COMMENTARY
New UH film school should have global focus
By Chris Lee
Last October, I had just been hired by the university to build a film school for the campus at Manoa.
Or so I thought.
Because, for all the headlines, I quickly learned that no such program had been approved by the regents, the faculty or the students.
That was a fact which somehow eluded me at the job interview.
But it's just as well.
Because if you want to go to a traditional film school, there are already standards of excellence at USC and UCLA and NYU against which we cannot compete on their terms.
Those schools define the Hollywood-centric model. What we have to do is create something unique to Hawai'i that's marketable on a global scale.
Hollywood makes around 300 movies a year, while India alone makes some 700.
Hollywood set a record in 2002 with about $12 billion at the box office.
In that same year, video games, which are dominated by Tokyo, made $25 billion.
In a global economy driven by a rising tide of affluence and the availability of entertainment time and distribution systems, there is an ever growing need for programming, intellectual property and content.
Hawai'i's students have a logical and rightful place in the creation of this content. And so does Hawai'i's economy.
The way I see it, the campus of the University of Hawai'i is not just here at Manoa.
I have been to Maui Community College, and to Hilo, and Windward, and Kapi'olani Community College and Leeward and Honolulu Community College.
And I've visited our public schools, such as Wai'anae, because these are the students who matter most to us, and these are the students who are doing the most exciting work in the field of media creation.
What I've found is a wealth of extremely bright students brimming with creative instincts, far-sighted faculty working hard to prepare them for the information/entertainment economy that we live in, and a surprising amount of first-class infrastructure for teaching.
But I also found a lack of recognition of this promise and coordination of resources.
Here at Manoa, I quickly learned that the most popular major is computer science, with some 888 students and growing. Yet it is only a department, not yet recognized as a school.
Many of those students want and deserve a fully-fledged media-content curriculum.
Kapi'olani Community College is developing a great program in content creation.
Honolulu Community College is doing an outstanding job of certifying students in the use of technology from Cisco, Intel and Microsoft.
They've also got the best auto-repair shop in the state. Because today, you can't even fix a car unless you know how to diagnose its problem with a computer.
Leeward has a waiting list for students for its television-production program, and a 100 percent employment placement record.
But its equipment is 12 years old and does not reflect how television news is gathered today.
Leeward also is hoping to offer a new digital curriculum in the fall and has 240 students signed up, even though the program has yet to be approved.
The University of Hawai'i-Hilo has given the world an extraordinary gift in taking the lead in preserving the Hawaiian language and thereby our culture.
By doing so, it has created a working model for indigenous societies around the world.
Some of you may know that the new operating system on Apple computers, Mac OS X, can automatically translate text into the Hawaiian language.
How many of us know that the software and fonts for that system were created at the Hilo campus?
These are just a few of the success stories I have found throughout the UH system.
Now, I want to argue on behalf of a new kind of program for the University of Hawai'i. It will be one that speaks to the strengths and abilities of our students and has the opportunity to answer the most pressing issue facing our state today.
The question is: How do we create well-paying, creative jobs that reflect the demands of the global marketplace?
We do that by harnessing our intellectual capital.
We do that by addressing the natural strengths of our students.
We do that by embracing the vision of a lot of other people who have dedicated themselves to preparing our students for jobs that are both fulfilling, desirable and that answer the needs of the global economy.
And we do that by bringing those jobs to Hawai'i.
I have a proposal from a leading video-game company to move one of its facilities from Vancouver to Hawai'i to work in conjunction with this program and employ our students.
Already I have received résumés from some of the leading researchers in game development to bring their expertise to the University of Hawai'i.
Already I have enjoyed tremendous support from the governor's office and individual legislators as well as the business community for this program.
The time has helped me to clarify a proposal for a systemwide endeavor called the Academy for Creative Media, or ACM.
It's an academy that includes and will complement traditional film and television but looks beyond the present to where technology is driving entertainment through computers and the Internet.
It's a systemwide academy that is involved with Hollywood but which navigates the entire Pacific Rim and recognizes the coming dominance of global popular culture.
And it's a systemwide academy that embraces the unique opportunities of this special place we call home by providing a platform for indigenous filmmakers to tell their stories to the broadest possible audience.
I'm sure all of you have watched your keiki in wonder as they virtually live on the computer.
Their comfort and ease with technology, their ability to create new and universal languages through e-mail and text messaging, and the empowerment that visualization through technology has brought to a creative process that was locked inside by dependence on verbal and written skills all point to the need, desire and value of this program.
In a world economy driven by knowledge-based industries, technology finally has liberated the creative skill sets of our most precious natural resource, our students.
Former Hollywood executive Chris Lee recently joined the University of Hawai'i to help found a film school and related endeavors.
