Section 1A, Winter Quarter, 2010
I’ve been teaching at UCLA for a full year now. It’s a great gig if you can get it. I primarily teach Screenwriting Fundamentals for non-majors to undergraduates. I’ve taught one quarter, in the summer, online. Which was actually a lot of work (it was billed as being easier), but actually more satisfying for me than the classroom. I took online classes with UCLA before coming west to the M.F.A. program and I can attest from personal experience in both the classroom and with online, you just have to pay more attention online – isn’t that strange? It’s true. You’re kind of one on one (which is where all that work comes in for the Prof.) (Yes, my students call me Professor Pedrolie no matter how much I tell them to call me Doc. It’s a little weird.)
I came west to get my M.F.A. in large part to teach. With the M.F.A., I will be street legal to instruct at the collegiate level – which is what I would like most of all for my teaching career; though I once interviewed for a post at the Arts High School in Chicago, and if there was such a arts centric high school – that might be fun, too. Ideally, I would love to teach at UCLA in the Grad Screenwriting program one day or in a similar Film School.
Usually my students are South Campus kids – the life sciences – with a smattering of curious sociology students and other assorted majors, or film minors. Some have just a rudimentary grasp of English, which is just part of life at UCLA, and struggle greatly to write in English. We have many ESL international students directly from the Pacific Rim. I usually think those students are pretty brave for taking a creative class. They’re all looking for an easy A (It’s a pretty easy class.) Usually you get one or two that are really interested in screenwriting. I had one kid today, come up to me before class started. He and a friend are writing a screenplay together, and they have about thirteen pages so far. He wanted me to look at, which I said I would. It probably helped a little he was wearing a Cardinals hat.
I teach for about an hour once a week. I wish I had them for longer. Maybe one more hour. It’s tough to get everything in, in ten weeks. They have no concept of what goes into writing a script or how to do it (I’ve been there before. Yes, I’m talking to you John Burkey!). They’re required to write ten pages of their script. My job is to get them through that with at least the proper format. It can be a bit like herding cats, but fun. Everyone loves movies, so it’s not like learning Calculus.
Today, I showed a couple of clips, as I will do sometimes to illustrate a point. I’m flying sans syllabus this quarter, just using the main, big lecture syllabus and not really planning out lessons. Basically, I’m just going with it and what the class needs, instead of forcing them in any direction. For right now the jury is still out on whether that was a good approach. I’ll keep you posted.
The clips, though? We were looking at the opening of movies. So, I showed Matrix, which they’ve usually seen. Then I showed them Gone, Baby, Gone – which I’ve grown to love more and more. It has a fantastic first ten minutes – really brilliant, minor key opening. Then I showed Jaws. I asked everyone before hand if they had seen it. Only two of the twenty-eight had. I’m serious. I was flabbergasted and immediately realized that, yes, I’m old. At least to them.
Jaws, people!! It’s one of the most iconic motion pictures of all time! Sometimes I just don’t want to know these things. Just let me live in this fantasy world. Don’t show me the reality like that!
Maybe we’ll get some video (no promises) of me teaching and post it. It’s quite a hoot.