Is Film School Worth It?

How Valuable is Film School?

by Tom Allen | Published September 10, 1994

The rush to film school continues unabated, and considering the film industry's growth and bright prospects in the emerging Cable Age, the trend may be only in its infancy. But is film school really worth the considerable amount of time, effort and money it demands? Would it be possible to redirect those resources and make an independent film instead, learning the ropes in the process? How naive a notion is that, bearing in mind that it wasn't so long ago that hard-won apprenticeships were the only "film schools," and that the quality of movies didn't seem to suffer. We decided to ask several prominent directors if they believe changing times and new technologies have made formal film school education necessary, or whether a young would-be moviemaker might still be able to bypass the instructional leagues and jump right into The Show.

If your goal, like most film students, is to become a director, you should know that many working directors believe that the best preparation is not film study at all but immersion in the humanities and social sciences. Elia Kazan said: "A film director is better equipped if he's well-read. He should study the classics for construction, exposition of theme, the means of characterization, and for dramatic poetry." To make good films you must explore life's nuances and allow what you discover to inform every frame of your work. Did Edward Dmytryk not understand about the suffering of a sensitive outcast while directing Montgomery Clift in The Young Lions? Was Milos Forman not keenly aware when directing John Savage in Hair of the ironies swirling around a Vietnam-bound farmboy lost on the lawns of a flower-powered Central Park? The directors we spoke to agree on this point: Whether or not you choose film school, having a rich life outside of school is what gives you something to say once you have the opportunity. The medium is already fat with examples of form without content. What is needed now are more artists.

The directors who responded to our survey offered some well-worn truisms, as expected, such as the notion that you cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. There were also points of disagreement. But we were struck by the unanimous admonition that while film school may help you enhance your natural ability and focus and articulate your message, do not expect it to give you that message.

The question of film school, they told us, is secondary. First and foremost, if you wish to participate in this unique and ongoing experiment in the visual arts; if it is your desire to entertain, inspire, educate or subvert utilizing the most powerful storytelling medium known to man, you must become a dedicated student of life. Investigate history and literature. Travel and explore different cultures. Teach, wait tables, sell ads, practice law, join Habitat for Humanity; these and other tough paths present the challenges that are key to formulating an artistic vision. Commercially, the movie business is doing just fine. But as an art form it is in serious decline. If film is to survive as art, it is essential that people in cinema acquire a solid humanistic foundation before expecting to excel at their craft.

Edward Dmytryk

(The Caine Mutiny; Back to Bataan; Raintree County; Murder, My Sweet)

Eddie Dmytryk started his career in 1923 as a messenger boy at Famous Players Lasky, which later became Paramount Pictures. Back then the studios were like small cities that employed thousands of people and shuttled young apprentices through every possible trade and craft related to film production, including writing and acting. It was in this way, apprenticing, that young Mr. Dmytryk learned the business. After some years working as a projectionist he arranged a transfer to the editorial department and began a fruitful 10-year stint editing for such directors as Leo McCarey (The Bells of St. Mary's, Duck Soup) and George Cukor (David Copperfield, The Philadelphia Story). This led to an opportunity in 1939 to take over direction of a B picture. Some 40 years later, when he left filmmaking and entered the world of academia, he had directed 57 features, including a number of timeless American classics.

Edward Dmytryk (L) directs Kirk Douglas and Paul Stewart in the 1952 film, The Juggler.

"The business today is completely different than it used to be," he told me in a recent telephone interview. "Today there's no such thing as studio apprenticeship. You go in full-blast, as it were. As far as film education goes, both (formal and self-styled) approaches are good, and yet neither makes you a filmmaker. Because if you don't have the gift for filmmaking, you won't be successful. I don't think Einstein, for example, would have been a good film director, and he was bright as hell."

For many years in his position as adjunct writing professor at U.S.C., Mr. Dmytryk has been working with some of the brightest graduate students in the world, many with Ph.D.s from places like Harvard, Yale, Oxford and the Sorbonne. But despite their academic credentials he finds that many simply lack that special talent. "I'm sure they are gifted in a lot of other areas," he explains. "I believe everybody has a gift for something. But not for pictures. It's a very special thing. That's why you see so goddamned many ordinary pictures now so lacking in imagination. The only thing (directors) do anymore when they get in trouble is have an explosion or violent sex scene. They don't know how to handle things subtly and delicately and with taste.

