Academic Filmmaking for Profit

Gregory Smith/Chapman Entertainment Scott Glenn, left, on the set of “Trigger,” with the movie’s director Basel Owies, a 2010 graduate of Chapman University.

Venture philanthropy Social entrepreneurship Robert L. Bassett, dean of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange County, Calif., said he still wasn’t sure how to label it.

But Mr. Bassett is finally in the thick of his college’s experiment in moviemaking for profit, via an adjunct studio, Chapman Filmed Entertainment, of which he is chief executive. The idea is to make movies directed by Chapman alumni, with crews composed largely of alumni and students.

And the lessons are piling up.

“We’re shooting in Montrose today for $10,000 a day,” he said recently of a first feature that is already a little more expensive than he intended.

It is a thriller called “Trigger,” directed by Basel Owies, a 2010 Chapman graduate, with Scott Glenn in a leading role. The budget, Mr. Bassett said, is about $1.25 million â€" somewhat outside the $250,000 to $1 million target that was set after Chapman announced its new studio in 2011.

“When students are working for nothing, you can’t trim the budget by cutting days,” said Mr. Bassett, describing the special challenges of containing the cost of a film on which many students are already working for about $8 an hour.

He noted that a similar filmmaking venture at the University of Texas, called Burnt Orange Productions, faltered in a weak market after making four movies in the middle of the last decade.

But the Chapman investors are all stakeholders in the university, he said, and they have been schooled to regard their support, in part, as a lift for the film program and its graduates.

Still, the goal is to make some money by producing a full slate of five or six films â€" provided Mr. Bassett can manage what he acknowledges is the “hard part,” finding a distributor.

He has already called at Lionsgate and Screen Gems, where executives told him to come back when he had a finished movie to show. Failing that, he said, there’s always video on demand.

That, he has already learned, is “where you get no money upfront.”

A Magazine Article on Race Sets Off an Outcry

Few subjects appear to provoke from readers as much debate, and anger, as race does. Since Philadelphia Magazine published its article “Being White in Philly: Whites, race, class, and the things that never get said” in late February, it has drawn a public rebuke by the city’s mayor, the threat of a boycott by the local African-American Chamber of Commerce and at least two forums where the magazine’s editor and the article’s writer answered angry questions.

“I absolutely stand by the journalism in the story,” Tom McGrath, the editor of Philadelphia Magazine, said.

Controversy clearly can be good for business. The magazine, whose circulation has declined nearly 10 percent in the last five years, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, had a minor boom in sales from the issue. Tom McGrath, the editor, said the article generated 1.4 million page views, a milestone for the site. The article has over 6,000 comments online, and Mr. McGrath said several vendors told the magazine that they sold out of the issue and wanted more copies.

But the issue’s notoriety may have a downside. The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller criticized the article’s author, Robert Huber, for providing anonymity to all of his interview subjects and painting a portrait of a city devoid of any voices other than white residents.

Mr. Huber did not include any interviews with African-Americans, and all 10 white Philadelphia residents in the article were quoted by first name or by a changed name. The article also shed light on how little diversity there is at the magazine, which has one full-time African-American employee.

Adrienne Simpson, an event planner at Philadelphia Magazine, wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The all-white staff of a city magazine, a city whose black population makes up 44 percent of its residents, is ill-equipped to spearhead any kind of enlightened discussion about race. Why Because its hiring practices have made it abundantly clear that black people and their opinions have no place in its discussions. And I don’t just mean discussions about race.”

Shalimar Blakely, executive director of the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, said she hoped that the controversy might persuade Philadelphia Magazine to consider creating a more diverse work environment. While she was hopeful that the magazine would make changes on its own, she stressed that the business community would resort to more serious measures.

“Whether or not it will turn into a boycott, I don’t know,” Ms. Blakely said. “I’m open to whatever steps it takes to make the magazine more diverse.”

Mr. McGrath, the editor, said: “I absolutely stand by the journalism in the story,” but he added that he was open to increasing diversity in the magazine’s workplace.

“It’s an issue I’ve committed to taking a look at,” he said, “in terms of the way we go forward, in how we handle the sensitive issues about race.”

ABC Creates Commercial to Save Its ‘Happy Endings’

The impulse among television superfans to create “save our show” campaigns for every imperiled sitcom and drama has been co-opted by one of the very networks that shows have to be saved from.

“Friday, March 29, you can save ‘Happy Endings,’ ” intones ABC’s new commercial for the low-rated sitcom. A graphic at the beginning of the ad has the word “SAVE” in bright red letters.

Call it ingenious or call it cynical â€" television bloggers have called it both in the last few days. “ABC Starts a Campaign to Save ‘Happy Endings’ From ABC,” read an emblematic headline on the comedy Web site Splitsider.

“If ‘Happy Endings’ Winds Up Canceled, ABC Plans to Blame You,” said TV.com. The write-ups are proof that the ad is having its intended effect, stirring talk about the two-year-old series, though ABC declined to comment on the ad or on its larger strategy surrounding the show’s return on Friday from a two-month hiatus.

Friday is a new time slot for “Happy Endings,” and not an entirely comfortable one; television viewership is relatively low on Friday nights and shows are frequently canceled after short stays there. Savvy viewers know that, which might be why ABC took the “Save ‘Happy Endings’ ” tack with the ad that made its debut late last week.

Jezebel subsequently published a list of five reasons the show was worth saving. (Among them: “The characters are not always likable, but they are always lovable.”)

ABC is also relaying the “save the show” message with Internet ads. Nielsen ratings will determine whether it can be saved. Despite what the ad states, it might be too late: TV by the Numbers, a Web site that algorithmically assesses the chances that shows will be canceled, wrote of “Happy Endings” last week, “Fans are kidding themselves if they think ABC will renew it.”