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The School of Cinema and Performing Arts- SOCAPA

The School of Cinema and Performing Arts (SOCAPA) is a premier visual and performing arts program, hosting summer programs in New York City, Los Angeles, and Burlington, Vermont. Drawing students from across the country and across the world (students from 43 countries attended in 2008), SOCAPA offers intensive courses in Screenwriting, Filmmaking, Acting for Film, Dance and Photography.

History
SOCAPA was founded in 1999 by a collective of visual and performing artists in New York City. What started as small program offered only at one campus in Brooklyn, SOCAPA has quickly become a renown summer program offering 2- 6 week programs in Screenwriting (newly added for the summer of 2009), Filmmaking, Acting for Film, Dance, and Photography in 3 locations- New York City, Los Angeles, and Burlington, Vermont.

Programs
Screenwriting SOCAPA offers both two and three week intensives in screenwriting at their campuses in New York and Los Angeles. Students have the option of developing two short screenplays (4-8 pages each), one longer screenplay (10-12 pages), or the first act of a feature-length screenplay. The course is designed to serve as a precursor to SOCAPA’s filmmaking workshops with students continuing on to produce and direct their polished screenplays the following session or the next summer. Filmmaking In the filmmaking program, each SOCAPA student writes, directs and edits one film per week of attendance. After workshoping their screenplays, students break into production teams and set out to shoot their first film. SOCAPA offers the immediate opportunity to learn the most recent digital technologies. For their final projects, students choose to shoot using either 16mm film cameras or state-of-the-art, 3-chip digital video cameras with synchronous sound. Regardless of the capture format, all students edit on Final Cut Pro non-linear, digital computer systems. This lets them create an elaborate multi-track sound design for each of their films, incorporating music, voice-over, sound effects and dialogue. Acting for Film SOCAPA’s Acting for Film Program is closely tied to the Advanced and Introductory Filmmaking Programs. When the filmmaking students go out to make the assigned films each week, they utilize the talent in the Acting for Film Program. This provides the acting students with immediate on-camera experience and allows them to walk away from the program with a DVD portfolio of films in which they have performed. Dance SOCAPA’s Summer Dance Program is a Jazz and Hip Hop intensive that also features specialty classes in Breakdancing, House, Wacking, Lyrical, and African. Classes are geared towards learning cutting-edge choreography at a professional pace and preparing routines to be featured in live performances and weekly music videos shot by SOCAPA instructors. This provides students in the Dance Program with a video portfolio featuring a number of their performances in a variety of projects. Photography SOCAPA offers both two and three week summer programs in traditional 35mm darkroom and/or digital photography with a strong emphasis on capturing images for the entertainment industry. Students take classes in studio and portrait photography, photojournalism, documentary, fine art photography, Photoshop and web publishing (online portfolio). The Summer Photography Programs are closely tied to the Acting, Filmmaking and Dance Programs. As part of the weekly assignment, a photography student may be sent out to shoot production stills on a film production one morning or off to the studio to light and shoot headshots for an actor or dancer one afternoon. In this way, each photography student builds an impressive entertainment portfolio to complement the documentary and fine art work they do in class and on field shoots.

The Campuses
New York City Campus- Downtown Brooklyn [ DUMBO & Brooklyn Heights ]:

SOCAPA's Summer Programs for High School students are hosted at Polytechnic University, located at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in downtown Brooklyn. Students stay in the modern Othmer Residence Hall, eat most of their meals at the campus cafeteria, and attend most classes right on the Polytechnic Campus or at neighboring L.I.U.

New York City has long been a world center of artistic and cultural exploration. SOCAPA is surrounded by exciting locations for film shoots, many of which have been photographed by some of the most famous film directors of our time. SOCAPA students find themselves in the heart of this vibrant city, walking distance from the Brooklyn Bridge, DUMBO, Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn Heights and the Promenade, and a short subway ride to Washington Square Park, Times Square, the Theater District, Central Park, Bleecker Street, and one of the most diverse concentrations of cafés, restaurants, and artistic venues anywhere in the world.

