This blog ran a series of articles delving into an internal problem at a state university. We were made aware of this problem late fall of 07 and began putting up articles a few months later in an attempt to pressure the university to take action. It took a while but the university did come around (we are not sure why) and apparently resolved the issue. The article that once appeared here has been taken down because we think it no longer serves the purpose it was intended.
It would appear that the alleged cancer of administrators self promotion and institutional promotion has erupted in a new place. It has metastasized itself into the KCET and CSUF joint venture project. In an effort to promote the university, allegedly at the expense of the academic mission, the university has joined in an agreement to allow the taxpayer’s facilities to be used by KCET TV station. Let me list the alleged cancerous invasions into the normal RTVF department educational process:
• KCET allegedly asked to have carpet put on to the studio floor for their show. You do not put carpet on a floor where a camera dollies. You can put it into a set but not out into the path of a camera. Cameras do not move very well on carpet. Putting a ‘permanent” carpet in place is so stupid it is beyond comprehension. The carpet can be rolled up and then out for the KCET production like every other student production.
• After KCET got their carpet installed it as pointed out that students setting up their shows would damage the carpet. Out of this concern, the dean’s office has ruled allegedly, that students will not be allowed to drag any set pieces across the carpet.
The RTVF Department has always had a small studio and thus their policy is to not allow permanent sets to exist. This is one of the main reasons why Broadcast Journalism students have their own studio, because of the time it took to set up their lighting and set. Broadcast Journalism is all about reading the news on camera and not doing studio set-ups and running camera. They needed their own studio. RTVF Department is all about the complete production process. Nothing is set up for the student. The students must come in and set up every part of their show: lighting, stage setup, character generator, audio, teleprompter, etc. The KCET request to have a lot of their show setup remain and not be touched is a normal request. The problem is that this interferes with the classroom use of this studio. The ideal solution is to require KCET to have no better ranking than any student production and clear their set after each show and reset for their next show. It is the standing policy of the RTVF studio to strike the set after each show.
A lot of student shows require a setting of the acting-taking place in some sort of room. A room requires walls. When building a set, one of the first pieces to be put in place are the “flats” which is a section of wall. The CSUF, RTVF Department studio standard for a flat is four feet wide by eight feet high. A flat is a four foot by eight foot section of wall, typically made of a frame on which is attached by glue or nails a four by eight thin wood panel. The frame is normally not seen, facing away from the cameras, and a hinged brace can be swung out from the back of the flat to prop this section of wall up. The brace keeps the flat from falling forward or backward. After the flat is in place the brace is swung out and a sand bag is put on the brace to ensure the wall will not fall. One husky man or women can lift this flat depending upon the type of wood used in the construction of this flat. The typical movement is to slide the flat across the floor in an upright position trying real hard from having it flop forward or backward. I have seen women of slight stature slide the flats across the floor with no problem. This now requires a husky man or two more slender students to lift a flat. This new requirement now brings up another problem. At the beginning of each TV production class semester, the student projects are individual projects, not group projects. Any TV production is a group effort and the faculty emphasize to each student in the class that they are expected to help out in setting up for the production. The reality is the student, whose turn it is to do their production, comes in early to do the setup Problem is, typically, no other students have shown up to help out. I see two possible negative outcomes. The student will attempt to drag sets across the carpet anyway, violating the dean’s policy and possibly damaging the carpet as no one will be there to police their efforts or they will injure themselves trying to lift the flats single handed.
• The RTVF faculty told the deans office that the students would be using food or drink as part of their shows and the carpet might be soiled. It is heresy not to allow students to drink (non-alcoholic), eat, and smoke. The rule is this. It shall be allowed! The university does not allow smoking, but if it is called for in a script and the crew does not have a problem with it, it can and will be done. If the script calls for food and drink in the set and consumption of same, it will be done! If the script calls for alcoholic beverages, the faculty member will see to it that the fluids be substituted to make it seem that the actors are partaking in the real beverage and they will drink when the script calls for it and directed to do so by the director. The script, the director, the student, the faculty rule not some administrator.
• KCET requested, allegedly, that some of the lighting be pre propositioned for the KCET show thus removing the total lights for student use. Also, the lights for the show might get in the way of a student production. When setting up lights for a show it is normal practice to find the closest existing light fixture that can do the job to speed up the process. Also, if a light fixture is blocking the light path and is not being used in the show its C clamp is loosened and slid along the light grid to get it out of the way. A good lighting person thinks of what is expedient because a number of student productions take place during a single lab period. Not allowing students to be able to use ANY lighting fixture has never been the policy of the RTVF Department and goes against what is best for the student lab process.
