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Cyberspace: the final frontier

School pioneers into digital age with visionary program for new media form

By Phillip Hong

The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television is about to embark on a journey to boldly go where no student film has gone before: cyberspace.

The Laboratory for New Media, located in Melnitz Hall, is a fully operational new media production and instructional complex. With top-of-the-line equipment and state-of-the-art software, students in the lab are producing politically proactiveand aesthetically challenging short films entirely on a digital format.

"With the newly designed lab, we now have the ability to produce entirely new forms of audio/visual media," says Fabian Wagmister, coordinator of the $97,000+ laboratory and a professor of the film school for four years.

Currently, the use of computers in the entertainment industry is skyrocketing. Responsible for the animated effects that dazzled audiences in The Mask and the image splicing effects used in Forrest Gump, computers have proven themselves versatile, cheap and highly effective in film production.

The demand of computer friendly filmmakers in the entertainment industry, forced the School of Theater, Film and Television to allocate departmental funds for the lab.

"The whole dynamic of film is changing, and the digital medium has the capacity to empower the individual," says Wagmister.

Students can produce digital movies and interactive media by manipulating still photography, graphic arts, film and video. Furthermore, the laboratory has the equipment to download the films onto CD-ROM.

A preview of some of these digital films show topics that range from the break-up of the family nucleus to the superficiality of the fashion world.

The hands-on experience, coupled with cutting-edge facilities, is a unique opportunity and a major boost for a UCLA film student's marketability in both film and CD-ROM production companies.

Even highly respected cross-town rival USC's film school lacks a program that is as visionary as the Laboratory for New Media.

"Computers in film are more than just a convenient tool for editing and special effects but rather it is the birth of a new medium for communication," says Wagmister.

The creative power that the computer allows pushes the digital storyteller to redefine the existing parameters of entertainment. This is a challenge that has many people in Hollywood guessing, as there is a very real potential for reaping huge financial rewards.

CD-ROM games now feature big name Hollywood talents. Malcolm McDowell of "Clockwork Orange" fame stars in the sci-fi space opera game "Wing Commander III." The hard boiled detective game "Under a Pale Moon" stars Margot Kidder, who was Lois Lane from the "Superman" series.

Blazing new trails as pioneers of cyberspace, the Laboratory for New Media is scheduled to become a server site on the Internet by the end of this quarter. On the World Wide Web, a graphical Internet environment, student films created in the lab will have the potential viewership of over 30 million people.

"We're bypassing the last 10 years of technology and jumping into the future," says Jon Belanger, the teaching assistant for the laboratory.

The launching of UCLA student digital media projects into cyberspace echoes Professor Kleinrock's South Campus achievement 25 years ago; he jumpstarted the Internet by connecting a PC to a mainframe.

The marriage of entertainment with digital technology, and the two achievements here on campus, is a telling tale that what the rest of the world will see in terms of the future of digital media will largely be determined here at UCLA.

"UCLA is the perfect nexus point for technology and entertainment," says Kevin Fisher, a graduate film school student enrolled in the digital media class.

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