Every passing year sees the completion and release of more new movies, and every year skilled people are required to make them. To fill this need, many good (and not so good) film schools have sprung up during the last few decades. Many successful artists and technicians are graduates from these schools.
But film school can be expensive or far away. Is getting a student loan and going into debt for several years a future filmmaker's best way to enter the business. Could there possibly be another way, and is film school even worth the expense?
Whether or not to seek training at a school is a decision that only the future filmmaker can make, but it's always best to weigh all of the options first.
It's with the hope that it will help future movie makers decide whether or not film school is the best route to take that I'm offering the following story about a friend of mine and how he got into the business. This friend travels around quite a bit so I haven't been able to ask him if it would be alright to use his real name, so I'll call him Paul.
Paul had an inheritance coming to him. His mother was put in charge of deciding how this money would be spent, with the stipulation that it had to be used to further his education. Naturally, she asked Paul what his career plans were.
He replied that he wanted to work in the movie industry and would like to go to film school. Employment in the motion picture business seemed fine to his mother, but she suggested another route to this goal.
What if she allowed him to use the money to produce a short movie of his own? It seemed to her that it would be the best way to learn how films are made.
This seemed to be a good idea to Paul, so he got to work. What he did first was to find a local special effects technician who would be willing to help him out. He located one who also just happens to be somebody I know. Let's call him John.
This is the deal Paul offered to John: John was to contact some of his special effects colleagues and together they would compile a list of effects that they had always wanted to create but had never had the opportunity to do. Paul would write a script that used as many of these effects as possible and a short film would be made from it that they would all work on together. The technicians wouldn't be paid for their work, but Paul would supply all of the necessary materials.
The effects crew enthusiastically agreed to this offer and the result was a very slick looking short film. Everybody involved had a lot of fun and Paul learned how movies are made. He also had a nice portfolio piece to show when looking for work in the future.
Of course there are a lot of people who went to film school and are doing very well, but Paul's story is certainly not unique. Many of the top professionals in the industry learned their skills by making their own films.
Stanley Kubrick, John Waters, Quentin Tarantino and especially, Robert Rodriguez are just a few of the many directors who have publicly stated that producing a film on your own is the best way to learn how it's done.
With the availability of affordable video equipment and helpful software, just about everybody has access to all of the resources they need to make independent films. They can even get their movies seen by uploading them to the internet.
Once again, there are many paths to success in the motion picture field and it is in the best interest of all who plan to enter it to consider as many of these paths as possible. Best of luck to all of you in the future!
About the Author:
If you're interested in a career in the film industry and want to know what the best way is for you to get into the movie business, visit Flashfink's Squidoo page to decide if going to film school is right for you.
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