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For those poor ladies and gents who want to work in Film
DrIanMalcolm
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I know there are guys here who want to work in the Film industry as director, screenwriter, actor, cinematographer, etc. and I know that there are some guys here who're already working in the industry.
LET'S TALK ABOUT TRYING TO ACHIEVE THE NEAR IMPOSSIBLE
Right now my plan is, once I'm done with my undergraduate degree, transfer to NYU or USC for graduate school in one of their film production programs. After that, who knows. Q-Mark and I will probably be making small movies up until that time and we have some connections to the industry that might yield something, but really, we have no idea what's going to happen.
WHAT ABOUT YOU GUYS?
Are you gonna go to a film school? Are you already working in the industry? Do you not care?
edit; Solid_Snake a posted this which is a pretty good essay on the MANY different jobs one could take on in the industry
LET'S TALK ABOUT TRYING TO ACHIEVE THE NEAR IMPOSSIBLE
Right now my plan is, once I'm done with my undergraduate degree, transfer to NYU or USC for graduate school in one of their film production programs. After that, who knows. Q-Mark and I will probably be making small movies up until that time and we have some connections to the industry that might yield something, but really, we have no idea what's going to happen.
WHAT ABOUT YOU GUYS?
Are you gonna go to a film school? Are you already working in the industry? Do you not care?
edit; Solid_Snake a posted this which is a pretty good essay on the MANY different jobs one could take on in the industry
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if you ever need a girl to play, like, the funny best friend, you call me, you hear
I basically have a small circle of film friends, we bounce film ideas off eachother, scripts, etc. I'm saving up for a good camera and i'm going to start making movies next year, and i'll be moving to L.A. by end of 09 or beginning of 10.
So as it is right now I have screen writing as a hobby.
Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Last.fm | Pandora | LibraryThing | formspring | Blue Moon over Seattle (MCFC)
Somebody steal my idea so I can sue you.
If I'm ever near Portland I will do this
But this means you could be Chinese, Korean OR Japanese!
Satans..... hints.....
In a few days I go off to my first year at a liberal arts college known for its film and writing majors. I am already debating between staying there and majoring in those, just taking classes in them or reapplying to Gallatin or Tisch in a year (if I apply to Tisch, it wouldn't be as an actor this time, so I might actually stand a chance). Once again considering options when I don't know at all what I'm getting into.
The worrisome thing is that the film and writing majors at the liberal arts school I'm going to (A) have very strict requirements and (B) are very popular, and I don't choose my classes till after everyone else. So I may find myself not getting into a film class and thereby unable to enter the major and thereby forced to transfer, but the only place I would want to transfer to would be a film school and it would be pretty shitty to get into a film school and have the teachers relying on me to know fundamentals that I never learned and all their students learned their freshman year.
uggh
I'm pretty tan. I could be Malaysian or Vietnamese or any other kind of Southeast Asian, too!
But you can be in any martial arts film no matter what
you won't be able to escape me
you raise an excellent and intriguing point
is it basically "have the experience of a film major at a well-known college or don't bother trying", or are a lot of the up-and-coming directors and screenwriters rising from unusual backgrounds? I mean, obviously film schools and film programs at universities aren't entirely pumping out millionaires or even underground successes, so are they just overhyped or do they teach absolutely necessary aspects?
A part of me says that I kind of want to avoid learning too much about directing or screenwriting from an academic setting because it'll have me falling back on cliches and boring techniques instead of getting all creative wid it.
Satans..... hints.....
Waiter?
Mooch off your parents?
Satans..... hints.....
Also, I never went to college and didn't even start writing until I was 19. I am the worst example ever, and should serve as a guide to absolutely nobody ever.
There's pretty much no right answer. Some people will tell you that film school is important, others the opposite. General opinion is that film school is only good for networking and getting used to the technology if you haven't already. There are directors who come from schools like NYU, UCLA, and USC, but there are also ones who come from smaller colleges or don't even go to college at all, same with screenwriters.