One of the major complaints of tearing down the TV studio on the Humanities Building and moving into the basement of the library was the new studio space was simply awful for a whole long punch list of reasons. The principal deficiency was the rat’s nest of existing pipes in the ceiling, which forced the lighting pipe grid to be too low for proper light angles. Now the students had to avoid these dead hanging lights, which were used by KCET.
When done properly, lighting is probably the most time consuming activity done for setting up a show. Depending upon what is called for in the script, the lighting can range from just a couple of lights, typically used for a single action area, to lights for multiple action areas which can dramatically complicate the effort needed to finish the setup in time for the show to start on time. Typically each talent should receiving three points of light. This means that for each actor there must be a key, fill and back light. If you have three talent and they do not move around you would have to set up nine lights, minimum. If they move around the lighting person typically goes for pool light, meaning the actors walk into one pool of three points and then into another pool of three lights. If it is a happy show (sitcom, game show, news), maybe more fill light is added. Lights on the set to highlight a curtain or plant or the outside of a window would add to the set up total. It is one of the basic mistakes of a new student director to not allow enough time for light set up and also to take too much preproduction time setting up lights and not dealing with other equally important issues. The point I am making is this. You do not want to slow up the lighting set up process one bit, it naturally eats up too much time when you have a perfect studio to work with.
Let me state a rule in lighting. It takes a LONG time to set lights. I can see why KCET wants their lights set in place. As for propositioned lighting, that has been a reoccurring issue before KCET came on board. Here is how the department handled it. A student would be quite smart to come in the day before their production; this especially worked his or her production was the next morning and was the first class of the day. The student would typically ask if it was ok to set up lights for the next day production. The department never had a problem with that and it showed intelligence, and preplanning on the part of the student, which was encouraged. The department NEVER guaranteed that someone would not move the lights. It just worked out that the schedule seemed to favor setups the night before the production. Now let us get to KCET. To expect that lights be stationary for their production is laughable. The studio is a student lab and students are expected and ENCOURAGED to come in and set up lights any time they can with no restrictions. Now saying that, for labs with a number of productions taking place during the same lab, the faculty often times ask the students to coordinate their lighting schemes so each production can use lights that are ALREADY in place. The former studio never had enough electrical circuits and lights for all of the student productions that take place in each lab period.
Another practical concern is who would police the KCET lights not being moved?
When setting lights, a ladder is used and moving a heavy ladder all around the studio would in itself cut into a carpet. Should we expect next to hear from the dean’s office that the ladder must be lifted over the carpet?
• Faculty and students were allegedly told by the administration that they cannot put KCET set pieces into the hallway. The administration did not plan for storage. Who needs stinking storage? Ask the staff in the College of the Arts, they did not plan for storage very well in their new building and is a current complaint by those staff members. TV studios, audio studios and drama theaters NEED storage. The exiting RTVF studio is not large enough for most productions and proper operation of this studio cannot allow any standing set pieces to remain in place.
I see a number of solutions to this problem in order of what works best for the mission: KCET gets the same studio status as any student production.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Note: This blog ran a series of articles delving into an internal problem at a state university. We were made aware of this problem late fall of 07 and began putting up articles a few months later in an attempt to pressure the university to take action. It took a while but the university did come around (we are not sure why) and apparently resolved the issue. This article now has been revised (9-4-08) to reflect this improvement. We still think the issues stated in this post are relavent.
Opinion Piece
For about two years I have been hearing of how the educational system at the CSUF, College of Communications, more precisely the television and film program, is allegedly being poorly administered at the dean’s level and higher. I have been waiting well too long for a solution to this alleged near incompetence and thus have called it quits for glossing over this problem to help preserve the “CSUF image”, what ever that is.
Let’s back up a few decades from now. CSUF has had a very long history of picking administrators over media programs that need proper credentials for understanding film, television, audio and related studies but not always did. On the support side, the Media Center lasted for decades but was done away with allegedly because the staff appeared to be a problem. The department was phased out to become smart classrooms program. No one could handle the problems within the Media Center so it was dissolved. The alleged hidden truth was that administration cronies filled the positions of directing the department ever since the first legitimate search for a director a Dr. Denno retired. Dr. Denno had legitimate credentials and designed the Media Center when it was first built and he was a pretty good administrator.
