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His students are already among the elite, having been admitted to one of the most prestigious graduate programs in the country. Yet, Tom Denove says he spends the first couple of weeks of instruction reminding those admitted to UCLA’s graduate film school that despite their presence at a top-ranked university, they face a career in which the odds of success are not in their favor. “I know for a fact that most of our graduates are extremely talented people, but Hollywood is full of extremely talented people that are unemployed,” says Denove, a professional cinematographer and the vice chair of production at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. “Anyone thinking about film school has to look at the reality of why they’re doing it,” he says. “Is this something they’re really willing to make the sacrifice to do—not just the sacrifice of going to school but of having what it takes to stick around long enough to be successful? How many years can I starve before I get my break?” If it doesn’t sound like much of a pep talk, Denove doesn’t necessarily intend it as one. As it happens, he’s an administrator at a public university where tuition is a relatively pocketbook-friendly $14,000 per year.

Still, those who forge ahead to earn a graduate degree with an emphasis in some area of film production (be it directing, cinematography, or editing) will emerge with new skills behind the camera and often, particularly if they’re at a renowned institution, with valuable connections. Take third-year USC writing and directing student Nicolas Delgado: Through his work with producer-director Jeremy Kagan (Roswell), Delgado has worked on a TV series and expects to have Steven Spielberg (whom he met through a guest-speaker presentation)look at one his student films.

A school’s profile is admittedly enhanced by a star-studded alumni list whose graduates (or occasional guest lecturer) might include George Lucas, Ron Howard, and Robert Zemeckis (all of whom attended the USC School of Cinema and Television); Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Ang Lee (NYU’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television); or Rob Reiner, Darren Star, and Paul Schrader (UCLA). Famed alumni or not, and despite the obvious obstacles such a career entails, there is no shortage of programs willing to train students in the use of cameras, lighting, sound bays, and, increasingly, the far less expensive digital video. New York and California may continue to be the media capitals of the nation, but comprehensive film-school educations can be obtained pretty much throughout the United States.

You’ve heard of the biggies of course, but equally thriving programs at the University of Texas at Austin (the breeding ground of Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez), Columbia University, and Florida State University are also turning students into the field regularly.

In their book Film School Confidential: The Insider’s Guide to Film School Studies, Karin Kelly and Tom Edgar make the case that the schools best suited to preparing a student for the slings and arrows of a life in Hollywood are USC (which retains possession of all student-made films), the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles, and Florida State. “Chapman University is going to become a major player,” adds Denove, referring to a small private university in Orange, Calif. “I don’t know where all the money is coming from, but they’re building sound stages and buying millions of dollars worth of equipment.”

Continues Denove, “I don’t know if there’s some place to go that says, ‘Okay, this film school has this or that philosophy.’ From UCLA’s point of view, we’re looking for storytellers.”

With so many application options available, extensive research makes sense, whether a prospective student peruses a film program’s website, speaks to alumni, visits the campus, or attends a recruiting session. Tuition costs and program duration are factors to consider, say students and administrators. Applicants are also advised to learn about the faculty, the program’s philosophy, and what equipment they’ll have access to.

Wynn Padula was accepted at UCLA and USC. Tipping the scale toward Westwood for Padula (who studied creative writing as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College) was a philosophy he could identify with. UCLA felt like a place that offered more freedom, he says, and the cost was definitely cheaper. “I rented films that each of the three professors who had interviewed me had made, and I liked all of them a lot,” says Padula. “It felt like they were really talented people who had a similar sort of ideology toward filmmaking that I liked.”

Delgado thinks a program will end up being what a given student makes of it. A willingness to think outside the box and bend the rules may well stand an ambitious filmmaker in good stead. “The way school works is not like the real world. If you follow rules and procedures, you may be a little surprised when you get out,” says Delgado, who studied English as an undergraduate at the University of Madrid. “They usually tell you that you can’t use school equipment for your own means for movies outside of school. Not everybody respects that. I think the school sometimes is a little too strict about what you can do.”

“A lot of people ask whether I’m surprised we don’t get more applicants,” says JJ Jackman, director of admissions for the AFI Conservatory. “Some graduate programs in film get thousands. We get about 600. Ours is such a specialized program, and we’re such a hands-on conservatory, as opposed to a graduate school at a larger university that is more production-based.”

Similarly, as admissions administrators will tell you, there seems to be no dearth of students eager to enroll. Joe Petricca, the executive vice dean of the AFI Conservatory, calls a film degree “the MBA of the next generation.” Notes Petricca, “Some of what accounts for it is that the equipment has radically changed in the last few years from being very specific and unique to being almost consumer-based. Anyone who can get their hands on a video camera and editing software can edit (whether home movies or a feature) whereas a few years ago, to edit and shoot a feature film was a…gigantic endeavor requiring specific equipment.

“A lot of the students coming up have lived with video cameras, and they know film language innately,” he adds. That language can only take you so far, however. Along with earning an advanced degree (typically an MFA) students emerge from a film program having completed a few short films (which, in most programs, they will own) and armed with the know-how to make others which will be longer and more complex. Along the way, they’ll study such topics as directing the actor, documentary filmmaking, critical studies, and film history. “I didn’t really know anything about the ways films get made in Hollywood, the business world,” says Padula, now a fourth-year MFA directing and cinematography student. “One of my instructors [Gyula Gazdag] ran the Directors Lab at Sundance. He was really smart and taught me a lot about what makes a good director and what doesn’t. I applied for a $25,000 award for my thesis film, and I got it. I wouldn’t have known how to do that kind of stuff.

“You have to have an initial sort of drive and creative interest to make films,” Padula adds. “I don’t think film school is going to give you that.”

