“Film School Students Aplenty, but What About Jobs?”
From today’s NYT, an interesting article on the state of film schools:
LOS ANGELES — One after another, touring groups of prospective students and their parents stopped late last month to pose for pictures around a bronze Douglas Fairbanks, who wields his sword in a courtyard fountain here at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Not even the imposing Mr. Fairbanks, a founder of the film school, has kept newcomers at bay. But another round of graduates is now hitting the street, in greater numbers and perhaps better equipped than ever before, to pursue opportunities that have seldom been more elusive, at least where traditional Hollywood employment is concerned.
As home-entertainment revenue declined in the last five years, studios reduced spending on scripts from new writers, cut junior staff positions and severely curtailed deals with producers who once provided entry-level positions for film school graduates. Yet applications to university film, television and digital media programs surged in the last few years as students sought refuge from the weak economy in graduate schools and some colleges opened new programs.
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At U.S.C. about 4,800 would-be students applied for fewer than 300 slots next fall, up from about 2,800 applicants the year before. Educators at established film and television programs like those at New York University, the University of Texas, Loyola Marymount University and the University of California, Los Angeles, said they had seen a similarly sharp step-up in the number of students seeking what used to be called film education but now typically embraces the production of video games and Webisodes and virtually any medium in which the pictures move.
By and large those established programs have kept enrollments steady. But an expanding number of new film and media programs at other colleges around the country helped feed what appears to be a bumper crop of graduates in the academic year that just ended.
I’d love to hear from those of you currently in or recently graduated from film school or have majored or minored in related fields. What has drawn you into this area of interest? What are your goals? Do you feel like your formal education helped you in a major way? If not, why not? How are you going about trying to break into the entertainment business?
Bottom line is film school or majoring in film studies a smart choice or not?
For more of the NYT article, go here.