The "Bullpen," a new high-tech sanctuary in Melnitz Hall where head- phone-wearing students are engrossed in images that appear on 21-inch computer monitors, could be the incubator for the next Francis Ford Coppola.

The space-age look of the 25 new Power Mac G4s in the 'Pen, in private editing suites and other areas throughout the School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) fits perfectly with what is going on there day and night.

Using the latest version of Apple's video-editing software, Final Cut Pro, students are adding special effects, editing sound and doing other post-production work in a total digital environment - faster and ultimately cheaper than ever before. To store the massive amounts of data, the TFT Apple lab boasts the largest-known fiber-optically connected Final Cut Pro storage area network in the country. Capable of storing 3.4 terabytes, or 3,400 gigabytes, the network has made TFT the envy of such major film studios as Fox, Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros., all of whom have sent envoys to Melnitz to take a peek.

The creative energy pulsing through the Bullpen is just as palpable in a high-ceilinged computer lab on the second floor above the New Wight Art Gallery, where students from the School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLArts) are learning to master Final Cut Pro on their brand-new G4s. They are preparing to produce a broad range of multimedia projects, from video installations to dance documentaries and ethnographic videos.

"A Design|Media Arts student at one computer will be working on a new-genre project with innovative special effects they've created," explained UCLArts' Robert Winter, associate dean of technology and a pioneer in the authoring of CD-ROMs. "Seated next to him will be an ethnomusicologist who's editing 14 hours of film chronicling a music festival in Polynesia. It may seem like they're from different planets, but sitting together and editing, they start exchanging ideas and tips. That's what I find fascinating."

Farther north on campus, 27 teachers at the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School are experimenting with the use of digital camcorders and iMovie Apple software to make desktop videos on everything from how to use the library to how to dissect a cow's eye.

This digital boom in the north campus is being propelled by a unique alliance with Apple Computer. For TFT and UCLArts, it's been a relationship that's been nurtured over a year of discussions, briefings, demon-strations and visits between Westwood and Cupertino, the company's headquarters. Helping to broker this alliance, which benefits both these academic units and the company, was Academic Technology Services (ATS).

"From the moment we started banding together - faculty and staff from both schools and ATS - one of the very first things we all agreed on was that this relationship was not just about getting equipment," said ATS Director Marsha Smith, although that was one benefit. "That's not where corporate sponsors are anymore.

"The question we set out to answer was

From "SublimeConcrete," a project created in the UCLArts G4 lab by graduate student Dmitry Kmelnitsky from Design | Media Arts

how could we create a long-term alliance that would support both schools in their increasing use of digital media and that would blend strategic interests. For Apple, we would use their products, experiment with them in a teaching and research environment. Then we would give them our feedback. That, in turn, would influence the ongoing development of that product."

Out of the alliance later came a separate collaboration between Apple and UES, whose teachers are using the desktop movie technology and then giving Apple vital feedback. "Apple wants to know how teachers can use this, what the pitfalls are and what the advantages are to using iMovie," said Sharon Sutton, UES coordinator of technology.

Even before there was any talk of an alliance, students and faculty had already discovered Final Cut Pro.

In 1999, TFT purchased three Mac stations and the first version of the video-editing software. "We were already moving into the digital environment incrementally on our own. But we would never have been able to make this great leap forward without a strategic partner like Apple," said William McDonald, vice chair for production at TFT. McDonald recognized early on that Apple offered a powerful package at a much lower cost, compared to other high-end film-editing systems.

In 1999, UCLArts had come to a similar decision. "I bought six Mac stations with Final Cut Pro in 1999, and almost immediately we were overwhelmed by student demand to do digital editing," recalled Winter.

For Apple, UCLA offered a unique opportunity to see these products used and tested in an arts-education environment.

"What really appealed to Apple is the wide variety of arts we have here - creative people working in both traditional and experimental new genres of art, filmmakers as well as multimedia artists who are very much Web-oriented and pushing the bandwidth at every turn," Winter said.

Explained TFT's McDonald: "To Apple, we represent a different kind of user. Young and innovative, our students live and breathe filmmaking. They are always pushing the software to extremes in ways conventional film editors would never think of."

While Apple can make technology, noted Winter, "they don't understand all the cultural implications of that technology. If you think of the arts as not just reflecting culture, but being a leader of culture, then this is a place Apple should be."

Such strategic partnerships with industry have become essential to staying on the cutting edge, said TFT Dean Robert Rosen, whose school has several industry partners.

"Given the fast-paced evolution of technologies and the high cost of transforming the infrastructure, a media-based school like ours necessarily has to form strategic partnerships that involve university support, individual donors who believe in our mission and technology industries," noted Rosen. "We see the Apple relationship as a model to be extended to the rest of the industry." To implement the new technology at TFT, what Apple offered was complemented by funding from the university and the Blum-Kovler Foundation.

In addition to the Bullpen, TFT now has 12 video-editing systems in private suites. In a 50-seat lecture hall, students can instantly download their films from the network, show, then immediately edit them, according to the instructor's suggestions. "You can have an actual working editing session right in the classroom, instead of waiting a week or more to view the new version," McDonald said.

For UCLArts, said Arts and Architecture Dean Daniel Neuman, the alliance has opened up new creative possibilities for students and faculty across the school.

"When you have someone like me and my wife, two nonprofessional filmmakers making video documentaries on Indian musicians," said Neuman, "you know the technology has evolved to a point where people who never ever imagined making film or video can now do it. This opens up enormous creative possibilities that weren't there before, thanks to Apple."

UCLArts has also made a considerable investment in its video lab, hiring a full-time ethnographic filmmaker to work with students as well as purchasing additional hard drives. Students can also borrow digital cameras from their departments to shoot video.

"The importance of having a platform in which one creates moving images that are artificially constructed out of digits to simulate imagined realities cannot be underestimated," Neuman said. "It will increasingly become the basis for art forms in the future."

The Apple alliance is just the first of what ATS hopes it can achieve with other schools and units across the campus interested in leveraging multiple interests, said Smith. "An emerging role for ATS is to investigate new technologies. When a vendor has a product that is strategic to teaching and research, then what you want is an alliance. You ask for a relationship that's give-and-take and that allows us to work with them on product development. That's what has happened here."