Distribution U

The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., employs a non-traditional structure that encourages students to tell the school how they access information in the ever-amorphous world of content delivery.
Photo: Steven Heller

“Majoring in film is not your mother and father‘s major anymore.” That undeniable quote came from a conversation with David Franko, the program director of film at Winter Park, Fla.-based Full Sail University, and it is echoed by anyone involved in educating our industry's future artists.

As the landscape of content distribution spreads into new frontiers of accessibility, no one must prepare for such changes as quickly and fervently as the education institutions training the next wave of content creators.

We are all aware of how entertainment and the information highway continues to transform, but as technologies update at rates never witnessed before, so must the curricula of public and private training grounds be modified. And they are.

“Mobile content is everywhere right now, and this type of content is in such great demand that we've actually developed a class in our master's classes based entirely around mobile content creation,” Franko says.

This is a trend seen throughout the nation's film and animation schools, which has already prompted some schools to update their entire program. At the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Graduate Film School Chair Robert Peterson is already modifying the title and focus of the school's program from a graduate film degree to a graduate broadcast cinema degree.

“Today, webcasts, unicasts, podcasts, cellcasts, and platforms that have yet to be created all have a common purpose,” Peterson says. “When we wish to speak about all of the current and developing options to disseminate information or entertainment, the traditional term ‘broadcast’ symbolically represents our intent to reach and serve the broadest possible audience.

Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., has developed a master's class based entirely around mobile content creation.

“‘Cinema’ has traditionally represented the highest level of quality in aesthetics and content. Our marriage of these two historic terms is designed to illustrate the promise of a new frontier for filmmakers.”

But that frontier, as new as it might be for some professionals in the industry, is already embraced by this new age of content creators — to the point that incoming freshmen even drive some of the syllabus objectives and coursework.

“We have a portfolio review before students are even accepted into our program, and I've got 17-year-olds telling us we can watch their demo reels on YouTube or they'll come in on an interview and they'll show it to me on their [Sony] PSP,” says Jason Donati, chair of media arts and animation at the New England Institute of Art. “So they get it. They come in knowing the importance of distribution intuitively.”

This type of student-driven class assignment focus is exactly what Peterson has in mind for the Art Center in Pasadena. He says the school actually wants its students to teach them not only how the younger generation sees the world but also how they access information in order to decipher what type of content is important for them to teach. This type of non-traditional structure could be exactly what students want and need to flourish in the ever-amorphous arena of content delivery.

The New England Institute of Art is teaching the importance of time constraints when developing content for mobile and viral media.

Besides the students, corporations are also fueling the high-demand
mobile-content market. The pool of creators capable of producing ample
content for big companies of all types is currently perceived to be
small. Thus, the big studios — along with service providers such as
Sprint, Cisco, and Verizon — have turned to the schools to help fill
the professional void.

“Outside vendors drove our class direction,”
Franko says. “They wanted graduates from digital-media arts colleges to
be able to understand the difference to producing a film versus what is
needed for mobile content. Some of the larger content companies are
wanting shorts to help create buzz for a film or a product or even a
website.”

Additionally, Franko says that even famous
directors are approaching the schools interested in producing shorts
and selling those via today's varying distribution methods. He point
outs, for example, that George Romero has shown interest in creating
little zombie shorts that could either stand alone or support someone's
next project.

Donati adds that even publishers are looking
for animators and content creators to help build mobile or viral
content to drive interest in books or other print products. But mobile
and viral content has a different audience than film. So more than
ever, schools are teaching the importance of the time constraints
involved in entertaining active audiences that receive this type of
content, while also teaching how best to create and fully develop
stories for the medium.

The two main technical points for schools focused on teaching today‘s distribution methods are compression and aspect ratio.

On the compression front, Donati says the New
England Institute of Art is focusing on QuickTime versus Windows Media
versus Flash and what the differences and the benefits of each are —
not to mention streaming versus downloading. He says kids must
understand that they have to be a back-end content producer to a
certain degree to effectively deliver their message into the world.

Aspect ratios pose the grandest task, because
there is no standard anymore — with sizes varying from the big screen
and IMAX to television, iPhone, and online. “You see little bits of
animation when you're on the ‘T'' now, or you go to the urinal for God's
sake, and you got something playing in front of you,” Donati says.

Presented at last year's Siggraph tradeshow in
San Diego were new technologies that look even further into the future,
such as a video screen that is the size and nearly the thickness of a
8.5"×11" piece of paper.

“What's that going to be like — having to
produce content at 8.5"×11"?” Donati says. “It just won't stop, so you
need to be talking about [aspect ratios] from day one.”

Focusing on the final product is the key in
today's content market. Schools now focus on starting at the end more
so than ever before — teaching students that creating content for
multiple devices requires more than just outputting or rendering to
different sizes and ratios. Rather, they focus on reframing, recutting,
and retitling their content for various distribution types in order to
adequately portray the most important story aspects of their zooms and
texturing on small, lower-resolution screens. Other important aspects
being taught regarding the production of such content include how
mobile content will be selected by the viewer as well as licensing
parameters.

In the end, it all comes down to technology
and what format is necessary to produce the desired end result. These
high-powered institutions have been focusing on HD or 3D content, but
they are now making room for the re-emergence of the professional
applications of SD.

“I remember where we basically taught two
formats,” Franko says. “Now our students use seven different formats on
a daily basis. We used to have flatbed editors and a Grass Valley. Now
every student in the film program has a MacBook Pro loaded with [Apple]
Final Cut Pro studio. So even the manipulating of the content is just a
huge shift.”

How far has modern distribution infiltrated
film schools? At the New England Institute of Art's film department,
the school is incorporating projects in which the end distribution is
YouTube and nothing else. And grades? It's all about the hits.

“It's funny, when I went to school I was like,
‘Oh, I want to see my work on broadcast television or see my name in
the credits of a movie,''” Donati says. “But now, I think it's better
for some of my students to get a million hits on YouTube. That is more
satisfying than seeing their work on a feature film in some respects.”

But, according to Peterson, the change in student focus is all worth it.

“Billions will be spent developing and
producing new forms of programming for the small screen,” Peterson
says. “The future is very bright for those storytellers who are willing
to embrace new ideas and invent new forms.”

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