I just received an interesting comment from a reader in the UK named Matt. He raises some good points, that speak to the heart of the classic film school debate. Here is the message:

Much as I agree with some of the points you make in your video (film schools are seriously overpriced and there’s a lot to be said for getting out and making your own films), I have to disagree with your entire premise.
If you truly cared about whether or not people who are spending $100,000 on tuition fees, why charge for the information? Make it available free and capitalise from advertising revenue that you would surely be getting IF your information is as valuable as you suggest.

Also I would like to point out that Spielberg studied at CSULB (Film production and Electronic Arts), Rodriguez undertook the film programme at the University of Texas, Stephen Sommers went to USC for cinematic arts, Woody Allen studied Communication and Film, and as an added bonus I’ll chuck in George Lucas (USC), and Martin Scorcese (did an MFA at NYU).

I should note that I am from the UK where the set up is very different, where studying film is more than just picking up a camera and pretending to know what to do with it, and where studying film is about wanting to expand your knowledge of the medium through rigorous research and theoretical study, not focussing on how to point and shoot.

There is more to film than making movies, didn’t you learn that?

Thanks, Matt. This is a classic and apparently accurate defense of film schools, but it falls short.

The main issue is this: are the anecdotal accounts of a handful of mega successful directors who attended film school 20 to 40 years ago enough to offset the reality that most film school alumni graduate with severe debt and no greater access to launch their careers?

And if there really is “more to film than making movies” (which sounds quite esoteric to me), how do you explain the success of directors like Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, David Fincher, Alfred Hitcock, and anyone who made movies before the 1960s when film schools were invented? Did these guys really miss out?

As an honors grad of Tisch I can tell you: the theoretical study of film is a lot of hooey. My film studies classes included Italian Cinema, Silent Screen, and “Comparative Directors: Coppala, Spielberg, and Altman”. We watched “Jaws”, “The Rain People”, and “MASH”. I watched Fellini films and Buster Keaton.

Did I enjoy these movies? Absolutely.Were they worth $4000 a class in tuition? Of course not.

What’s funny is the “free pass” given to esoteric and theoretical education. I’ve had a few people write in, like Matt, chiding me for charging a measly $70 for this absurdly practical information, yet have few qualms about a college allowing an 18 year old to dig themselves into a financial grave for a few theoretical classes.

Students who take Film School Secrets across the board express their appreciation for the value of the course and what it has allowed them to do in their lives immediately thereafter; it’s practical and applicable, not theoretical.

That said, there is one very practical matter to address when looking to filmmakers like Lucas, Spielberg, Scorcese, and Woody Allen.

Each one of these filmmakers attended film school many many years ago, in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. Between 20 to 40 years ago. Citing them as an example of film school having value is anachronistic.

They were living in a time when even making a short film was a distant dream to most people. Film equipment was hard to come by and super expensive. Schools were often the only place you could get access to this equipment, and watch films as there were no VCRs or DVD players.

Lucas himself speaks to this in a prolonged interview. He cites film school as being a place where he got a chance to make a 1 minute animated short that changed his life.

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/luc0int-1#

Lucas describes life in the 1960s, and the impenetrable film industry. He didn’t even have an interest in film until his 3rd year in school. To him school was a place to figure out what he might be interested in. And when he got into a film production class it was a rare opportunity to actually make a film; something 90% of the population couldn’t do.

Today, we are inundated with media from birth. Young people have an acute awareness of the business of movies, behind the scenes, etc. and many have a love/desire to make movies when they are in high school, and the means to do so.

Stephen Soderberg enrolled in college courses while he was in high school just to get to make short films; this was in the 80s long before After Effects or Final Cut Pro. College was a great access to this equipment.

If the year were 1965 and you wanted to pay modest tuition at a college to make films, I would say go for it. It was a brilliant idea.

But it was a completely different world than today.

If Lucas were 20 years old today, would he go to film school? Unlikely. He’d more likely be one of these crazy kids owning an entire HD studio, completely with digital editing station, After Effects, and HD camera, and out shooting movies with his friends and putting them on Youtube.

The common thread between all of these directors isn’t school; it’s their vision and determination, which did not come from sitting in a few classes.

Spielberg made a 26 minute short that he peddled around Universal and won the affection of an exec, which got him a directing gig on TV shows when he was only a kid.

