Scorsese on film school

William Goldman said "no one knows anything" about the movie business, and it's true. There is no set path. By all accounts, Wes Anderson only made one short film, Bottle Rocket, and off that got James L. Brooks to make the feature version (starring the same no name actors no less), while Oliver Stone, after making numerous shorts in college, toiled for years and years on his projects, finally getting to make Salvador and then Platoon some 12 years after writing it. It's all a crapshoot. The only thing that's changed recently is the accessibility of cheap, professional quality tools to those starting out. Up until the mid nineties, the only place a poor young filmmaker could get access to filmmaking equipment was film schools. I don't regret going to film school as most of the work I got my start with was from colleagues but now, it might make more sense for an ambitious young filmmaker to take that tuition money and start shooting. Just read a lot and watch a lot of films to make up the gap in education a film school can give you.
 
What's cool about film school (if it is a good one like Barry said) is that you have some form of diciplined learning process and curriculum to guide creative, albeit young and disorganized people. It is supposed to give you the basic tools.

read: it helps you get your first real job.

My personal preference is a 4-year college...where you learn about more than just film.
 
Barry_Green said:
Rodriguez sends mixed messages. In the book "Rebel Without A Crew" he makes it very clear that you have to work your fingers to the bone before you dare to set out to try to make a feature.
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And even then, El Mariachi was a "practice" movie. And he intended to follow it with two more "practice" movies. And he intended to follow those with a "serious independent film" as he puts it in the book.
 
... and that's pretty much what he did. He did a bunch of mediocre studio films before he returned to his roots and did the film he wanted to make, for himself: Spy Kids. And it ruled the box office for 8 continuous weeks, a feat that's extraordinarily rare.
 
i think you can have all the vision and passion you want, but without the intangibles, itll just never happen and its usually just simply appearant.
 
Indywannabe said:
My personal preference is a 4-year college...where you learn about more than just film.
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I agree fully with indy. I was orginally going to go to Full Sail for film school, because I wanted to learn film making and everything that comes with it. I knew and still know that your degree does not really mean jack, so I wanted to go there over a 4 year becasue I didn't want to take gen-ed classes.

BUT...

Now that this fall will be my 3rd year of a 4-year school, I would not trade it at all. You really do learn a much broader sence of reality and the world, which I personally believe helps influence the way you shoot even more.

I would disagree that film school is all about you creating films where you try to be very expressive. Senior thesis projects are completely full productions, pre-prod, prod, post... with concept, scheduling, building a budget, finding funds, following union guildlines, locations, permits...



on a side note, I enjoyed this quote from On the Lot, NYU girl, "Sorry, I assumed that if you call yourself a director of photography, you'd know what a canted angle is..." Kenny, "Oh yeah, thats right...I didn't go to film school"

haha. come on, not going to film school isn't a write-off to not know techniques used in your "field" PS. the nyu girl does suck.
 
Jim Brennan said:
Scorsese on making Mean Streets:
"In order to get the picture made I had to learn how to make a movie. I didn't learn how to make a movie in film school. What I learned in film school was to express yourself with pictures and sound. But learning to make a movie is totally different. That's the people with the production board, the schedule. That means you gotta get up at five in order to be there, you gotta feed the people."
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OMG. I don't know what to say here, this is so right on the money. I learned how to make movies my watching movies and watching movies be made honestly. After my first film I really learned what makes a movie tick and it wasn't what I thought.

-Nate
 
I think the point is that you never stop learning. I'm a pretty bright guy. I read a lot of non-fiction, host poli-sci/philosphy/history discussions, do the NY Times crossword and all that. But I could never get through college. I tried numerous times, at various institutions and stages in my life over 20 years. It just is not the way I learn. (Plus, as I got older, being in a room full of clueless teenagers who thought what they were wearing was more important than what they were learning was a tad annoying). I get great scores on standardized tests, but I don't really learn much.

But I'm a whiz at teaching myself. Put me in a room full of people who know what I want to learn, and I will pick their brains like mad.

Most educational institutions are set up to teach everyone the same way, but we all learn differently.

But, as my degreed wife is so fond of telling me: "School should enhance your education. It should neither be the sole source of your learning, nor should it interfere with it."

The lessons never stop, and theory is rarely the same as application.
 
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