definitely take the DIY approach, unless you intend to go to USC and get into the industry there. that is the way to go to make life networking contacts in the biz. but if your goal is to be a film makers, film maker, an iconoclastic visionary and make your own films, forget school. while still in NY where I started we often employed film school grads as assistants… these kids had to UNLEARN half of what they learned to be able to survive in the real world.. especially in commercials etc where the ny work is most. in the reel world you have to be extremely good and extremely fast.. you don’t have a semester to make a short…
my advice always has been take the money and make a feature.. no matter how funky… no matter even if it’s bad… you will learn… dealing with the labs or post houses and equipment rental houses, whatever by the time you’ve done one picture even on video you’ll have learned as much as four years in film school and in many ways more and better. real pros want to pass on their knowledge and you’re getting it from people actually working at it day in day out.
not to say you can’t learn at school, but it’s not about a piece of paper saying you’re a director it’s about the reel under your arm.. the dvd in your pocket.. about ten years ago I saw a terrific Tarentino style film done by an 18 year old kid in rural Massachesetts.. on video.. he had everything, drug deals, real cops, terrific shoot outs, love interest… etc etc.. when I asked him what the film actually cost him.... wait for it… about $20 for the hi-8 cassettes. everything else was donated or borrowed.. etc. and the picture looked great…
he then went on to Emerson College in Boston and it probably ruined him… I don’t know I lost touch with him.. too many people are hung up on the diploma, the proof of competence… but the great thing about the picture business so to speak is there are no rules, there are no requirements other than to tell a story that people can’t help watching. years ago I worked on a picture in NY as line producer that used actual bums playing bums. one of them told me the way he judged a picture was if he couldn’t get up to take a piss it was a great picture… not bad..
you got a dream., go for it… Woody Allen said 80% of success is just showing up. challenged a few years later about that he said, ‘60% is too low, seventy doesn’t sound good for the quote, leave it at 80%.” so there you go… and I’ve known/I know people with terrific screenplays who don’t put them out there… you got the dream go do it..
btw I’m in post on my eleventh feature, third indie self financed… we’ll see how it turns out… the other pix were low budget thrillers for foreign distros… my film school. plus over 100 national commercials.. as editor/producer/director… mostly editor… plus a slew of corporate films… some docs and a maritime historical tv series in Maine…
writing is the key, if you can’t write find writers you want to see on the screen and direct their stuff. if you want to direct hook up with theater companies, local, regional, whatever, and direct one acts, then three acts… you’ll learn to create life on the stage. and that my friends is the key to film… creating life in front of the lens… otherwise what have you got??? another poor acted barely watchable show.. one of the most compelling films I’ve ever seen was an English BBC production a 45 minute film starring the great actress Maggie Smith as a recent widow. She sits in a wing back chair directly in front of the camera for three quarters of an hour talking about her recently deceased husband a minister and their life together and you can’t take your eyes off her and can’t take a break… one shot, one angle one actress...that’s film making… not so easy to make it compelling… that’s a challenge..
You’re really on the mark with USC and UCLA really being about networking. My son is taking Post Classes at Santa Monica College (a great place if you want to learn practical Post Production or Animation high end software). There’s quite a few USC and UCLA folks taking these classes at SMC because it’s not offered at USC or UCLA.
I have found that school can be helpful to some and if you use it for a foundation and do some internships and maybe a Co-Op than it has more merit and gets you exposed to the real world. In s lot of cases I must agree with you, many times a young person will rely on the school to carry them. Bad news you are sure to fail even with great grades. In the film and video business you need to be HUNGRY! You have to have big teeth like a barracuda and go after what you want. Networking is the key join organizations and local clubs expose yourself to positive people and make a reel to show. If you don’t have a script you probably know someone who loves to write, turn that into a script. People love to see there stuff glorified and making a movie of it is the best way. One thing I would disagree on is don’t make a feature as your first film. Start with one or two shorts and make them 6 min. In doing this you will see how everything needs to play out than go to the larger scale. Remember nothing saves time and money like a good storyboard!!!! Have a call for actors even for your short films, why because this is important your making a movie. Be serious and you need to treat it as if it were a multi-million dollar feature. Now it will all come together. If you don’t the money to go to school don’t fret it get a few books find a camera of some kind and make sure you get plenty of film and BATTERIES!!!!! Invest in some lighting and you can make a lot of it there are tons o site you can goto to show you how to make almost anything. some are better than others. I will give you the names of a few books that might help. all are available on amazon.com and can be gotten used as low as $4.95 and up. That sure beats $120.00 my students pay for their textbook for one semester and best of all these books will continue to help you again and again.
