Reader questions: What should I study in college and how do you struggle afterwards?

You might have noticed that posts have gotten scarcer the last few weeks. I've been working on a new spec and have been trying to put together a short film, so my free time for this site has plummeted.  However, I am still getting all your emails and I'll respond to them as time and severity warrant.

As luck would have it, two recent emails seem to relate to each other in an interesting way so I thought I'd knock them both out here.  First up is Cecilia:


Hi, I realize you may be busy with other priorities and such and this may seem like a silly email but I really don't know who to ask. I ideally would like to go into a career in film (like directing or screenwriting most likely), but my parents will never let me study anything like that in college. Should I just write and do what I can on my own and then try to send in scripts? I truly love film so I don't want to waste my time and half ass something but I also don't want to be broke and have an unsympathetic family. Do you have any advice?

I do. Believe me, I can understand why parents would push their children to study something more stable than writing or directing.  My parents were very supportive of my choice to pursue such a path, but I entered college at the tail end of the Clinton Administration, back when we had a stable economy, no budget deficit and much lower unemployment. The economic picture is very different today and because of that, I would definitely recommend you study something that can pay the bills. Do what you can to make yourself employable down the line because it's a harsh job market out there.

That doesn't mean you can't take film classes as electives, though. Nor does it mean you can't make friends among the film majors and make movies with them in your spare time.  When I was in college, it was just before the boom where seemingly every student had their own digital video camera. Today, you probably won't have to go far to find someone with a copy of Final Cut Pro and it's a relatively cheap program to purchase.  I learned more about filmmaking from actually doing it than I did from just listening to lectures in a classroom, so there's no reason you can't pursue it as a hobby and build up your portfolio on your own.

Post-graduation you can always move out to L.A.  No one's going to care what's on your diploma.  Even though I was a Film major, I could have gotten the exact same jobs I netted out here even if I majored in Econ or English.  Heck, at least two successful screenwriters I know didn't even GO to college!

And now an email from Chris:

I know writing to you is a long shot. That's okay, for me, every day is a long shot. 23 years old, I moved to LA five months ago, after getting my B.A. I have been living on savings while simultaneously working four internships (one of which involves periodic script reading). 

I thought that by now I'd have the credits for a lowly PA/secretary job but that's not the case. I might've done something wrong, or am just unlucky. I don't want you to tell me it's all going to be okay. Or that if I keep working on my writing "it'll all pay off". I just want to know if you've ever been in my position before and, if so, what you did that helped you sleep at night. 

Cecilia - this is your future.

Chris - what you're experiencing is relatively normal for a 23 year-old in his first year in L.A. When I moved out to L.A. It took me almost seven months to get a real job that paid and until that time I did internships and worked on my writing on my own.

Some of the best advice I got was from a visiting alum who came to my school after becoming a rather big name in the industry.  She cautioned, "Your early twenties will suck." Yes, they will.

My first year in L.A. wasn't great. I knew maybe two people before I came to town, I was living off of the generosity of my parents, it felt like I was never going to be hired and I was 3,000 miles from everything I'd ever known.  I have definitely been in your position, Chris.

This is a hard place to make a living and even people who've been here for a while still struggle.  I've been on unemployment a few times myself. I'm fortunate in that my wife has been pretty consistently employed in the business and that she's extremely good and rather successful at what she does.  Over the years, my writing career has taken some steps forward and thanks to this blog and twitter, I've formed a lot of useful relationships with people in the business.

But the struggle never really ends, and especially now it's even worse because where in an economy where employers can't afford to take on many employees and they underpay the ones they do have.  It's a horrible way to treat people who've worked hard, but what can they do? Quit? HA! Then someone else will do the job for the meager pay.

Getting that first paying job in the industry will take time. I knew a guy who went almost a full year without landing his first job.  It won't be easy and I can't promise that it even will happen.  All I can tell you is that you're not alone.

Film schools finally join the digital era... but why wait for them?

This is my 700th post today, and I wanted to say something more significant.  As it turns out, I'm probably going to get off on a bit of a ramble, but I saw a story that weekend that sparked  a lot of thoughts.

