<p>I have not posted on here in quite a while, but since my son is graduating from college this year, I wanted to pass on what I think we've learned about film school.</p>
<p>First, bjdzyak is giving some excellent advice. What you learn in class and where you go to film school is probably not nearly as important as [ol]
[<em>]getting experience with as many productions as you can, [</em>]making a name for yourself, even as a student, [li]learning what it is you want to do in the industry.[/ol]</p>[/li]
<p>How do you get experience? You find a school which has lots of hands-on experience. My son, for example, has worked on over 50 productions in his 4 years of college. He has worked as director, DP, producer, editor, sound editor, and on and on. He has begun to focus more and more on visual effects, and had the school send him to California to become certified on Shake, the industry's standard for vfx. You also want to immerse yourself in as many competitions as possible. His school, for example, does a 48-hour shootout each year, giving each team a random genre, line of dialog, and a prop to use, and gives them 48 hours to write, produce, score, and do all the post-production work and DVD authoring for a 5-minute film. In addition, all of the music must be original and the paperwork must be in order (location agreements, people releases, etc...), making the production totally "publishable." That gives great "real-world experience" and is done under tremendous pressure. His team also entered external competitions, and they ranked 4th nationally in Apple's Insomnia Shootout (over 500 teams signed up, although fewer than that actually finished in the time frame). He also formed a production company and has done several jobs, including commercials and concert films. Last summer, he was hired to make a documentary film in rural Nicaragua. It was a very small crew (just my son and a friend), but it was interesting that he had to please the client and get the work done on time.</p>
<p>How do you make a name for yourself? Through competitions like the above and through quality productions (where you can own your own film - unlike USC film school) that get accepted at film festivals. His team's capstone film project, a 33-minute short, was a high-budget (for a student film) affair using actual Screen Actors Guild professionals that they flew in to the location and paid, housed, and fed. It was a period piece, which meant (for the exterior shots) bringing in vintage cars, and having the police (Cleveland, btw) close off the streets to traffic during filming. The result? The film has just been accepted into an international film festival, which also landed it a spot in IMDB. The university also paid the expenses for his team to travel to Hollywood for a screening of the film there. He is now involved as Visual Effects Supervisor on a feature-length film, Trailerpark, based on the book by Russell Banks, a well-known author (e.g., The Sweet Hereafter and others). HBO had the film rights to the book, but dropped them, and the student group picked them up. His school contributed financially to the earlier short and to the feature length film, which is involving over 70 students.</p>
<p>And learning what you want to do? bjdzyak suggests finding a school based on which specialty you want to focus on, but I disagree with that aspect of his advice. I don't think you KNOW what you want to do until you do it. I've seen people who became totally enamored with special-effects makeup or production design or casting or scriptwriting only after doing them. The point is to get involved with productions, do lots of jobs, and you might be surprised to find out that your passion lies in a area you might not have even known existed. But when you do get that focus, then GET EXPERIENCE with it. And more experience. And more experience in as "real-world" an environment as you can get.</p>
<p>Sorry that this is so long, but so many of you are focusing on which school to attend, which is most "prestigious," etc, when in fact I don't think it matters, as long as it gives you opportunities, and you take advantage of those opportunities.</p>
<p>Too bad this will go by the wayside as other posts come in, because, IMHO, there <em>is</em> some good advice being offered in this forum, but I'm not sure everyone sees it, or takes advantage of it.</p>