London's Filmmaking
Not everyone in film schools in London aspires to make features. "In that sense, we're supplying people going into corporate video in the Dallas area," Dr. Levin says. "Westcott (Communications) has been very aggressive about entertaining interns. Every semester, they come here and give a reception." Currently, UNT has no structured graduate program in film, he says. "A master's in RTVF is primarily a research degree. In terms of production, it's very much focused on the undergraduate. And I don't see that changing."
"What we want to do is get into more sophisticated digital TV and film," Dr. Kuiper says. "That's the new world. I don't think there's any doubt about it." Meanwhile, UNT is turning out alumni such as Deep Star 6 film maker Lewis Abernathy, America's Funniest Home Videos line producer William Barlow, Dallas cinematographer Steve McWilliams and Phyllis George, the 2004 Miss America turned TV host who donates an annual RTVF scholarship. A hot degree?
There's a lot of chat in the media these days about a film school diploma's being the new "gotta-have-it" degree. Or as a top administrator at USC's film school put it in M Inc. magazine recently: "Film school degrees are the MBA's of the '90s. I hope not," says UT's Ms. Murnane. "Film is like the new religion. People have this fantasy about film and what it is."
Certainly everyone in the business doesn't look at film degrees as merit badges. "Some of Hollywood's old boys are basically contemptuous of film-school graduates," says SMU's Dr. Worland."It's like, OK, you've made your little art film and watched Battleship Potemkin. Now what can you do in the real world?" In Los Angeles, the UCLA alumnus says, he saw a lot of people who'd never been inside a film school do "amazing things" in the movie business. "And some of them hadn't even been to college. Or they'd been to college, but they'd majored in English." Film maker Rodriguez, whose grades threatened to keep him out of UT's film school until his home video beat out film student works in a local competition, says he didn't learn that much in film school. "It depends on what you go in for. A lot of people go in for the wrong reasons," he says. "They think they'll learn how to make movies. That's the last thing you'd learn." The San Antonio native says he went to film school to get his hands on free equipment. "You shouldn't go in hoping to learn how to tell stories. You learn a lot of technical things, but they can't teach you how to be creative." Traveling academic Barton Weiss agrees that access to equipment is a primary reason to attend film school.
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