UH Setting Strategic Plan in Action to Build a Premier Film Degree Program

Looking to Expand Pre/Post-Production Curriculum

Houston, Texas | January 10, 2020

Lynn Birdwell: We are talking to Temple Northup. Thank you so much for joining us here for the Bird Feed Podcast. Just for everyone, Temple Northup is the the Director of the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston. Temple, tell us how Jack's name came to be the name of this program.

Temple Northup: Jack Valenti was a graduate of the University of Houston, and in the 40s and 50s, he worked in advertising. In the 60s, he worked with Lyndon Johnson. He was in the White House, and then he was appointed around 1966 as the president of the NPA, he created the rating systems that we're using today, and was the head of that for the next 40 years. When he died, the university thought this is a great person who was so influential in the field for decades that we should be named for him.

Lynn Birdwell: So then his daughter, tell me a little bit about her.

Temple Northup: So, his children have certainly carried on his legacy. His daughter, Courtney Valenti, is the President of Development and Production for Warner Brothers Pictures. She certainly has a giant slate. I think they made $6 billion last year, so they're doing well under her [leadership].

Lynn Birdwell: When did you get [to Houston]? I thought you've been here for three years.

Temple Northup: I arrieved in 2011. This was my first university job, just a professor when I got here. A little over three years ago, I was appointed as the director of the school. Over the last three years, that's been my role. I still teach some, but primarily leading the school and to where we want to go.

Lynn Birdwell: Okay. So, the University of Houston has had a film program for a long, long, long time. Tell me where you came from and what you hope to bring to it.

Temple Northup: So, prior to going to graduate school and then ending up here, I worked in Los Angeles. I was out there for many years working in television production, primetime television. I was a writer for a number of different sitcoms. My wife works in film development for Sony. That's my background.

Temple Northup: When I got here, I wanted to carry that experience in, and I wanted to try to really push this program into new frontiers. The City of Houston doesn't have a major film program. We've existed for a long time, but it's relatively small. My vision is that we are, you know, the creative center, training the next generation of storytellers.

Lynn Birdwell: There are a lot of programs in Houston at different schools, and also on campus at U of H, that are all film programs. But, you told me that you wanted this program to be the best in the nation, the best in the world. So how do we achieve that?

Temple Northup: That's a huge question. So, I think there are a lot of different aspects that help us achieve to be the best in the nation. And so obviously, to be the best, it means we need to be training our students with the best equipment. But even more, we need our students to be working with people who are working at the highest levels. There are people like me teaching the students, which is great, but I've, you know, once you go back to teaching, you're out of the industry losing touch with what's going on. And so, I think connecting our students with working professionals like you, like some of the other high level people in Houston, is a huge component of that vision because then they can get training in the real world on actual sets with actual equipment. And when they do that, the second they're graduating from here, they're ready to work on a set professionally, day one. There's no training when they go out. There are no mistakes when they leave the program because they've all been done. They've learned it. And so that's a big part of what I want to do that I don't see really a lot of other people doing is really creating these strong partnerships between our program and the working professionals in Houston and then all over the country, really.

Lynn Birdwell: So, I find that a lot of them leave Houston the minute they get their degree and they go find themselves in New York or LA or Atlanta. But you know, integration here in Houston can happen. One of the issues we have in Houston right now is we don't have any really big production companies who have constant studio systems going with, you know, internships available in every department and you know, shoots going every single day, that sort of thing. So, the students can still fit in to the ongoing shoots that are going on in Houston, whether it's TV shows or films or commercials or whatever, but they need to have that connective access. Right. So you've talked about starting a film club here that would help them have access to some of that. So tell me a little bit about the film club.

Temple Northup: Yeah. So that's something we started about a year ago and we're continuing to build. And so the film club has a few purposes. One, it's trying to bring all of the students who are in our school together because they'll often be disconnected. You know, one might be taking class in the morning and one the afternoon, they miss each other. So we want to create this central hub for all our students to get together. And we've seen just from those connections, amazing things happening. So they've gone off through those connections and they've shot some little short features on their own time, which is great because they're networking. Part of their strongest network is going to be with each other. So, when they go out and once they're graduated and they're working in professional shoots, they're going to have a network that they can call.