"As far as where you learn (filmmaking), it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference if you've got the talent. I've been teaching full time ever since I retired from filmmaking. If you have somebody with talent, you can help them, give them ideas about which way to go. But you can't make a filmmaker out of anybody.

"Everybody in school learns how to load a camera. Hell, I never loaded a camera in my life. I didn't have to, because I had people loading them for me who could do it much better than I could and much more cheaply. The same with lights. I never set a light for a photographer. I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like, but then he would go out and make it better than I could have. Same with acting. I don't tell a good actor how to read a line, because his business is reading lines, and if he can't do it better than I can, then I don't want him."

The key to directing successfully, Dmytryk believes, is being able to work with a script and bring it to life, which often means changing it. This requires a certain feel for material that cannot be taught. But the technical disciplines are another matter, and he feels film school is the best place to learn them. "When I find a student who says she just wants to be a photographer or an editor, I think that's wonderful. You can make a very fine living doing these things and make a name for yourself, and you don't have as much competition, he explains. But even these fields require that one make an intuitive leap in order to really excel. "When I was a projectionist," he explains, "I never had a cutter tell me why he cut a scene a certain way. They would just say that it seemed the best thing to do. When I was on the set as a cutter and would ask McCarey or Cukor or another director why they staged a scene a certain way, they'd say simply that it seemed the best thing to do. Don't let history crit people fool you. Directors - I mean good ones - work on instinct and intuition and don't even know necessarily know why they do things the way they do."

While discussing the subject of whether or not a young filmmaker might be better off taking the time and money earmarked for film school and making his or her own film instead, he had this to say: "Making your own film without the benefit of formal schooling is a sure way, even for professionals, to fail. You've seen what's happened, for instance, with Jack Nicholson. His acting earned him the right to direct three different pictures and all of them were horrible. And God knows he's had a lot of experience on the set and he's an intelligent man and one of the great actors of the world. This should convince people more than ever that it takes a special talent. It isn't enough just to be around.

Randa Haines with Robert Duvall on the set of Wrestling Ernest Hemingway.

"Look, there are a lot of good film schools in the country that turn out hundreds, maybe even thousands, of graduate students each year who think they can make films. Too many people now think they're writer-directors. But the problem is, the two things just don't go together at all, and it's made for a lot of bad filmmaking. Writers used to get a name - Dudley Nichols, Jack Ford's writer, is an example. He was considered the finest screenwriter in the business. But he directed twc pictures of his own which are absolutely terrible. He couldn't edit his own stuff the way a director does. A writer writes a story and falls in love with it, then goes out and makes it exactly the way he wrote it. That's something no good director ever does, unless it happens to be the perfect script.

"A director works with a cast and crew of hundreds of people and in a sense is in charge of all of them when a picture's in production. He has to have a skill for working with people, understanding them. He's got to be a psychologist whether he's studied it or not. A writer works or his own, like you do. If somebody's looking over your shoulder while you're working, you are bothered, aren't you?' (Yes.) "A director has dozens of people looking over hi; shoulder literally all the time, and he's got to make a thousand decisions a day. He's got to know, `Must I take this scene again? Was it good enough this time or can I get it better?' And when he finally gets it, 'Do I print this scene or do I go for another one? How do I stage this scene? Do the people walk over here or over there? When do I cut it? Do I need a close- up or don't I need a close-up? Is the wardrobe okay?' All kinds of things. A writer as a rule doesn't have that kind of personality. His is more withdrawn. He likes to work on his own, likes to make his own little decisions. It's a whole different category."

Dmytryk laments another toll the current stampede to film school is taking on the industry: the fact that Hollywood professionals in their 40s and 50s, many of whom have been working in film their whole lives, can no longer find work because they have been priced out of the marketplace. "What happens is the independents, and studios like Disney who are notorious for being chintzy, take people right out of school and get them very cheap. The supply (of workers) has become far far greater than the demand, and that of course is always very weakening. It ruins the unions, it ruins the business. And as a result, we don't have executives anymore who know what a picture really is.

