Explore Santa Clara University's Cutting-Edge Digital Filmmaking Program (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi there and welcome to Santa Clara University. My name is Mike Whalen and I'm the chair of the Communication Department in the Digital Filmmaking Program. It would have been great to meet you in person, but I think due to circumstances, staying safe and healthy right now is more important. So, I decided to create a little virtual tour of our film and television facilities so that you get an idea of what we do here at Santa Clara. Let's go. This is our 2200 square foot digital filmmaking studio and it's in here where students make films. They build sets and I've seen them build everything. Convenience stores, cafes, bars, jails, bedrooms, you name it, they've tried to build it in here. They can also use the green screen if they want to shoot in the virtual world. In addition to being a filmmaking space, it's also where we hold all of our production lectures. So, students can actually get hands-on, workshop-type lectures during normal class periods. This is our audio control room where students use Pro Tools to record podcasts, live music, and build the sound design for their films. As you can see, we have a pretty amazing facility. Now, what about our gear? We are a Canon house, so all of our cameras are Canon digital filmmaking cameras. Each one has 4K capability and we add new cameras, lights, and sound equipment every year. Another point to emphasize is that we are a 100% undergraduate program. We don't have graduate students, so everything here is for you. We don't reserve the best gear for our grad students because we don't have any. Finally, all students enrolled in a filmmaking course have 24-7 access to the facility and the gear. The last stop on our tour is one of our edit bays. We have 8 of these individual edit bays, in addition to a Mac lab with 11 computers on them. We cut on Avid back here at Santa Clara, and a lot of people ask, why don't you cut on Final Cut or Premiere Pro? Well, it's because about 85% of all television shows and films in Hollywood are cut on Avid, and students coming out of Santa Clara with Avid knowledge actually get jobs in the industry rather easily. You can just ask a couple of our recent grads, Vanessa Delgado, who is an editor on Grey's Anatomy, and Hilary Bolger, who is an editor on the CW series Batwoman. Now, students can still learn Adobe's Premiere Pro and After Effects if you really want to, but our main curriculum, we cut on Avid. Thanks for coming on the tour with us today. We're a small program, but we're a really good program. I'd say a one-of-a-kind program in the country. How do I know that? Well, our alumni network, working in the film and television industry and the local corporate communication, video production industry, is over 1,000 strong, and they are constantly in contact with our students. They're giving them internships. They're helping them find work. They've even developed such a strong network that 4, 5, 6 years, even 10 years after graduation, they're still networking with each other to help each other move on to their next job. In addition to that, they help us run a shadowing program every spring break, where we take 40 to 50 students, go down to L.A., and introduce them to Emmy and Oscar-winning writers, producers, directors, and even some of the top executives at some of the top studios and networks in Hollywood. Pretty much no other program in the nation does something like that, and it's all free of charge as long as you're a student at Santa Clara. Well, I hope I see you here in the fall. I hope you had a great time on the tour, and go Broncos.