L.A. Schools to Open Academies on Film Trades

Attempting to fill a void of qualified workers, movie executives and Los Angeles Unified School District officials announced Tuesday that they are opening three academies for high school and adult school students interested in working in the film industry.

Starting this fall, students at Palisades and Hollywood high schools and the Abram Friedman Occupational Center in downtown can sign up for classes ranging from set design to animation.

Students will learn how to use computer graphics to create special effects such as the tornadoes in “Twister” or the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.” By the end of the school year, officials hope the teenagers will have the skills to produce their own videos, which will be shown on campus or placed on the Internet.

“The academy is truly an example of enlightened self-interest at the highest level,” said Kathleen Milnes, an official with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers Assn. “Our participation is a direct result of our members telling us, meeting after meeting, that the shortage of creative people who can work in digital media is hampering their growth and driving up their costs.”

The decision to start the three New Media academies comes at a time when public schools are searching for private partnerships to help launch “school-to-career” programs, which provide job skills to students who may not attend college.

“My job is to find my students’ button switch and flick it on, because so many of them have been turned off,” said Dennis Danziger, who will teach screenwriting at the Palisades High academy. “We want to look at things in a different way. I see this as a hipper, more 20th century way of covering the same material that students need to be covering.”

Film industry backers of the academies said they hope to provide internships and other job opportunities to qualified students. The school district is allocating $100,000 for the first year of the program, and the Weingart Foundation is giving $30,000. Movie companies such as Sony and Paramount have provided teacher training and professional expertise.

Under the academy concept, high school students essentially enroll in schools within their schools and take specialized classes to learn specific skills. The district offers other academies in areas such as banking and finance, tourism, health and law and justice.

In the New Media academy, students will learn math skills by working out the dimensions of sets. They’ll learn English by writing screenplays, and they’ll learn art by drawing characters for animated films. About half a dozen teachers--ranging from math instructors to English teachers--will participate in the academies at each school.

“Together we can put on ‘Jurassic Park’ types of shows,” said T. H. Culhane, a Hollywood High School film teacher. “In the process, the kids learn about history, about science. The approach is much better than sticking kids in what looks like a jail and asking them to read incomprehensible text.”

“The goal of the program is to have students ready for their next level of training,” said James Konantz, director of the school district’s Career Development Office. “We want to have students who, when they leave high school, are ready for college, who are ready to enter the motion picture industry.”

Los Angeles school officials hope to have 400 students enrolled in the academies next year. Eventually, they want to expand the program to other schools. Assisting with the program is Workforce L.A., a nonprofit organization devoted to building stronger schools-to-career programs for students.

“To my knowledge, no other public school district in the nation has forged such an intense relationship with a specific industry,” said Barry Sanders, vice chairman for Workforce L.A. “We are very excited about this.”