Film School

I use to be ambivalent that I went to film school. Now…it’s strange...I learned the appreciation of it. And that is…most student films suck balls. I mean they are bad. And you can tell once you watch it. Most of them are just overly earnest. They want so bad for you to know how clever or smart or deep they are.

Recently, my friend showed me a student film. Beautiful in craft, DEAD in story. There is no story, only a very ambiguous thought. If I were the professor who proctored this project, I would’ve told the director/student “hey, listen, you can do what you want, but let’s get real here…you need to eventually work. Let’s re-think this.” But no one told him. Or it went completely ignored. I’m not sure where this comes from. The three years I was in master’s program, it was mostly watching kids doing a pageant of a larger movie.  They aren’t casted right, they aren’t acted right. In defense, this is mostly because…they’re so worried about the technical issues. Coverage is a learned craft. Visual storytelling is a craft. And this is not really learned by mistakes. The typical student filmmaker refuses to believe their way of storytelling is stupid. As if they are seen as stupid. Very few learn from this and continue to make the same piece of crap. I’ll be honest, it took me a TON of mistakes to get to a point of being honest with my product. I guess you could chalk it up to pride. But I am learning now. At an accelerated rate. Because I’ve seen the audience that watches these movies, and you DON’T want to waste people’s time. Movies cost so much now to go to, you’re not doing them a service by giving them “Tree of Life.” And I’m not saying it has to be dumb, but it should entertain. Two action movies I saw recently come to mind “The Scorpion King” & “Van Helsing.” These are two very slapped together movies. Nothing shows the semblance of originality. It follows a very by-the-numbers action movie. And it’s dumb. Big budgeted dumb. However, these aren’t complete washes. It showed The Rock was very much charismatic (for future successful movies). A very expensive debutante ball, if you ask me. Were these successful…sure. The people who made these movies aren’t hurting for future work. But they know. They know they catered to the masses. It didn’t seem like it was in their heart to do these projects. But doing anything to keep “hot” is the name of the game. The minute you get cold…you’re dead in the water. Case in point…I could tell everyone what I’ve done, it’s now 2015, these things I’ve done is over 5 years old, NO ONE remembers my credits. The minute the stop talking to me. I’ve seen this first hand. What have you done for me lately? It’s no joke. If you go off the grid, you are forgotten.