CCipedia for film majors

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
1

<p>I wanted to post a thread that presents some of the basics for future "film" students. It should not be a post comparing programs or schools, but just one which - like wikipedia - is user contributed and gives useful information. I'm drawing these from questions I had when my son told me, "I want to go to film school."</p>

<ol>
<li>What is the difference between "film studies" and "film production?"</li>
<li>What about other programs which could be related to/be an alternative to "film," like "media arts" or "media studies" or "video production?"</li>
<li>"Film school" ....does that only refer to grad school? What kinds of film production programs are there for undergrads?</li>
<li>What about programs that don't allow you in until Junior year? What do you do for the first two years? What if you are not accepted after that time?</li>
<li>Which schools are known for assigning you positions for making films vs. groups independently determining who does what?</li>
<li>In which schools can you start making films right away? And make lots of films?</li>
<li>What are the "jobs" in film? Other than screenwriting and directing, what else can be learned in college? How can you get experience in other positions and find your true passion? Want to be on set? Or want to shape the post-production look and feel of the film? Or are the various pre-production jobs more to your taste?</li>
<li>What are the job prospects and what kind of career can one reasonably expect from a film production major? (Obviously, this depends on your area of specialization).</li>
<li>Do you need to go to a "name" school to make it in the film industry? What are the advantages? Do California schools give you a leg-up in the industry?</li>
<li>What about TV? How i that different?</li>
<li>Are there "artsy" vs "trade school" approaches? Which is best for me/my kid?</li>
<li>What are the costs of various schools? Are scholarships available to film students?</li>
<li>Should I take any equipment off to college (cameras, microphones, booms, etc) or will the school supply all that? What <em>do</em> I take with me to film school?</li>
</ol>

<p>.....and many other questions as well. They seem limitless, and <em>are</em> overwhelming when you are first approaching this.</p>

2

<p>Media studies is big right now with web technology and social networking. There is also industrial media, podcasts, and conference technology used. Half of media world is dictated by advertising dollars.</p>

3

<p>Great questions, Digmedia. I know you must have some or all of the answers as well as the questions. Would you like to take a stab at some of them? I’ll tackle the first one:
film studies and film production. In film studies courses, you primarily watch and analyze films. You might read opinions of critics, and you would form your own interpretations- writing about films yourself. You study films. In film production courses, you film and edit a movie. You might be the screenwriter and the cinematographer, editor, director etc… or you might have one job in a group of students producing a film. In this venue, you produce films.</p>

4

<p>I just remember being sort of overwhelmed at the beginning. We’d start investigating schools only to find that the film production program was for grad school only, or that some schools made you cool your heels for two years before you’d even know if you would be accepted. All of those questions above were in our heads as we (I was doing some of the basic research on schools to bring them to his attention) started the search process.</p>

<p>The video production track in the Media Arts major provided what seemed like everything the film major would. The reasoning was that movies are being made digitally these days, so that seemed to be the way to go.</p>

<p>Of course, when you first start out looking at film schools, USC is the first one to look at. But the cost would have been prohibitive, even with some expected scholarships. But then you learn there are so many film and video production programs that you go from only knowing about one choice to knowing about too many. It was hard to sort through them all.</p>

5

<p>Ya, there is a lot of emphasis on brand name recognition on cc. For transfers its different. Contract and focus wise csun ends up accepting all my lower division so can move forward wo having to repeat classes 4 junior year!</p>

6

<p>soz if i disrupted the thread. Much of this has been hashed over so lets see how the questions from the CC community evolve. Kudos and Gold Star Award to Digi for being so supportive of his sons major!</p>

7

<p>@ Digmedia,</p>

<p>Great idea for a thread!</p>

<p>@ Kmazza,</p>

<p>You didn’t disrupt the thread but let’s start on question #1. Let me use an example and ask your advice.</p>

<p>Pepperdine has recently begun offering a course of study in Film Studies. How would something like this compare to LMU’s major in Film Production? You know about 1000x more than most about this, how do you see it?</p>

<ul>
<li>Wheaty</li>
</ul>

8

<p>Hmmm, good question. I was just discussing Malibu on a post too where Pepperdine is located. Pepperdine is a great school and take education seriously so would imagine they would offer something of quality. They usually are willing to pay for good instructors and given the recent popularity of film and photography lately am confident they invested wisely. </p>

