How to Improve your Chances in the Hollywood Crapshoot: The Film School Question

So you're an aspiring filmmaker in your early 20s. You want to make films. Not just some half-cooked short film you may have created while in an undergrad production class, but a real film, really made - with real people who can truly define and brand themselves as filmmakers.

Not only that, you want to be a filmmaker in the industry. You want that glorified Oscar nomination... but you'd settle for Sundance. You want to travel to Cannes for your work.

You want Hollywood.

Best way way to get there? That's the tricky part. I've had aspirations to write a traditional 120-page Hollywood screenplay, submit it to a competition (and win), sell away my rights to it for a few cool million & get noticed in the biz. Just a few easy steps! I mean if JJ Abrams can do it, why couldn't I?

The cold hard truth is that is isn't as easy as that. Not everyone is as talented and successful as someone like JJ Abrams. Everyone who has that kind of talent doesn't necessarily also already have a connection in the biz - your parents. JJ's parents produced a few television shows in addition to him.

It's not formula. It's a crapshoot. How does one improve his odds in a crapshoot?  In order to make it in the film industry, one needs to have not only the drive, talent, & determination and a boatload of luck, but also the connections. The best way to attain these valuable connections if one isn't already born into them is film school.

Hollywood Reporter recently unveiled its annual list of top film school undergraduate & graduate programs, tallying votes from a bevy of industry professionals from the America Cinema Editors, Writers Guild of America West, and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. But are they worth the money?

Top programs like University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, Hollywood's own American Film Institute Conservatory Program, and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts are steep in price. The gamble you make, of course, is whether or not you'll be in student loan debt the rest of your life, which runs you close to about $100,000 on average for a two year MFA program. Have no fear! You pay that money back after you network with the big boys after graduation! Easier said than done.

But it's way more than networking. A smaller and relatively less expensive film program such as FSU's College of Motion Picture Arts, provides its students with an arsenal of industry cameras & lights. For free. Top programs like USC & AFI might not be even to provide that - you have to rent elsewhere. Granted, they give you grant money to rent & use them for your thesis films, but that's besides the point. The point I am making is this - you do get what you pay for when you pay for film school. Industry standard equipment is catastrophically expensive.

You'd never get a chance to play with with equipment like that, and learn all their intricacies, anywhere else. And if you plan to concentrate in cinematography rather than directing or screenwriting, you get to use that equipment to shoot plenty of films. MFA programs in directing and screenwriting can guarantee maybe only one thesis project that you can personally brand while in school. Cinematographers have the advantage of shooting multiple theses, which provide excellent sources for a reel to showcase your talent to industry professionals. More projects equals more diversity in your reel, which is more impressive than just one magnum opus, in my humble opinion. You have the opportunity to shoot multiple magni opi.

Which brings me to my next point: what to specialize in film school, if that's an option. I would suggest venturing down a path in cinematography for several reasons. For one, less people tend to concentrate in cinematography because the ones applying to grad school flock to the directing programs. Cinematography helps you out in admissions. I never personally understood this because I believe cinematography should be the most popular. You are actually behind the camera, and using it! Or you actually light the space yourself! The cinematographer is literally responsible for the visual, not the director. But, I digress.

The second reason is that a proficiency in cinematography means you know about both camera and lights; you are more responsible on-set because you are most likely more technically knowledgeable than everyone else. A director, yes, is the unspoken boss on-set, but really he is in charge of getting the best performance from the actors. A screenwriter loses his power once he sells his perfectly manicured script. After that, his input is rarely heard. They're not even allowed on set during production because their mere presence and potential complaints are an annoyance to the director. The director has final say in story elements & visual choices after that.

If the screenwriter is responsible for why the story is important, the director is responsible for what is important to show in that story, and the cinematographer is important for how everything comes into place - the real bare bones & all the guts and glory. You are more engaged with your work at hand, and isn't that the most important thing? Doing work you love because you're engaged with it?

The third reason is anyone can read a book about screenwriting, and then write a screenplay. You don't have to pay tuition to learn that. Yes, you get connections in film school, but a screenwriter can write as much as he or she wants and enter hundreds competitions and win prizes without a degree. This is true.   Cinematography, however, requires a certain skill set that can advance in levels in terms of proficiency; specific equipment is required that is not readily available to the layman, but is available to experiment with at top film programs.