1. Digital Video Hacks • ISBN-10: 0596009461
2. Film Directing Shot by Shot • ISBN-10: 0941188108
3. Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking • ISBN-10: 0240805461
4. Digital Video Production Cookbook • ISBN-10: 0596100310
5. Digital Filmmaking 101 • ISBN-10: 0941188337
6. The Pocket Lawyer for Filmmakers: A Legal Toolkit for Independent Producers • ISBN-10: 0240808428
These six books can get you started and you should be able to put a reel together rather quickly and don’t forget when you put in your sound track make sure it is yours and you have purchased the rights to use it. The number 1 NO NO in this industry is miss-use of other peoples material. Make sure you have royalty free material that you have the rights to use, create your own, or if you have some friends in a band create it, just make sure you get them all to sign a release forms so that you are clear and it is now yours to use. I wish you the best. Just make it HAPPEN and “Keep shoot-en”.
What ever film school can teach you or can’t teach you can find in a book, take the money for just one semester and you can buy just about every filmmaking book there is, and I really suggest doing so, read them, make a feature, not a short (it will be tough but do it) and then after that decide if you still want to wast your money on school. The biggest issue is the teachers are industry folk and do not know how to teach. Networking is a big deal so take names and write em down, also use the internet to find people in your area, start a production company with some like minded people and you will be on your way if you don’t quit.
Through the hands on problem solving approach in the DIY sector, you get real world practical experience.
In school, you get to work with better equipment and get access to knowledge from real world professionals working in the industry. You also get great networking from film schools...Kevin Smith is a great example of this, he met Scott Mosier in film school...that seems to have worked out alright.
Is your goal to make movies...or to make a living making movies?
If the latter, then the diploma and networking really do count for something. Or you can go the hard-er route (both routes are difficult) and do it all on your own like Robert Rodriguez...who succeeded on a fluke and pure will...you’ll note he’s mentioned alot in these discussions...because he’s one of the only people to ever succeed the way he went about it (which is the way we all want to succeed - the numbers are against this route, don’t ever ignore history).
I agree with everybody above, but I want to amend my post to include yes by all means make a couple of shorts.. real ones with actors, a script, etc. five minutes is fine, you just want to get the process in your bones a little, develop muscle memory so when you go to the feature you’ll have a sense of it already.
My last feature (still in post btw) I couldn’t have done with what we had, the time etc if I hadn’t done all those cheesy little thrillers. we shot 12 and half hours of super 16 in 12 and a half days! I had a great cameraman who did a superb job of lighting. and a great sound man. do your best to get these people because the sound is so important. and DO NOT ever listen to anyone who says “we can fix it in post” NO YOU CAN’T. if you don’t have it on the original negative or tape where’s it gonna come from? sure maybe Dreamworks could fix something in post with a lot of money you don’t have. and try to get all your sound on location, forget looping, it’s so phony though they’re getting better at it all the time, but remember digital audio in sound facility costs lots of bucks per hour… I don’t know the rates today.. but never cheap unless you find someone with a home studio..
also as posted above make sure you get releases signed by everyone even your mother and father (especially them you don’t want any post censorship).