On the academic side, the School of the Arts allegedly tried for years to pretend they had a film and TV program when all they had was live stage. There was an alleged internal bias for live stage and anything else was looked down upon. Film was finally dropped and TV has been on life support for decades. They currently possess the best space for a TV studio but politics being what they are on that campus, it fails miserably to come up to its potential. In this case it was an administrator and faculty that held the same opinion, not too bad except you would be a fool to come to CSUF to learn acting for TV. And the university president did not seem to know any better. He was happy so long as he could call up his live stage actors for PR gigs.
Another academic department, The Department of Communications had an emphasis called TV and Film, which was created and run by Dr. Mastroianni. Dr. George, as he was called, ran a pretty good program until his passing. Dr. Maxwell and Dr. Alexander hired Dr. George from a legitimate search of candidate’s way back in the 60’s.
If you have not picked up on my point so far let me be blunt. CSUF has not done too badly conducting legitimate hires into media management positions. It is when cronies are swung into being in charge that it usually goes bad.
Now back to the present. We have a Department of Radio-TV-Film, which broke away from the Department of Communications so it could get out from under the POB accreditation scheme. Students need to learn the equipment more than they needed to take liberal arts classes, so ran the logic for this break. Currently Dr. Fink is the department chairman. He was hired from a legitimate search. He has a good reputation in the classroom and as an administrator, except he should have been tougher against the villains in this story. His power and the power of the faculty in that department has been stripped away by the dean’s office and that is where the problem lies. Once again, the we find individuals who fail to understand the areas of radio, TV, film, audio, lighting but insert themselves into the decision making process with alleged ruinous results.
The doctorate degree is a most unfortunate invention when possessed by anyone who thinks his degree transcends out beyond his or her area of expertise. At CSUF it is not where learning is preeminent it is where a bunch of numskulls think they have the credentials to step beyond their credential capabilities. And you want to know something? Right now there is a Charlie Foxtrot upon the RTVF faculty going on and being a taxpayer and a sincere concern for students and faculty, I will campaign for a management change until there is a resolution to this problem.
This blog ran a series of articles delving into an internal problem at a state university. We were made aware of this problem late fall of 07 and began putting up articles a few months later in an attempt to pressure the university to take action. It took a while but the university did come around (we are not sure why) and apparently resolved the issue. The article that once appeared here has been taken down because we think it no longer serves the purpose it was intended.
An argument prevails that Radio TV and Film Departments brings down a “real” college reputation by being perceived as more suited for a junior college or trade school. Let us take a look at some of the issues and try to determine any possible resolution to this reoccurring debate.
First lets take a look at who is making the claim that RTVF is at the level of trade school to see if the people that talk down RTVF are doing so for personal gain or out of a rational concern to keep college level classes free from providing lower ranking trades school courses.
Keeper of the flame types do walk the campus halls looking to purify the college experience. These types range from blatant self serving PHD’s looking to pump up the campus perception and thus their own to the ouside world., Some individuals thinks a college should emulate the Catholic priesthood and put to the flame any disbeliever who is perceived tarnishing the image. Keeper of the flame individuals are all fluff and puff and RTVF is anything but that (FOX TV is the exception). The priest types love the academic regalia, the ivy on the walls, gargoyle on the roofs. They do not understand and are aghast at seeing “On The Air” warning lights flashing over doors or red rotating lights on hallway ceilings throwing out apparent death rays of red sweeping beams of warning light in front of stage entrances. They don’t relate to technology very well and find it difficult to see how TV cameras, video tape recorders, character generators, teleprompters properly fits in with white boards, text books and term papers.
Department heads and faculty from other departments might look upon RTVF departments as a treat and this attitude might lead to putting RTVF programs down when votes are cast for disbursement of money. RTVF costs a lot of denar thus being perceived as taking more money out of the university family funds. RTVF also, naturally, gets more publicity, naturally more attractive to young people, easily promoted in all the advertisement methods and thus becomes attractive, can be a vehicle for positive PR for the administration. Other department heads might view the RTVF department as requiring more institutional support at the expense of all the other departments.
Second point, let us examine at a top down, god like view, of this discipline and pick out factors that support, on one hand trade school and on the other college level work as being better suited for RTVF.
When done well RTVF is an art form not unlike theater arts. Just look at the Emmy and Academy Award programs for proof of this point.
