The 480 Experience

The 480 Experience Synopsis

Follow the exploits of a USC student film crew as it seeks--unsuccessfully--to make an overly ambitious thesis film with as little interference from the faculty as possible. Of course this doesn't work out as one crisis after another befalls the students, resulting in their confrontations with a faculty that seems to be losing control over the project.

To wit: fist fights between crew members; power outages of the campus computer center; barricaded streets in downtown Los Angeles--illegally, without a permit; and threatened cancellation of the project by an incensed and uncertain faculty./Cinema 480 is the name of the Graduate Thesis film class. In the lexicon of USC film school jargon, '480' comes to embody all the experiences, frustration and joy that was student filmmaking at USC Cinema-TV in the mid-1970s.

Having made a 480 film, you are part of the USC Cinema fraternity that includes alumni George Lucas, John Milius, Walter Murch, John Carpenter, Ben Burtt, Randal Kleiser, Robert Elswit; and Professors Mel Sloan, Herb Farmer, Dave Johnson, Dan Wiegand and Ken Miura, to name a few./The genesis for this documentary about a 480 student film crew was conceived out of my growing awareness that there was a gaping chasm of understanding between the production experiences student filmmakers encountered while making their films, and the nature of the critique and discussions they subsequently had with the professors during their classroom meetings.

I hoped my documentary would illuminate these differences in order to initiate changes through better understanding by both students and faculty./The subject of this documentary was a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the USC student film "America Lost" directed by Richard Redeman. Since my documentary was also a 480 thesis project, the crew an dI were in the unique position of documenting an experiences while we were the students participating. I feel this is greatly responsible for the honest moments that come through in The 480 Experience.