Sure you can get an MFA in Screenwriting and apply for teaching jobs at the collegiate level and make a good living, but schools also tend to hire based on experience. Winning prizes in well renowned nationwide competitions shows you know how to write screenplays and is a substitute for that Masters degree. Pay hundreds of dollars to enter competitions or pay thousands of dollars in student loans to meet your end goal? That's the decision.

Last reason, you can still get noticed by making your own film without the help of one of these institutions. You can just max out all your credit cards to become ~$100,000 in debt to pay for equipment, locations, and permits like Kevin Smith did with Clerks, but that's a real silly gamble.

My real last reason to go to film school: you make not only industry connections at these graduate programs, but you meet friends. Film is a collaborative medium. You need to meet other people who are as invested in making movies as you are; it's not a hobby, it's a calling. And you filter out those who believe filmmaking is a hobby at film school. These are the ones you make truly great work with after you leave school. And that's when the fun begins.

At least that's my best educated guess, because that's where I hope to be later down the road...in film school.

- Sebastian

Dialogue: A double-edged sword

Dialogue is the most overrated aspect of film.

I say this with the intent to inform the public that, yes – speaking roles in movies are paramount to any successful film, but there should be a sense of frugality incorporated into the writing of a script when one thinks about dialogue.

Dialogue is hard to write. There are several factors to be considered when writing dialogue.

Does each separate character have its own voice? Do they sound different?

Does the dialogue act as a progression in the plot? Does it move the action forward?

Is there new information being revealed to the audience? And is that information, known as exposition, too on-the-nose? Meaning, will the audience feel like they’ve been whacked the head really hard by the writer or director saying “HEY!!! Listen up, this is IMPORTANT!!!”…nobody likes that friend who taps them on the shoulder to say, ‘Hey pay real close attention to this part. Watch it, are you watching?’

No. Nobody likes that. As an audience we like to go to the movie theatre (or sit in the comfort of your own home theatre system, or TV room) and be sucked into the world of the story. We don’t want to be reminded that we’re watching a movie. We want immerse ourselves in the story because it’s compelling enough to capture our attention.

That story will include characters you want to understand via sympathy or empathy. And dialogue is the most difficult tool to utilize as a writer to convey a sense of understanding to the audience.

A great screenwriting professor of mine once told me that great dialogue can make a good movie even better, but that bad dialogue can ruin a great movie immediately. Bottom line – dialogue get’s re-written until it is the most concise, succinct, and anti-verbose as possible. Motion pictures are being made here, I remind you. Moving pictures, visuals, are the primary component and sound and dialogue are added as fine details to the final product.

I’ll use one little example, from one of my more recent favorite films, Drive, by Nicolas Refn Winding. In it, Ryan Gosling shines as a nearly mute lead character that defines himself through his actions, not his words. He has very limited dialogue, and his character doesn’t even reveal his name throughout the entire movie, something which I’ll admit to not even realizing until I looked it up later on IMDB. How do you understand a character who barely speaks or shares very limited information to you? 

His character in my opinion is so compelling because of his non-verbal body language. Every thing he did say, merited some very valuable characterization. Whether it is a simple “Wanna see something?” and have him take his love interest and her son on a sunny Sunday drive down the Los Angeles River, or a simple “Okay,” as a response to whether he’d want some water, Ryan Gosling as “The Driver” gives the audience a tease into the grinding gears of his psyche. It’s only until we see him explode as a character of violent nature later in the film that we realize there is something innately intriguing about him, his motives, and his past. From then on, the audience can only surmise the “why” of his true nature.

That is it right there; a cinematic love and infatuation for ambiguity in complex characters. Nobody wants to be hit over the head with lines of explanation because it removes the fun out of the movie viewing experience. People love to be sleuths, and love to solve mysteries, and it is the mystery of the character that makes roles in certain movies so compelling. It’s when the screenwriter, director, or cameraperson gives you the tiniest morsel of breadcrumbs visually, not aurally, to build to your conclusion without being directly told why through dialogue of the character.

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” Alfred Hitchcock said this.