<p>Ok, here is the thing some people misunderstand and becomes quite conspiracy laden. There are these ideas that all teachers are Marxists who teach Marxist ideology etc etc. For the most part that isn’t true for the majority of teachers. It’s been viewed as a dead ideology since the Berlin Wall came down. Although, his ideas have greatly resonated with millions of Americans and others worldwide for 150 years, especially the artists who many sympathized for due to the dangers and sacrifices they faced.</p>

<p>The main premise of Marx’s Capital treatise was that that the Capitalist class (not Capitalism itself) pays a worker just enough daily to survive which puts him in the slave wage like position on having to come back the next day and do it all over again. So how does this relate to film studies? Well, for one, all the workers in the industry got paid crap for decades, except for the above the line Actors Guild and Directors. The screenwriters, grips, gaffers, editors, producers decided to form their own guilds. They were doing that because not unlike today with striking similarities, workers were threatened to accept lower and lower wages or be replaced by illegal imported labor. </p>

<p>Why do you think Regan hated the Communists workers, organizations and guilds which were common in everyday America at the time!?!??! Well, because pretty much everyone else in the industry thought the Actors were getting way overpaid compared to the large gaps in what they were getting. The amount of violence throughout US and California History over jobs in this country is utterly mind blowing and downplayed.</p>

<p>Anyways, for those people to create a form of ‘art’ which they viewed film and photography as back in the day was to create a film language. To do that there had to be some way to communicate timeless ideas that could be developed onto the silver screen. It had to be done in a way that was both analytical and could be passed down generation to generation and worked upon. Although not Marxist in ‘thought’ per se it was Marxist in ‘principle’. That is, it held up to historical materialist authority by referencing a source that could be verified and peer reviewed to see if it holds weight.</p>

<p>Let me offer an example…textbooks. What is called ‘Marxist’ Academia is just a tradition just like anything else more than an ideology. When I research and write a paper, I am obligated to properly state a bibliography based upon ‘authority’, even though that term has even been changed recently because sounds too ‘governmental’ haha. What that means is I have to state my source, author (authority!!!), date, publication etc. for credibility purposes that I critically put consideration into where I got the information from to analyze for bias, fallacies, and misinformation.</p>

<p>In 1991 and again in 2001, there was a huge consolidation of the producers and directors of information, very much including textbooks. Each time that started happening I started noticing strange references in the textbooks which young people rarely question or bother to look up. There would be these claims like such and such person is an ‘expert’ or such and such science is sound because ‘so and so’ said so. An EXPERT, wow that sounds credible now doesn’t it. I would start researching these so called ‘experts’ and realized more than half were hacks that worked for the publishing company and were just being plugged in to sell more (text)books…get it yet!!!</p>

<p>Anyways film studies is a very sophisticated language. It’s a mix of semi marxist thought, art theory, literature and analysis, history, theater, critical theory, semiotics, linguistics, politics, psychology, and philosophy later on towards post modernism. Is this a bad thing in and of itself…no, its just the way it is. The problem is it takes TONS of reading to understand and an immense amount of knowledge and experience to finally go aha and make sense of it all. These people from high up scientists and educators to the artist studied the human condition and your mind so know how to invoke the desired emotional reaction. </p>

<pre><code>The other problem is because there is a steep learning curve, film studies tends to go way over many young peoples heads. Not because they are dumb, because you’d be surprised how media savvy people are today, but because of the lack of ‘visual literacy’ or deciphering what one is seeing. That may be one of the appeals but what happens if not enough don’t get what they are seeing in a more big picture manner they tend to personalize issues back to themselves. The effect is that some students start trying to seek (or convey) meaning in almost everything where their may be none or non-intentional or just looking in all the wrong places.
</code></pre>

<p>This causes a crisis of tradition vs. re-inventing the wheel. Unfortunately in the US, especially in today’s world compared to the golden age of cinema and sound, media is ALL about the money. It’s going through a transformation as has done before in the past being forced too by powerful interest and necessity to conform to the digital dystopia. </p>