Temple Northup: Part of that student clubs vision is just that, networking, but then also connect those students with the working professionals. So, we bring in people to give talks to them on different subjects. That's part of our vision moving forward is creating half day or full day workshops. We can bring in somebody whose expertise is lighting. So, we can just have a day on lighting, a day on financing, a day on anything you can imagine, and bringing those high level people who are out there doing it right now so our students can get that hands on information from people that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. And so, that's really what we're trying to do with the film. Have them working together on their own projects, but then getting that training from people out in the community or even bringing them infrom other places around the country.

Lynn Birdwell: So I feel like in a lot of the schools, there are programs that allow them to dream and like go make a movie and like create their own vision, but there's a whole career paths they can decide on. I'm going to go into the grip electric department and I'm going to work until I can become a gaffer, and I'll be able to do Superbowl commercials and TV shows and movies and make that money and be in the union, or versus being a writer, being a director, being a producer. I think it will be great to see how this, um, allows students to see themselves as crew members in different departments.

Temple Northup: Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I have identified over the years is if you ask a typical student what do they want to be -- I want to be Steven Spielberg. Everybody wants to be the director, big time famous. And that's great. That's great to have that dream. But there are not a lot of Steven Spielberg's, but there are a lot of these other crew positions, and by and large, you don't know what positions even exist. You don't know all the departments. You don't realize that all of those people are not only talented, but are creative and share a really important role in any film. If you're looking at the cinematographers who are setting the look and feel, they're all working collaboratively, down to wardrobe and makeup. They all have such an important part. Students don't often think about, Oh, there are whole career paths that aren't the director that are still really important, often really creative. And so bringing in people who have done those careers so the students can hear from them, I think is another really great way to open their minds to all the different paths that actually exists.

Lynn Birdwell: Because they won't be able to until they know that and they understand how all the different departments work. They can't actually fit into a crew of, you know, 100 or 500, that is for a really big project because they have only been exposed to a two person, five person, or 10 person shoot. Right. Often the people that are at a very high level in the film industry are very well educated. That's another thing that students probably would really benefit from knowing. So, okay. So, you have grants that you've been developing that will allow you to start doing more with this program. Let's talk about that. I know that those are still in the works.

Temple Northup: Yeah. A lot of these dreams and the vision, of course, requires funding of some sort. We're in those early stages of figuring out how can we find it and if we're able to really sustain this. So, a lot of what we've started so far, we've been able to cobble together some funds here and there to bring in a speaker, or to fund some of our smaller student projects. But we want to increase the success of this program. And so, that's what we're looking to do. And hopefully in the next few months, people will start hearing about it, to create those funds so that we can bring in really talented people, for instance, to lead these workshops so we can afford to either fly somebody in or just even bring somebody in locally, and make it so that they're being compensated in some sort of way for their time. And then being able to teach the students, so we need funding for that. We need funding for trying to take our student projects to the next level.

Lynn Birdwell: Because if you do that, you can put them on your website and it's a recruiting tool, right, so they can all be proud of it. They can get an IMDB credit if it's a real thing.

Temple Northup: Yeah. Real films require locations, require all those sort of things. And so right now, our student projects that we do tend to be filmed on campus. Campus is a great resource because it's sort of like a mini lot. We have restaurants, we have convenient stores, so there are locations. But at the end of the day, it's not, you know, it's not a professional shoot. And so that's what we want to do is create the most professional training ground possible so that our students are completely prepared and ready to go. That's where the major grants and fundraising really play an important role.

Temple Northup: So, another really great thing, which we haven't talked about, that it is a benefit for a professional crew, a-list crew, people who do this for a living at a very high level coming in to work with the students, is they get to shop the students that really have promise and really get to start, you know, encouraging them to come out and work with us when they're not in class and weekends. Then they automatically have a place in the professional crew roster when they graduate or before with a great mentor.

