Columbia College Chicago: Quietly Preparing the Industry's Best

According to Charles Celander, operations manager of the Film and Video department at Columbia College Chicago, the school is the film and television industry's "best-kept secret." With a department that boasts nearly 2,000 students, 250 sections of classes each semester, and more than 110 seats of various Avid products, it's easy to see what he means.

The school instructs students on all aspects of pre-production, production, and postproduction, offering specific concentrations in a wide variety of areas, including directing, editing, cinematography, screenwriting, and animation. Postproduction manager, Dennis Keeling, likes to think of the school as a "practical arts" college. "We train our students to go out and be competitive in the industry. We want them to be successful, so we try to model what the industry is doing. Avid is certainly a leader in the industry, so it fits in really well with our goals," he explains.

The editing department, which was formed in the early 70s, transitioned to digital nonlinear editing in 1992. "We were one of the first facilities in Chicago with the Media Composer 1000," says Keeling. Since then, the department's Avid systems have expanded significantly. Today, the school's setup includes Avid Xpress DV, Avid Xpress, Avid Xpress Pro, Avid Media Composer, Avid Symphony, and Avid Media Composer Adrenaline editing systems, plus Avid Unity MediaNetwork and Avid Unity LANshare EX shared-storage systems. "The only thing we don't seem to have is Avid DS Nitris. And since the industry is clearly moving toward HD production, it won't be long before we're going to need HD capabilities here too," says Keeling, who now has even more HD options, including the Media Composer Adrenaline and Avid Xpress Pro HD solutions.

"We train our students to go out and be competitive in the industry. We want them to be successful, so we try to model what the industry is doing."

- Dennis Keeling, Postproduction Manager, Film and Video Department, Columbia College Chicago

The Right Connections

Beyond the basic editing classes, the Film and Video department offers a variety of courses in specialty areas. For example, Celander designed a course titled Assistant Editing, which teaches students how to set up an editing room and conform workprints to cut lists generated by Avid systems. Keeling teaches a course on the Avid Film Composer system, which enables students to cut films digitally at 24fps, deal with KeyKode, generate cut lists, and conform films. The department also offers a class titled Finishing Strategies, which teaches students how to do onlines and create a high-quality video master using the Avid Symphony system.

As an instructor, Keeling enjoys teaching on Avid systems. "The great advantage of digital editing is the ability to explore the possibilities in the material much more thoroughly. In the same amount of time it takes to do one edit on film, a student can go through 10 or 12 permutations of the edit to come up with the best one," he explains. This allows students to explore creative options more easily and let their imaginations go.

In addition to the editing and shared-storage systems, the department's 20,000 square-foot postproduction facility includes a 250-seat theater and a large audio studio, which contains 30 Digidesign Pro Tools systems, including four Pro Tools|HD systems.

Foley, ADR recording, and mix theatres are also available in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound. An Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage system with 5.6 terabytes of storage supports this large audio setup, while a PortServer Pro system enables the Pro Tools workstations to share data with a collection of Media Composer and Avid Symphony systems for added flexibility.

The department uses three more Avid Unity LANshare EX systems in two different configurations: one serves 17 Avid Xpress systems; the other two are cascaded together in a 40-seat Avid Xpress Pro setup, all equipped with the Avid Mojo hardware. The centralized machine room, where all the video decks are located, can be patched out to 18 individual edit rooms as well as to several media labs. At any given time, more than 100 students can be working on a project. "They can all edit at DV25 resolution via 100Base-T Internet connections. It's pretty remarkable that we can do that," says Keeling.

" Avid actually brought me to Columbia College . I didn't want to go to a school that was all about sitting around and talking about film. I wanted to do it."

- José Marra, alumnus, Film and Video Department, Columbia College Chicago

Sharing Educational Benefits

The department first upgraded to the Avid Unity shared-storage system in 2003 because it was unhappy with the support provided for the shared-storage product it was using at the time. "The LANshare EX had just come out and because of its good price and performance it was a great fit for us," says Keeling. "We'd looked around, but there was nothing else around that could compare. The installation was easy and fast, and the learning curve was very low . From the students' point of view it's super easy. We give them a user name and password and they log in. It shows them what storage they have access to, and they mount that storage and start editing ."

The shared-storage setup also enhances the school's ability to serve a large number of students. "By capturing material once, we can make hours of rushes available to many students and have each of them cut their own version of it. This way, we can have multiple students working with one body of material. It levels the playing field in terms of assessments as well. It works really well with large classes that might have several sections and use a standardized syllabus," says Keeling.

Sharing media enriches the classroom experience as well, enabling students to give and receive constructive criticism with increased frequency and ease . Says Keeling, "In one of our labs we have 14 [Avid Xpress Pro] systems connected to a video switcher. We can just output from whichever station, throw it up on the video projector, and watch a student's cut right there in class. Everybody can see it and give feedback while we're working during class time. That's enabled by having the Avid Unity LANshare EX shared-storage setup and using Avid Mojo output from [Avid] Xpress Pro to have live playback projected ."

"The Avid Unity shared-storage systems allow us to be much more efficient in how we use the storage, as well," adds Keeling. "We not only have been able to raise the number of hours of storage available for each student, but we've also been able to lower it. The smallest FireWire drive you can get these days is about 40 GB. If a student only needs a gig or two, we can allot just that amount of space . It's very scalable to the requirements of the project."

" In one of our labs we have 14 [Avid Xpress Pro] systems connected to a video switcher. We can just output from whichever station, throw it up on the video projector, and watch a student's cut right there in class."

- Dennis Keeling, Postproduction Manager, Film and Video Department, Columbia College Chicago

True Measure of Success

The enrollment of the college as a whole, with nearly 10,000 students, has been increasing approximately 3 to 4 percent each year since the early 90s. "As our enrollment expands we buy more systems and create more courses," says Keeling. "We try to stay pretty current. When new versions of editing technology come out, we tend to adopt them within six months."

Today, students from around the world are taking advantage of the department's impressive curriculum and technology. Argentinean student José Marra came to Columbia College Chicago largely because of its top-of-the-line equipment. " Avid actually brought me to Columbia College ," he says. "I didn't want to go to a school that was all about sitting around and talking about film. I wanted to do it."

Marra did more than work on classroom projects. While in college, he landed an internship on the film Ali , working with editor William Goldenberg when the crew came to Chicago for production in 2001. Marra continued to work with Goldenberg after graduation and moved to Los Angeles to work as an editorial production assistant (PA) on Seabiscuit and as an apprentice editor on National Treasure .

Because of his talent and knowledge of Avid's technology, Marra quickly advanced to a more responsible

position as a still image artist for the image sequences of Seabiscuit . "The ease with which the Avid allowed me to import and export image files actually helped my career in a big way," explains Marra. "Because it was so easy, all of a sudden I - a PA - was doing final visual effects on the movie! Because I could talk the Avid talk, I was taken seriously and although I was still getting coffee, I was considered more than a PA and given more responsibility."

Well on his way to success, Marra is adding his name to a list of accomplished former students, including Academy Award winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ( Saving Private Ryan , Schindler's List ) and film editor Pete Teschner ( Charlie's Angels , Legally Blonde II ), who launched their careers from this noteworthy school in Chicago. Marra's experience also underscores the school's philosophy that film and video professionals need to be conversant with editing terms and technology to succeed, regardless of their discipline. "Whether they're going to be independent filmmakers or work in the industry in some other capacity, our students need to know Avid when they leave here," says Keeling. "We're very heavily invested in Avid because the industry is."

*CREDIT: Photo: Charles Celander