LOS ANGELES—The CCCU’s Los Angeles Film Studies Center (LAFSC) moved to its new location on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Calif., the week of July 5, 2005. The program’s previous location was in Toluca Lake, a section of L.A. in the east valley located adjacent to Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney studios. Wilshire Boulevard is in the Miracle Mile section, south of Hollywood. LAFSC now has a beautiful 16th floor, 180 degree view, sweeping from the Hollywood Hills to downtown Los Angeles. Although not adjacent to any one studio, the new site is more centrally located to all of the six major studios, giving more students a shorter commute to their internships. Miracle Mile is decidedly more urban than Toluca Lake and includes museums, parks and excellent shopping and entertainment.
The primary impetus for the move to the new venue was to maximize the program’s funds and move the students into the heart of the city. The new facility is a much larger space for a considerably lower price per square foot. Whereas the previous building held just one classroom seating about 40 students, the new spot affords a large classroom seating 60 students, a small classroom seating 30 students, plus more square footage for offices and labs. Students will live in the Park La Brea apartments which are comparable to the Oakwood Apartments (where students lived up until this point).
This move is just one of a series of changes that have taken place within LAFSC in the last academic year. In October 2004, Rebecca Ver Straten-McSparran was appointed the new director while outgoing director Doug Briggs became director of L.A. Filmworks, an enrichment program of LAFSC designed to create quality entertainment while providing LAFSC students and alumni opportunities for professional-level production experience. Since her hire, Ver Straten-McSparran and LAFSC faculty member Michael Smith also worked to revamp the curriculum of the program, which now includes "Hollywood Production Workshop," among other new courses. In this required course, students will add actual production experience to their resumes by working collaboratively in groups to create a festival-ready piece by the end of the semester, including all the legal documentation and rights.
Beyond taking ten credits of courses, students earn six credits serving in internships in Hollywood as support personnel to producers, writers, directors, agents, post-production personnel and others. Internships have been provided at such companies as 20th Century Fox Casting, Atlas Entertainment, Lakeshore Entertainment, Miramax Films and more.
In addition, LAFSC has implemented an aggressive technology plan, which will give students a competitive edge in the independent film market as well as the entertainment industry workplace. Not only will they produce festival-ready films, but they will shoot and edit them at crystal-clear HDV quality. Students will have access to a fleet of new Sony HDV cameras as well as a state-of-the-art edit lab equipped with Final Cut Studio workstations.
LAFSC is one of 12 student programs made available by the CCCU (www.BestSemester.com). Along with the American Studies Program, Contemporary Music Center and Summer Institute of Journalism, the Los Angeles Film Studies Center is classified as a "culture-shaping program."
The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities is a higher education association of more than 170 intentionally Christ-centered institutions around the world. There are now 105 member campuses in North America and all are fully-accredited, comprehensive colleges and universities with curricula rooted in the arts and sciences. In addition, 67 affiliate campuses from 24 countries are part of the CCCU. The Council’s mission is to advance the cause of Christ-centered higher education and to help its institutions transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.