New-Media Trade School

By Ilona DeBare

International center for training in computerized sound and graphics. Ex'pression's founders are sinking a huge amount of money into the school -$20 million, when construction of all the classrooms and labs is complete. They're also charging a hefty tuition to recoup these costs-$27,700 for the school's visual arts program and $25,700 for its sound arts program. That's well over the $13,500 per year charged by San Francisco's Academy of Art College. It's even more than the $22,100 per year charged by Stanford University. Ex'pression officials say the steep fees are justified both by their state-of-the-art facilities and by their unique teaching approach. While other schools like the Academy of Art College spend four years training digital artists, Ex'pression will move each class of students through its entire program in 14 months. And it will teach them through a process of total immersion, with students required to put in three hours of class time and six hours of lab time every weekday. The labs have one teacher for every six students. The school's facilities are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. About half the students have labs scheduled from 6 p.m. until midnight. "Our attitude is: Get in and do it like a job, every day," said Ex'pression President Gary Platt. "It's very strenuous, very hard. By the time they get out of here, we want them to have worked harder than they'll ever work on a job.... In 14 months, they will get more handson experience than in four years of college." Some observers caution that Ex'pression can't provide all the knowledge needed by future sound engineers or digital artists in just 14 months. "They can teach you about the (music) industry, but you really need to be musical before you go in there," said Chris Stone, a longtime music producer who founded World Studio Group in Los Angeles. "In 14 months, you don't have time to learn composition or learn two instruments or demonstrate you can read a score." Ex'pression's founders openly acknowledge that their approach isn't for everyone. Their school isn't yet accredited. It doesn't offer a formal degree. "We don't teach the history of Western civilization. We don't teach English literature," Platt said. "If somebody needs to go to school to get life experience or general learning, we're not for them. We're for people who are passionately focused and know what they want to do, which is to be in the entertainment arts." There's no question that the entertainment industry is hungry for the kinds of dedicated digital experts that Ex'pression claims it can produce. In San Francisco alone, the multimedia industry added 6,000 jobs- a 51 percent increase-between 1994 and 1998. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that computer animators and Web designers typically earn $28 per hour after only three years of experience. "It is really difficult for us.to find highly qualified personnel," said Arthur Schwartzberg, president of Xaos, a San Francisco digital effects production company. "We easily get S0 unsolicited (demo) reels a month, but finding people with talent is something else." At the same time, the number of schools offering some kind of digital art training is growing. Ex'pression is Competing for students with San Francisco State University, which enrolls more than 1,500 students each year in the country's oldest and largest multinedia studies program. It's also competing with the Acadamy of Art College, which has inested heavily in digital equipment during the past decade. "The whole arena of education around multimedia is getting more competitive," said Chris Marler, director of San Francisco State's program. "Now everybody is doing it, from local community colleges to places like Ex'pression." Right now, Ex'pression is a work in progress. The first class of 60 students arrived at the school's half-finished building in January and started a two-month introductory"boot camp" that covers everything from basic recording technology to Microsoft Excel. Meanwhile, hard-hatted construction workers continue transforming piles of cinder blocks and fiberglass insulation into additional labs that will offer DVD authoring equipment, 96-track recording studios and cutting-edge "5.1" speaker systems that have five separate channels. The students-who must have high school diplomas and pass a general aptitude test-are completevy jazzed to De tiered Clllucr slocks and alp. "The first day we were here, they had us using a $25,000 digital camera," said Roy Miles, 27. "The second day, they had us taking apart Macintoshes.... I'm starting to Eook at things in 'Ex'pression time.' Every day here is like a week on another campus." Some industry professionals who have visited the campus are equally impressed. "It's well set up, ambitious and they have all the right ideas," said Schwartzberg. "I actually got sort of jealous going over there." Ex'pression officials hope to increase enrollment to 300 by the end of this year and turn a profit by the end of their second year. Within three years, they hope to reach full enrollment of 600 students and 40 faculty. Then? Open a second school elsewhere in the United States, followed by a third school in Europe. An international focus comes nat urally to Ex'pression's founders. The school's principal owner is Dutch businessman Eckart Wintzen, a software entrepreneur who has diversified into other businesses ranging from AIDS research to a Ben & Jerry's. Platt, a former executive at the well-known Full Sail school of entertainment arts in Florida, said he ad Wintzen spent six months lookzg at sites across the United States zfore settling on Emeryville. "It's not easy being in the Bay Area, with everything from the high cost of buildings to the difficulty of finding housing for our students," Platt said. "But this is the crossroads of the entertainment and software industries, Hollywood and Silicon "alley. There is a credibility you get rom being in the Bay Area that you would never achieve in L.A." Like any new vocational school Ex'pression's biggest challenge will se proving that it can place its students in good jobs within their profession. Platt and other school of finials are confident they can meet California laws that require trade schools to find jobs for 85 percent of their students within six months of graduatlon. But they're also consciously trying not to oversell themselves. Platt is quick to point out that high-profile animation firms like Pixar and Disney hire only the very top talent from around the country. Most graduates will errd up in less ~xy environments like corporate raphics departments or Web-degn businesses. "We tell people they're looking at & 30,000 a year," Platt said. "We're lot going to raise expectations to a zver pitch." Brent Wallace and Loren Allen looked at other schools, such as the Academy of Art College, before deciding on Ex'pression. Wallace sold his truck, stereo and TV to help pay the steep tuition. He kept his bike-which he rides to his morning classes, then to an afternoon job and then back to Ex'pression for a 6 p.m.-to-midnight lab session. In their first two months, Wallace and Allen have learned programs such as Photoshop, Excel, PowerPoint and Painter. They've filmed a short movie and edited it on the computer. They've recorded a sample radio ad for the school. "I came in by no means a virtuoso, but I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the computer now," Wallace said. "Anything in this field is super-exciting. I'm just super-stoked to be here." Maxtor's Singapore Buy Maxtor Corp. of Milpitas, a maker of computer hard-disk drives, agreed to buy a building in Singapore for an undisclosed price, giving it a site where it can expand manufacturing capacity if sales rise as expected. The 3 50,OOO-square-foot building is about six miles from Maxtor's other Singapore facility in