For a cinematic perspective on life, you can see really good movies written by good screenwriters who tell stories peppered with great dialogue. But it is those few really great screenwriters, however, who can tell an incredible story using as little dialogue as possible.

- Sebastian Gilbert

Screenwriting: A tool for teaching

Today we are increasingly exposed – maybe even overexposed to some extent - to screens. Television screens, smartphone screens, and yes, even the big screen. We are now a generation that is predominantly stimulated by images that are streamlined to us.

A generation of teenagers, middle school and high school, are a new breed of young adults that have an enhanced visual literacy, with a very high susceptibility to become illiterate in other media, most notably written work. Real, physical literature has been digitized to a screen, whether it is downloaded to a Kindle or a device similar, or it has gone to the extent that the book itself has been adapted into a movie. It’s easier to watch a story unfold in front of you, than it is to read or write a story from one’s imagination. Kids these days are coerced into finding the easy way out.

For me, there is a simple solution to ease children of all reading and writing backgrounds and skill sets;  teach screenwriting in high schools as an alternative form of creative writing.

Not only will teaching the art of screenwriting be more relatable to students because it involves creating a visual story on paper, it is fundamentally a rigid, structural, and formulaic type of writing; in other words, I believe it is a creative alternative to help entice more children to read and write. Also, I’ve never met a kid who didn’t like the movies. What’s important for them to learn is why they like movies. All things considered, it most likely written exceptionally well. If something can be written that caters to today’s youths short attention span, then it must be written exceptionally well for it come across on the big screen in such relatable fashion.

Screenwriting goes beyond basic creative non-fiction or fiction writing, and it goes beyond analytical or persuasive essay writing. It can be both equally fun and challenging. The best thing of all is that it is doable for students. If students do not like to write because they are uninterested in the topics they have to analyze, or if they see no point in sharing a creative thought, screenwriting can give them an end goal to strive for. They can strive to create an individualized story that can one day, reach the silver screen. That goal becomes lost or even an afterthought in other forms of writing. That goal is probably the most important aspect of all – the ability to dream that one day, a movie can be made from a single idea that you’ve concocted. Everyone has an idea for a movie. Not everyone knows the process in order for that idea to become a movie. The good news is that this particular understanding of how a story is crafted and written for the screen can be both taught and learned.

I have had the pleasure of teaching a high school elective screenwriting class two separate times. What I found intriguing both times is that teaching a class on this topic is engaging for the students. They learn how a movie intrinsically becomes a movie – it all starts with paper and pencil, keyboard and computer screen, and most of all – with the written word that is spawned from an idea.  Screenwriting, just like any other form of writing, is a form of expression and otherwise an outlet for today’s youth. The best films are made from true experiences and if students learn to understand themselves better or even share their experiences with others in an accessible way, it can be very therapeutic and rewarding.

One of my former tutees was a sophomore girl who had trouble focusing in her English class and had issues with a creative writing assignment that dealt with writing a short story. I simply told her that a short story is a step right before writing a screenplay, which is a step right before making a movie. She immediately recalled one of her favorite Lifetime original movies that echoed one of her own real life experiences, and boom – she had discovered the fire of inspiration inside herself to write a short story. Her distraction now became an ability to emulate another story and create her own. And that’s just the start.

It’s my hope that if students at a young age can learn how to write for the movies before they reach the collegiate level, they will have much stronger overall writing skills than can help them succeed in various areas of the job market. Having a background in a regimented writing discipline is paramount in the real world. The teachers of today’s youth, editors of magazines and novels, and even lawyers, all have a strong writing background. Most people who start in these successful professions ultimately wind up as professional screenwriters or script consultants themselves at the end of the day.

What is important to take away from this is that screenwriting can be an effective teaching tool when it comes to molding creative young minds. Linking creative writing, particularly screenwriting, with visual media, notably films, as a teaching tool for students can give them a certain level of appreciation of writing they might have never learned otherwise.

Screenwriting is an art, and it can be easily taught as well as appreciated. Plus, if the younger generation is taught how to write screenplays well at a young age, we might be saved from a future of horrible movies that dilute good writing with bad special effects and action sequences. I can at least dream , can’t I?

-- by Sebastian Gilbert