Temple Northup: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know as well as anybody that it's all about networking in this industry. And so the more people we bring in and they begin meeting our students, they realize, Oh wow, look at this, this program that's being built here. I need to keep up with them. And the good students, they're good at networking with the people who we bring in, who come to campus. They'll actually send that followup email or message and say, Hey, it was great meeting with you. And that's led to jobs for our students. And you know, you've hired our students, the good ones. Once you find one, you want to keep them. If they're doing their job, those students you're bringing are creating a network, not only with you but with their peers. And so maybe you want to hire one of our students full time and they're gonna say, well, let me introduce you to this other person. Cause now you need another PA, and now we've got this whole network building, and before long we have an entire creative community.

Lynn Birdwell: So in the 80s, we had like this huge film industry, and we can bring that back again with these kinds of programs andsystems of talent and crew and production teams. We have all kinds of stuff going on. There are other departments that specialize in postproduction or special effects or just the editing side. Tell me about that. I know that you have some of that here.

Temple Northup: Yeah. We've got a lot of the post-production. Wwe don't have animation, or a strong animation program. The College of Technology has a digital media program, and so they're much more skilled at things related to certain aspects of post-production. We're primarily editing, but now we've added a color correction course in just in color correction and color grading. We're beginning to build the post production. I think if you look around the country at most film programs, what is missing the most is post-production. It's sort of like everyone just decides that they'll offer an editing class and that's the beginning and the end of post-production.

Lynn Birdwell: Talking about that, it's like there's all these parts of production that don't get considered because everybody just wants a camera and to go.

Temple Northup: Right. Yes. If you look at curriculum, 90% of the curriculum is production, but we all know that 90% of a film is not production. The production is usually the shortest part of any of production, but that's where everybody's trained. And so we are trying to develop a film program which will really cover a lot of that preproduction, especially in everything from contracts to clearance and things like that. We're working with Fleurette Fernando in the School of Art to look at opportunities where we can really create something that looks at the management side of things as well.

Lynn Birdwell: So, are you developing anything new or is this just a build out of the existing program that you have?

Temple Northup: So far, it's just building out what we have. It's a slow and steady march. Hopefully the next step is going to create a bachelor of fine arts. That's my hope. Mydream is it will just allow us a little bit more training of our students. Right now, we're just limited in terms of number of hours they can take. And if we change the degree a little bit, we'll be able to give them more. Then hopefully if that goes as planned in the next few years, then we can also look at adding an MFA in filmmaking. We've been speaking with a lot of people over at the School of Art and just seeing how can we all pull what we're already doing together to build something.

Lynn Birdwell: I think that's what Fleurette was talking about in her interview. Okay. So there's a writing degree that will be new. Yes? Screenwriting?

Temple Northup: It's not new. We are adding courses, so we continue just to add classes. Previously, we had an introduction to writing class, and that was really it. So we've added what we call an advanced screenwriting class. Now we're trying to break that even further apart to have a much more defined path for people who are interested in writing. So, that's also coming down the way.

Lynn Birdwell: Well, good. Thank you very much. I'm so glad you were here. I know that there's a million other things that we can talk about.

Temple Northup: We can talk all day.

Lynn Birdwell: We'll get back together again and do this soon. Thank you very much for being with us.

A Partnership to Train Young Film Professionals In Houston

City of Houston, Local School Districts Develop Workforce Training for Film Students

Houston, Texas | November 20, 2019

Lynn Birdwell: Welcome to the Bird Feed Podcast, and I'm here with Juliet Stipeche from the City of Houston. She's the Director of Education. Welcome.

Juliet Stipeche: Thank you.

Lynn Birdwell: Juliet, tell me what you do.

Juliet Stipeche: Well, it's the new position that was created by Mayor Sylvester Turner in February of 2016. The mayor wanted to have someone at the city that was going to be able to be transformative and innovative and making sure that education is something that is consistently thought of in the minds of Houstonians. We created an office that assists with collaboration, coordination, and communication amongst the various educational entities in the City of Houston, and my goodness, there are certainly a lot.

