Columbia College Film School's New Direction

By Staff in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 5, 2010 5:20PM

The cliché of pretentious creative self indulgent artists is slowly fading away from Columbia College Chicago’s film program. Last fall, the film and video department changed its curriculum centering on group collaboration with an emphasis on storytelling over technical mastery. The college’s program has a long standing reputation of hard work focusing on the technical nuts and bolts of production. The goal is to maintain that while underscoring creative collaboration. “We can teach skills, but people forget it’s how a filmmaker works with others that gets a movie made,” said Bruce Sheridan, film and video department chairman, in an interview with the Tribune.

Columbia has the largest film enrollment in the country - currently 2,038 undergraduates. However, it’s coastal colleges that receive the prestigious notoriety. The school recently stepped up it’s competitive advantage by building a state of the art Media Production Center. The $21 million facility that opened in Jan. 2010 is the first new building constructed in Columbia’s 120 year history.

“(The Media Production Center) makes it possible to integrate instruction the way we couldn’t before,” said Columbia President Warrick L. Carter in an interview with the Columbia Chronicle. “It will positively impact our students and provide them with a curriculum that’s better related to the industry.”

Recently Columbia graduate Mauro Fiore took home an Oscar. Fiore graduated in 1987 and won the cinematography Academy Award for Avatar last month. "When I was at Columbia, we had one floor of a building in the South Loop. We were a combination of art and trade, and it wasn't that well organized. I don't think we though to compare ourselves with other film schools becasue we were more of a trade school, and we were respected in that fashion, as a a practical-minded, craft-oriented environment. But that was the 1980s and Bruce's changes are looking impressive," he told the Tribune.

Post by: Sean Stillmaker