Professional Motion Picture Production and Distribution NEWS

Art Center College of Design's Film Program (www.artcenterfilm.com) is featured in StudentFilmmakers Magazine's March 2009 Edition. Read the accompanying online article here.

Screenwriter/Novelist Ross LaManna was appointed Chair of Art Center College of Design's Film Department as part of the college's restructuring and expanding of its film program, with a curriculum designed to push the boundaries of traditional filmmaking. LaManna is best known for his spec script Rush Hour, starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.

LaManna talks with StudentFilmmakers magazine about Art Center�s new camera purchases and editing suite upgrades for the school�s film students. LaManna also shares how the college�s film program emphasizes the entrepreneurial approach to filmmaking, while working to help film students build connections and secure internships with Hollywood productions.

(Pictured above: Art Center Film Department Chairman Ross LaManna with "Watchman" Director Zack Snyder at a private Art Center "Watchman" screening, March 4, 2009. Photo by Betsy Winchell.)

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: How did Art Center College of Design's Film Program wrap up 2008?

Ross LaManna: We had a great year. We re-equipped our 10 private editing suites with state-of-the-art 8-core Mac Pros with Final Cut Studio and Avid Media Composer, bought some HDV camera and Panasonic HVX-200 P2-card cameras, saw several of our graduates step into industry jobs brought in some amazing new instructors (see below) and had a stellar lineup of guest speakers come to our campus in Pasadena, including Paul Haggis, Frank Marshall, Sam Raimi, Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., Taylor Hackford, Josh Brolin, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, editors Jerry Greenberg, Hughes Winborne and Zach Staenberg, cinematographer Robert Elswit, Mark Pellington, Mark Rydell, studio chiefs Jeffrey Katzenberg, Nina Jacobson and Thom Mount, composer Mark Isham, producer/director/actor Tony Bill, super-hot commercial director Tom Kuntz, and many others.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: A little over a year ago, you had been appointed to the United States Air Force (USAF) Entertainment Industry Liaison Civilian Board of Directors. Could you share with us the advantages and benefits that this provides for Art Center College of Design�s Film Program, and for your film students?

Ross LaManna: My position with the Entertainment Liaison Board gives our students the opportunity to secure Air Force cooperation on related productions. Also, the Board works closely with a number of big Hollywood productions every year, including Iron Man 2 and Transformers 2, directed by Art Center Film Alumnus Michael Bay. We are exploring various ways to bring internship opportunities on such films to Art Center Film students.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: What are some new things going on in the Art Center Film Department, as well as with your film students?

Ross LaManna: We are very excited about a new partnership between the Art Center Film Department and powerhouse commercial production company MJZ, Creativity Online�s �2008 Production Company of the Year.� MJZ principal David Zander is an awesome, visionary guy, he has made arrangements for himself and his all-star directing team (Spike Jonze; Harmony Korine; Dante Ariola; Tom Kuntz, etc.) to mentor and advise our directing students.

We also strongly encourage our students to be as daring and entrepreneurial as their talent will take them. For instance, directing student Brian Thomas Barnhart shot a 40-minute teaser film of a feature he wrote, using the Department�s equipment and fellow students as crew, giving him a very strong sales tool for finding financing to shoot the rest of the film.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: What you would say makes your film program stand out from other film programs?

Ross LaManna: An executive at DreamWorks Animation recently summed it up nicely: �What I like about Art Center Film is that you understand movies aren�t just shot any more, they�re designed.�

Our goal is to create a new generation of filmmakers who are leaders in their field, through a comprehensive visual arts education, hallmarked by a deep understanding of every aspect of filmmaking. A close collaboration with Art Center�s world-renowned fine art, design, and illustration departments make us unique among film programs.

The art of filmmaking demands a far broader range of skills than ever before. Every aspect of our curriculum focuses on students mastering the technical aspects of moviemaking in order to serve the narrative. We also believe filmmaking should be taught by accomplished, working professionals, as evidenced in our faculty list. Class sizes are small, fostering close, mentoring relationships between instructor and student. New students are shooting immediately in HD; advanced students shoot on 16mm, 35mm, the Red One and other professional cameras.

Our ties to Art Center�s other visual arts and design departments gives us a true interdisciplinary curriculum, offering a comprehensive education in all of the visual arts related to contemporary filmmaking. More so than ever, filmmakers must be leaders, visionaries and entrepreneurs. We are here to help them realize their dreams.

We�re located just minutes from Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, ABC, Paramount and the Burbank Media District. The Art Center Film Department enjoys an unusually high percentage of accomplished filmmakers on its roster of part-time film faculty. We believe that successful working professionals are uniquely qualified to impart a thorough understanding of the entire filmmaking process to give our students the skills and confidence to succeed, whether working for the studios and networks, independently or in emerging media.

We offer three main study tracks � Directing, Editing and Cinematography � within which we customize a specific, scalable education program for each individual student. We strongly encourage and enable students to create portfolio projects as ambitious as their own talent, passion and capacity for hard work will allow.

Among our successful alumni are directors Carroll Ballard (Never Cry Wolf), Michael Bay (Transformers), Zach Snyder (300 and Watchmen), Tarsem (The Cell), cinematographer/director Ericson Core (Invincible), Academy-Award-winning special effects creator Kevin Mack, production designer Frank Church, cinematographers Larry Fong, Don Burgess, ASC, Academy-Award-winning writer/producer Roger Avary, and many others.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Who are some of the professors in your film program?