Lucas’ animated film changed the department at USC; he brought the creativity to that project, the school didn’t endow him with some theoretical advantage.

Woody Allen started writing jokes professionally when he was in high school. He never stopped working. After becoming a celebrity, doing stand up, etc., his manager and agent encouraged him to make a movie. According to the latest documentary on him, he literally read a book called “Film Directing” the day before showing up on set for “Take the Money and Run”. He had a whole film crew there to support him. A DP, grips, sound support, actors, all put together by his agents and the studio. All he did was write a funny script and show up.

This was not the result or correlated to a few classes at NYU.

Brett Ratner went to NYU… but freely admits he spent all his time making music videos and networking with rappers and regularly skipped class.

Robert Rodriguez was making short films when he was a kid, something he explains in depth in “Rebel Without a Crew”. He is also the founder of the “10 minute film school” and completely encourages young filmmakers to skip film school and probably wouldn’t appreciate being used to defend the merits of film school.

Rodriguez, like many others, started film school because he thought he needed it. When he got there and saw how slow it was moving he instead decided to shoot his own feature. His professor even argued with him and told him he couldn’t do it, but Rodriguez eventually convinced him. Then Rodriguez raised $7000 by submitting himself to a drug study. He used the money to shoot “El Mariachi” then pimped it around LA until he found an agent that recognized his talent.

None of this had anything to do with film school.

There are definitely a handful of great directors who happened to go to film school. But using them as a justification for spending $100,000 to play with $3,000 video cameras is absurd. It’s kind of like thinking Vitamin Water is going to make you a great basketball player because Kobe says so.

You can’t correlate the success of any of these filmmakers to anything they learned directly from their film school programs. And that’s why it is hard to come up with any other names of this caliber from the 1990s onward. All of the big names associated with film school are old, great guys.

And I truly believe if any of them were starting out today, they would be shooting their own movies with their own equipment, taking crazy risks… and using their college funds to make a killer feature.

Hey guys. Today I received a comment on the site from an NYU student taking issue on this website and my argument that an expensive film school like NYU (my alma matter) is a waste of money. Specifically with me raising a criticism about the school still charging $40,000 a year in tuition to provide students with black and white film cameras that cost less than $100 a day to rent.

Specifically, I think it is absurd for a 20 year old to pay $20,000 a semester to do film exercises that look like this:

This student, “Shawn”, disagreed. I didn’t want to leave this long exchange on the NYU Film School page, so I am posting it here. This is his message:

“Are you an idiot? You really think it is a waste of time for film students to make silent films while studying? Do you know anything about film? Making a project like this teaches the bare basics of film in the best way. They are restricted to shear visual story telling. THAT IS WHAT FILMMAKING IS ALL ABOUT. And are you seriously judging the quality of their work based on how much money it takes to make it? Just to let you know, underclassmen at NYU tisch film shoot dozens of projects, like this and others on various formats, on a small budget. For thesis films, students are provided with a much larger budget, but are also encouraged to raise money for their film and pitch it to producers like they will have to do after school. They are not begging for money the way you make it seem, they are learning in a real world situation. And forget about all this, you are an idiot for thinking that attending film school warrants any kind of special job upon graduation. Just because someone goes to tisch does not mean they are handed over millions after graduation to make hollywood movies. regardless of where you go to school, you have to take charge and make the most of your time there, not expect things to be handed to you. so yeah, go ahead and trash some of the jobs that some tisch kids are getting. its their fault they didn’t make more of themselves. but you could also talk to the hundreds of recent grads from tisch that are making all these pretentious people like you go to shame. yeah there are my two cents”

I was disturbed by this, of course, because someone like Shawn is the very person I would like to reach with the message of this website.

And this is my response:

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the mature and thoughtful comment. Calling me “an idiot” was a particularly compelling point, that clearly reflects your authority and expertise on this topic. It’s “sheer” storytelling, by the way.

I graduated Tisch with honors back in 1999. I know all about the program, the professors, and the alumni support after graduation, including many well known alumni who do not wish to be associated with the school because of how little help it was when they began their careers.

I am absolutely judging these films based on the amount of money it takes to make them. Just because you are in college doesn’t excuse somebody paying $40,000 a year to make silent black and white films using 50 year old cameras that aren’t manufactured anymore. I know the Tisch Undergrad Curriculum well. Sound Image, Frame and Sequence, Sight and Sound, Color Synch, and Narrative. Translation: make a radio play, take still pictures, shoot silent black and white films, short videos, and then pay $20,000 in tuition to make a 5 minute and a 10 minute color film.