"In conclusion I'd say that since the studios are no longer set up to train people as apprentices, where they go in, get a job and advance through the various crafts, some kind of introduction to filmmaking is necessary; the schools fill that need. So film schools today are almost indispensable, even though - as in everything in our society - there are things about them that don't work exactly right and could use fixing."

Mark Rydell

(Intersection, On Golden Pond, The Rose, The Cowboys)

Mark Rydell also worked his way through the business while training in film's various disciplines. He emphasized repeatedly during this interview that intense, ongoing training is critical and essential for anybody working in the professions of theater or film. While training as an actor at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater with Sanford Meisner, he was already possessed of a serious respect for craft which he acquired studying music at Juilliard and Chicago Musical College. Throughout the early '60s, Rydell studied with Howard Clurman, Bobby Lewis, Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg.

"My training was extensive but it was essentially in the theater," he says. "When I came to California to be a director, I apprenticed on the Ben Casey Show as a general schlepper with the promise that if I worked hard I'd get an opportunity to direct." After directing theater and performing on stage and television, the film directing opportunities began presenting themselves. Rydell believes too few of today's aspiring film directors understand the nature and essence of training, and points to insufficient recognition of craft as the overriding problem. He remains adamantly pro-film school despite his feeling that most are not equipped to do the job properly.

"I think film seminars are useful only if you have already been trained as a filmmaker. As far as whether one should sacrifice education to make a film, I would not agree with any of that. I think that is misguided, unintelligent and foolish. Now there are exceptions. But I would say that before you make your first film you'd better study and learn what it is, what material is, what a scene is about, what production design is, what lighting is. To learn on the job, well, that's another way, but it's not nearly as useful as formal skilled training, although as I said before, there are not a lot of places that know how to do that." Long a teacher himself, primarily of other established film directors, Rydell is irritated by the prevailing attitude among some independents of "no schooling" or "schooling-on- the seeing it as inherently disrespectful of craft and art, and suggestive of a sad lack of understanding of the processes of filmmaking.

"It requires a lot of exposure," he states, summing up. "There are people I know who have been actors for 25 years and only then get behind the camera. To take an inexperienced person and say, `Go make a film' is like taking somebody into brain surgery and saying to them, `Go ahead, try the operation.' I just hate that attitude of disrespect toward training. It's crazy, it's foolish and it's ignorant."

Barry Primus

(Mistress; actor: Night and the City, Absence of Malice, Big Business, Autopsy)

Veteran stage and screen actor Barry Primus, who directed his first feature film, Mistress, starring Robert DeNiro, in 1991, did not attend film school either, though he did make an attempt. He enrolled in the early '60s at New York's City College Institute, one of the first schools to offer a program in film, only to watch it close down for lack of money. He learned the business performing in 30 movies and spending his free time loitering around the studios observing people, asking questions and making friends. One was Mark Rydell, for whom he has worked as an assistant on three films, overseeing casting, second unit shooting and editing. Primus is another example of a teacher (formerly at the National Television and Film Workshop in Rockport, Maine) who has seen the good and bad sides of film school play out in the experiences of countless students, and who consequently feels ambivalent about the subject.

"I'm amazed at the amount of people interested in film," he remarks. "It's so incredible. I was a judge at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival this year and got to see a lot of student films. I was amazed at two things: the technical ability of these student filmmakers and the actual quality of the films. Now, on the other hand, Renoir said something like: `Film gets more and more dangerous the closer it approaches being done easily,' because then people begin to confuse art and reality thinking that just by pointing a camera in a certain direction and recording an action, that that in itself is going to be a movie. Filmmaking can only reflect where people are as human beings, and a lot of 19- and 20-year-olds in these undergraduate programs that I've seen don't have a lot of experience in life. That's not to put down what experience they do have...

"What was wrong with what I saw was that the teachers had helped them tremendously in technical areas, but the reason for making films had not been imbued in them," Primus says. "They were ready to work, but they were not equipped to use the form in the way it was intended. The reason for filming - the fact that one has to be saying something that one knows about - was not present in the films."

