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“There are many hard realities that employees in the film
industry face,”said professor Bruce Cook, addressing his business cinema
students on the first day of class at LA City College.
“First of all, it costs money to train. There’s the cost of tuition and
books and the fact that you have to support yourself while in school. Your
student movie project can run into the thousands of dollars. Once you get
out in the field you will probably have to take low-paying jobs for a few
years until you get established.”
“Second, working in films is a very physically demanding job. If you work on
a crew, we’re talking 16-hour days, six days a week, for weeks on end. And
there’s no job security. When you’re done with one job, you have to
continually look for your next. And being gone for these long periods is not
conducive to maintaining a long-term relationship.”
“Then there’s the fact that you’ll work on so much bad stuff. When you get
into the middle of your career, there’s the disillusionment that sets in
when you see your work distorted or destroyed by producers. And yes, you can
make it really big in the industry, but you can also be struck by
lightning.”
Yet for all its challenges, working on a film can give you one of the
greatest satisfactions in life, said Mr. Cook. “What I love about it is the
fact that you’re working as a group with 50 other individuals to create
something of meaning, something beautiful. It’s not like working as a
solitary artist. Also I like the fact that filmmaking is a marriage of
technology and creativity. And all in all, Hollywood provides a decent
living for a lot of people. There are a lot of interesting jobs that pay
pretty well.”
The wisdom that professor Cook dispenses is probably something that film
students in Iowa do not hear, for he has been teaching the business of
filmmaking to students at LA City College for more than 30 years, drawing
upon his many years of experience as a filmmaker in all areas of production.
He is especially demanding of his cinema business students. “I make them
write up a resume, a cover letter requesting an interview, and a five-year
career plan,” he said. And it is assignments such as these that give LACC’s
film students an edge when looking for employment in the industry, he said.
“Many of LACC’s grads find entry-level jobs and move up in the industry,” he
said.
Although he has taught at UCLA and USC, he especially likes teaching at LACC
because he likes City’s international student clientele. “There’s a constant
interaction with different cultures and stories,” he said.
“Asian, Indian, and Japanese students, for example, produce films which have
a more languid pace and the emphasis is on the portrayal of moral values.
The love of family or loyalty are common themes. The work of African
students, on the other hand, is different in that their stories are very
verbal—their characters talk. I like that variety. At LACC customs mingle
and clash and are synthesized into something new. International students
come here to learn American filmmaking techniques and they leave something
behind here as well.”
In his business class this semester, students come from such foreign lands
as Austria, Colombia, India, Italy, Honduras, Spain, Argentina, Iceland,
Israel, China, and Japan. New cinema classes are set to start in January and
February. Located at 855 N. Vermont Ave. in Hollywood, LACC offers a
certificate and-two year degree in filmmaking as well as one in television
production. Students are taught all aspects of the business including an
overview, film history, screenwriting, directing, cinematography, lighting
and sound, business, as well as advanced projects.
Mr. Cook has taught filmmaking at a number of schools throughout the
Southland since 1973. Among his thousands of former students are Matt
Groening (creator of “The Simpsons”), actor Laurence Fishburne, Paramount VP
of Marketing Lucia Ludovico, numerous directors and producers, seven Academy
Award nominees and winners, and twelve Emmy nominees and winners.
His varied career as a filmmaker have earned him credits as writer,
producer, or director on eleven independent feature films as well as
commercials. He has written more than twenty screenplays, including the
films “Husband,Wives, Money & Murder,” “Line of Fire,” and “Nightwish.”
In the late ‘90s, Mr. Cook was invited by the largest television network in
the Philippines to teach a series of seminars on improving the production
techniques of the film and TV industry. While on location, he researched the
background for his recently published and acclaimed (first) novel, the
suspense thriller “Philippine Fever.” Before he became a filmmaker he worked
as a laser physicist on the Apollo Project. He holds degrees in physics,
mathematics, film education, and communication.
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