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Jared Drake (pictured) and his brother Brandon have both recently won awards from the School of T

Having just received the Spotlight Award from the School of Theater, Film, Television and Digital Media this year, graduating film student Jared Drake is eager to start a career in directing among Hollywood hotshots.

For starters, “Sand Dune Water Worms,” his short film, will be shown at the Directors Guild of America Theatre. Drake is ready to take his diploma and run toward the glitz and glamour of stardom.

So what’s more exciting than one Drake taking on the film industry? Two, of course.

Jared isn’t the only Drake who’s anticipating a future in film. Older brother Brandon Drake just won the screenwriting competition in the School’s Professional Program and is also graduating this June.

“It’s like the Drake brothers are dominating!” said Jared, laughing. “We can’t wait to graduate. We have so many things that we want to do. We’re on pretty cool paths, and we’re optimistic about this.”

With Jared as director and Brandon as writer, the brothers’ paths seem to coincide naturally. While they “are taking completely different paths (in film),” they “always had the idea to do films together since high school,” according to Jared.

But the Drakes didn’t always anticipate seeing their dream come true. During his first three years, Jared’s main passion had been pole vaulting for UCLA track and field, until an injury caused him to be redshirted his third year. It was then that he picked up an interest in directing and realized that he needed to make a difficult choice.

“I remember telling my coach that I could either give fifty percent of myself to track or fifty percent of myself to doing film,” Jared said. “I tried to do both at the same time, but it was too much. I knew I had to pick one or the other. (My coach and my teammates) were extremely supportive of my decision.”

Despite the sacrifice, Jared has no regrets.

“That year when I was hurt, I had started editing some stuff and thought, ‘Hey, this stuff is pretty cool.’ So I applied to the film school,” he said. “By the time I got accepted, I was dead certain that this is what I wanted to do.”

Soon after he began his career in directing, Jared encouraged his brother to apply to the certificate program in screenwriting offered online by the Professional Program. Up until then, Brandon had been trying out his career as a writer for a travel magazine in San Francisco.

“I’m a writer, it’s all I do. I’ve always been about expressing ideas and I’ve always been passionate about writing. I was searching for the right outlet for it,” Brandon said. “I started talking to (Jared) about scripts and discovered I really liked it. He let me check out the Professional Program, and I decided to do it. It would have been a shame if I hadn’t taken up the chance.”

By finding their separate niches at UCLA, the Drakes developed their own interests in film and also a closer bond with each other, both as brothers and collaborators.

“We both developed on our own, and we both have different strengths, which is great,” Brandon said. “(Jared) is awesome with the camera. The stuff he does on computer blows my mind—I can’t even understand how some of the stuff works.”

Despite their differing skills and the four-year age difference between them, the two brothers still make time for each other.

“There’s no question about it. We complete each other,” Jared said. “Everything I lack in, (Brandon’s) got covered. He’s everything I’m not, and I’m everything he’s not. There’s no competition at all. Even though he’s older, he knows I can kick his ass.”

Probably the most valuable aspect of the Drake partnership lies in the brothers’ respect for each other and each other’s work.

“We’ve been best friends forever,” Brandon said. “We’ve always done things together. For example, we used to make all these snowboarding videos together. It’s pretty much the same thing here. There are so many people whom you can give your work to and they’ll say, ‘It’s awesome,’ just because it’s what you want to hear. Or, they’ll say, ‘It sucks,’ because it’s what they want to say. But we know we can give each other our work and get the truth. There’s not that many people like that who you’ll run into.”

As they stand at the brink of graduation, the Drakes are ready to grab any opportunities that may come their way.

“As of now, we’re both at the jumping-off point, where we’re pretty confident in our abilities as filmmakers,” Jared said. “We’re ready to dive deeper into what we’ve begun.”

The awards that the Drakes received just last week serve as extra assurance that their futures lie in film.

“Hopefully I’ll get (an agent) out of this,” Jared said. “But basically it justifies my decisions about my future. It’s a good feeling. Now for my future, I have some credibility behind me. I feel no regrets, it just feels good to know that this seems like the right choice for me now.”

As a brother should, Brandon echoes Jared’s sense of confidence.

“We’re both entering now into whatever is out there,” Brandon said. “We’re both trying to make things work, and if we can do it together, then that’s the dream.”