Primus assails the auteur film culture prevalent at the film schools and himself believes writing and directing are two distinct disciplines that require some space between them. "These students were all asked to write their own films," he explains, "which is a problem at the outset because writing is already one skill. They're asked to be auteurs right away, equal parts writer and director. It's a complicated question because there are wonderful teachers around. You just have to hope you're taught by real human beings who give you not only film but also a point of view about life. If your program applies that, that's great."

Primus is also concerned about the industry not being able to hold all the students coming out of the schools. "I guess with all these CD ROMs and things like that, maybe there will be a lot of venues some day," he says, before turning philosophical. "I'm not sure people wouldn't be making these films even if they hadn't gone to film school. It always seems to me that true artists, be they actors, dancers, or painters, they emerge anyway. One way or another, they find their way."

After mentioning how "horribly competitive" some schools are, Primus specifically decried the practice of dropping some students after the first year. "There are an awful lot of people who are talented and don't emerge right away," he explains. "What they want is people who have that personality that fits into the industry, because the industry people run those schools.

"The good side about film school is it can give you film culture. If the film culture it gives you is one steeped in values and a philosophical point of view about living, one that attempts to have a humanizing effect upon the students, then that's great. If it's a school that just has a technical/industry point of view, I think it can be very detrimental. There are values that film should uphold. One way or another, when a filmmaker goes out to make a film, he should be trying to save the world in his own Peculiar way."

Milos Forman

(Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ragtime)

Multiple Academy Award-winner Milos Forman did attend film school, at the esteemed four-year university program in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he chose to focus on screenwriting. He recently gave me his thoughts regarding the importance of film school for any aspiring filmmaker:

"(Attending) film school has one advantage because for quite a substantive amount of time you are in the friendly competitive company of other students, and you have time enough to find your own vision rather than starting as an assistant and immediately having to serve other filmmakers' visions. You spend enormous amounts of time (in school) talking endlessly about movies with your fellow students. It's a wonderful time when you have a chance to find and formulate and put on screen your own vision.

"As far as whether to go to film school or make (an independent) film instead, this is individual. Anybody who wants to make films who feels he needs to conform his ideas and opinions with other people's to try and make up his own mind and find out where his head is at, these people should go to film school. Otherwise, if they are more secure on their own feet and in their own vision, then it might be a good idea for them to go ahead and try their hand at making a film. It depends. For somebody who already has a certain technical knowledge and practical knowledge, that's fine. At school you get that certain kind of necessary technical knowledge which is always helpful, so it depends. It's very individual, this."

Randa Haines

(Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, Children of a Lesser God, The Doctor)

Randa Haines did not attend fihn school, but did participate in the Directing Workshop for Women at the American Film Institute back in 1975, before it evolved into the fully-blown instructional program that it is today. Since at the time she attended it was merely a program which encouraged students to use the equipment and experiment with issues/09/images, she does not consider it a true film school experience.

"I really worked my way through the business," she explained to me recently. "I started out as a struggling actress. Then I worked in production for a long time in different jobs, working as an editor, and finally ending up as a script supervisor for about nine or 10 years. After that I had a brief stint as a writer, so I really had exposure to every facet of filmrnaking before I became a director."

Academy Award-winning director Milos Forman lines up a shot.

Haines feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn film by moving through its various core disciplines in a manner reminiscent of the studio apprenticeships of the past. Favoring such an approach but aware of the odds against making it happen, she considers film school a viable alternative - superior, even, in its emphasis on film history and theory. Her self-education in film aesthetics, which she began while living in New York, included weekly visits to the Museum of Modem Art to see the films of Truffaut and Goddard and the rest of the French new wave. While this approach bore fruit for her personally, she believes a more formal, structured approach might work best for others.

Besides providing an intellectual education, it hopefully gives a student something to show others, because when you want to be a director, it's very hard to get that first chance if you don't have something you can show. That's what I got through the AFI workshop: (a reel) which I could show that very, very gradually led to some writing work and ultimately to a directing job. But I think to get at directing everybody makes their own path. There is no dear way.

"I think if someone can go ahead and make their own film independently, that's a great thing to do. If they have the resources and the friends to help them, if they can call in all those favors, then I think it's great, provided they feel ready. The main thing is to find out beforehand whether you can really do it. I would recommend taking acting classes, and in those classes seeing if you can communicate with^- actors. That doesn't cost you anything. But once you get all the equipment and all the friends and the bank account involved, and then find out you don't know how to communicate with actors, then you're really in trouble."

