are introducing the art and craft of the moving image to 7th through 12th graders in order to accelerate the learning process in all their fields of study. "Thousands of young people are now learning to use digital cameras and computer editing systems to tell stories and to demonstrate mastery of their studies," says AFI director and CEO Jean Picker Firstenberg. "In the process, they are preparing for the jobs of the future by becoming literate in the language of the 21st century." AFI's (American Film Institute) Screen Education Center was launched in 2001-2002 with its first grant from the U.S. Department of Education, in six Los Angeles schools. Sixty teachers were trained, starting with those who taught kindergarten. In 2002-2003, it reached 21 high schools in northern and southern California; Montgomery County, Md; and Washington, D.C.- reaching a total of 4,000 students. "Our approach, for this program, was to take our 35 years of expertise and develop techniques that could be applied to kids. The teachers were in strong need of making sure the kids were engaged," says AFI Senior Vice President for Media and Technology Nick DeMartino. AFI found that the attractiveness of film did draw the students. The trial program still continues, and the students' grades in all of their subjects are on the rise, along with the cinematic inspiration. DeMartino is very quick to note, "We aren't offering filmmaking classes. We are teaching how to integrate digital cameras to spark interest in storytelling as a way of absorbing the context." The program is also teaching young students how to work in groups and how to study a text and storyboard. All of these skills are helping these youths visualize and solve problems faster. But DeMartino doesn't see filmmaking influence and education at a young age creating an automatic potential for these students to become the next Francis Ford Coppola. "AFI teaches through the language of the screen because it has become the primary mode of literacy," says DeMartino. "People have stopped reading words, and this process helps get the kids doing so again. The novel was used at one time as a form of teaching; now it is taken for granted. But you didn't automatically become a novelist because you read novels." But if you are a film conservatory, you might hope to recruit these students in the future. It's obvious that this program provides great promotion for AFI, anticipating getting recruits after the tykes remember they got to use a camera when they were 13. They'll be coming around the graduate school bend right after they craftily steal Dad's car for use in a dolly shot to complete their simulated high-speed chase for Bad Boys 4. Scaling the Lot Fence Another way institutions are getting students to say "action" earlier in life is by getting them onto actual film sets and studios. Schools such as the New York Film Academy are doing something no other high school program can do. They get students onto a Hollywood studio lot long before some inside, industry, family connection can get them their first production assistant gig. All it takes is a tuition fee of $5,900 for four weeks or $6,900 for six weeks, and tweeners can get past the security gate at Universal just as urban legend has it Spielberg did. (We all know it was really a clerical job snagged through a family connection cultivated when he was still in high school.) However, in line with AFI's philosophy, Dan Mackler, director of the New York Film Academy's High School Summer Workshop on the Universal Studios lot, says they are using the program only as a "creative outlet that will hopefully improve the students' other fields of study." The focus of their program is "to build confidence" and "teach the kids the importance of making choices, whether they are right or wrong. We teach them to go with their instincts in order to service their story." One of their students, Daniel Webster, serviced his story so well that he got his film into the International Student Film Festival in L.A. Though the program itself claims it doesn't want to develop the next Robert Rodriguez, that doesn't mean the parents don't want their son or daughter to be discovered. Students use equipment of which other high school programs would be envious: Arriflex-S cameras, black and white 16mm film, Lowel portable lighting packages and Final Cut Pro 3 workstations running Apple's new OS X. The final product is so impressive, "one film festival that our student submitted to called us to make sure they were a high school student," insists Macker. Oh, those crazy college students. At least by their age, they aren't trying to claim they are being influenced by film only to improve their other studies. They are truly film geeks, and they would kill their dorm mate or sell their girlfriend to slavery to get onto a Hollywood lot. Thank goodness they don't have to take such drastic measures. College filmmakers can buy their way onto the lot for just over $7,000, plus lodging expenses and the cost of a flight from the Windy City to Tinseltown (or the gas money to drive their beater across the desert). Founded by late assistant director Robert Enrietto (Phantom of the Paradise, Harold and Maude), Columbia College Chicago's Semester in L.A. is the only college film school program with an actual bungalow on a studio lot. CBS Studio Center in Studio City, which hosts CCC's Bungalow 5, has many high-rated network TV programs shooting on its lot, including CSI: NY, Will & Grace, and The Bernie Mac Show. But it also gets regular film shoots like Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Michael Apted's Enough, starring Jennifer Lopez. Enrietto's passing during the holidays in 2003 left a legacy of a program committed to more than just knowing the realities of working on a set. He also understood that the only way to get a job in this town is to hustle and network. The speaker-heavy teaching regimen of classes in production, adaptation and screenwriting, coordinated by instructors Craig Gore and Louie Pradt, gives students plenty of opportunities for card passing and question asking. "It's up to the speaker to make the connection, and we put the onus on them," says producer Jon Katzman, Semester in L.A.'s new director. "Otherwise we wouldn't get the professionals that we do. But bringing in so many gives them more opportunities." With Katzman's extensive executive background in the biz, including producing such films as Man in The Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story for VH1 and Redemption for TNT, he serves as perfect example that multitasking is encouraged. Being an Assistant Director himself, Enrietto's dream was to have kids direct their own films on an actual studio soundstage with a professional crew. In Summer 2003, that dream became a reality when ten directors, including Love Story's Arthur Hiller and Re-Animator's Stuart Gordon, led ten students through a five-week directing course with a cinematographer, grip, and lighting crew presently working in the industry.
