DreamWorks Enters Venture With Colleges

DreamWorks SKG will fund a new program at Los Angeles community colleges aimed at bringing more minorities and low-income people into the entertainment industry, officials said Monday.

The program, announced Thursday by DreamWorks SKG co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, culminates two years of often-strained negotiations between the studio, city and Los Angeles Community College District.

Under the plan, DreamWorks will help develop an entertainment industry curriculum for the college district. Because the district has large numbers of minority students and students from low-income backgrounds, officials say the program will help diversify the entertainment industry.

As part of the program, the studio will also offer internships to community college students.

Although he would not give a specific dollar commitment, Katzenberg promised the program would be incorporated into DreamWorks’ plans for a new film studio in Playa Vista.

“We’re not going to be screwing around,” Katzenberg said in an interview at the DreamWorks animation studio in Glendale. “This isn’t going to be some annex that’s tacked on as an afterthought.”

DreamWorks’ decision to fund the program comes as the City Council considers giving final approval to city subsidies for the studio project.

But some community activists say the commitment is too vague, especially in light of the estimated $70 million in combined state and local development subsidies for the entire Playa Vista project, which in addition to DreamWorks includes housing and office developments.

“Obviously this is not enough as far as specific commitments go when you think about the scale of public investment,” said Anthony Thigpen, chairman of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance, a countywide alliance of community groups and labor unions. “If they can get away with a kind of fluffy announcement, then that’s what they want to do.”

A City Hall source familiar with the negotiations derided Thursday’s announcement as a nonevent and said Galanter was being naive on DreamWorks’ level of commitment.

“I think she’s just so single-minded about getting DreamWorks there that she’ll give them what they want,” the source said.

But Kelly Candaele, a college trustee, rejected the notion that DreamWorks was shortchanging the district.

“We’re just happy that the community colleges are connected to DreamWorks,” he said. “This is a major step for us. This is a great thing DreamWorks is helping us to do.”

So far, DreamWorks has promised to work with the community colleges to design an entertainment studies curriculum to be used throughout the district. It has also promised to provide guest lecturers, technical advisors, internships and mentorships.

According to the plan, DreamWorks will also fund a “Job-Link” program--a clearinghouse of job information for the community colleges initiated by Galanter’s office. DreamWorks also plans to participate in a construction-based training program at Playa Vista.

While praising the commitments made by the studio, Thigpen said he was disappointed the district had not leveraged for more concessions.

“It all sounds like very beginning steps,” he said. “Those steps are important, but we would’ve expected more.”

Negotiations between the alliance and the studio became strained after the group demanded that DreamWorks fund programs on all nine campuses and guarantee top graduates of the program DreamWorks jobs.

Galanter, whose district includes the Playa Vista site, sought to separate the issue of city subsidies for the 47-acre Playa Vista development from the entertainment studies curricula.

“DreamWorks is giving back partly because I asked them to and partly because they just do that kind of thing,” she said.

Galanter said many of the tax breaks, utility discounts and other incentives given to the Playa Vista development “have become citywide policy for a number of other projects.”

She and Katzenberg said the resulting relationship between the college district and the studio would be worth more than any specific financial commitments the studio would make.

“It’s not how many millions we’re going to spend,” Katzenberg said. “Not everything comes down to the dollars and cents of it all.”

As the movie industry grows, interest is growing in entertainment studies programs at universities and colleges all over Southern California.

Santa Monica College’s cutting-edge Academy of Entertainment and Technology recently purchased an $8.5-million building and trains 140 students a year in animation. This weekend Cal State Northridge will host its second annual SUN International Animation Festival. Valley College is seeking funds for its own media arts center. Disney is in the first year of a mentoring program for high school students who aspire to become animators.

Today Universal Studios is hosting a conference that will explore partnerships between schools and local businesses, including Southern California’s film industry.

“When we go to find animators the talent base isn’t trained,” said Andy Spahn, a DreamWorks spokesman. “On one level our initiative with the community colleges is selfish. We need a talented trained pool of trainees down the road.”