Homework Project That Became PBS Documentary : Movie: UCLA film student’s ‘Hugo and the Blue Whale’ will air tonight on Channel 28.

Two years ago, UCLA film student David Egen was assigned to produce a short film as an exercise for one of his courses. Running out of time, he took an incomplete grade in the class but continued to work on the project.

This year, the 23-year-old senior had the satisfaction of selling that finished film--his first--to PBS, thus launching his professional career even before graduation.

“Hugo and the Blue Whale,” a 12-minute documentary that Egen calls “a piece on urban mythology,” airs at 11 tonight on KCET Channel 28 as a segment of the offbeat PBS series, “POV.”

The documentary, shot on a $500 out-of-pocket budget, is about community reaction to a quixotic West Hollywood standoff: It seems that 15 years ago, when land was cleared for construction of the towering blue glass Pacific Design Center, one small business stood firm in the face of all financial offers to sell out to its giant neighbor. Hugo’s Plating, a down-at-the-heels little building, still sits smack in PDC’s considerable shadow, a juxtaposition Egen used as framework for his film.

Hanging out with his ancient JVC video camera, Egen shot interviews with some two dozen interested people he corralled off the sidewalk.

“The film is based on all these people contradicting each other, a mosaic of arguments,” Egen explained. “I wanted to talk about urban mythology, about people making their own meanings out of reality, and about the history of Los Angeles and people-watching, and this was a good way to put it all together.”

Egen’s sale to PBS for $5,000 was a shot-in-the-dark that transpired after he learned that “POV” executive producer Marc Weiss solicits projects for the series.

“We get hundreds of films,” Weiss confirmed, “but David’s caught our eye because it’s short, sweet, kind of quirky and fresh--it stood out from the pack. It fit in with two films on urban issues we were thinking of showing.”

Now completing his final film project before graduation, a three-minute music video about “the ‘commodification’ of women and children,” Egen looks forward to leaving school behind for the film world. He admires the work of such directors as Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Robert Altman, and says he hopes to work in all film genres.