Lynn Birdwell: So, you're dealing with kids as they go through school. Is that all the way through college?

Juliet Stipeche: Yes. We work these kids from early childhood education, the K through 12 system, and also higher education and workforce development and training. We cover the full gamut from cradle to career as they described it.

Lynn Birdwell: This podcast is primarily about film production and the production industry in Houston, but also just the entire creative industry economy that we have here in Houston. So, I know that in some of the schools, just found out recently, have some wonderful production studio sets set up for those kids to start that process. Tell me about those.

Juliet Stipeche: There's some amazing programs at the elementary, middle school and high school levels for young people to have an opportunity to experience what it's like to be in the film and art career fields. You have some places that literally have full-fledged studios that are operated by young people, and they write, produce, edit, and learn cutting edge technology that they're able to use and have access to.

I have worked with some schools that have produced some short films and documentaries that went on to receive prizes at the state level. At one high school, I worked with the group of young people and they created a documentary called The Other Side of Town, and it was extraordinarily influential on my perspective of serving as a school board member.

Lynn Birdwell: These programs, do these kids have an opportunity to have a vocational outcome and stay in Houston? That's my goal.

Juliet Stipeche: Well, I think that's how we can sit and talk about how we can better connect those that are in the industry to those that are aspiring towards being in that industry. I think young people are consistently looking for mentors and role models, and we know that the pace of the economy and transformation of things occurs so quickly that it's really important for schools to connect to those leaders in the community that actually know what's going on in their industry because sometimes the children may get something that is outdated. So, we want them to be learning what they need to know the most of in order to be able to connect and get that career in the film industry that they so desire, and that really requires building social capital, knowing the right people, and connecting to people such as yourself.

Lynn Birdwell: You had a sister who went to one of our very famous art schools here in Houston, the High School of Visual and Performing Arts. Tell me about how that was for her.

Juliet Stipeche: My sister, she never had an opportunity to take a formal art class, but she always had a passion to draw, and my parents always encouraged her. My dad would buy books and she would try everything with crayons and pencils and poster boards. She was accepted into the High School for Performing and Visual Arts because they saw that she had natural talent. It was something that allowed me to see a larger world, as well. Visiting HPV was just an amazing experience. My sister says that if weren't not for art, she does not know where she would be today. Art is transformative.

Lynn Birdwell: And, I heard someone say, I was at an event this week, and one of the major patrons, it was a theater event, and he said, “theater is so important, we cannot let it die. There are certain times, and we are in those times now where sometimes art is the only way we can communicate.”

Juliet Stipeche: Absolutely. I think that's something that my sister told me, too. She was like, “there are moments in my life when art was the only way that I could find the most satisfactory way of expressing myself.” I think that working collaboratively in using the creative expression, it's an opportunity for those that are vulnerable and voiceless to be heard. It's also important for young people to have a creative expressive outlet. It's important to be able to develop the mindset of, of older people that may not be familiar with a particular community. Art on so many different ways is truly transformative in terms of its method of communication but also creation. It is truly something that allows a person to feel a sense of, of self-motivation, of, of just being able to create something that is able to exist in the world and to be able to share that with others is very transformative and empowering for young people.

Lynn Birdwell: It is, and I was talking with someone at the UN this week who said that they thought in communities all over the world, the arts were where additional jobs can be created for people who may not be good fits for other kinds of jobs, help them grow in other ways. That's another conversation, too. So, film from my perspective as an economic industry, but it's also an art form. And, only through the schools I think can we start our city thinking that way?

Juliet Stipeche: I agree. I think you're truly a visionary in recognizing that the pipeline starts, whether it be Pre-K or elementary, you know, young people, the longer they have an opportunity to have rich access to the arts and be able to talk to industry experts, the reality of joining and becoming a part of the film industry is a reality. The arts are extraordinarily important in developing this unique perspective and being able to create, but also being able to connect to the economic opportunity that allows one to then be able to have the capital and the support to be able to turn their art pieces into things that can bring job opportunities and investments into the community, as well. We want it to be win-win and what's the best way for us to be able to allow the workforce pipeline to develop in the most appropriate way? It's coordinating and connecting industry mavens and leaders to the young people so they have examples and role models for which to follow.

