BARBARA DUNPHY: The Los Angeles Film School is a one
year associates degree in film production, and the school
covers every area of film production.
So it goes writing, producing, directing, cinematography,
production design, editing, sound, the whole gambit.
And every student gets the same education.
The production design part of the Los Angeles Film School
Filmmaking Program initially started with hand-drafting.
But because SketchUp is so important to the film
industry, we had to include it in our program.
That just has become one of the more popular programs for
pre-visualizing.
SINEAD CLANCY: When we first meet the students, a lot of
them have never drafted before or designed, and anything
really before.
So what we do is we take them through the whole motions of
two-dimensional and three-dimensional design.
Then we introduce them to SketchUp.
And then we show them how easy it is for them to take their
ideas from paper, put them on computer, and how easy it is
to manipulate it from that point onward.
BOBBY LOFSTOM: I graduated from the program in 2005, and
at that time I learned SketchUp and I've been using
it ever since.
I've just found that it really helped me visually communicate
all the facets that I need to to a director in
three-dimensional space, which is really important that
SketchUp can do that.
Where as a piece of paper you can only show one angle at a
time, in the computer I can build the whole thing, and
then spin it around, show him the other angle and show him
what's going to work and what's not.
ROGER KING: SketchUp was the first introduction we could
actually do in a building, because we do teach it in a
way that almost shows you is how to build a set.
When we're pulling up walls and we can keep every element
of the set in groups so that we can take it apart.
Because ultimately, you will take a set apart, and you will
change it because sets constantly are being changed
because there's always more needs or the director has
other ideas.
SINEAD CLANCY: I find that it's a very, very easy way to
get ideas on paper.
Now I'm at the point where I use SketchUp all the time.
I don't draft anymore.
PAUL LONG: SketchUp works well in interior design for a
variety of reasons.
One, it's so easy to model so you can quickly test different
design ideas and different design options.
The only reason I use SketchUp is, especially now with the 3D
Warehouse, it's really quick and easy to accurately
represent your design, whether it's with furniture or a
certain type of furniture, or a certain type of product.
There's so much available in 3D Warehouse that's really
helpful and useful.
And then the other reason that it seems to be really useful
is using the material browser and the ability to add
materials quickly and change materials quickly.
A big way students use SketchUp is they'll model
their CAD drawings in SketchUp and they'll use SketchUp or
some other CAD program to turn their two-dimensional ideas
into three-dimensional models.
Another way we're using SketchUp is we're using the
wide array of aftermarket plug-ins that we can put into
SketchUp to create more photorealistic type
renderings.
This is super exciting for myself and for students
because the cost is so efficient rather than buying a
program that's $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000.
A problem I think students have in any design program is
they put so much time and energy into a design that they
don't ever want to back out of it.
But with SketchUp you can test ideas over and over and you
can back out of an idea really easily without having invested
so much time and energy.
JOHN LANTERMAN: I've been stunned sometimes at final
presentations what the students are producing in
SketchUp when I know at the beginning of the semester they
were introduced to the program.
MARCEL DE LANGE: I think where it really shines in my opinion
is in the early stages of a design project.
Again, matching is so easy.
I don't know any program that matches
things easier than SketchUp.
From a program point of view, we use it all the time to map
out size of things, and you can figure out how big a
certain area could be and those can become essentially
placeholders in SketchUp, colorful boxes that we could
start to lay-out the program.
And that actually leads to some very exciting
discoveries, and also to some really noble ways of
presenting that information.
Now we can actually show three-dimensionally, we can
quickly go through lots of variations and iterations.
So that's something that's been one of the big advantages
of SketchUp early on in the process.
JOHN LANTERMAN: It's great for students to be able to develop
a fly-through because this unfolding of experience in the
progression through different spaces, there's nothing better
than to let the students build a little movie of what it's
like when they first enter the site.
It's one thing to read about something in a book.
And it's completely different to have them go in and see how
their ideas can be reflected in a built environment.
SketchUp's the easiest, most successful tool I
know of to do that.
MARCEL DE LANGE: And the great thing about SketchUp is that
it's there.
It's right at your fingertips.
You can set up your coordinates correctly, and
then essentially you can do a very accurate shadow analysis,
which I think is absolutely crucial nowadays.
JOHN LANTERMAN: For them to be able to walk through and to
understand that sequence of experiences, I think it really
increases that learning curve, having a tool like SketchUp,
because our brains, we're so visual, that to gain this
instant understanding of what they're doing, it makes them
better designers.
And it makes our job easier.
Maybe the students are getting a little spoiled because it's
pretty sophisticated, the power that they have at their
fingertips.
But it's great.