Filmmaking How To: Choosing A Film School

I get asked all the time whether or not I think going to a traditional film school is a good idea and for the most part, I usually answer in that most annoying of ways, "it depends." How to go about choosing a film school and knowing what to look for is going to vary quite a bit depending on what you expect to get out of the film school experience and your financial resources.

The Benefits Of A Traditional Film School

I think one of the biggest benefits to attending a brick and mortar film school are the potential contacts that you can or will make during your time at the school. This is especially true if you are attending one of the more "elite" film programs at the University of Southern California (USC) or University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA.)  I've actually known a few graduates from USC's program that have gone on to do quite well from themselves. Now, I more think that this is largely due to their innate general abilities, but I would say that having the kind of access that they were afforded during their time at USC helped get them going a little quicker.

As you go further down the scale, the quality and type of contacts that you will make tends to go deteriorate accordingly. Once you get outside of the handful of good schools in LA or NY, I would honestly say that you're probably just wasting your time and money. Now, most potential students I talk to tend to put an inordinate focus on the experience of being in film school. They read the promotional literature about how they'll be doing film schoots "from the very first day" and stuff like that and I think they kind of get bamboozled by it a bit.

Where The Brick And Mortar Film Schools Fall Short

The toughest part about teaching film production is that filmmaking in general requires significant time and expense to execute properly. A "normal" work day for a film crew is quite often 12 hours long and during that time, they may only shoot two minutes of material that will actually show up on screen. Now, clearly, this just isn't practical and will never work in a classroom setting. Even if the school could afford to run a class such as this (which they can't), most students have an expectation of spending a couple of hours in a class, not sitting on a set for 12 hours while a select few people are doing set up work.

As far as having access to specialized film cameras, equipment and things like that, it can be a benefit, but I would argue that in the grand scheme of things, the amount of time you actually spend with the equipment is insufficient to be competitive with say, a guy who's working 50 hours a week in the camera department as a studio or at a camera rental house. And never mind a guy who's working 80 hours a week actually shooting films professionally.

What Your Really Study At Film School

Most aspiring filmmakers come to the industry with a very odd notion that somehow they are already qualified to make films and the only ingredient they might be lacking is someone with money to give to them. The cold truth of the matter is that the filmmaking process involves an incredibly diverse set of skills that requires a lot of working practice to know how to get right. The pitch that the film schools use to attract students is that they will be gaining those skills during their education, but as I pointed out above, that is simply not practical, nor realistic. If you go on a tour of ANY film school, what you will likely see are students in classrooms listening to lectures. The State has requirements that must be fulfilled before a degree can be granted and those elements are going to take up at least half (if not more) of your time in class and during study.

After that, you will spend the next major bulk of your time participating in classes that are more "teachable" and "testable". As in, where they can assign you homework and then quiz you on the results. Thus, the multitude of classes on film history, film criticism, studying various film movements and courses of that nature. What time you have left, you will most likely spend rotating between various student film projects. Even those rarely offer any significant experience, as the projects are often severly under budgeted for time and are usually wholly under control of the students themselves, which, for obvious reasons, doesn't bode well for the educational opportunities. Or, to put it more bluntly, it's the blind leading the blind.

How To Choose

Like I said early on, I think there can be a nice benefit to attending a film school from the perspective of making future contacts. Also, actually having a legitimate four year college degree can be very beneficial later on in life when you may decide to further your education or, even just getting a job in general. So, in choosing a film school, I would say your most important criteria should be the depth and breadth of your potential contacts followed by the quality of the non-film related education. A degree in anything from UCLA or USC is going to look a lot better in almost every circumstance than something from a specialized "art" college. Of course, you'd better bring some money, because that access isn't going to come cheap. 

Outside of the top tier schools (I actually have specific recommendations and links on this page) I think that you can find a lot better ways to spend your time and money. If you're thinking about a film program in Indiana or something like that, I can say wholeheartedly to not even bother. You will make almost no meaningful contacts and you'd frankly be better off studying computer science or engineering, where you might actually be able to get a job when you're done.

It's About Experience

As far as getting "experience" making films, you can do the bulk of that on your own nowadays. In fact, I would argue that, provided you are practicing good, solid filmmaking techniques, you will rise to a level of competence as a filmmaker far quicker than most of your film school counterparts. This leads me to what Film School Online is all about, which is giving aspiring filmmakers and students an opportunity to learn those fundamental skills and then apply them in the real world. So, in closing, I would say that if you are dead set on choosing a traditional, brick and mortar film school, you should concentrate on the few that I have listed on the resources page. Otherwise, step up, use the tools that are available here for less than the cost of most film school application fees and go out and actually DO what you want to do, which is make films.

Hope this helps and good luck on your shoot!

-Danny