In TV and Video there is the concept of above and below the line. One could make the point that above the line is college level because this is where the decisions are made for show creation. Creativity has often times been accepted in colleges as important and sought after. Below the line might be at the trade school level courses because they are a more mechanical almost repetitious duty devoid of the creativity element (actually not true).
Electrical.
Lighting.
Camera.
Audio.
The problem with this division, above and below the line, is that some of what below the line people do comes close to being an art form. It is not uncommon to hear of a camera person, a lighting designer, an audio designer, getting recognition for achieving an artist level ability. An artist who creates with paint, chalk, pen, pencil etc, does not conceptualize a project and then tells another person how to put the art drawing together on a canvas. The artist conceptualizes the piece and then carries out the task to a finish. It is true that some artists, especially very famous ones do conceptualize and to some extent turn over a painting for the finish work but that is not the norm and most artists do all or most of the work themselves. The RTVF programs, not always, but usually necessitate group effort art and the totality of that art comes from BOTH above the line and below the line efforts.
When a production works really well is when the team members come up with solutions that are unique to the production. In other words the crew pulls out of their knowledge pool what they think is the best solution for that particular script and what the director and producer want for a finished product. The lighting designer looks over the script and understands the mood of the show and thus how the lighting should be done to best propel that mood to the screen. The camera person during run through or blocking might suggest an arc, dolly or rack focus if the director is stuck with a blocking problem. The camera person’s framing, when done well is arty. The audio person might suggest a reverb on a microphone in one shot to enhance the suggestion that the shot takes place in a hard surfaced room such as a bathroom or prison cell. Talent is having a hard time reading the teleprompter script on a camera too far away. The teleprompter operator might increase font size as a solution. The video engineer picks up high white value from jewelry worn by talent and decided to send these into the camera clipping and not iris down and make the shot look poor. The point here is even though many of the crew positions are below the line supporting what the director and producer is doing, they work together as a team to make the whole, the production what it is. The director may take the credit for a good show but one must remember it was a collaborative effort. How does one dice up collaborative effort in a college course? How can you say that lighting, audio, camera, TD, teleprompter, CG is diminished or less in importance when they are all recipe ingredients for making a show.
Another reason that above and below the line utterly fails to offer any convenient demarcation between what is trade school and college work is that some of the above the line positions are filled from below the line people who moved up. The point being is that to attain above the line status one some times must start below the line. A very famous film director started out being a scene designer. Writers can become directors. Lighting people move to camera. Camera operators can become directors. Directors can become producers and visa versa. Electric can move to lighting. Carpenter can move to set design. Another point is that to get a position above the line one must work their way up from a lower position unless mom or dad have connections. There are exceptions to this pattern. Some individuals do take an immediate position into being a director or producer but this is construed by many as unfair and is often times comes about by cronyism.
The education process is one of learning and learning more gets you more and you have more to offer society if you have learned more and raised to a position that can offer more. It is a natural progression then to start with teaching below the line tasks and through this process of showing and teaching all the various tasks then introduce the above the line education. This is typically what most college departments do. They start out teaching the grunt work of audio, lighting, camera, TD, CG, teleprompter, floor manager, and then progress to scripting, blocking, directing, producing. This is a practical method for many reasons which why it is the model for instruction at most colleges. But one should realize that in this process of showing all the pieces of doing a production, we offer the student an insight to most of the jobs and some times a student discovers that he or she likes a particular job which is a wonderful celebratory event. From a god’s perspective it would be a shame if any student goes through life not fining the best occupation match.
An argument is often made by faculty that above the line training should include below the line training so a director or producer will better understand what is and is not possible. In other words what the crew is capable of performing or not is better detected. I do think that is a bit insulting that a director and producer can detect the level of competence of each crew position because it implies a very high level of understanding and competence in many areas. I am sure there are individuals that do have this level of knowledge but is this that important? I think this is a weak argument compared to the above points because in the motion picture and TV industry anything is possible now with digital technology.
A good home computer, high definition camera and added small pieces of equipment puts high quality video projects within easy reach of most everyone. This fact alone makes a case that very fewer people are necessary to put together a good creative product. But fewer people means that those same individuals must understand more of the total process, they work above and below the line, jumping back and forth when needed. The melding of tasks requires all tasks to be taught. A college can not, before and now, cherry pick what they courses they will offer. All the basics classes must be offered, if a college wants to stay relevant with the new personal high quality production capability we now enjoy.