<p>The next question is all this necessary??? Hmmm, well I think visual literacy is very important so people understand when their senses are being seduced. Some like to appear intellectual but tend to overthink this stuff so become critics I suppose. Generally, I tend to side with the average everyday viewer and concerned more with…well did you like it or not??? Most people aren’t concerned with technical stuff and keep voicing… sure we enjoy $$$$ CGI but we LOVE a great story that will make us laugh, cry, dream etc.
I suppose once you get it, it’s all about applying that knowledge somewhere or having some outlet with it i.e. scriptwriting, film production, advertising etc. Now that people are becoming more visually literate, I’m just hoping more start reading again. The majority of classic movies were adaptations from books because Americans LOVED reading murder mysteries and noir and anything to do with the American Dream and normal people who do great things and rise above etc. sorry if rather long, gotta go.</p>

9

<p>Loved the long history lesson, but no one has responded since. Daughter is freshman film production major at LMU. When applying she specifically focused on schools that advertised early hands on opportunities vs. UCLA type wait until junior year, and CC really helped gather this information. Not sure where we heard this before, but people have pushed the idea of working on other student’s movies, and her opportunity to do this at LMU has been even greater than she expected. She has been on a set almost every weekend in A.C. and grip positions that she has truly enjoyed, everything from 2nd year to grad student productions. Almost none of this has been connected to her 1st year film classes, and it has actually monopolized her weekends. There are lots of ways to approach film at college, and I thought people would find details on experiences interesting. How about sharing what it is like at other film schools in the 1st year or two.</p>

10

<p>jtmoney -</p>

<p>I have been one of the ones pushing pushing pushing on-set experience and love hearing about your daughter. At my son’s school, every year they had a big event called Shootout, where students get a random genre, line of dialog, and a prop and have 48 hours to get a five-minute film made, including scripting, production, location agreements, original music, editing, etc. With his own and others’ films, my son worked on over 50 films in his four years. As for a look into freshman experience, you can see for yourself. The film they did as freshmen for Shootout can be seen online. Their genre was “Instructional Video,” the line of dialog was “It’s a rite of passage,” and their prop was a lampshade. The movie they made was “How to Have Fun With Alcohol.” But the interesting part was that they made a BTS to go with it (“behind-the-scenes”). And that is available as well, and gives a good insight into the group dynamics and the way the film got made, from idea to screening. If you wish, I will send you (and anyone else who wants to see them) a link to the films in a PM.</p>

<p>But I think your daughter will really enjoy her experience.</p>

11

<p>No posts on this site in a while. Digmedia: How about posing one question at a time? I’d be really interested in what people have to say about each of them. I wonder if each was it’s own separate thread, would they get more responses?</p>

12

<p>They was just discussing Malibu on a post too where Pepper dine is located of the film majors. I just was ideology since the Berlin Wall came down a film.</p>

13

<p>Richardluthar,</p>

<p>Have you considered a career in screenwriting? </p>

<ul>
<li>Wheaty</li>
</ul>

14

<p>Attempting to revive a “dead” feature discussion that I thought had potential, now that the cycle of research, application, waiting, decisioning is about to start again.
Let’s try this question:
9. Do you need to go to a “name” school to make it in the film industry? What are the advantages? Do California schools give you a leg-up in the industry?</p>

15

<p>You are right, jt. This thread’s potential remains untapped. Q#9, anyone? </p>

<p>(If nothing else, it was worth re-featuring the One-Two punch of Richardluthar’s genius + Wheaty’s response, above, LOL)</p>

16

<p>Re Q9: what is it that a Big Name school provides beyond prestige and connections? Are these the unique advantages that determine success? </p>

<p>Do the strong academic foundations provided by the Big Names figure in to the equation? As in: graduates are broadly educated, mature, storytelling artists? It seems this maturity could be developed outside of the Big Two or Three programs, however. </p>

<p>Lastly…Does the namebrand and who-you-know <em>always</em> trump quality, hard work, talent, decency, dogged persistence and other sundry virtues that might otherwise figure into success? Most likely, success is a matter of all that AND connections. </p>

<p>And what about a marginal, not-so-hard-working grad of Big Name School vs. stellar grad of Mid/No Name School? Will grad #1 always prevail when these two are vying for a first job, for example?</p>

17

<p>Q9 is extremely tough.</p>

<p>Because I want to do film (unwavering in this decision), I’m obviously looking into the big names such as USC, UCLA, Chapman, CalArts, etc. especially NYU and Pratt because they are local for me. but when you look at it, the genre of art universities represents notoriously high tuitions with low return rates after graduation. The bigger names are usually just 10k-15k more than the lower-tier programs, but the lower-tier film programs are still expensive, especially if they have a sufficient amount of resources (cameras, lighting, stages, etc.) to lend to students. </p>