Classroom and lab work should teach you the basics of equipment use, as well as the necessity of sticking to a schedule and budget. “You learn about deadlines, which is more important than I think a lot of people might think,” says Brad Sample, a classmate of Padula’s. “You also have the ability to experiment without worrying about failing and damaging your career. You’re giving yourself this little breathing time to just think about film—to just try to be a director without having to worry too much, about paying rent or having jobs that take up so much of your time that you wouldn’t have as much energy to do that.”

Film school, adds Chapman junior Ivan Van Norman, is “a place to [screw] up while making films. I’ve noticed in larger schools, more pressure is riding on you than it is here. I’m adamant about using every advantage and resource this school has.”

Van Norman entered Chapman’s undergraduate film department with a substantial scholarship and financial aid package that covered the bulk of his $34,000-per-year tuition. As the university’s profile has climbed, Van Norman feels the program’s reputation as a place where scrappy, ambitious students could produce great things out of meager resources has somewhat declined.

Now, with generous donors helping to enhance the school’s equipment and profile, the school attracts single-minded students along with less-focused students who happen to have deep-pocketed parents, Van Norman says.

As a freshman, Van Norman took his dedication to almost extreme lengths. In the program’s first-year classical visual-storytelling class (which was designed to get students creating less-than-three-minute visual exercises) he had an exercise due after every weekend. Coupling his own assignments with working on the projects of his classmates, he found his other academic requirements getting compromised. “I don’t think any film school emphasizes working on peer sets enough,” he says. “There are lots of kids always doing sets, and you need to be active being on them. That’s where you’re going to learn. I actually overdid it; I worked on 11 sets my first semester and burnt myself out. Now I’m considered one of the more knowledgeable people, production-wise.”

The education doesn’t come cheap. Between tuition ($30,000 per year or more at private universities) and production costs, students often emerge from film school with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and maxed-out credit cards. Once you’re out, work may be available in some form of production or in the classroom, but a film school degree is not exactly comparable to passing the bar or obtaining a medical license. Ready jobs aren’t necessarily available. You say you want to direct? So does everyone else.

A harsh reality, certainly, but one the thousands of prospective students applying to film schools every year appear no less eager to brave. From the more than 700 applications UCLA receives, the school selects 21. Across the country, NYU’s Kanbar Institute admits 36 per year, culled from approximately 1,000 applicants.

Admissions officers and professors will tell you they’re looking for talent in their candidates, but they’re also looking for a collaborative spirit. Demonstrated experience in film production will never work against you, but should you have proved yourself to be a gifted storyteller in an unrelated discipline, that can be a good thing, as well. “Filmmaking is a collaborative medium, so that’s very important to us, because ours is a production program,” says John Tintori, chair of the graduate film division at NYU. “Everybody will produce, everybody will shoot, everybody will direct, and everybody’s going to edit. We want people who can work with other people. And we want people who have a unique voice and who are passionate about cinema.”

For many programs, student who acquired and developed that passion sometime past the teenage years are as welcome as those right out of high school. AFI looks for three to five years of experience from the approximately 135 students (termed “fellows”) admitted to the two-and-a-half-year program. A diverse résumé (including time away from school gaining real-world experience) may stand an applicant in good stead, as long as he or she has demonstrated a passion for narrative. “We don’t care if they’ve taken any film courses in college at all. That’s not what we’re looking for,” says Denove of UCLA’s grad program. “Being a storyteller manifests itself in sculptors, painters, musicians, and writers. We figure we can teach them from scratch how to make a movie.”

Portfolios are submitted by all sorts of people, from gung-ho undergrads to those seeking to switch disciplines within filmmaking,and even to the doctor who decides mid-career he wants to be behind a different kind of camera than an X-ray or ultrasound machine. The people interviewed for this article studied such disciplines as English, political science, and philosophy before switching gears. Vincent Jay Miller studied behavioral psychology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and long nursed a dream of going to law school before enrolling in USC’s graduate program. Also accepted to UCLA and Loyola Marymount University, Miller discovered that with scholarships, the private university proved to be a less expensive proposition.

Several of Miller’s fellow USC students ended up working on his first film, the independently produced Gabriela. Miller says he might have made even better use of his film school connections had he been a certain personality type. “The fact that you went to USC film school doesn’t mean a lot to people in the industry,” says Miller, who is in preproduction for his next film, a modern adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov titled The Brothers Carver. “That in itself isn’t going to do it. It’s the luck of the draw unless you’re the kind of person who is a schmoozer who tries to make friends with powerful people. I wasn’t.”

Tintori studied art at the University of Michigan. He came to NYU after 20 years of working in the film industry. “I wish I had gone [to film school]. We’re giving away secrets here,” he says. “We have a whole faculty of people who have put in years and years delivering a lot of really well presented information and wisdom.”

Gregori Viens earned an undergraduate degree in political science from UCLA when he began considering film school with an eye toward a career in feature and documentary direction. Self-taught in camera work, lighting, and editing, he owned much of his own equipment. He also had already directed the feature-length documentary Island of Roses. Viens attended Syracuse University with a full three-year scholarship and guaranteed teaching opportunities along the way. Syracuse is well outside of New York City, meaning connections weren’t always the easiest to come by, but he doesn’t regret his choice. “I wanted to learn narrative fiction and also to make films with other young people who were dedicating all their energy and lives to it,” says Viens, now a visiting assistant professor at UCLA. “We were really pushed artistically. We were pressed and criticized and critiqued harshly to do better. I liked that a lot. The pressure was good.”

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Keywords

"martin scorsese" "tom denove" "gyula gazdag" "darren star" 

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