Ross LaManna: Our faculty roster includes directors Jeremiah Chechik, Ron Underwood, Victoria Hochberg, and Academy Board of Governors member Richard Pearce; cinematographers Dean Cundey; Affonso Beato and Earl Rath; screenwriters Doug Eboch and Ron Osborne; Academy-Award-nominated editor Billy Weber; Emmy-Award-winning film composer Dennis McCarthy; business affairs executive Lee Rosenbaum; title sequence wizard Dan Perri, and more.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Tell us more about your equipment and facilities.

Ross LaManna: While we are able to equip most student productions from our well-stocked Equipment Warehouse, special arrangements with studio rental companies such as Clairmont Camera enable students to rent full, professional 35mm production packages for only the setup fee.

Our state-of-the-art facilities also include several private editing suites equipped with 8-core Mac Pros, 2 terabyte RAID arrays, and diverse media creation programs from Adobe, Avid, Apple, Maya and others. Other facilities include a surround-sound-enabled recording and mixing studio with ProTools and Digital Performer, and a Foley suite. Several fully-outfitted multi-computer labs are available 24 hours. A 5,000-square-foot stage with a cyclorama is available as well as a green screen digital compositing equipment and staging.

The architecturally-striking main building and beautiful grounds on a wooded hillside above Pasadena are amazing places for location shooting and have been used for shows such as FX�s Nip/Tuck, Fox�s Bones, and many motion pictures.

(Pictured above: Art Center College of Design Film Department's shooting stage on their Hillside campus in Pasadena, California. Photo by Steven Heller.)

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Could you talk more about the cameras?

Ross LaManna: The designers from Red recently gave us a private look at their upcoming Epic and Scarlet camera systems and new prime lenses. We�re also interested in acquiring some Sony EX series cameras; one of our directing instructors just shot a TV pilot on an EX-3 and was very pleased with the results.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Tell us more about what your school does for film students in regards to film internships.

Ross LaManna: We have placed students in a number of intern positions at such companies as MTV and Nickelodeon, and with filmmakers such as Joe Pitka. Our own instructors, when shooting in town, will often bring students into their productions when shooting.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Have any of your film students or film professors won awards?

Ross LaManna: Several of our instructors have won Emmy, Cleo, and DGA Awards, others have worked on Academy-Award-winning films or have been nominated for Academy Awards. In the past two years several of our students have won Student Emmy Awards, Cleo�s, Special Awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Eddy (editing) Awards and many others.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: We're very familiar with your work and credits. What kinds of changes and new trends have you seen over the years in relation to screenwriting, and scripts that are bought and produced?

Ross LaManna: When I first started writing in the late 1980�s, you could sell an idea and get hired to write a script from a one-sentence idea. Studios developed original concepts and liked to buy spec scripts. (I sold Rush Hour as a spec script.) Now it is much more difficult to get something started from scratch, especially something original. Studios prefer buying books or graphic novels, or doing remakes and sequels, which they view as less risky than new material. It�s also become increasingly difficult to get anything set up without elements � star, director, financing, etc. � already attached. Accordingly, we�re really emphasizing the entrepreneurial approach to filmmaking: it isn�t enough to know just one discipline any more. Filmmakers, even those wanting to work in the mainstream world of Hollywood movies and network TV, must be prepared to seize any opportunity that presents itself. More importantly, they must have the requisite skills and confidence to create opportunities for themselves.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: What kinds of changes and trends have you seen over the years in relation to Film Education?

Ross LaManna: There has been a lot of discussion in film programs regarding how to train people to create stories for the so-called new media. Our belief at Art Center Film is that from the perspective of the filmmaker, there is no new or old media, there are only alternative modes of distribution and more choices of screens on which audiences can watch stuff. We think that aside from the obvious need to train students to be expert at these new technologies, a solid foundation in traditional visual storytelling skills is of paramount importance to their success, now more so than ever.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Could you share with us how you began your career in the industry?

Ross LaManna: I graduated film school with a degree in screenwriting, didn�t have a clue what to do while waiting to sell my first script. I took a day job at an indie production company, working in the legal department, wrote at night. Soon I knew everyone at the company, and asked the story editor if she would mind submitting a script I was working on for coverage, so I could see the reaction to it from a professional reader. We had no expectation the company would be interested, as it was a horror script and they didn�t do horror. We sent it in with a fake name on it. One of the executives there saw the [favorable] coverage, and was intrigued by the concept. The story editor came clean, told the exec who wrote it. So, for about five minutes, it looked like the company might buy the script, which was sufficient to have several big agents interested in signing me. The company never did buy the script, but my new agents introduced me to a producer who was willing to pay WGA minimum to write a script based on a one-sentence idea he had. That script, a comedy, sold to Columbia Pictures. It was never made, even though it survived several regime changes. Here�s where it gets interesting: the production VP who bought the script for Columbia soon moved on to become head of production at United Artists. I still had my day job, and the new UA Production President gives me a two script commitment and an office in order to get me to write full time.

StudentFilmmakers Magazine: What advice would you give to new and aspiring filmmakers and storytellers looking to get their foot in the door and seriously work in the industry?

Ross LaManna: Prospective filmmakers must take control of their own destiny from the moment they graduate. We expect our directors to have one or more strong short films on their reel. Ideally, they will have developed or written or gotten themselves attached to a good script; the work on their reel should be thematically related to the degree that it demonstrates their ability to direct the script. Our editors, cinematographers, writers, etc. must also initiate projects to the extent they can. They must be ready to seize any opportunity that comes along. Work begets work.

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