<p>moreover, most of the biggest film directors known to man didn’t go to USC/UCLA/NYU. Spielberg was rejected from USC THREE times, where he then settled to Long Beach. Hell, some of the biggest names today didn’t even go to college. This doesn’t even only include the film industry. This does not mean that there haven’t been big names that haven’t gone to big name schools. Michael Bay and Joss Whedon went to Wesleyan… not really a big name school, but well-known. </p>

<p>I am a firm believer in experience. I am a high school junior, taking a film class taught by a man who has actually worked in the business for 13 years, yet I know MORE than him in a few aspects of production. This could just be because a lot of the equipment now is much different than previously, but still…</p>

<p>Yet I must say that in these $60,000/year schools, the connections you make could potentially be much more lucrative than the average state school film program. My uncle graduated from NYU’s film program, and he made a very great point. He said to me in an email, “true, the school does not matter, but the PEOPLE do. In a regular SUNY film program, you make connections with the average/lower-income students, or the students who are just getting their feet wet in producing films. In a huge name school, you’re making connections with people who are just getting their feet wet, lower-income students with talent who earned grants/scholarships/worked to pay their tuition, and the rich, babied kids who have big name legacies. In the big name schools, you connect with everybody. That means more opportunities for work.” </p>

<p>I couldn’t really rebuttal that point, but if anybody else can, trust me, I’d be appreciative to hear it, since my 9th and 10th grade scores have put a bruise on my transcript due to extenuating circumstances to the point where my ONLY saving graces are my extensive film portfolio and 11th year grades. I barely have an E.C. to report… but so far, I am going to agree with him, since he has never and I mean NEVER not had a “gig” of some sort… and he is a Screenwriter. I have to laugh.</p>

18

<p>I think the major advantage of a big name school is the network available to tap into. Not only will the big schools have large alumni networks, but the students at these schools are the cream of the crop, and will also be part of the connections you make. Of course, going to a top school will not guarantee success but will give you an advantage over those who don’t.</p>

19

<p>Another shot at reviving this thread, in the guise of bragging about my D’s LMU experience.
Just returned from helping with “crafty” (food service) on D’s Junior level thesis film, roughly 10 minute no dialogue narrative must be shot on film. Wow! The network she built by working on other student’s movies the past three years so paid off. From graduates to Freshmen, watching a crew of 20 do a three day shoot, including finishing with a 12 hour 9 pm to 9 am marathon, was simply amazing. The professionalism and teamwork was amazing, start to finish. There was no doubt in my mind that an LMU graduate could be prepared to step directly into the industry.
Repeat, could be, as listening to her stories there are students her level that have no clue because they haven’t done the dirty practical work of being on set every possible opportunity.
Other interesting things to consider: her production costs were considerable and that is a major consideration concerning the cost of a film school program. She is the ultimate cheap skate, half her film stock was given to her (all those contacts), student discounts, etc. but I think she broke her $5000 budget. One must consider production costs for a film degree, I got the impression she was on the bottom end of average at LMU. What about other schools? Digital vs. film would save a ton, and rumor is LMU won’t require film after this year.
Other information from film school world? It would be great for future applicants to know how schools differ in their approach to the practicalities of production as a major.</p>

20

<p>I was just reading some posts here and at other sites about schools like The Art Institutes and Full Sail and basically how for profit schools like this are really just there for profit and not for the students and that a degree from there not only doesnt matter but that it actually hurts you in ways and is a waste of your time and money… I am now going to the AI of SLC and am just wondering if anyone disagrees with those comments??! I was really excited to have been accepted so fast / got financial aid going and clAsses started up but now I am not so sure… I am 26 and have already been in the film industry for the past 8ish years… Working on everything from ACing Discovery’s “American Loggers”, DPing and editing “The Michael Phelps Story” and producing,shooting, and editing hundreds of other nAtional commercial spots and tens of national documentaries. I honestly went back to school to take a break… Get back into a creative role insteAd of a reality series sellout… And make it more about filmmaking And storytelling like I wanted to do when I was younger rather than stock locked and loaded reality or money based projects where they all have the same formula… I want the BA Instead off ASsociates and I wanted it from a good school with talented and creative people… Am I wrong in questioning this? Am I in the right place? What would YOU DO?!</p>