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Schools Ready for Close-ups

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Times Staff Writer

With its ginger-colored brick buildings and pine trees, University High School near Brentwood can pass for an elite eastern college or a New England prep school. It has played such parts in movies, television shows and commercials.

Film crews have just one complaint about the school’s appearance: Those birds of paradise out front spoil the Ivy League effect.

Not for long. The tropical-looking plants with their spiky orange-and-blue blossoms are about to be torn up.

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Serving as a film location is more than a matter of fleeting glamour for University High, whose credits include “Bruce Almighty,” “The Hot Chick” and television’s “7th Heaven” and “Lizzie McGuire.” The school collected $25,000 from movie and TV producers last year, and officials want to keep the money flowing.

“We will find a way to accommodate them,” said Assistant Principal Ali Galedary.

With school districts across the state facing painful budget cuts, Southern California campuses are courting movie and television production companies as never before.

Producers pay several thousand dollars a day to shoot at schools. Some also donate furniture and theater equipment or pay for campus renovations.

So some school districts are grooming their grounds for cameo and starring roles. Others are posting photos on the Web to advertise their campuses as potential Hollywood locations.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has hired the county film-promotion agency to tout its classrooms, gyms, libraries and cafeterias.

The number of L.A. Unified campuses volunteering to be film locations has grown from 19 to 160 in the last year. The district’s annual film revenue has doubled to $1 million, officials said.

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It used to be that a film crew showed up at a Los Angeles school once every few weeks. Now, it happens nearly every day, according to Susan Yackley, who coordinates and promotes filming at schools through the county’s Entertainment Industry Development Corp.

“Obviously, we’re in a horrendous budget crisis,” Yackley said. “This is not going to solve the budget crisis, but it’s going to give them a little extra discretionary money.”

Some students and teachers complain that filming is disruptive and messy. Officials also worry that footage of their schools might wind up in a porn or slasher flick. They try to get filmmakers’ assurances that the campus won’t be embarrassed by anything sleazy or very violent.

Still, administrators say they are as welcoming as possible because they need the money.

L.A. Unified charges $1,700 a day for filming on its campuses. About 15% of that goes to the EIDC, 65% to the individual school and 20% to the district, to be spread among all campuses at the end of the year.

University High has served as a backdrop for 38 movies, TV shows and commercials in the past two years. Freebies from film companies supplement the fees it receives. Last year, Twentieth Century Fox donated $12,000 worth of lunch tables to replace old, graffiti-marred ones.

This year, officials hope to collect enough from filming to pay for 1,000 new desk/chair combinations at $91 each.

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Galedary said administrators allow crews to work during school hours, and are willing to move teachers or students out of classrooms and other areas to make way for cameras.

“Our kids understand, and our teachers understand, that filming is beneficial to University High School,” he said.

At Dorris Place Elementary, in the Elysian Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, the tiled floors and walnut doors appeal to location scouts. The 1925 campus was featured in the Disney film “Freaky Friday,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and has a continuing role in the CBS detective show “Cold Case.”

Money from filming helped offset cuts in funding for classroom supplies, said Principal Charlene Vignes.

At Cleveland High School in Reseda, a crew of about 50 people gathered on the football field Wednesday to shoot a music video for singer Melissa Etheridge’s single “Breathe.”

Students from the school’s journalism and media classes took trips out to the field to watch the production and interview crew members and Etheridge, who posed in front of rows of red bleachers.

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“It’s exciting to be able to see this up close,” said student Michael Manning, 17. That is not the only benefit, he added: “It allows us to have a ton of extra money. It allows us to have extra things at our school.”

Revenue and donations from past filming provided new paint for the cafeteria and shrubbery along walkways. Now, Cleveland officials hope to attract a major television show by sending studios a computer-animated tour of the campus, created by students.

If such a show was filmed at the school for a full academic year, “that would be constant revenue,” said Assistant Principal Harry Ibach. “That would really help us.”

Le Conte Middle School in Hollywood recently used filming fees from NBC’s “American Dreams” to install white boards in 65 classrooms, replacing old-fashioned chalkboards.

