Article by Kevin Franzen
In a profession where the hopefuls dish out $ 35,000 or more a year to attend school without a guarantee for employment after graduation it’s sad to see their money is being wasted. I recently worked on an film school short production. It was the worst film production of my short career and I’m very sadden to report such a thing. The students were not organized from the start. There were many problems with the script from the beginning that I believed contributed to the problems. The script itself was not written entirely to be a film it had some very wordy scenes without any action to be filmed which caused for confusion. Other problems with the script were the production didn’t stick to it as it should be. We film additional footage to give more dialog to actors and more action to the film. The film also saw dialog changes when the actors wouldn’t stick to the script. From putting together the production team, personalities were not considered.
The director of this project was a soft spoken guy. The DP was straight to the point and wanted many things his way. Many times the director gave in and then these decisions made us behind in filming and slowed down the production. One example was after the 5th or 6th take the DP wanted more takes and the director wanted to move on. The production kept getting behind schedule for extra takes. Another example was a shot the DP wanted and got that put the camera in sight of a beam taking longer to set up and shoot. Film production is a huge business. It’s one that attracts many hopefuls and wannabees. For those you must first realize there is a lot of money being spent on films.
The production needs to be done in an orderly fashion that aids in saving money. Film schools seem to be were most people think they need to go. I once thought in this manner. After working in the industry on two TV films and several shorts I am learning that film schools are not the place to learn the art of filmmaking. The school I attended taught me an enormous amount about film and film production. I learned about areas in filmmaking that would make the experience more pleasant and keep the production on budget. The school is Cinema Arts Tech which has instructors who are currently working the industry and know how to make films. For the best value and education think about Cinema Arts Tech.www.cinemaartstech.com
About the Author
Working Script Supervisor worked on 12 Films mostly independant some Television.
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