the idea of making a short, make it quick and dirty… don’t labor over it, pretend you’re making for the south american drive in market or something.. it’s just to experience the process. and rewrite the script at least three times. make sure you actually need certain scenes even though you love them, same with certain words, it’s all got to serve the total story. don’t get precious about stuff, you can always use it in another project. also try to get a little texture in, little shots of details you can use as bridges when cutting. because of time pressures I didn’t get enough of this stuff last time. they’re great for building mood, and adjusting rhythm.
in one of my phases when I dropped out I went to Maine and built wooden boats. my boatbuilding guru told me build a rowboat first, not a model a real rowboat, because the process was the same, the pieces just got bigger.
if you have no ideas for stories, don’t know how to write, have no writer friends, hard to believe, go online find short stories, short shorts and hook up that way, also colleges are full of wannabes… go hookup with them lot of talent there though maybe misguided going to school. (incidentally I saw the same phenomenon I posted above with boat building school students, one even went so far as to tell my guru who’d been building wooden boats 45 years that he was doing it wrong! because he wasn’t doing the way the guy was taught in school!!)
there is no right or wrong way to make a film. there’s your way. and if it works, that’s all that counts… and don’t spend too much time on fancy shots. emotion is what it’s about. the audiences emotional response to the lives and dilemmas of your characters, the people in your film. the actors are important, but don’t pick them because you want to make them your friends, or because they’re good looking, or you want to screw one of them. that’s a no no forever. the director must keep some distance from everybody to maintain your mystique. trust me I know the hard way.
this is your work, it’s not about getting rich, (though not too many would turn that down), it’s not about socializing, though it’s nice when people know you’re a director there’s always that little extra something, which you might only notice when you introduce yourself as a carpenter and it’s not there anymore!
and lastly if you have no actors, no sound etc you can always make a film without them, use your imagination, add music or sounds later, make something up.. and remember this is a visual medium… moving pictures… show don’t tell.. and if you can’t imagine how things will look maybe you should find a different line of work because this requires visual imagination..
... it’s not about socializing, though it’s nice when people know you’re a director there’s always that little extra something, which you might only notice when you introduce yourself as a carpenter and it’s not there anymore!
Filmmaking is not an individual sport...you have to socialize, it’s a collaborative effort if you’re going to make anything larger than nature montages or experimental still life films. No how to socialize and schmooze...you never know when you’re going on excitedly about your next project at a house party and somebody says “I want to make films too...I’ve got access to an airport hangar, or a 15 acre lot that’s wooded with a swamp, you can do anything you want out there!” Every cool location I’ve gotten to shoot has started out socializing and knowing how to navigate a conversation. The producer’s entire job is making phone calls and arranging people to do things, never overlook an opportunity to exercise the network you’ve built up...and don’t mess up that network either by being disrespectful (obviously). I competed in the Heinz competition (DQ’d - logo on shirt - my bad), we ended up talking to a neighbor of a friend of a friend of one of the guys on my production crew who took one of us up in his cessna for an hour for free! You can’t CG the reality of the sky passing behind an actor’s head and seeing the sun pass by as they’re turning without tons of time and expensive software and years of training/practice. Network is everything, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise! Whether you get it from school or elsewhere doesn’t matter, but this is a social activity. Without the social element, you can get lots of people to work with you...ONCE!
shadowhorse - 07 November 2007 11:52 AM
and lastly if you have no actors, no sound etc you can always make a film without them, use your imagination, add music or sounds later, make something up.. and remember this is a visual medium… moving pictures… show don’t tell.. and if you can’t imagine how things will look maybe you should find a different line of work because this requires visual imagination..