Because of such benefits, more schools are opening up to movie and television crews, said Woody Kane, location manager for “7th Heaven.”

“For us, it just makes it a win-win situation. They’re happy to see us; we’re welcomed guests,” he said, adding that such is not always the case in residential neighborhoods.

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In the past, Kane conceded, schools rightly griped that film crews left behind trash and damaged property. But crews now try to clean up and treat campuses with more respect so they will be welcomed back, he said.

But some disruption is inevitable. Kane’s crew usually includes 50 members, plus 100 cast members and extras. They need about 1,500 feet of curb space to park trucks.

“We are intrusive,” he said. “When you start displacing students and teachers, you really are impacting the campus.”

Veronique Vowell, a location manager for “Cold Case,” said she too had noticed that school principals seem much more accommodating now.

She recently scoured eight public and private schools for the perfect gymnasium for a scene about the 1987 murder of a high school basketball star. Some schools were willing to rearrange their sports teams’ schedules; others spent several hours giving tours.

The crew settled on St. Anthony’s High School in Long Beach, where the gym has large concrete bleachers along three sides of the basketball court.

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“Principals are excited about having us,” Vowell said. “Everybody is looking for money.”

Pasadena Unified School District plans to create a Web site where filmmakers can view the district’s campuses.

“We want to try to find ways to expand that relationship,” said Pearl Iizuka, assistant superintendent for business services.

The oft-filmed Beverly Hills High School, which charges film companies $6,000 a day, welcomes the extra revenue, said Gary Mortimer, an assistant superintendent in the district. But school officials ask about the rating of any movie that producers want to film on campus, he said, and will usually turn down anything R-rated.

“We don’t want the image of the school to be tarnished,” he said. “If it’s a documentary, like for the History Channel, those are things we would look at before some kind of horror film.”

Torrance High School, one of the most filmed campuses in Southern California, wound up regretting one shoot.

After the filming of “Not Another Teen Movie” on his campus, Principal John O’Brien said he was shocked to discover that the movie included off-campus scenes with nudity. School officials now ask movie makers about their projects and deny access for films that will contain nudity, a lot of vulgarity or extreme violence.

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In addition, after parents and teachers complained about distractions, the district recently prohibited filming during school hours.

“By having 50 people show up on campus, it is disrupting the program. Plus, there are always safety problems, with people coming and going,” said Steven Fish, superintendent of Torrance Unified School District.

Some students were late to class earlier this semester when the Fox television drama “Skin” was filmed between classes one day, said Torrance student Chris Palencia, 16. The campus played “Los Feliz High” in the short-lived show.

Still, students were intrigued by “the cameras and the set props and the extras,” said Palencia, who is helping create a photo essay for LA Youth newspaper, an independent teen publication, replicating scenes from various shows and movies filmed on the campus.

“Everyone stopped to comment” that the actors didn’t look like high school students, he said.

Torrance senior Vilma Huerta, 17, said people recognize her school sometimes from its television role in “Beverly Hills, 90210,” and that “gives us pride in our school.”

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The school has also appeared in “The O.C.” and “She’s All That.”

Hollywood pyrotechnics briefly engulfed Torrance High’s Romanesque-style main entrance when an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” called for its “Sunnydale High” to be blown up. To get that shot, crews set off a loud explosion in the middle of the night, angering some neighbors but causing no damage.

But the financial benefits are appreciated at Torrance High, which usually charges $3,000 to $4,000 a day for extensive filming.

The school is using about $2,500 from its recent television and movie stints to replace a dilapidated marquee used to post announcements.

Earnings from “Buffy” helped reupholster seats in the auditorium. Revenue from “90210” helped refurbish the senior patio with a fountain of ceramic yellow, blue and white tiles.

Fish, the superintendent, said the glamour of serving as a film location has to take a back seat to academics. But he added that the district is “more than happy” to allow filming overnight, on weekends or during vacation breaks.

“In these financial times,” he said, “any outside funding is helpful.”

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