Teri Schwartz looks to future at UCLA film school

With an annual $24-million budget, UCLA's has long been considered one of the nation's premier film schools, with a list of alumni that includes such stalwarts as Francis Ford Coppola, Alexander Payne and "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski. But of late it's been lapped in a race for resources and the latest high-tech gadgetry by its crosstown rival, USC's School of Cinematic Arts, which in 2006 received a $175-million gift from alum George Lucas and his foundation to expand the film school with a new 137,000-square-foot facility. Studios like Warner Bros. and the Walt Disney Co. chipped in an additional $50 million to USC. While students at UCLA often labor on secondhand equipment from studios and networks, USC's students get to try out the latest cutting-edge technology in an immersive media lab and decide which of the 200 or so high-tech cameras they wish to sample.

Schwartz, who ran Loyola Marymount University's film program for six years, does plan to upgrade UCLA's physical plant. Schwartz intends "to remodel these facilities and bring them not only into contemporary production work-flow practices but to position ourselves for the future, where it's going. It should be cutting edge. It should be a great place you want to be 24/7," says Schwartz, who also plans a series of mediated discussions with faculty members, students and interested members of the community on how best to reimagine the curriculum.

Schwartz has long ties to UCLA, having not only grown up five minutes away but also having graduated from it in 1971.

She later attended film school at the University of London before starting as a gofer for $50 a week on a fly-by-night indie production. When the line producer -- who was also the property master and the craft service person -- bailed, Schwartz stepped in.

"I didn't know what [being a line producer] was, but I was going to do it," recalls Schwartz, who figured that "the makeup and hair guy will know everything I need to know. I locked him in the bathroom with me and I said, 'Everyone give me an hour.' " She later emerged, "grabbed a slate, and didn't stop working for the next 30 years."

She honed both her production and creative skills working in the Roger Corman low-budget empire on such films as "Big Bad Mama" with Angie Dickinson and Ron Howard's directorial debut, "Eat My Dust."

"I really learned how to build a movie from the ground up, both on the creative side and the production side," says Schwartz. "I wasn't just a deal maker, but I could actually make a film."

Even today, Schwartz believes ardently in the classic basics of film education -- namely, the ability to tell a coherent and moving story. "The way we're experiencing media now is very different from when film schools first started in the 1960s. We won't betray our classical roots, though. When you look at the great painters -- Picasso and Braque were classically trained. They invented Cubism, but they could still classically paint," she says. "Remember, the technology changes every other Tuesday. The education has to be anchored by a timeless, universal piece which is storytelling, humanistic storytelling."

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rachel.abramowitz@latimes.com