Some schools do try to help you get jobs once you get your degree with them, USC and Chapman being the first ones that come to mind (I think).
As for learning from an academic setting, it also depends on what you want to learn. For instance, USC (apparently) is good if you want to do more Hollywood blockbuster-y type of films, and NYU is for more independent types. I wouldn't say that you should avoid schools because they'll have you falling back on cliches and boring techniques because that probably won't be the case. They'll teach you the basics and necessary skills, at which point you can break away with your own creativity.
I think this answers your question
tell me it
Are you moving to LA for school or what
man I hate LA
can somebody make that happen
1. dinosaur
2. astronaut
3. director
i considered the third, decided i didn't have enough talent and am now reconsidering trying anyway, so we'll see
in fact I just hate california
a pretty attractive feature of screenwriting as opposed to directing is the ability to travel
of course I doubt i am ever going to come to a crossroads in life where some great angelic voice booms "CHOOSE NOW OR BE FOREVER ENTOMBED IN TUNGSTEN" so I can probably do both if I should have such absurd and divine luck
I am just operating on the assumption that I will hew out a niche in an extremely competitive field because I have never desired a career that I wasn't competing with waaaay too many people for
the good news is that looking at not only the writings I've seen of other teenagers but the kind of stuff that is getting produced, and I know I could totally write that. Not "my ideas are so much better", not "I could revolutionize the film industry", but man, apparently I could easily write a script that Ben Affleck and Blonde Love Interest would appear in because the quality of the writing in these movies hardly requires some grand intellect.
I have a friend, who I met through an internet forum. We had similar definitions for what constituted good writing, so started trading stories. We discovered that we both give pretty good criticism, and both of us started improving at a fairly rapid rate. We've been really good friends for a while now.
Anyway, this buddy of mine actually went to college. Started out with a major in journalism, but changed it to production when we started getting better at writing.
One of his professors had connections to Hollywood. About a year ago, one of those connections got in a sticky situation. Needed a full-length script, based off of an existing treatment, in four days. So the connection asked the professor for help, and the professor recommended my buddy. Buddy invited me along to help.
So in four days, we banged out 120-page script.
We got totally fucked on payment (the then-looming writer's strike tanked the production), but the production company we were working for was so impressed by our moxie that they started tossing me some side work. Those jobs led to other contacts, those contacts led to other jobs, and so on.
Couple things to keep in mind: I got extremely lucky. My buddy did the hard work of going to college, and I was just fortunate that he could use my help. And what was more important than the quality of my writing was that I could bring good material on a very tight deadline.
So if you don't feel that school is up your alley (it definitely wasn't mine), make friends with/impress people who do go there. Because it's pretty much an unavoidable step in the process. Also, be prepared to take a whooooole lot of shit, and get paid way too little for it. We all know how broke I am.
Oh, and I hope you enjoy hurry-up-and-wait.
Syd Field/Robert McKee's books are almost required reading now but I reccomend picking up Bill Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade and Sydney Lumet's Making Movies which covers the whole process in an easy to understand way. Also wouldn't hurt to get a copy of Aristotle's Poetics since he's got the basics down.
the idea of somehow making contacts in a situation like that is appalling
this is a hypothetical question, not based on pooro's mystical tale of internet forums and grand providence
http://www.cineman.co.uk/
maybe bookmark it for a rainy day, but it's worth your time
I'm going to CSULB instead, and film/video production is an impacted major, making it twice as hard. Fuck.
wait what
School and work, pretty much any work I can get. My main passions are directing and writing, but I can act too though I have no professional experience. While i'm doing scipts I figure I might as well audition for shit, if I get lucky and some director likes how I look, deliver, sound, etc. whatever, then that's one way into the biz.
But i'm either going to Long Beach or the New York Film Academy in L.A., and you can get work coming out of either of them. I'm going to learn about lighting and cinematography, camera related stuff, so when I finish I can probably be an A.D. for some studio.