Teri Schwartz, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (UCLA TFT), and multiple Academy Award-winner Francis Ford Coppola announced today their collaboration on a month-long student workshop of a LIVE CINEMA production. Distant Vision was broadcast live from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s Freud Playhouse on Friday, July 22, 2016 to a limited audience. Coppola returned to his alma mater, where he received an M.F.A. in Theater Arts in 1967, to produce and direct the experimental workshop.
Distant Vision (a 19th century term for television) is the story of three generations of an Italian-American family whose history spans the development of television. The UCLA TFT workshop culminated with a live broadcast of an excerpted script. The workshop served as a “proof of concept” of a groundbreaking experiment for Coppola’s concept of LIVE CINEMA. More than 75 UCLA TFT students and faculty participated in the project and served as active crew members in all areas of production, including operating over 40 cameras, acting, sound, set design and construction, costume, props, editing, stage management and producing. UCLA TFT co-sponsored the workshop with American Zoetrope, Coppola’s production company. Coppola was the writer and director.
The concept of LIVE CINEMA is that by utilizing feeds from a multitude of cameras, instant replay servers, and other sources, all of which the director can switch live with the most technologically advanced broadcast equipment, a new kind of movie-making is possible — performed live and viewed by an audience in real time. The look and feel is more cinematic in nature than what is typically employed for live dramatic and musical broadcasts, and has the in-the-moment energy of a live event. LIVE CINEMA depends on a definitive script, extensive planning, rehearsal, and coordination of a variety of sources enabling the real time selection of views, music and effects to be combined into the desired expression of ideas and moods. Although the audience experiences the production in real-time, it has many choices of where and what type of viewing medium is used. LIVE CINEMA can simultaneously be performed in multiple cinema theaters, configured auditoriums, on network television, cable television or Internet streaming to home theaters or personal devices. Mr. Coppola explained: “I felt the need to experiment in order to learn the actual methodology of live cinema, which is a hybrid of theater, film and television. The SHOT is the basic element, as in film; the live PERFORMANCE is from theater; and the advanced television TECHNOLOGY to enable it is borrowed from TV sports. It is very exciting to work in.”
“It is our greatest honor to warmly welcome our most treasured alumnus Francis Ford Coppola back to his alma mater,” states Schwartz. “We are thrilled to have UCLA TFT serve as the workshop home for Distant Vision, Francis’ groundbreaking new creative project. Francis has amazed and enthralled all of us — students, faculty and staff — with his fearless and bold mastery of visual storytelling at its deepest and most transformational state. We thank Francis for this magnificent opportunity for our students to work alongside him as he takes cinema into a very exciting and inspiring future.”
This partnership underscores the vision of UCLA TFT, which re-imagines entertainment and performing arts education as an interdisciplinary enterprise grounded in humanistic storytelling, social impact, global diversity, and technology and innovation. Key to this vision is providing students with opportunities to develop and create stories that enlighten, engage and inspire change for a better world. UCLA TFT continually builds upon its innovative curricula designed to prepare the next generation of creative leaders with the knowledge and skill sets demanded by the rapidly changing entertainment and performing arts industries. The interconnectivity between film, theater, digital media, animation and television has an enormous impact on the state of the industry and the nature of storytelling itself.