Making Film Makers : Well-Regarded Orange Coast College Movie, Video Program Lets the Students Do It All

Alan Ruffier graduated from the film/video department at Orange Coast College in 1986. By 1988, he had formed his own production company and written, produced and directed his first feature film, “Bonneville, Arizona,” on a $100,000 budget that he raised himself.

Just 25 years old, Ruffier is now at work on “Grandpa,” his second independent feature. “It’s a bigger budget ($500,000) and I’ll be working with name actors this time,” Ruffier said in a phone interview this week. “It’s a whole new ball game.”

Kent Blakely, a fellow OCC graduate and Ruffier’s co-producer on “Bonneville, Arizona,” is now directing an independent feature of his own, “A Different Life,” to be shot entirely on location in Orange County in June and July. With a local doctor as an investor, Blakely has also optioned the rights to another screenplay that will go into production next year with a projected $2-million budget.

“I’m 26 years old and I’m doing my second film,” Blakely said, “and I’ve already got my third lined up.”

Ruffier and Blakely are two of the success stories that Brian Lewis, head of OCC’s film and video department, points to with pride. And the two former students in turn give credit to Lewis--and the program he has built on a shoestring budget--for giving them the tools to build their early success.

“I’m very grateful to Orange Coast and Brian Lewis,” Ruffier said. “At OCC I had the freedom to do what I wanted.”

“When you’re first making films, you have to have the freedom to experiment,” added Blakely, “or you won’t learn anything at all.”

Although it lacks the glamour of more famous film schools such as USC and UCLA, Orange Coast has quietly been building a reputation for turning out students with a solid grasp of the technical side of movie and video making.

“We are the film school in Orange County,” Lewis said matter-of-factly. “We’re the main game in town.” It’s only a 2-year program but, Lewis added, “it’s totally hands-on.” While the school also teaches film theory and appreciation, all students in the introductory courses have a camera thrust into their hands in the first week of class.

After Blakely graduated from OCC, he went on to Art Center College in Pasadena but said he learned more in his 2 years at Orange Coast. “I went to Art Center for the degree only,” the young film maker admitted.

When Ruffier graduated from Orange Coast, he went straight to work. “I never went to any other schools because by the time I came out of Orange Coast College, I knew how to make a film,” he said.

These days, activity in Orange Coast’s editing room is especially frenzied as students scramble for equipment, desperately working to finish their film and video projects in time for the school’s upcoming festival.

“I came back to do some editing the other night and there wasn’t any room to stand in here,” said Todd Williams, a beginning production student working on a video to enter in the annual event.

Students have until Wednesday to turn in their entries. That’s when the work begins for Lewis, who must choose from as much as 40 hours worth of 20-minute films to create a 2-hour program, to be presented Friday night in the school’s Forum theater.

This is the 19th festival in as many years for Lewis, who started the festival after arriving at Orange Coast from San Francisco State University. “The first year here (the film program) was kind of a meager offering,” Lewis recalled. He also recalled how an annual festival created a focus for the program at San Francisco State.

The approach to student projects at other film schools is often highly regimented, with each student responsible for just one aspect of a production. Each of Lewis’ students is assigned his or her own full project and gets a taste of every aspect. “It’s like throwing you in the water,” said student Dan Buhler. “But it really does make you work.”

Lewis puts no constraints on style or content, which results in a wide variety of approaches. Colleagues have asked how he can view so many student films year after year; Lewis says that variety is what keeps him going.

“It never ends, in terms of the creativity of the students,” Lewis said. “There’s been some great stuff.”

Lewis screened two films from past festivals to prove his point. One was “Rabbit,” a short by Keith Fialcowitz that went on to win awards in several international competitions. The highly polished film takes a humorous look at the way nature turns the tables on a bored driver during a lonely haul across the desert.

“Horror Brunch,” a slice of Grand Guignol humor in which a peaceful Sunday brunch turns into a blood bath, was done by Rik Carter, who has gone on to work special effects in Hollywood.

Lewis also screened an early entry in this year’s festival, “Under the Windowpane,” a mature and sensitive look at a father coping with the suicide of his son. Mark W. Solter wrote, directed, produced and edited the film, with photography by S. Emmett Fahey and original music by Todd Rogers.

Until 2 years ago, the festival accepted only films; now videos make up about half the entries. Where beginning production students once worked in super 8, now they use one of 15 video camcorders the school owns.

That is partly a matter of convenience--video is cheaper and easier to use than film--and partly a recognition that most jobs are now in video. “You really need to have an insight into video production,” Lewis said.

The hands-on approach to teaching film relies heavily on having the right equipment, which Lewis has managed to assemble--largely through donations and discounts--at a time when community college budgets are notoriously tight. Film and video-editing equipment, a screening room, mixing equipment for film, and computers for graphics all are available to students.

Lewis remains the program’s only full-time instructor, and now he has been handed the school’s studio production program as well. Film and video classes fill up within the first few days of registration, so Lewis would like to expand the offerings. “The only thing holding us back is the money,” he said.

About half the graduates of his program go on to 4-year colleges, Lewis said, while the other half go straight into the workplace. Of those, about half go into theatrical and commercial films and television, while the rest find work in Orange County’s burgeoning production market, which is mostly focused on industrial videos.

While Ruffier and Blakely took the independent route, largely for the creative freedom it offers, they are the exceptions. Former student Liz Ervin, like most of the graduates, works for others; a free-lance production assistant, she just finished work on “To the Limit,” a new Imax film from Laguna Beach-based MacGillvray/Freeman Studios.

In the next 2 weeks, Ervin will be releasing the second edition of her “Orange County Film/Video and Audio-Visual Resource Directory” which lists production and post-production facilities, recording studios, permit information and free-lance production people in the county. Its size--230 pages, up from 180 last year--indicates the growth and size of the production business here.

Ervin was planning a career in social welfare when she took Lewis’ introductory film production class to satisfy a general education requirement. She soon switched her major. “It changed the course of my career,” she said.

Lewis’ approach “weeds out the people who aren’t serious,” Ervin said. “If you’re really interested, you put in a lot of effort. If you’re not, you drop the class. It’s a lot of work.”

Since graduating, Ervin has hired Orange Coast students to work on her productions, as have Ruffier and Blakely. “I’ve hired a few production assistants out of OCC, and it’s worked out great,” she said.

Orange Coast College’s 19th annual Student Film and Video Festival takes place Friday at 8 p.m. in the Forum theater, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Admission: $2. Information: (714) 432-5629.