I graduated college about ten years ago, and I was remarking recently to another graduate of that era that most of the technical aspects of my film education are now remarkably outdated.  To put it in perspective, most of my film projects were shot on 16mm film using Arri and Bolex cameras.  Fortunately I made two digital short films during my senior year, which gave me experience with the Canon XL-1 and Final Cut Pro, but we were just at the start of the digital revolution.

On one hand, I have to respect my professors' insistence on really pushing us to tell stories with our short films, to not let them become little more than sketches.  But looking back with the perspective of the last ten years, it's hard to deny that the rise of YouTube has certainly benefited the kinds of short filmmakers who have been good at creating short, flashy and vivid entertainment.  The kind of stuff that rises to the top at Funny or Die or that goes viral on YouTube is also the sorts of things that would have been dismissed in most of my film classes.  And yet... that material is also often what gets young filmmakers noticed.

The Wrap had a recent article that highlighted how some schools are finally adjusting to the new climate.  In part they say:


“Twenty years ago, people went to film school to become the best filmmaker they could become so they could go out and make films,” said Bob Bassett, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, told TheWrap. “Today, they have to be much more calculating about developing their skills, because those skills are what lead to paying jobs.”


In all cases, there is an increased emphasis on crafting films that can be viewed on YouTube, Funny or Die, or other digital platforms.


“It’s not just learning to work on a mini-budget or simply recycling a television episode and putting it on the web,” Paul Schneider, chair of Boston University’s film and television department, told TheWrap. "It has to be content that really is outside the box."


Both BU and Chapman University, for instance, now routinely encourage students to create shorter and more interactive film projects.

 It's great to see film schools really step up and join the 21st Century.  I get the sense I have a fair amount of readers in college, and perhaps even some in high school.  I have to say that I really envy you guys.  I've talked before about how I was the executive producer on a student-run TV series in college.  In those days, no one had Final Cut Pro on their personal systems, and the idea that someone's cell phone would be able to shoot high-definition video was an impossible dream.

There is so much opportunity for those of you even if your film schools are still teaching hot splices and reversal film.  Those of you who are nearing high school graduation there is no better graduation gift you can ask for than a MacBook with Final Cut Pro.  Shoot footage on your cell phone if you have to, but start turning out product. 

You'll pick up the process of storytelling by doing, and by forcing yourself to chisel coherence out of your own raw footage.  There were some night in college where my friends and I would grab a high-8 camera and just start shooting little sketches in the bowels of the library, making the script up as we went.  A lot of times, we came back with some silly pieces, but that trial and error helped us figure out the kind of concepts that worked and what didn't worked.

Telling a story in a short film is incredibly different from telling it over a 100 pages in a screenplay.  I'm going to start highlighting some examples of good short films over the next few months because if this blog is at least going to address ways to break it, it's hard to overlook the value of short content as a showcase for storytelling talent.

I learned a lot in my film classes and I'm a big proponent of education.  But if film school isn't an option for you, I see no reason that you shouldn't get a laptop, get Final Cut and start shooting.  Even if you think you just want to be a writer, you'll learn so much from the process of translating your script to the screen. 

Tuesday Talkback: Film School or No Film School

Over two months ago (hey, I fell way behind in emails) I got this email from Stephen Dypiangco.

My friend and I are both independent filmmakers in LA, and we just made this humorous video called Film School or No Film School:



I'm sure this is a question your readers think about, and we'd greatly appreciate it if you could share it on your blog!


Synopsis:
We went to film school. Patrick went to San Francisco State, and Stephen went to NYU. Find out why we went and whether the debt was worth it.


Who We Are:
National Film Society
The National Film Society is a new media studio co-founded by filmmakers Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco, who've decided to take their talents to YouTube. They produce original content, showcase amazing works, interview talented creators and make fun of each other as much as possible.

So let's make this today's Tuesday Talkback.  I got an undergraduate degree in film, but never went to graduate level film school.  Frankly, I don't feel like the money I'd have spent on the education would have been worth it in the long run, or gotten me substantially closer to achieving my goals.  I think moving to LA and diving right into the job market was probably the best thing I could have done.

But what do you guys think?