<p>Hi everyone, I hope you can help me!
I am a 17 year old jr in high school. I know that I want to be an actress and a filmmaker( original, i know). I am definitly going to go to school for acting, but I am having trouble deciding wether or not to go to undergraduate school for film making. I have heard and read many articles that say going to film for undergrad is useless, and that if you MUST go to film school you should go for graduate school( the latter of which i plan to do). I have researched many graduate film programs that say you do not need an undergrad degree in film to be accepted. Is this true? What do you think I should do?
Thanks for your help!</p>
<p>Good Question!!! One I don’t think anyone can answer accurately either. Talent is not decided by which school one goes to and what level but by the hard determination put into ones craft and being able to sell yourself. There still are more jobs in the business side of film then there are in production. There are also more opportunities in other aspects of film like set design, stage management, production assistants, and marketing than film-making. If you are interested in acting but want an education that closely resembles what it’s like to work on a set then may want to check out Theater Design: Emphasis in Film/TV programs. Females in general do well in that field as well as in screenwriting since production does tend to be more male and labor dominated.</p>
<p>Thanks for your advice! I want to be a screenwriter and director. I know it’s mostly male dominated, but I believe I can do it (look at Kathryn Bigelow)</p>
<p>Ok point taken. Although one would not need an undergrad in film to go to grad school for film, it would be the more difficult route to take. Grad film school is more towards specialization built upon knowledge learned during undergrad. If you want a mix of acting, screenwriting, and directing then I would still recommend TA:F/TV emphasis. Do you know if you wouldn’t mind working in TV as a PA, script analyst, or set director or r u a film nut?</p>
<p>kmazza has some good ideas and that could be a start for doing some research in schools.</p>
<p>The main thing is to find a school in which you can start getting lots of experience making films and getting to know what you really want to do. Almost everyone who enters a film or media arts/production major has dreams of being a director. But with experience working on films, they tend to suddenly find that there are lot of jobs associated with filmmaking and they get experience with one that they might fall in love with. A good example to look at are the assistant director positions (First and Second). Contrary to what you might think, these are not just assistants to the director, but very specific jobs: The First Assistant Director is really reporting to the producer and has the responsibility of running, with the unit production manager, the entire set during production. The Second Assistant Director has a completely different job and is sort of the overall manager of the actors: he/she creates the daily call sheets from the production schedule, serves as the “backstage manager”, working with the actors, putting cast through make-up and wardrobe, and manages the background (extras).</p>
<p>These are more management jobs then creative ones, but some people find they are much more suited to positions like these. </p>
<p>Then there are some, like my son, who gravitate to the more technical tasks (editing, visual effects, etc.). But it takes experience on set and with lots of films to help sort that out.</p>