Still wondering whether or not film school is the right choice for you? Here, the heads of some of the country's top film education programs-New York Film Academy's Jerry Sherlock and Michael Young, Vancouver Film School's Marty Hasselbach, AFI's JJ Jackman, UCLA's Stephanie Moore, Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Charlie Humphrey, Digital Media Education Center's Jaime Fowler and Academy of Art's Dr. Elisa Stephens-conclude their roundtable discussion.

Part health club, part Internet café and part moviemaker hangout, New York City's DV Dojo is changing the way people approach film-and taking their students from "aspiring moviemaker" to "first-time director" in as little as one weekend.

Deeming itself the "hands-on film school" since opening its doors 10 years ago, the New York Film Academy has been dedicated to the belief that "a top-quality education in filmmaking should be accessible to anyone with the drive and ambition to make films." Here, students Don Boner and Peter Cohen square off about how far that education has taken them.

In any college curriculum, there are electives and there are requirements. Since 1952, for students at Columbia College Hollywood, making a movie is the latter. Taking a hands-on approach to the moviemaking process, the school guarantees that you won't leave without adding at least one film to your credits. Here, CCH's Director of Admissions (and alum) Amanda Kraus talks about their student body, state-of-the-art facilities and the Columbia College advantage.

If you don't live in Hollywood but are interested in getting an education in moviemaking, Filmmaker's Central School of Cinema may be the answer. Here, the school's executive director and co-founder, Rayelle Belleau, talks about their unique approach to film school, their international expansion and what a hands-on education can teach a student about "follow-through."

Call him a revolutionary, but Jimi Petulla's method of learning by doing is really just a "a throwback to the Renaissance period," where you learned your art by paying your dues and taking advice from a true master. Through his Film Connection program, aspiring moviemakers all over the country are becoming working moviemakers-and learning from the best in the business. Here, Petulla talks about bringing the 12th century into the 21st.

It may not be considered one of America's hotspots for moviemaking, but for the past three decades, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been home to one of the country's most distinguished media arts organizations. Recently MM spoke with Pittsburgh Filmmakers' executive director Charlie Humphrey about the group's founding mission and the city's important cinematic history.

From one day to one year, completion certificates to PhDs, London to Los Angeles, whatever your film education desire, the growing crop of film education programs is making experts out of novices every day. But which program is right for you? MM takes a look at a score of film schools and education programs the world over to find out where you might fit in.

Film schools in Southern California sometimes seem almost as plentiful as actor/waiters, and they continue to churn out hundreds of freshly minted moviemakers each year. If you’re serious about getting a film education—and a career—in this land of dreams, you’d better have something unique to offer. For four and a half years now, the Los Angeles Film School has been doing just that—supplying aspiring moviemakers with the aesthetic and technical skills they need to "make it" in Hollywood.

At only three and half years old, the HD EXPO organization certainly seems to have come along at the right time--finding immediate success with their inaugural 2001 event. But HD EXPO founder Kristin Petrovich and her team knew that in order to truly make a difference, education needed to be part of their plan--and so the HD EXPO Workshops were born. Here, Petrovich discusses the birth of HD EXPO's workshop component and why it's important to separate high definition myth from fact.

Think you need a year to learn how to make a movie? Four years? A long apprenticeship? At New York City's Weekend Film School, aspiring auteurs can learn the tools they need, both creative and professional, to stop talking about movies and start making them--and, according to Joe Mefford, it takes them all of 48 hours.

Say that you're an aspiring moviemaker, fresh out of college or high school, looking for that perfect film school-the one that will give you all of the experience, training and contacts you need to help you find a great job in the industry. MM speaks with Krane about why The Krane Academy could well be the film school for you!

s Center for Digital Imaging Arts

To hear David Tames tell it, a great education is all about being on the cutting edge. And as Program Director of Digital Filmmaking at Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts, he’s certainly willing to back that up. Tames spoke with us about the school’s philosophy, why it’s better to learn from pros, and the history of moviemaking as a technologically-intensive art form.

A school for moviemakers with serious ambitions, Columbia College Hollywood offers the equipment, the courses and the instructors to prepare young artists who believe they're ready for a rigorous and rewarding learning environment.

Some film schools have to struggle to keep up with the current pace of technology-but not CDIA. The Center for Digital Imaging at Boston University gives its students that extra boost in a fickle film education marketplace by utilizing cutting-edge technology… while never losing touch with traditional film craft.

Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, the film and video department of Columbia College Chicago boasts one of the most interactive film programs in the country. The school has a simple, yet extremely effective, method of teaching: In order to understand the moviemaking process, students must make movies-and lots of them!

With its rapid-fire, nine-week program, the unique Bronx-based Ghetto Film School has provided an education in the art of moviemaking to underprivileged high school students since 2000. MM spoke with the school's president, Joe Hall, about the organization's history, philosophy and plans for the future.

It's got the term "Real World Education" in its name for a reason: Full Sail is all about training aspiring moviemakers to get out there and work once they've graduated. Here David Franko, Full Sail's program director for film, gets to the heart of the school's mission.

Making movies aside, the most important job of any film school student is to forge strong relationships in the business, so that once they're out in the "real world," finding a place in the industry won't be such a daunting task. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, 50 film school students were lucky enough to get a little networking help from one of the biggest names in the moviemaking software business when Adobe paired them up with some of the biggest names in the world of editing-for a week-long celebration of all things editing.

When you're in the editing room at want to scream at the DP, sound guy, boom operator, AD, script supervisor… etc., try to have sympathy for them. People on set aren't making mistakes expressly for the purpose of making your life difficult. It's hard to know what they were going through that day, but it's more than likely that they were under intense pressure and time constraints-all while having been sleep-deprived, hungry and cold. This leads to piece of advice #2.

It’s one thing to sit at a computer and learn how to edit a film; it’s an entirely different thing to do it at The Edit Center. Founded by two-time Emmy Award-winning editor Alan Oxman, whose credits include Douglas Keeve’s Unzipped, Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness and Storytelling and Michael Ian Black’s The Pleasure of Your Company, The Edit Center does away with stuffy lectures and instead puts its students in the driver’s seat on real indie films.

Director Guy Magar just completed the suspense thriller Children of the Corn: Revelation, based on Stephen King's original story for the Miramax/Dimension label, slated for release October 14th, 2001. His film directing credits include Showdown, starring Matt LeBlanc of TV's "Friends," Stepfather 3 (HBO World Premiere), and the cult thriller Retribution.