Brooks Institute of Photography

by MovieMaker Staff | Published March 12, 2007

One of the greatest assets a film student can have during his or her education is a mentorâ€”--someone who can guide him or her through the challenging process of moviemaking, using years of experience in the field as an invaluable resource. Most students would be lucky to find just one such person; but at the Brooks Institute of Photography, members of the schoolâ€™s film program are blessed with dozens.

For the last four years, the Santa Barbara-based Institute has been the recipient of Kodak’s 35mm Project, a grant that enables students to produce a 35mm short film project in collaboration with a 150-person crew and more than 30 local vendors. Students who attend the Brooks Institute, which offers both bachelor and master degrees in film and video production, participate in the 35mm Project by enrolling in a corresponding class, then apply for specific production jobs on the film.

In order to augment Kodak’s program, Emmy Award-winner Tracy Trotter and his wife Judy, who serve as faculty sponsors on the project, used their connections in the film industry to bring together an impressive collection of mentors. Hailing from a variety of fields and organizations, from the Directors Guild of America to Clairmont Camera, these experts assist the students over the course of the project by providing input and support at each stage of the moviemaking process. Judy Trotter notes that the benefits of the mentoring aspect of the project go both ways: “We as teachers and mentors share our 30-plus years of on-set experience with the Brooks students and in turn they share their joy for the filmmaking project.”

Find your mentor at www.brooks.edu.

--Jennifer Straus

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Comment by Bill on 3/15/07 at 1:12 pm

Speaking of mentoring and DGA. The Brooks Institute of Photography is a great school, located in beautiful Santa Barbara. Over the course of the last two years, I was in search of a film school that was very affordable for me which includes incredible mentorship. I have worked on many independent films with actual pay after one month of training from a film school, Cinema Arts Tech. In addition, they are very affordable and they have instructors from the DGA that have a plethora of experience who have worked with industry professionals. Thanks to Cinema Arts Tech, I am working on my 5th indie film and from there have networked with many people on set. Besides classroom instruction, one of their programs feature on-the-job training where you will have a mentor put you on an actual movie set and coach you until you reach a professional level. One of the most important aspects about this school is they see the students as their most valuable assets.
Many, many Script supervisors trained by their instructor are working at this time.
Greg just finished a three day commercial and recently worked on location with the last week of his production in Tennessee, starring Willie Nelson. Kathy just started on a feature film, Kari starts a TV series on location overseas, also today. Kathy earned
over $2,500.00 a week within thirty days of her training about a year and a half ago and she
hasnâ€™t stopped working since. She has many feature films and commercials on her resume
already. Not bad for just starting out.

Dennis just finished a film at Lake Castaic and is scheduled to do one in Florida. Afterwards
heâ€™s signed on to do script supervising on a film in the Congo and in Nigeria. Both Sarah and
Simone have been working on two different feature films in Missouri and Sarahâ€™s film was sixty
miles from her parentsâ€™ home in that state.

Guy earned the monies he paid for tuition within thirties days of training. On his third picture
he was hired at $250 per day and in the first week the company raised him to $300 per day!
Many dozens of the grads have had similar voluntary pay raises by the production
companies. That is impressive because production companies are not noted for their
generosity.
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Comment by josh on 10/24/07 at 5:39 pm