Film School to Save a Place for Inmate : Scholarship: Teen-ager who won contest with an anti-drug video will get to collect her prize--a workshop at USC--after she serves her time for auto theft.

Film school can wait.

Officials at USC’s School of Cinema-Television say they have decided to defer the scholarship prize for a Ventura County juvenile inmate’s winning anti-drug video until after she is released next spring.

Earlier, officials had expressed uncertainty over whether Wendy Creiglow, a 16-year-old from San Diego County serving time for grand theft auto at the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School, would be allowed to collect the prize--a five-week workshop at the film school--for her video, “Flatlines.”

The CYA was unwilling to release her early, saying she had not completed her rehabilitation and would be ineligible for release until next spring.

And the USC faculty judges were not sure whether they could guarantee Wendy a slot next summer after granting this year’s slot to the runner-up video maker from Orange County.

But on Friday, film school officials announced they will hold Wendy’s scholarship until next summer.

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None of the judges of the Teens Making a Difference competition, run by USC and KCET-TV, could be reached Friday for comment.

But the school released a statement saying, “The University of Southern California-School of Cinema and Television wishes to reassure Ms. Wendy Creiglow that her inability to participate in our program this summer in no way prohibits her from participating next year.”

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It concluded, “The university is committed to fostering new talent and fully intends to hold Ms. Creiglow’s scholarship until summer, 1995, when she is able to attend.”

Wendy, who was being videotaped Friday afternoon for a panel discussion on KCET’s “Life and Times” program, could not be reached for comment on the judges’ decision. The video, written by Creiglow and produced by fellow inmates at the school, warns that drugs can kill. In graphic close-ups, it equates lines of cocaine with the profile of a gun and the flat-line readout of an overdose victim’s pulse on a heart monitor.

CYA officials said they are glad she will have the chance to use the $4,500 scholarship in an intensive, five-week filmmaking workshop at the school.

“The Youth Authority’s very proud of this young woman,” said Sarah Andrade, a spokeswoman for California’s juvenile prison system. “This is a wonderful accomplishment, and there’s no way we would want her to miss this.”