I’m sure many people still have the fantasy in their heads that going to film school gets you great contacts and into the inner circle of the film world. Fine, that delusion ain’t going away anywhere soon.

But there are still people who believe that you need to sit in a classroom, take notes, and pay $40K a year to learn how the basics of how to shoot a movie. Thousands of them every year are lining the coffers of film schools with millions of unearned dollars. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is now highlighting just how freaking easy it is for anybody to grab a camera, write a story, and shoot a movie just like they do at film school but for thousands less.

Even Teenagers & Best Buy Employees Make Better Movies Than Film Schools

Best Buy just launched an ad campaign touting their store as a veritable production house for any aspiring filmmaker to cut their teeth. The ads showcase a bunch of young people grabbing video cameras, shooting, and editing with PCs. They even recruit one of the Best Buy employees to be a zombie in the movie. Here it is:

The final product looks better than most student films. Which may prompt you to ask, what is the difference between a little amateur movie shot like this and something made at film school? A few similarities and differences:

1. These kids own their equipment, rather than sharing it with hundreds of other students
2. The kids in the ad aren’t paying $40K a year in tuition
3. They own the rights to their video exclusively (not so at schools like USC)
4. They are learning the exact same movie making basics as a student at NYU, USC, or NYFA
5. They are screening their movie on a projection screen TV just like a student at any major film school