USC’s Daley to Receive First Charles S. Swartz Award

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Mon, 09/08/2008 - 20:00 -- Nick Dager

The Hollywood Post Alliance has announced that the dean of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts Elizabeth M. Daley will receive the organization’s first Charles S. Swartz Award.  The award will be bestowed during the HPA Awards gala on November 6th and honors a person group company or technology that has made a significant artistic technological business or educational impact on post-production. The mission of this award is to recognize broad and lasting contributions that have advanced and/or provided some unique purpose to the field of post-production. Charles S. Swartz in whose honor the award was named passed away in 2007. Swartz was the executive director and CEO of the Entertainment Technology Center at USC as well as a respected technologist educator and producer. In announcing Daley as the recipient of the award HPA president Leon Silverman says “We are honored to have Elizabeth Daley be the first recipient of the Charles S. Swartz Award given Charles Swartz’s relationship to Dean Daley USC and the impact his own career had on the future of our industry. She has made important contributions to our industry in helping to prepare the filmmakers of the future for their careers in an era of significant creative and technological possibilities. In addition to her role at the School of Cinematic Arts Elizabeth has also had profound influence as a major architect in the industry’s thinking and planning for the digital revolution through her leadership of the USC Annenberg Center for Communication. Elizabeth Daley’s vision has extended well beyond the university. Her prescient view executed in an advanced curriculum is producing some of the industry’s most important creative and artistic innovators. Through her work and ideas she is helping to set the stage for the industry of the future. ” Daley is a globally recognized expert in digital media and academia. She has been the dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts since 1991 and was the founding executive director of the Annenberg Center (1995 – 2005). As the leader of the Cinematic Arts School Daley spearheaded the expansion of its six divisions as well as the infrastructure and endowment that supports them. Highlights of her tenure include the creation of 14 academic chairs construction of the 35 000-square-foot Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts and the founding of the Interactive Media division. She currently oversees the creation of a new cinematic arts compound which is composed of a new state of the art complex which will feature a 137 000-square-foot facility and four integral adjacent structures—a 36 000-square-foot instructional building; a 9 500-square-foot soundstage; a 9 200-square-foot soundstage; and an 8 450-square-foot soundstage. As director of the Annenberg Center she oversaw numerous projects exploring the intersection of digital technology and society including the Institute for Multimedia Literacy which examines and defines literacy for the 21st century based on a mastery of sound image and text. The Charles S. Swartz Award was created to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of post-production an industry in a state of an expanding creative palette and of dynamic transition as a result of digital technologies and societal changes. Swartz led the Entertainment Technology Center from 2002 until 2006 and helped to build it into the industry’s premiere test bed for new digital cinema technologies which helped to establish the ETC at USC as a vital educational center for entertainment professionals. In addition to a long and successful career as producer educator and consultant Swartz served on the board of directors of the HPA.   Hollywood Post Alliance Awards www.hpaawards.net