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I received a Master of Fine Arts with an emphasis in screenwriting. I can talk about UCLA from the perspective of the screenwriting track (although everyone in every track has to take classes on general filmmaking as well). Richard Walter, who's been interviewed on programs like Hardball and the Today Show on Hollywood issues was one of my professors. Richard Walter (who wrote the first draft of American Grafitti and went to USC with George Lucas and even did a student film with him) is truly a wonderful person, a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy who will do almost everything he can for his students, including getting their screenplays in front of potential purchasers. I believe he became Department Chairman for awhile but I'm not sure what his position is now. I suggest your son get his phone number (in the UCLA directory online) and give him a call. He's a very nice person.
Graduating from there helped me to land a job working for a producer (Dino DeLaurentiis' son-in-law) and I had a chance to work a little on the development of low budget films like Pumpkinhead and Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure. I also was reading screenplays for Sam Raimi for awhile, and got paid to offer my opinion on some of his own potential projects. But when DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group went bankrupt I spent about a year looking for work in Hollywood without success and went back to law. My association with failure was the kiss of death (or so I was told at a couple of job interviews). In the meantime, I submitted screenplay after screenplay and it never came to anything. Truth is, I couldn't even get my co-workers at DeLaurentiis to read them. Maybe they were bad and maybe I didn't have enough talent, so I don't want to discourage your son. But he must realize that Hollywood is a very tough town and you need a lot of determination to make it. I think that many people (probably the majority) who graduate from the UCLA Film School abandon their dreams and find other things to do with their lives after awhile. It's not easy.
UCLA, however, has had a great number of students go on to very good success. Quite a few screenplays have come out of their program, perhaps even more than USC. Here's a list of just some of the screenwriters who went to UCLA who have become successful in Hollywood (from the UCLA website):
David Koepp (Spider Man, Mission Impossible)
Paul Schrader (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver)
Collin Higgins (Harold and Maude, Nine to Five)
Eric Roth (The Insider, Forrest Gump)
Shane Black (Lethal Weapon I & II, Last Action Hero)
Mike Werb and Michael Colleary (Face/Off, The Mask)
Ed Solomon (Men in Black, The In-Laws)
Alexander Payne (Election, What About Schmidt)
Audrey Wells (Shall We Dance, Truth About Dogs & Cats)
Daniel Pyne (The Manchurian Candidate, Sum of All Fears)
Scott Rosenberg (Gone in 60 Seconds, High Fidelity)
Scott Kosar (Machinist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
Randall Jahnson (The Doors, The Mask of Zorro)
David S. Ward (The Sting, Sleepless in Seattle)
Dan Gordon (Wyatt Earp, The Hurricane)
Sacha Gervasi (The Terminal, The Hypnotist)
James Herzfeld (Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers)
Niels Mueller (Tadpol, The Assassination of Richard Nixon)
Pamela Gray (A Walk on the Moon, Music of the Heart)
Robert Roy Pool (Outbreak, Armageddon)
Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 3)
Josefina Lopez (Real Woman Have Curves)
Richard Price (The Color of Money, Mad Dog and Glory)
Lewis Colick (Ladder 49, October Sky)
Dana Stevens (City of Angels, For the Love of the Game)
Paris Qualles (The Tuskegee Airmen, Rosa Parks Story)
Marianne Wibberley (National Treasure, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle)
Gregory Widen (The Highlander, Back Draft)
Kathy Stumpe (Cheers, Everybody Loves Raymond)
Patrick Cirillo (Tears of the Sun, Dangerous Heart)
Ed Neumeier (Starship Troopers, Robocop Trilogy)
Nicholas Griffin (Matchstick Men)
Michael Miner (Robocop)
Gregory Poirier (Rosewood, Tomcats)
Dean Hargrove (Perry Mason, Columbo)
Gloria Katz (American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
I was accepted at USC as well and went one semester to their film school. I found that USC had a more practical approach while UCLA was a lot freer and what some might call more "artsy fartsy". I can only talk about one semester at USC but I remember the film production class (here meaning directing, writing, and creating your own student film) had us watch several of the student films of George Lucas. Our first project was very controlled by the professor: we were told to go out and film an industry, factory, or any people at work and set it to a known piece of music, editing it down to no more than 3 minutes. The screenwriting class at USC had us do a lot of exercises designed to develop creativity. For example, each person (in a class of about 15) was told to write an opening event in a story. Then we were told to pass the paper to the person on the left. We had to continue to the next scene. We then had to keep passing it around faster and faster and faster. There were quite a few other exercises, such as: "A woman enters the room of her child for the first time since the child's death ... write that scene without one word of dialogue." Whereas at UCLA, screenwriting classes were less guided. Students would for example bring three screenplay ideas and the professor would ask the class to offer their criticism, as far as story value was concerned, all designed to get all the students thinking. Also, there seemed to be more emphasis on commercial film-making at USC whereas at UCLA they were looking for more socially conscious ideas. Again, it's just my impression from back in the mid 1980s.
I preferred UCLA to USC (and I couldn't afford USC's much higher tuition) also because of the sense of commaraderie there among the students, which I found somewhat lacking at USC. One drawback at UCLA was perhaps that there was too much freedom and not enough preaching and drilling on the fundamentals. For example, I did my "Project One" (first student film) with almost no input from my professor or critique. It was basically, present your idea to the class as a coherent 5 to 10 minute film and go out and film it, do sound, cast it, edit it, edit sound, and show it ... in a time-frame of about 6-7 weeks. One of the interesting things about UCLA was the open-house at professor Lew Hunter's house every couple of weeks. Lew Hunter was also a wonderful person and great teacher but I think he's retired. Basically, anyone in film could show up at Lew Hunter's for a party and network or just talk ideas. UCLA was a very open and free-wheeling environment.
I don't know what the situation is like now. I have a friend who now teaches screenwriting at USC named Frank McAdams. He's also an extremely gifted writer and a great teacher. You could also ask your son to call Frank McAdams at USC. Frank is also a very giving person and teacher. But McAdams just might say that UCLA is the better school because he went there as a student. In fact, he's a two-time Samuel Goldwyn Award winning screenwriter (the Sam Goldwyn is UCLA's highest student screenwriting award). When I was investigating film schools back in the '80's there was also the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, which has also produced a number of award-winning professionals.
My suggestion is to have your son talk to as many people as possible and visit various film schools, possibly asking to sit in on a class. It used to be very hard to get accepted into film school (I don't know about now) so perhaps a year or more of preparation before applying might be necessary (taking film classes at a community college, writing a sample screenplay or creating a sample film, doing an internship in a film company) as film schools like to see some film-oriented background before accepting students (at least they did in my time).
I wish your son good luck and good success.
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