Lynn Birdwell: It also gives them places to go directly to immediately after their education instead of thinking they have to go to Hollywood, they have to go to New York, so they can see that they can create here. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Juliet Stipeche: It's been a pleasure and an honor. And you know, one of the mayor's initiatives is the Hire Houston Youth program. We would love to see how we can try to get some more collaboration for young people to be able to work in the film industry. Let us know. We'd love to partner.

Lynn: This will be all for Houston. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Training Houston's Next A-list Crew will Boost the Local Economy

University of Houston Looks to be the Center of Evolving Local Film Industry

Houston, Texas

Lynn Birdwell: I'd like to invite Florette Fernando to the stage. She's the founding director of the M.A. in Arts Leadership Program at the University of Houston.

Fleurette Fernando: Go Coogs! Coogs in the house! I am the director of the AMA in Arts and Leadership. This program is a graduate program. It's about seven years old now, and essentially it's an arts administration training program. So, I have students coming to me from theater backgrounds, dance backgrounds, music, creative writing. The one thing that is missing right now in our city is a film production degree program. And this is something that we're talking about at our new college of the arts at the University of Houston in conjunction with Temple Northrop, who couldn't be here tonight, but he is the Director of the Valenti School of Communications.

It's very much in its incubator stage right now. We haven't received approvals for this, but we are hoping to launch a BFA in film. As many of you know, the Austin film scene is thriving now in large part because of an excellent film program at UT, at the University of Texas. So, we really think that we have something to offer here in Houston that is unique. Everybody says Austin's the cool town. Austin is where the cool people are at. But we know as Houstonians that that's not always true because what do we have on our side that Austin doesn't, and no offense to any of the Austin folks here, but what do we have? We have Houstonians! And we have a huge level of diversity, right. We talk about that all the time, that we're a diverse community. We are the fourth largest city.

We have an opportunity to tell some unique stories from unique perspectives that are specific to our communities. Our communities look and feel different in many ways all over the greater Houston area. I just want to say something very quickly, that is actually stolen from Remy, so run with me, so I will give you all the props for this. We know this in the room, those of us who are interested in film or working in film, that film is a medium, it's a discipline that incorporates all types of artists, all disciplines, musicians, composers, choreographers, actors, writers, visual artists, designers. I think that we have a really unique opportunity to start something here that can be rooted in an academic institution like the University of Houston that is still connected to all of you who are on the front line working in the industry.

We want to make it a practical program, a program that serves as a pipeline to see our students actually working in the field. And that field hopefully will be right here in Houston. I want to say something very, very quickly, which is that I'm originally from Toronto, Canada, a child of immigrants. I got to see the film industry grow in Toronto, and similar to Houston, when growing up in Toronto, we were always told Montreal is the coolest city. Montreal is where the artists are. Montreal is where the culture is. And so Houston, Toronto always felt like, Oh, we're kind of set as second citizens in terms of arts and culture. And as you know, those of you who've been to the Toronto Film Festival, that has changed. And there was a mandate when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s in Canada and in Toronto to produce work that reflected Canadian content.

It was really big in the 80s. I don't know if there are any Canadians here who may remember that. I think that's a really important part of the conversation is that if we do build this, that we make it a mission and a vision and a priority to tell the stories of this city while we're building an industry to attract production from all over the world, I would love to talk to you all further. If any of you have thoughts or ideas or questions, please come and see me. And thank you Lynn, for putting this together.

Lynn Birdwell: It's really going to take all of us to create this Houston creative economy. It will take all of us to do what we know we can have. We're going to all have to do this together.

The WOND3R Team Shares How Cities All Over the World Have Built Creative Economies

And Why They Think that We Can Build a Creative Industry Economy in Houston

Work-In-Progress: Production Slate in Development, Midtown Arts and Theatre Center Houston, Houston, Texas | December 4, 2019

At the Work-In-Progress event on December 4, 2019, the team from the creative agency WOND3R spoke about working all over the world and shared how cities who've built creative economies did it and why they think that we can build a creative industry economy in Houston.

