This Would Cost You $10,000 to Do in Film School

I wanted to come up with a cool stinger for Film School Secrets. I did this in under 5 minutes with no programming and no graphic design experience:

Now, when you take an animation course or multimedia course in film school, especially at a place like NYU or USC, it can cost you more than $1,200 a credit. Which equals between $5,000 to $10,000 a class. Adding in a “lab” (which just means they give you access to Mac or PC computers pre-loaded with software you could buy for a couple hundred bucks).

It’s a complete con job. This little stinger cost me under $15 to make and it looks rad. I downloaded the After Affects template from one of the thousands of websites and graphic designers out there in web land who do this sort of thing. I downloaded a free trial of AE, uploaded the template, replaced the text with my own text, rendered it, and boom. In 5 minutes I have my very own stinger that I could use to promote my reel, my production company, whatever.

It’s what we call “sweetening” your real. Or “polishing”. Just adding something that looks cool, professional, or bigger and better than some crap you’d find in a school. What’s amazing is that there are kids paying literally 10 grand to learn how to do the same thing. I don’t even necessarily mean the people learning how to design and code such a sting (which I have no idea how to do) but rather how to use After Effects at all. But if you’re under 30, you should be able to figure it out in about 2 hours.

I’m a child of the 90s, confounded by XBox 360 controls, and I still remember pagers and rotary phones. But I figured out how to make this thing for less money than a movie ticket and popcorn. Be smart, and you shouldn’t have to spend a boatload to make cool visuals and impress people. This is the kind of thing we get into inside Film School Secrets.