Despite $50 million awards, an abundance of National Merit Scholars, more than 50,000 students and other accomplishments, ASU is seriously lacking in an important industry, film.
While UA and even Scottsdale Community College offer majors in accredited film programs, ASU remains leaps and bounds behind the two schools and the nation in teaching students how to produce, direct and act in films.
Filmmaking is an art. It takes discipline, guidance from those successful in the industry and, most importantly, opportunity. Without the opportunity to major or even minor in film at ASU, possibilities are limited.
Back in 1995, the president of the ASU Film Society, then ASU student Dan Barrett, appealed to the ASU administration to implement a film studies program because, among other reasons, "Film helps students to survive." That's according to a Sept. 14, 1995 State Press article.
In the article, Barrett and other ASU students explain the importance of a film studies program at the University.
"If Scottsdale (Community College) has money for a film program, ASU should," Barrett said. "There would be big initial costs, (but) the school would pay for itself in the long run. The school could generate revenues by showing student-produced films around the world."
Then film society member and communications broadcast major Jackie Ankney said, "(Existing film) classes have more an emphasis on theory rather than the technical aspect. ASU should at least have a minor."
Current ASU students and professors have proven that a film studies program would be put to good use if implemented.
Most recently, visiting ASU professor of film Miguel Valenti's "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra," a spoof on the cheap, cheesy and classic science fiction films from the 1940s through the 1960s, is in the national spotlight after TriStar, a segment of Sony Pictures, picked it up for distribution throughout the country.
Valenti explained the success of the film.
"This only very rarely happens; the last time a picture like this got this much national attention was 'The Blair Witch Project,' but we've been getting an awful lot of press with this movie because it is so offbeat -- it's played so straight up that you can't help but to laugh."
For people like Valenti, his students and countless others who are considering a career in film, the value of a film studies program at ASU would be immeasurable, because they would be more able and more willing to cultivate their creativity.
Come on ASU; give it to them. They deserve it.
And, just maybe, it would give the campus a more respectable outlet than productions like 2001's "Shane's World #29: Frat Row Scavenger Hunt 3," in which multiple ASU students infamously participated.