Make a silent film for at least one of them to get a feel for what you can do with just pictures, and an in camera black and white for the attention it draws to your use of light. These experiences and images will stick with you forever and flavor everything you do after them. Start out with skits, move on to written 5-10 page shorts ( http://www.celtx.com - free screenwriting software + community) and commit them to tape faithfully. Pick a weak point of your production process and focus on that in your next project...analyze your work and be brutally honest with yourself. Let others share and beat up your work in communities like this one. You’ll learn tons. Lather, Rinse, Repeat!
talk about taking things out of context or perhaps I didn’t make myself clear… I was speaking about the film makers intention as to why one is doing this in the first place. this is not an easy business or art and one should be clear about one’s motives. that’s all I meant by ‘it’s not about socializing’… the rest I thought went without saying. Geez.
nonetheless Knightly makes a really good point regarding people only working with you once. I’ve seen indie line producers who exploit relentlessly anybody and everybody repeatedly (not necessarily the same people obviously) using their enthusiasm to get them to work for free or very little. so yes absolutely treat everyone the way you want to be treated. do business the way you want people to do business with you.
and don’t skimp on the food. your crew will forgive a lot if they’re well fed. it’s more than the food, it says you care about them.
also about socializing it’s all true what K posted… I also have gotten so many fortuitous and serendipitous connections, locations, etc etc…
oh and someone made a reference to success, (however one defines it), it’s not enough to have talent and skill and turn out good work. one also has to make the right decisions regarding one’s career. managing one’s talent is just as important as having it. that’s my story. I made many wrongheaded mistakes, at least they seem like mistakes since I sometimes turned down opportunities carelessly that in hindsight didn’t do me any good to turn down. a word to the wise.
like the time (just to name one) I wanted to make a 45 minute short based on a famous short story and was offered backing (a greenlight) if I’d turn it into a feature. I felt like it would be a disservice to the story/author to do that… now I see it wouldn’t have, I would merely have been fleshing out characters and situation mentioned in the story… I thought I was being principled… actually I was being an idiot.
You can tell the difference between a self-trained (untrained) filmmaker and trained (school) filmmaker. In essence, you need a marriage of both disciplines. Go to film school and get your skills. Take out some extra money with your student loans (lowest interest rate for a loan possible on the whole planet) and buy some decent equipment. When you finish school and have some skills as well as a equipment, shoot a DIY feature. Barring friends and contacts, the next way to break in is for Hollywood to come to you by doing something excellent. If they don’t, direct to DVD is healthy for the low-budget filmmaker if you’ve done your research on what can be sold, and how to make a movie you like within the parameters of what can be sold.
I don’t know if anyone mentioned this yet but one of the best things, for me, about film school is the equiptment. Not only do we have demos on new equiptment pretty much every day but as long as you are enrolled in at least one film class, you can take out equiptment for any non-professional project and come in an edit on the full FCP suite (a big plus for me ‘cause I have Pinnacle at home and it feels like I’m trying to ride the tour de France on a tricycle). It’s great because we can get thousands of dollars of equiptment all semester for just the couple hundred dollars for the class.
And you’re surrounded by people who love making movies and wont’ hesitate to come over and help with a project over the weekend in exchange for a pizza and a space in the credits. Not like freinds and family who ditch you halfway through the shoot after they get bored waiting for lights to get set up.
thanks VivaLasLauren.. I forget that film schools have come a very long way. and that’s a really good point.
as for the other re: trained vs untrained, you think, I suppose, you know what you’re talking about. to wit:
I’ve worked on 37 feature films, as operator, dp, line producer, producer and editor and on eleven I was the director, on seven the writer and I’ve sold 14 scripts. most of this experience was in NY, I’m not living there now.
I’ve also worked on over 100 national commercials in NY, some as producer and or director, most as editor. I was often called in by agencies to consult when they were first doing storyboards. some clients included Mercedes, VW, Purina, Bold, Weight Watchers, Quaker Oats, American Tourister, I’d have to look at the list for the rest.
I also worked on a dozen or so corporate films, including 6 for Merrill Lynch, one for Burlington Mills, one for Ayerst Laboratories and one for American Home Products.
while in Maine I produced directed and edited the Boatbuilding Video Series and produced a project of oral history films with old boatbuilders on the east coast. (these were done while I was living in a remote beautiful place 25 miles from a town with no electricity or running water, wood heat, kerosene lamps. a phone out at the road in a shed. I got the local CBS affiliate to donate equipment, crew, and editing suite and a boatbuilding school their shop between semesters. the point is you need determination more than anything.
and I made a few shorts.