It’s absurd.

Certainly a film student shouldn’t expect to be handed the keys to the kingdom after graduation. But after investing 4 years of their time and energy and $200,000 in tuition they should expect to get a more in depth, practical training on producing a feature film, networking, marketing themselves, and the proper means to actually raise funds from private investors. And it would be fantastic if such an education led to greater opportunities than holding a boom pole or getting coffee.

Yes, students are encouraged to raise money for their films in school. But they aren’t taught how. It usually involves hitting up family and friends, something that rarely cuts it in the real world when you need a $200,000 budget. You need to know about how to present your project in a compelling way, legally receive money through a private placement memorandum and then figuring out a distribution plan. You don’t take $100,000 and sink it into a 1 year production of a 30 minute short film (Advanced). You would be fired and run out of the industry for such an absurd waste of time and money.

The point of this is to wake you up to the money you are wasting at school and free you up to get your money back and make your own damn movie! If you want to make silent movies in black and white that is great but do it on your own camera without paying $40,000. Make 100 silent movies to hone your craft but don’t pay more than a house to do so. Use the money you save to either buy your own equipment and/or hire a pro crew to shoot something that you can actually sell or use to demonstrate your skill. You won’t be able to show those black and white films or Sound Image Radio dramas to agents or investors.

Most of the Professors you will be learning from haven’t worked seriously in the business for many years, some since before you were born. Their income is from a tenured position at an educational institution.

I’d love to see a list of the successes from Tisch who can directly attribute their success to school. Of the thousands of classmates of mine who graduated between 1996-2001, only a handful have even shot a feature.

The general attitude towards film students is best reflected in the clip below, from Kevin Smith’s “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”.

Ironically I am saying that the school should be held accountable for providing you, a student, with more practical and powerful training. And you are defending the school’s entitlement to ream you financially, provide you with esoteric and theoretical film exercises and assignments, and do nothing to support you after graduation.

I think you deserve better than that. That’s why I created Film School Secrets.

God bless,

Seth

That said, here is a quote from 18 year old Ricardo Casco who is already working in the film industry.

“I need to make a bunch of flyers and hand them out at the big film schools, save people’s lives. Its very sad how film school works. I’m 18 and love Gripping, and have already worked on much bigger sets than the film school grad PAs on those low budget projects.

The chris rock video made me chuckle, but its a sad reality. An intern PA I spoke with said she is paying about 95k on an film degree, all she ended up doing was washing dishes and cleaning up on set. I don’t know about you, but I wouldnt pay that much to do janitor work.”

What do you think?

On Jimmy Fallon last night, President Barack Obama admitted to enjoying one particular spoof of his personality. That spoof is the sketch “Obama’s Anger Translator” by Key and Peele on Comedy Central. In the sketch, Obama speaks calmly while his “Anger Translator” Luther yells and keeps it real about he really feels to the audience. Here is the sketch:

And here is Obama talking about it (forward to 2:20)

What many people don’t know is that the sketch was directed by Pete Atencio, a self made filmmaker and a former neighbor of mine. (As a testament for what is required to “network” in the film world, I met Pete while doing laundry in our building while living in Hollywood. No degree required).

Pete has to be one of the most talented working directors in the TV/film industry that you haven’t heard of yet. He directed a feature film with William Forsythe. He’s been paid by TBS and Superdeluxe to shoot sketches, shot celebrity and Oscar interviews, and even did the “Twilight with Cheeseburgers” spoof vid that has millions of views on Youtube. Pete’s directed the first season of “Key and Peele”, which has been a hit on Comedy Central. The two stars of the show are hysterical and very talented, and with Pete behind the camera it is a home run.

And Pete dropped out of film school.

When I met him in 2006, he was already being paid by TBS and production companies to make shorts with his own DVX100 camera, work lights, and Mac based editing system. I asked him if I he went to film school and he said “for less than a week”.

Basically he enrolled in a film school in Colorado, sat through a few classes, realized “this is bullshit” and dropped out. He used his tuition money to buy equipment, taught himself how to shoot and has been working every sense.

And just this week one of his shorts got acknowledged by the leader of the free world.

Not bad for someone who never went to school for his current profession.

