Aspiring to be a Filmmaker? USC offers pioneering film program

CEBU, Philippines - Aspiring filmmakers now have an option to study moviemaking in a university-based program right here in Cebu, with the University of San Carlos’ Department of Fine Arts recently introducing cinema as one of its major four-year course offerings beginning this June.

Apart from its main purpose of uplifting local cinema from a mere form of public entertainment to a form of art, this is also USC’s response to a growing need of the local industry for university-educated, technologically-savvy film professionals at a time when there is a dynamic indie film scene and a rising enthusiasm to revive the once glorious Cebuano film industry.

“Since two years ago, it has been our dream to put up this course. The downturn in the global economy has put more emphasis in the creative and cultural aspect of our economy. We think there’s a vision here in Cebu to be a creative capital, and we’d like to respond and contribute to achieve that goal. We have the resources and facilities so we’d like to maximize that,” said USC’s College of Architecture and Fine Arts Dean Archt. Joseph Michael P. Espina during the program’s formal public introduction at the Fine Arts Theater of the USC Talamban Campus. Their Fine Arts Department offers three other courses namely Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Advertising Arts, Painting and Fashion Design.

This is the first university-based film program outside the capital and the first fine arts-based film curriculum in the country, since film programs in Manila are usually under the Mass Communications department.

Acting coordinator of the BFA Cinema program Misha Anissimov, a Cebu-based Russian-American filmmaker, said that a Masscom-based film program does not emphasize artistry as much. For USC Fine Arts professor Radel Paredes, he finds it appropriate to put it under the same department with painting and other fine arts programs because film is essentially one of the visual arts.

Paredes cited as their model the world’s first and biggest film school in Moscow called VGIK, whose entire first year in its five-year curriculum is spent mainly on the study of painting. A look at USC’s syllabus shows fine-arts related subjects in the first year such as Design Fundamentals, Graphics, Freehand Drawing, History of Art and Shades and Shadows.

“Film is basically photography and the best training a photographer can have in the study of composition and light is still in drawing,” explained Paredes.

Anissimov, a graduate of the San Francisco State University, drafted a course outline that he hopes is a good balance between cinema theory and practice. He said they made sure to put emphasis on producing, curating and criticism as cinema is a big business worldwide as well as an art. Producing includes film pre-production, planning, controlling cost, budget cost, contract negotiations, trying to market and sell your film, publicity, leveraging your success and finding a paying audience. Likewise, the film industry needs more than just filmmakers to function. It needs film scholars and professors to teach, thus there is a demand for film festival curators and organizers to connect new films to audiences and distributors.

The curriculum also includes film basics like cinematography, editing, screenwriting, sound and cinema ethics — giving the graduate a variety of career options here and abroad, may it be to work as an editor, cinematographer, sound designer, animator and scriptwriter.

If USC’s advertising arts program — which has a course in TV arts, basic film appreciation and production —was able to produce professionals who currently make up Cebu’s contemporary indie filmmakers with awards to their name and exposure in the international film festival circuit, the university has high hopes of their program’s future cinema graduates. (FREEMAN)