The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

and are lucky enough to be able to do so. In the last two .years of study — and in graduate work, too, if desired — the student who majors in theatre goes on to more specialized courses. If the student wants to major in motion pictures or radio, the work of his last two years is devoted to those areas, in addition to courses in other fields of education. But how can film and radio, as well as theatre, be effectively taught? UCLA follows a familiar and well tested pattern. This is first to study certain single aspects in one-semester courses, concentrating mostly on theory, and then to study and practice those theories in workship courses. Thus the student who takes camera, cutting, or directing through a lecture course, practices what he has learned, and, of course, learns far more by applying his knowledge to production work in three successive workshop courses. Students are not allowed to specialize too strictly until they are sure where their interest and capabilities lie. LEARNING the motion picture skills on the basis of stage skills seems generally a sound principle. For instance, the actor learns how to use his voice, how to interpret character, how to time his lines, how to relate his part to another's — all in terms of theatre. This is fundamental to all acting. When he comes to study acting for the screen — or the radio — he learns how to modify his technique to suit the new medium. The value of this approach is obvious in writing. The basic course is playwriting ; no one is admitted who cannot turn in a one-act play, one act of a long play, or a radio script that shows he has a feeling for dialogue. In the playwriting course he learns how to build scenes, present characters, and organize a story in terms of the theatre. This takes two semesters, but it provides the man who wants to write for film or radio the fundamentals of his craft. He may then take a one-semester course in fictional screen writing or in dramatic radio writing. There he learns the special techniques that modify what he has learned in playwriting. He needn't take the playwriting course, however, but can enter either of the others directly if he presents the instructor with a well-written fulllength play or a comparable radio script. Of course there are other forms of writing for the screen and radio, and here playwriting is not a prerequisite. If the student wants to learn to write documentary or educational films, he has only to show the instructor that his writing is easy and effective. The same goes for radio writing of the documentary and narrative type. But who can teach theatre arts effectively? The man or woman must have had training. He can get that in drama through the many universities that have dramatic departments. The universities with radio departments can supply trained teachers in this field. As yet, institutions of learning can provide few teachers of motion pictures, but the Army and Navy, through their very extensive production of training films developed a surprising number of men who can teach various aspects of motion picture work. It is still necessary in film teaching — and in radio and theatre, too — to find specialists for certain subjects. The Hollywood film and radio studios can supply these specialists ; UCLA uses them to teach courses in set and costume design, make-up, animation, and cutting, and to give individual lectures in all aspects of the film. Who, I ask the readers of The Screen Writer, would care to teach screenwriting next year at UCLA? If a university that teaches the theatre arts should not be a trade school, then what will its students gain from their studies? The first answer may be — jobs. But that depends on the native ability of the student, his persistence, and his good fortune. And if, for example, he is lucky enough to get a studio job as an actor, or a writer or a cutter, he will go farther faster — granted native ability — than if he had to learn his craft entirely within studio walls. The same is true for radio. Then, too, the graduate may want to teach. In theatre and radio the field is wide and widening. Even in film, opportunities exist and are increasing; within the past few months two great state universities have asked advice on how to staff the curriculums in motion picture work that they are contemplating. IN motion pictures there is another field of opportunity. I have mentioned documentary and teaching films and also animation. UCLA gives five undergraduate courses and four on the graduate level that deal specifically with the documentary and teaching film, in addition to the courses in basic skills that apply to the non-fictional as well as the fictional film. In the activities of the workship courses, there is an inevitable pull towards the production of documentary and teaching films. We make individual scenes from Hollywood scripts, but only as practice for the actor, the director, the cameraman, and the cutter. We can hope only very rarely to find student ability in writing and directing that will justify the making of a dramatic short. The documentary and teaching films are another matter. There the student can do good, solid, presentable — and useful — work. Though only the first of the three courses in animation has been given so far, the students have completed the story board for a film to teach perspective drawing. Aided by the animation class and certain courses, a graduate student in geography has completed as part of his master thesis a documentary film on Palm Springs, beginning with its geological history. On the graduate level our own students will do work of this kind, but such films will also be a product of the workshop courses as they develop. TEACHING the theatre arts — specifically the motion picture — is obviously good for education when it serves other departments, as in the case of the Palm Springs thesis film. But I feel it makes a much broader {Continued on Page 25) 10 The Screen Writer, August, 194