Crafting picture-perfect careers

Michael Miller

Nick Medrud may be only 19, and he may be working on a minuscule

budget. But the Orange Coast College student producer still managed

to get Arnold Schwarzenegger in his debut film.

Last Thursday, Medrud and his production team gathered in the

Orange Coast College television studio to film a three-minute public

service announcement about safe sex. In the sketch, a young couple

about to get intimate find their bedroom infiltrated by a strange

pair of characters named Herpes and Gonorrhea, who warn them about

the perils of promiscuity. The set features a pink and white bed, a

pair of plants over the fireplace and, oddly enough, a poster from

Schwarzenegger’s film “Collateral Damage” on the wall.

Whence the connection?

“It’s an implication of the unsavory act,” Medrud said, referring

to the movie’s title. Unsafe sex can, after all, cause collateral

damage, and that’s the message of the La Mirada resident’s first

film, which he directed for the school’s Introduction to Studio

Television class.

“If it gets to even one person, we’ve done our job,” said

assistant professor Bob Lazarus, who oversees the course.

Every year, the Orange Coast College film and video department

turns out a number of public service shorts on topics from safe sex

to drug addiction and more. William Hall, the department chair,

passes on the best ones to Comcast, which has a local channel set

aside for Coast Community College District broad- casting. The films

that don’t make the airwaves still offer valuable first steps in the

student filmmakers’ careers.

“We have students who come up with ideas, write scripts, build

sets,” said director David Hersey, 27, of Anaheim. “It’s definitely a

class participation in all aspects of television.”

The safe-sex film, which started and wrapped on Thursday, featured

the efforts of six producers -- five of them assistants under Medrud

-- as well as student cinematographers, editors and sound

technicians. Medrud, who dreamed up the original concept, also penned

the script.

“We were just sitting in class, and Mr. Lazarus was talking about

the public service announcement thing, and it just came to me,”

Medrud recounted.

Apart from the public service shorts, the film and video

department turns out a number of other projects every year, including

a half-hour dramatic piece in which the acting, editing and

electronic field production classes collaborate.

The program also offers individual opportunities. Later this

month, seven works by Orange Coast College students will be screened

at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

“I want to be a filmmaker,” Medrud said. “That’s the ultimate goal

in life, right?”

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot

education writer Michael Miller visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa

area and writes about his experience.