I’ve always had a reputation for being extremely professional, particularly on the set. but like I said managing ones talent is just as important as anything else.
the idea that only in film school can you learn film making is preposterous, (and in my opinion ignorant or reality) what about the first 60 years of film before there were any film schools? did Eisenstein go to film school? Did Chaplin? Renoir? Woody Allen? Truffaut? Hitchcock? Goddard? Rainer Werner Fassbinder? (a good one to watch for low budget ideas btw) Werner Herzog? Antonioni? Fellini? Clint Eastwood? Are Tony and Ridley Scott film school alumnae?
that’s like saying you can only learn painting in art school.. particularly college… did Balzac? Michelangelo? all those old time painters and sculptors learned on the job…
my advice has always been save your money get a job. can’t get a job as a PA get one sweeping the floor. for free if you have to. work another job at night this will let one know if they’re a dilettante or dedicated. and if you’re good they’ll start paying you. or you’ll make contacts in the business who will hire you. I’ve seen this work for may people over the years. btw if what people are interested in is making money, one word: Television.
you may be right about schools these days, regarding learning the basics, I’m sure one doesn’t need to go four years. certainly having the equipment to use is a terrific plus. I don’t know. I like the suggestion to use student loans to finance your feature. good idea. and straight to DVD is a good start.
My answer would be--It all depends. If you are graduating high school and are planning a college education, go for it. I would suggest however that you attend a well respected film school if you want to use that as a springboard into the industry. I am self taught, learning most of what I know from experience just making films and working on as many professional sets as possible. Many colleges with a “film program” are at mostly survey classes that may familiarize you with filmmaking, but don’t leave you with much experience that translates into paying jobs. Over the past year, I have worked with 3 or 4 film school graduates who didn’t seem to know anything about making films. Several of them told me they learned more over a two-week shoot then they learned in 2 years of film school.
I will echo what some have said already by acknowledging that film school really helps you network and build a good list of contacts that can help you make films. So, if you are young and have a bunch of money laying around, go to film school. If not, save your money, buy good gear, make friends and just start shooting and cutting films. If I lived in LA or New York, I would consider going to film school at one of the more prestigious schools, but I certainly don’t think that you necessarily need to go to school to learn film. You might be more likely to hit a home run with good schooling, but it doesn’t always make someone a better filmmaker.
Now, that doesn’t apply to all roles in filmmaking. If you want to be a DP or a Gaffer or good Electrical, you can learn a lot in school. Many of the more technical specialties would benefit from a formal education, but I have worked as a Gaffer with just experience alone. If you want to be a DP, it is more likely that you will get more experience with shooting actual film in film school… the average Joe isn’t likely to burn the money experimenting with cameras, film stock, lighting and lenses in his back yard. There are self taught DPs out there, but they have either had really good contacts, mentors or loads of money. I don’t think that there is a single right answer to your question… it all depends on what you expect or need out of it.
i went to a big ten school and was upset that most of what i was learning was theory-based with only a few production classes. i took a semester off and checked out several film schools in california, florida and texas… i met with people in the industry and nearly all of them said to stick with theory-based learning and make films on my own.
i graduated in may 2007 and believe that my team is better than most of those filmmakers who wasted the $35,000+ per year on learning technical aspects
i would recommend at least looking into a film degree that doesn’t focus on production, but things such as audience theory, auteur theory, oppositional film, foreign film, documentary cinema, studio history vs. independent history, etc. You would then be able to make your own films (and own the rights) and still come away paying less.
another way to look at it is if you want to guarantee an independent beginning, skip film school… but if you go to film school you have a single-digit percentage rate of finding work in the industry… and that is usually in a below-the-line positions
I couldn’t agree more with Piraje. Tech can be self-learned. The other stuff, history, theory; you know, the stuff that really makes a filmmaker stand apart from the other mini-Tarantinos with CCDs. I’d even take that a step further and say to make films, but get your degree in something else. In my opinion, the more rounded a filmmaker is, the more interesting he/she is.
