Can I talk to you about film? What did you major in in college to get a job making movies? How important is a film degree for getting a job in the industry? I'm 16 and want to make movies when I grow up.
oh wow okay I’m going to answer this as best as I possibly can but I want you to know that I’m exhausted cause we’ve been filming all week so I’m sorry in advance if I don’t make as much sense as I mean to.
First of all, all of you should always know that you are 150% always free to talk to me about film, public or private, cause I fucking love it (obviously) and love talking about it.
I went to San Francisco State University and majored in Cinema. It’s really important to pick a good film school, but that doesn’t mean picking a fancy and expensive art school. A lot of my friends who I graduated with went to community college and then transferred so don’t feel like you need to spend ALL the money in order to get a film degree. In fact (and maybe I’m biased) but as far as within the city limits of San Francisco goes, SFSU IS the best film school and is in fact ranked nationally among the best film schools.
As far as a film degree goes…this is a little bit more complicated. The film degree itself doesn’t mean anything. But the reason going to film school is extremely important is because most of film is who you know, and the best way to know people is to go to film school. That’s not to say my professors weren’t amazing (they absolutely were), but in fact one of the reasons they were/are amazing is because they are still in the industry and I even still get e-mails from some of them about jobs in films and such. But it’s extremely important to get a degree so that you meet the people who will eventually help you get jobs.
If you want to make movies start filming stuff on your phone and editing it. I’m going to tell you right now that you’ll look back on them when you’re in film school and think they’re terrible, but it’s super important that you just do it. Everyone starts somewhere, and we live in an era where being young and making terrible movies doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars and you can easily just get a couple friends and make a couple things for fun in your neighborhood and not worry about it. It’s important because, while I knew I wanted to make movies since I was 12, I thought I for sure wanted to be behind the camera. And then I got into a film class and realised what I really loved doing was editing, and I’ve been doing that for like 10 years now (seriously I would edit movies in high school for like $10 for other peoples like history projects).
So just do stuff, no matter how terrible you think it might be. Figure out what it is about film you really like doing, and then fucking ride with it. And, most importantly, like what you’re doing. Love what you’re doing. And don’t be afraid to do the shitty PA jobs because let me tell you EVERYONE does the shitty PA jobs when they’re starting out and they’re shitty but that’s where your best stories are going to come from.
EDIT: dear @alltheladiesyouhate @savviesays @kwizten @pandacrow @coronakingdomlights and other people in film feel free to put your $.02 in