SCA students petition to pause production classes


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The production track includes hands-on, workshop-style classes that center upon collaboration and technique using tools the School of Cinematic Arts offers to prepare students to work on sets in the film industry. Some students say production skills cannot be effectively taught online. (Daily Trojan file photo)

Students in the School of Cinematic Arts production program have launched a petition to pause the school’s production courses should the University decide to continue remote instruction through Fall 2020.

The petition, which has amassed more than 700 signatures to date, asks SCA Dean Elizabeth Daley to place the track on hold for the duration of next semester in the event that classes remain online. It argued that access to in-person resources is a cornerstone of the University’s production courses, and the classes cannot be replicated remotely.

According to Daley, SCA will not consider suspending any of its degree programs and plans to modify courses for an online format if in-person classes do not resume as scheduled in August.

The interruption to students’ academic progress caused by temporarily suspending the production program would pose an insurmountable difficulty for students whose circumstances prohibit them from extending the timeline of their degrees, Daley said.

“Nothing is a perfect solution, but we’re looking at all the scenarios that we can, and we are definitely not going to close down,” Daley said. “When something goes wrong on a movie set, you don’t close it down — you move ahead.”

Gerardo Garcia, a junior majoring in cinematic arts, film and television production who helped organize the petition, said the production classes at SCA emphasize hands-on and collaborative philosophies that don’t come through in a virtual format.

“Currently, our production classes have shifted to online, and it’s not the same effect — we’re not learning the same tools that we would have learned,” Garcia said. “It’s all very conceptual, and although the conceptual aspect is important, USC — and SCA specifically — markets itself on its physical production education.”

Garcia cited the “Advanced Production Workshop” class production students take in the fall of their senior year as part of the production curriculum lost in the online format. The class culminates with a $10,000-budget movie, an experience he said would be eliminated if the course is held online next semester.

“If physical production courses don’t fit on an online medium, why force it?” Garcia said. “It sort of feels like SCA’s best interests are in their financials, and they’re not taking the time to consider our educational consequences if we continued online.”

Ashlyn Bradshaw, a sophomore majoring in cinematic arts, film and television production, said she does not plan to sign the petition. She said the degree plan for the production major would make it difficult to ensure a timely graduation for current students if courses were suspended for a semester.

“It’s just tricky because the production course for fall and spring admits is so compacted,” Bradshaw said. “Unless they figured out a way where maybe our major didn’t need as many requirements or they took a class away, I don’t really see how pausing it would work in terms of getting us all out in four years.”

Garcia said administrators should take into consideration elements of the curriculum that can’t be conducted remotely. He said the filming equipment SCA provides and the opportunity to shoot films with other students in the production cohort are central to instruction and part of what attracts students to the program.

“I think if they really respected their education, they would pause the production track and just wait until we go back to doing classes in person,” Garcia said. “That is a big portion of what physical production is: learning the tools and collaborating.”

Daley said that while pausing the production track is not a possibility, SCA administrators and faculty have begun to look at alternative course plans should in-person classes not resume in August.

“In the fall, we’ve looked at a bunch of different scenarios,” Daley said. “Maybe we’ll get to come back just like we always do, but if that doesn’t happen, then how could we work in smaller groups, how could we shift the curriculum a little bit perhaps so that maybe you take certain courses in the fall that work a little better online and some of the other courses get delayed until either later in the fall or spring?”