Haines is a big believer in paying your dues, working hard and being ready when your opportunity arrives. She stresses the importance of working in the business, even for those who attend film school, and working outside the business as well. "I think that people who go from high school to film school to going right to work as directors tend not to have much to say," she remarks. "I think it's real important to have some life experience in addition to whatever training you have. To feel you have to "make it" by the time you're 23 or whatever is foolish. Because when you've spent time working your way through the business and through life, then the stories you choose to tell theoretically have more meaning for a lot more people. That's the kind of filmmaking I'm drawn to, anyway."

Whit Stillman

(Metropolitan, Barcelona)

Aside of two night courses in film production under Thiery Pathe at New York University School of Continuing Education, Whit Stillman did not study film formally. Nevertheless, he did earn an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for his first film, Metropolitan, proving that such a feat is possible for a relative neophyte. A graduate of Harvard University where he studied American History, Stillman broke into the film business in Barcelona in 1983, working as a sales agent for Spanish film producers eyeing the American market. He says he would have loved to have gone to film school during his first ten years out of college, but that it just wasn't in the cards for him.

"I favor a more self-styled approach to film education," he comments, "but I admit that I don't really know how great film school is, or what you might learn there that you wouldn't get otherwise. I would think it'd be good in a personal sense in terms of making friends in the business who you could call on later, but I really like the work approach. It's great when you can learn something through real work experience and also get paid for it."

Stillman, who hires film school graduates to work on his own pictures ("As the director, you don't really have to know anything, so there's a real advantage in that sense."), sees a wealth of opportunity for aspiring filmmakers looking to get a foothold in the industry. He advises working with the key personnel on as many small productions as possible and maintaining high standards so they are inclined to continue hiring you for future projects.

"I think there are great avenues open within film for people who work really hard - far harder than anyone should work - and who are loyal. Hard work and loyalty are at a premium in a film shoot, because it's kind of an anarchic and chaotic situation. Those two virtues tend to really pay off. I've seen people in shoots go from P.A. to associate producer just because they're so good. But you have to be really committed to the project; you can't doubt it and stand back.

"I believe one of the disabilities people get from film school is that they tend to become too big for their britches. Once you begin feeling you're kind of too important and too talented, you no longer have the right attitude to make a contribution on the set."

John Sayles

(Passion Fish, Matewan, City of Hope)

John Sayles did not go to film school and believes that if he had, it would only have been for about a week, with every minute spent absorbing as much technical information as possible. Coming into film by way of a budding career as a novelist (Los Gusanos, Anarchist's Convention) and storyteller, Sayles was naturally inclined to tell his own stories and control the processes by which they are brought to the screen, so he writes, directs and edits. He believes film school can be very beneficial for those looking to establish a network of industry contacts, as well as those looking to discover their own specific interests and talents.

"Film school would be good for someone who really doesn't know exactly what he wants to do in film," he says. "If you're career oriented and interested in getting ahead in the Hollywood film world, probably you should attend a major film school. But if you just want to learn about making good films irrespective of Hollywood, then there might be great schools all over the place.

"As far as whether you should make your own independent movie instead, I think that depends on your level of confidence in yourself. Look, if you have $200,000, you probably can make some kind of film and learn an awful lot doing it. If that's the way you like to do things, by jumping into them, then that's what you should do instead of going to film school. But if you're somebody who needs to think about things more and decide, for example, which aspects of filmmaking you want to focus on, then film school is probably a good idea." MM

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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by Theatre Schools on 12/08/08 at 12:04 am

Nice Article.
Thanks for sharing.

Comment by Film School on 1/15/09 at 11:41 am

This is the best post I have seen on this topic! Going to film school is a major decision for those who want to create films. The more information on the pros and cons of film school the better! As an employee of the New York Film Academy I see students everyday struggling with the choice to attend film school or just jump right into filmmaking. Film school is not for everyone, but for those that have the means and drive, it is time well spent mastering their craft. Keep up the great work Movie Maker!

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