Keeping it Personal The true last stand of the auteur is still being fought in the trenches of some film schools, even though it may be a desperate losing battle. The Bolex camera and the soundstage might be replacing the soldering iron and the computer lab for working-class students from Middle America. But most film school administrators and instructors don't want to admit it, and when questioned about the transition will always try to speak the party line. Many film schools would clearly rather be seen as "elitist" film institutions rather than trade schools, and this inspires them to pontificate that their institutions are "teaching proper narrative" in filmmaking, "showcasing the student's creativity," and letting them express the "art of storytelling." In reality, trade and vocation aren't very sexy or glamorous words to describe the basics of working on a real film set. In fact, in numerous interviews conducted with film school representatives, it's clear these are dirty words to recruiters fighting to keep their curriculums geared more towards teaching the white collar set jobs than the blue collar ones. "We want to distinguish ourselves from typical four-year schools because we only teach professionals how to become directors and cinematographers," says AFI's DeMartino. And even though these graduate-level conservatories have made the effort to teach the more technical aspects of filmmaking, they have eventually dropped the classes that track into the less glamorous jobs of grips or gaffers. "We used to run a program that provided training in specialized areas of film, like the extension programs of other colleges," says DeMartino, "but we got out of it. We thought it was becoming too much of a commodity instead of an art." As a result, programs like AFI's also went for full-scale accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and the Accrediting Commission of Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. DeMartino says they did this so they "weren't confused with or treated like a trade school to become a beautician or a truck driver."
Trading Spaces So, as we forge ahead into the 21st century of filmmaking, the future is clearly in the hands of a new breed of workers not necessarily raised in the world of film but, instead, on film. And the place where those dreamers learn how to make their dreams come true is not necessarily on a Los Angeles film lot but in a classroom a world away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. The disease of being the next Sundance discovery is no closer to a cure with children being introduced to filmmaking at such an early age. People from all walks of life are aspiring to become "above the liners" (screenwriters, producers, and directors) and "below the liners" (grips, gaffers, and production assistants). If you actually stay for the entire credits of the next film you see, you can't ignore the fact that the art of filmmaking is a composite of the mind-boggling number of trades scrolling by. AFI's Catalyst Workshop clearly defines the merging of tradesperson and filmmaker. It encourages scientists and engineers interested in working in entertainment to learn how to write and submit scripts. This gives even more impetus to professionals in traditional technical fields to break into the biz. The workshop also attempts to help them do their jobs in the science and engineering fields more efficiently by using creativity in the workplace. Bearing the stamp of approval from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the workshop's other goal is to strengthen how these disciplines are portrayed in motion pictures. Still, every would-be filmmaker has a story to tell, and if you choose the right film school to enhance it, you might be the next wunderkind. But every wunderkind must tap into his or her other inner trade and skill sets to make films studios will actually greenlight. "The demand for different types of skills is much broader," admits AFI's DeMartino, "but at the core you have the central creative spark. Whatever the delivery mechanism, it's a storyteller's medium." The reality is modern film requires a good hybrid of both art and trade. A delicate splice of the personal and the spectacle define true auteur filmmaking of the future. "Filmmaking is war - there's no other way to look at it," said James Cameron while directing the top money-making film of all time, Titanic. "It's a great battle - a battle between business and aesthetics." Yes, there will obviously always be the hungry shutterbug, on every street corner offering a star map, who is willing and possibly capable of breaking into the biz old-school style. But for everyone else, filmmaking is now taught in four years and costs thousands of dollars. The modern director has truly become the new tradesman. | 