Pete’s a great example, and you can do the exact same thing. If you have talent and drive, don’t waste it in a classroom. Get your own equipment, or hook up with people who have it, and make your own movies. For a detailed plan of attack  on how to do this in detail, inspiration, insight, and plans for world domination make sure to check out Film School Secrets.

I just read an excellent post on the blog “The Black and Blue” about the pros and cons of film school. Evan always presents things in a very even keeled manner, and I respect that. But I’d like to bring up the driving point behind the stand of this site and everything we talk about:

Money.

You’ve heard of it. Little green pieces of paper we all assign a particular value. Now, many of the things that film school provides (including the opportunity to network with other creative young people and have a safe environment to focus solely on making short films) are really quite cool. And if they were being offered at the level of a community college or even a vocational workshop, where the participants pay anywhere from $60 to $1000 a class, I’d be down with it.

But that’s not the case. The fact remains that young people are paying between $10,000 to $50,000 a year in tuition plus film production costs to pay for film school.

That is a TON of money. You’d never blow that much on a car, a down payment on a house, or even a RED camera without doing some serious research and discovering EXACTLY what you’re getting for your money.

If a film school was audited, they would have no way to show where all that tuition goes. Once a school has stocked itself with entry level DSLRs, some Panasonic DVX 100s (still being used at some film schools even though Standard Def is ancient), and some PCs or Macs with Final Cut or Adobe Premiere… where does the money go?

For example, at one very popular school based in NY, a year’s tuition is $30,000. Student’s also pay EXTRA for their films on top of tuition (which begs the question.. what the hell is the tuition for?!). If you get 30 students in a classroom paying $30,000 a year… that’s about $900,000.

Almost a cool million per class.

Now, I’m not math whiz, but $1,000,000 is a lot of money. In fact that could buy 333 Canon 5D cameras, or 1000 Mac editing systems. This school, however, still uses cameras purchased in the 1960s (Arri-s Film Cameras) and has its beginning students use DVX100 cameras which were purchased ten years ago.

I know schools have to pay for faculty and their buildings, but that $1 mil figure is only from one class in one school. The school in question has campuses all over the planet. Even if these schools we re-investing the tuition into new equipment it still leaves a healthy amount of profit. And that’s why these schools pay marketers as much as $20 per lead to find new students.

The real cash cow at the end of it is this: student loans.

If the average film student were required to shell out his or her own cold hard cash of $40,000 to $200,000 to go to film school, these schools wouldn’t even exist. The reason schools are like crack is because the student loan companies allow for a young person with little to no credit or understanding of money to borrow more money than it takes to buy a house in some cities to pay for school.

That’s a dream come true now, and a nightmare later.

So you want to go to film school, but can’t afford it. Student loan qualification means that you can borrow as much as $200,000 in one fall swoop; which will result in more than $1000 a month in payments after graduation. But between the time you borrow, enroll, and start taking classes, you don’t pay a thing.

And the whole time, you have borrowed money against a dream and a hope.

The hope and the dream that fuels film schools is that somehow you will become the next Spielberg, or win Sundance, or make a ton of money from your film school experience and degree.

But when you actually talk to people who went to film school, even the ones who enjoyed it, you will find one thing in common: everyone says it wasn’t necessary. They may have picked up some tips, made some good contacts or connections.

Is that worth the thousands of dollars people are spending and the schools are making from this bloated “education”?

No.

You know there are no “self made” doctors. Nobody ever just picks up a scalpel and starts doing surgery without being arrested. But in the film business more than 90% of the working professionals are self taught. No school.

If my son or nephew was considering film school I’d think twice about encouraging him to invest that kind of money learning things that he could learn better, faster, and smarter on a real film set. I’d also feel irresponsible as an adult if I let him invest that kind of money into an educational process that cannot provide him with a solid, concrete plan of how he will ever make back that incredible debt load.

I would not want to see someone I care about having to come up with $700-$1000 a month on top of rent, food, and car insurance every month while they are doing what every film school grad has to do anyway: grind it out, find work, make a project happen.

It’s just a radically poor investment.

That’s why I created Film School Secrets. To give aspiring filmmakers the brutal truth about film schools and provide a smarter, faster, and cheaper alternative that in most cases puts you well ahead of people who take out loans to go to school. To find out exactly what we teach and how it works, click here to see the course syllabus and read some student testimonials.