Los Angeles, Hollywood and Occidental College:

SOCAPA’s Summer Programs in Los Angeles are hosted at Occidental College, one of the oldest and most beautiful college campuses in the West. Situated just across Griffith Park from Studio City and Universal Studios Hollywood, Occidental's Eagle Rock neighborhood has a cozy, suburban feel while being close to all the action of the big city.

Students in the Los Angeles program enjoy the advantages of being in the heart of the filmmaking capital of the world. Chosen as home base by the film industry because of its nonstop sunshine and beautiful scenery, Hollywood has become synonymous with making movies. Not only is Los Angeles the center of the world’s film industry, but it also plays a central role in television, music, fashion and art. Trips are planned to the Walk of Fame, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios (two of the most renowned of the Hollywood studios), the pier, boardwalk and amusement park in Santa Monica and, of course, the beach. Visiting filmmakers and actors from the industry drop by at least once per session to screen and talk about their work.

Champlain College and Burlington, Vermont:

SOCAPA's Vermont Program is hosted at Champlain College, situated in picturesque small city of Burlington, Vermont. Champlain's campus is perched in the historic Hill Section, overlooking the breathtaking Lake Champlain and the surrounding Adirondack Mountains. A short walk down the hill and students are immersed in the vibrant arts scene of downtown Burlington. You'll find the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and the lively, pedestrian Church Street Marketplace, lined with boutiques, shops, art galleries, sidewalk cafes, coffeehouses, a smorgasbord of ethnic eateries, street performers, an indoor mall for rainy days, and movie theaters showing first-run, art and foreign films. A little further down the hill and you are on the shores of spectacular Lake Champlain. The waterfront's Battery Park hosts weekly outdoor rock concerts and North Beach is perfect for swimming, kayaking and sunbathing. Burlington is and ideal summer haven featuring an eclectic mix of cultural, artistic and recreational activities.

Faculty
JAMIE YERKES, the founding director, is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned his MFA in Film. He has taught Film Production and Film History at Webster University and Long Island University and has worked in the film industry as a cinematographer, an editor, and a writer/director.

CHRIS REED, Summer Program Director of SOCAPA Los Angeles, received his B.A. from Harvard, Master’s from Yale (Film Studies), and MFA from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (Film Production). He is SOCAPA’s resident film scholar. Chris has directed many short films, both documentary and narrative, including the award-winning "All About George." Chris has taught at the high school level at Exeter, Choate, and LREI, and at the college level at Long Island University, the Art Institute of New York, and presently at Villa Julie College, in Baltimore.

MATT MARSHALL, director of the actors' reels is a documentary filmmaker with his BA in Film from University of North Texas and his MFA from NYU. His three narrative films, Lost Dog, Passage and Four Steps have each received the prestigious Academy Award nomination in the short film category.

ROGER MANIX, Acting Technique, is a graduate of The William Esper Studio where he studied with Suzanne Esper. Roger has most recently studied with Wynn Handman at Carnegie Hall. Roger has been teaching Acting for the past five years in New York and Los Angeles. He has appeared on television and all throughout New York City theatre. Roger's technique is grounded in the Meisner method.

The Dance program is directed by AUSHI OSKARSDOTTIR, a graduate of UC Berkeley, who started her professional dance career at the age of 15 with video and commercial work, and has gone on to teach jazz, hip hop and dance for stage at San Francisco Dance Center, Stanford University, Bally’s, Dance Fusion, and California Theatre Arts, to name a few. She has studied and performed at Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, as well as Broadway Dance Center and Steps on Broadway.

TOM LEGOFF, Director of SOCAPA's photography program, has captured some of the world's most illustrious film stars and in the process created a new iconography. Clients include Spike Lee, Robert Altman, Nick Nolte, Deborah Harry, John Waters, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jean-Luc Godard, Christina Ricci, Martin Short and Ang Lee. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Interview, and IFC/Rant magazines to name a few.

2009 Dates
SOCAPA offers 2 and 3 week programs starting on the following dates:

June 21 (New York Campus)

June 28 (Los Angeles and Vermont Campuses)

July 12 (New York Campus)

July 19 (Los Angeles and Vermont Campuses)

College Credit
SOCAPA students who complete three week programs in Filmmaking, Acting for Film and Dance are eligible for three college credits issued by Long Island University.