When fourth-year Erin Beck began the undergraduate film and television major at UCLA two years ago, she was one of the few starting her studies of film, television and digital media from scratch.
“I didn’t even know the difference between a director and producer,” Beck said. “It was a huge struggle my first couple of quarters just catching up to where everyone was.”
While Beck, a film production student, had a lot of catching up to do compared to her classmates, she still walks away with the extensive knowledge and experience only obtained through the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television ““ one of the nation’s top film education institutions ““ along with the blood and sweat to prove it.
Once admitted to the highly selective school, students typically face constant academic pressure and demands from extracurricular activities throughout their tenures, all while trying to maintain a social life. An average UCLA film student, on the other hand, faces all this mixed with impossible production schedules and the loads of outside experience necessary for anyone trying to break into the business.
“There is no such thing (as a typical day),” said Steven Lewis, a fourth-year film and television student who specializes in cinematography.
Not all film school applicants may be aware of the sacrifices that being a film student requires, but many of the average of 400 applicants per year apply with a hint of what’s ahead. Their motivation can, however, differ greatly.
“As far back as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker,” said fourth-year Eri Hawkins, a fourth-year specializing in animation who has been working on claymation projects since childhood. “It’s something I’ve always thought that I would end up doing.”
In comparison, Beck chose film after her dissatisfaction with traditional, lecture-based classes mounted.
“It wasn’t as interactive as I was looking for in college, and as entertaining,” she said.
After an extensive application process, the top 30 UCLA students, as well as the top 30 applicants from other schools, are granted interviews. The pool is then cut down to 15 from each group.
While potential film students may dread the grueling class and work schedules ahead of them, this small department is appealing to many, and it is a rarity at a school the size of UCLA.
“We all work together so … it’s a really good sense of community and I never really realized a major could be like that,” Beck said.
Such a small major can also bring limitations to the table.
“A lot of the strengths of the UCLA film program tend to be its weaknesses. It’s very centered on students so we get a lot of individual attention, but at the same time, when we start trying to draw from our fellow students for projects, we have less people to draw from,” Beck said. “Less students means less alumni and less money.”
Others find this approach more practical for future success in the demanding film industry.
“UCLA doesn’t always have that money, but they show you how to get things on your own, which is a lot more useful in the long run,” Hawkins said.
Instruction begins the students’ third year, when they are split up randomly into two groups of 15 and are thrown into 19 units of film classes a quarter. The classes are a mix of hands-on film production and lecture-based cinema and media study courses. The former introduce them to the various aspects of the filmmaking process such as editing and cinematography, while the latter are more traditional, theory-based courses.
While film and television students receive less hands-on experience as they finish the bulk of their cinema and media studies during their third year, this prepares them for their final year in the program when students pick their concentration, choosing between film production, television and video production, screenwriting, documentary, cinema and media studies, cinematography and animation.
“It made my first year a tad disappointing,” Lewis said. “They made us take all this stuff, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”
With such an eclectic group of students, even the reasons behind their concentration choices differ greatly. While some students seem to have long-term aspirations in mind, others are focused on enjoying the process in the present.
“I chose production because I wanted to be in charge of my own project,” Beck said. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever direct a feature film or a film outside of film school, so I wanted to have this one opportunity to take care of things on my own.”
Once concentrations are selected, students subsequently jump into concentration work as soon as they come back in the fall. Depending on students’ emphases, they must finish a set amount of work to graduate. For example, film production students must create their own short film, cinematography students are required to either shoot two thesis films or one thesis and two experimental films, and screenwriting students must complete two screenplays.
“It’s all fall quarter for the undergraduates,” Lewis said. “They shove us into an earlier time which is kind of rough.”
While it may be intimidating, the undergraduates are always ready to meet the challenge by this point in their film education.
“We didn’t have a lot of experience to get out of the classroom junior year, so finally when senior year came … we actually found out that we could pull this off,” Lewis said.
The amount of work during this time can be hard to bear, but most students look forward to this part of the experience, which truly separates the film major from other areas of study at UCLA.
“The hands-on classes are awesome because you’re not studying for finals and spending 10 hours in Powell,” Beck said. “Instead, you spend 10 hours on set or spend 20 hours directing a camera.”
In such an intensive program, this amount of work carries over to the students’ personal lives and can become an issue for many.
“Most of the time, I spread myself too thin,” Hawkins said. “Having a social life is not always too easy ““ half the time I’m just too tired after the day is done.”
Some students decide to completely immerse themselves in the program for their last two years while others struggle to maintain the lives they had prior to their acceptance.
“For better or for worse, I made the decision that I wouldn’t give up the life that I had at UCLA … that I wanted to keep a life outside of film school,” Beck said. “That could be a reason that I might not be as successful as some of the other film students.”
Because the film business is so competitive, success is a looming question even after the amount of hands-on experience and knowledge students attain.
“Its unfortunate that no one knows how to go about finding a career afterwards,” Lewis said. “You can ask every professor and all they can say is how they did it, no one can give you any solid advice.”
But Lewis, like many, still remains optimistic about life beyond film school.
“If I ever achieve the job that I want, then what I’ve learned in school is immensely important,” he said.