Charlie Le:

So we've worked at a lot of agencies around the world, and obviously all of these great agencies are not here in Houston. What we kind of realized is that we had to leave to kind of really love Houston, and what it forced us to do was really explore a lot of the interesting things that we had known before, especially for me.

So, we get asked this question very often, especially when we're outside of Houston and talking with our comrades at other agencies, what is so unique about Houston. Well, we believe that it's wholly underrated. A lot of people really overlook it, and to us that means that if it's being overlooked like that it can really pack a punch.

And everyone talks about diversity in Houston, and that's very true, but we really think that it is very special because, you know, we don't really ask for permission -- we should just ask for forgiveness, right? We should really do things first. Like Paul said, we should go out and do it and then seek forgiveness later. So I think, I think that's where we had this opportunity here, which is, um, if no one is doing anything that means no one is doing anything. We have the opportunity to do something, and I think that's a really unique point about Houston.

Kerry Chrapliwy:

I think one of the things that we forget is the economic impact of this. So, you know, this all looks like fun. Everybody thinks it's a fun industry, and it's a lot of blood, sweat, tears, passion, energy, and building it brick by brick. But when you look at the economics behind it, the creative economy in New York City in 2017 delivered $30 billion of revenue to that city --$30 billion!

So, when you think about what the economic potential is and where the city always talks about Houston wanting to grow with the young millennials and they want to create some kind of creative community here, you know, it's not just for fun. It is actually 300,000 jobs in New York City, $30 billion. And I believe that we can do that here because we have such a low cost of living, a high disposable income that we could take a huge chunk out of that $30 billion and bring it to Houston. That's our mission.

We're right across from Toot Suite downtown and East Side. Our office is always open. We have a happy hour every couple of weeks. Everyone's always invited. And, we're just trying to build the creative economy here, brick by brick, stone by stone.

Graham Painter:

What I can say is Lynn, thank you so much for everything you're doing. You're really a champion for all of us. And uh, you've taken really the first step toward what we've always been talking about with you, which is talking about this creative economy, establishing something that that becomes dialogue and it becomes a reality here in Houston. As Charlie was talking about, I considered myself a refugee. They call Houston a flypaper city. People get here and they get stuck. Well, I was an unstuck fly. I ran away to go do my thing in New York and London and around Asia Pacific and so forth and came back. I realized that those cities that I had gone to, each one of those had been developed almost artificially as creative hubs.

London that had been implemented there. It was very intentional. They developed the creative ministry there. That's still there. It's like 42% of jobs in Southeast England are all coming out of the creative industries. Then I go to Bangkok 2002, the prime minister had developed something called the Thai Culture and Design Center, and he made design and post production and production of all types of reality -- advertising and film and all sorts of arts that spurned outside of it. I think I'll steal Remy's line, which is a film was the most inclusive of all art forms. It builds everything else up. And, I think that was absolutely true, but these were not that long ago that these systems were put into place, guys. I mean those of you who think of London, you think creative Mecca, right? But, it wasn't until '97 they really started talking about creative economy and building this ministry. Thailand, for those of you that have spent time --obviously Megan did here, she went to Bangkok to get that boot [laughter] -- but, it's a creative hub. There's this energy. Obviously, when we're in New York, you know, we feel it.

So, it's up to us to really build that together. I think the fact that we're starting from zero, but we are this, somebody said third largest city, you know, I know we're certainly the fourth largest, if not the third largest, and we're the most diverse. So, we're also building things that are going to become the future for everybody else. And we're almost, because we're doing it in spite of ourselves, we're working harder, but we're having to come up with more creative solutions. We need to balance the economy here. We have the greatest minds in engineering and science in the world. Oil and gas has done that, but those of us that are hiding here, that are the creative minds to balance that, it's time we step up and do these projects. If we could do half of these projects that were up there, we're going to be way ahead guys. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. [clapping].