To Reach This Film School, No Commute Is Required

The man in Antarctica, one of the first 90 students to sign up for the Global Film School, was thrilled to finally be able to study cinema through the new online school. He only had one question. “He was wondering if he could get the textbooks sent to him by e-mail,” said Frank Stork, the school’s chief executive officer. “He only gets mail once a year, in September.”

Launched in May by UCLA and film schools in Australia and England, the for-profit online film school is believed to be the first of its kind. In its first trial months, it has generated both excitement and some confusion. The students--many of whom live in non-English-speaking countries--are not equally skilled in English; they’ve had problems obtaining the required textbooks or videos in their countries; and they live in a variety of time zones, forcing some students to sign on to live chat class at 2 a.m. And some students have had to deal with a few technical glitches, such as being dropped accidentally from a chat room.

Still, judging by the students’ response to the classes and willingness to pay the per-class fees (now an average of $500, increasing to $700 in September), Stork believes he’s tapped a viable market for the entrepreneurial venture. “There’s a real demand from aspiring filmmakers willing to pay a fair amount of money to get real instruction from top instructors,” he said.

Not only does Stork predict the school will turn a profit within 18 months, he says its educational goal is honorable and revolutionary: “It’s the democratization of film education,” he says.

The school is associated financially and academically with UCLA but has yet to be accredited. So far, it offers only two courses: “Screenwriting Fundamentals” and “Elements of Great Filmmaking,” taught by UCLA’s Richard Walter and the University of Arizona’s Yuki Makino. There is also a free seminar, “Shoot Out!,” about the day-to-day realities of Hollywood filmmaking, hosted by Peter Guber, chief of Mandalay Entertainment, and Peter Bart, editor in chief of the trade paper Variety.

The online classes, similar to those offered by UCLA’s film school, are divided into a maximum of four sessions with 15 students each, Stork said. The professors lecture through downloaded videos, which students watch on their own time. In addition, instructors lead live chat sessions on the Internet, and give feedback to students though e-mail. Students also interact with one another twice a week for more than an hour in online chat sessions.

E-learning isn’t for everyone but seems to work best for aspiring students who are either geographically or physically challenged, or are already working professionals. Fifty-five percent of Global Film School students live outside the U.S. and include a former cinematography student now serving time in prison, a quadriplegic in Denmark and a 16-year-old enthusiast from Amsterdam.

As it looks now, the $4-million online school is a vastly scaled-down version of the $25-million venture announced several years ago during the dot-com boom. Back then, it was said 90,000 potential students had expressed interest. It was an unrealistic vision coupled with bad timing, said Stork, who was hired by the Global Film School a year ago. Last year’s approval by the University of California regents was a “time-consuming and painful process,” and when it was over, so was the dot-com boom, he said. “I came on to lend business ability and sobriety to the project,” he said. “Everyone was still dreaming of the hundreds of millions of dollars of equity values and revenues.”

Stork said he recognized the school had to go beyond concepts and create a credible revenue-generating business before it could go outside and raise capital. “It wasn’t easy to do, frankly,” he said. Learning from the University of Phoenix example, he scaled back the “bells and whistles” of technology to focus on content. His salary and that of the professors will be paid from a portion of the profits later.

Through bulletin boards and live chat rooms with other students around the world, they’ve heard different points of view from all kinds and levels of enthusiastic students. “That’s something you can’t find everywhere,” said Hector Mora, 24, a student in Colombia, via e-mail.

The initial courses were limited, Stork said, so that the school could test price and class content. A third session of courses will be launched soon with additional courses: “Screenwriting Workshop” and “Concepts in New Media.”

Mora said he reviews the material as many times as he wants to, and at his own time and pace. He was surprised he had to work so hard. “You have to write and send reports,” he wrote. “For people outside the U.S., this could be hard because of the language. In my case, I must say that my writing skills has [sic] been forced to improve whether I was ready or not.”

Takayuki Ito, 29, a management consultant in Japan who aspires to become an independent filmmaker, said in an e-mail that he hopes the screenwriting class will help prepare him for graduate-level filmmaking classes he plans to take later in the U.S.

In addition to the paying students, more than 1,000 “auditors” have signed on to the “Shoot Out!” series, found at www.shootoutonline.com and based on a UCLA class that also spawned a book of the same title. They have heard agent Bob Bookman, director John Singleton, actors Angelina Jolie and Matthew Perry, and Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, relate professional experiences. Stork said the school is converting the seminar series into a paid course with additional materials and live instruction.

“Our intention was to do this as a gift,” said Guber, the former Sony Pictures chairman, who has taught courses regularly at UCLA for 33 years. Aspiring filmmakers today have easy access to digital cameras and editing suites, but lack access to experienced professionals who can help guide them in the storytelling process, he said.

As it grows, the school hopes to evolve into a sort of talent clearinghouse where agents and producers can see the actual films of some of the students. Fox Searchlab, Fox Searchlight’s director program, will award a scholarship to the top candidate from Global Film School’s international student base. The candidate will be flown to L.A., where he or she will receive a first-look deal with Fox Searchlight.

The school has applied for accreditation. It also is studying whether to impose admissions requirements and is considering scholarships to remove cost barriers.

Even if the school succeeds, some questions remain. Can anyone really learn filmmaking on a Web site? Can anyone have a successful filmmaking career without living in one of the filmmaking centers? Will Americans, long criticized for imposing their cultural values on the rest of the world through movies, spread their domination through the school?

Noam Dromi, publicist for shootoutonline.com, said, “We take the position that once you’ve established a certain level of success in the entertainment industry, you can live anywhere you want. The way the town works, you can benefit from spending time in L.A.” Stork, who is Dutch by nationality and has lived in several countries, said one reason he was hired was for his international viewpoint. “Had they hired someone American, it may have become too much of a Hollywood-focused enterprise,” he said. “We’re not limiting it to American instruction to the world. From our perspective, Hollywood is part of the global product base. It’s the most prevalent, the most profitable and popular. Hollywood knows how to develop the films and market the films. They’re not always the best stories, but the best-sold stories.

“What we hope to do is broaden that. A Spanish student taking a course from a Chinese professor may come up with an entirely new and different story technique, which may be impossible where students go to their indigenous film schools.” On the other hand, there’s something to be said for that as well, he said. “We don’t want to destroy a country’s film culture.”

According to the University of Arizona’s Makino, her students, many of whom are Americans living abroad, tend to have independent or eclectic tastes: “Clearly, they’re not in a position to be able to do huge-budget-type films.”

Stork said, “There’s a certain level of arrogance from the Hollywood perspective. They think they don’t need schools to find the talent, that the talent will naturally always gravitate to Hollywood. It’s not the case. There are a lot of talented actors in the world who are not able to realize that passion. Film schools are out of their reach. We hope we’re opening a door to a whole new group of talented individuals out there.”