Me, Circa 2009
This is in response to a recent poster, Ashton, who asked:
“Hello, I am a 17-year old high school student…I just wanted to know about your experiences at NYU. Did your studies there help you in regard to making films? Do you think it was worth it? I just wanted to get a personal opinion from someone who physically went to NYU film school, because I’ve heard a lot of people say that “film school isn’t worth it” and that “it’s a waste of time”, so I’m not quite sure what to believe. And I wouldn’t want to make the wrong decision.”
No. Seek a career in banking/finance/health/a defensible industry, now.
…Kidding, kidding. (Sort of).
Before I get into the details, I’d say: “yes, I think that if you want to become a writer-director or a producer in this day in age, it definitely helps to go to film school.”
And not just any film school. Whether Undergrad/Grad you need to attend one of the heavy-hitters, where you’ll get the opportunity to put your hands on some state-of-the-art equipment and to build and network with people that are actually potentially hungry enough to be working in the industry in the future.
[That's not to say that everybody that goes to film school has a stellar career, that the people that didn't go aren't working and that people that didn't go to certain film schools are bound to fail. The reality is quite the contrary.]
What it all comes down to, at the end of the day, is how hungry you are, how patient you are, and unfortunately, how lucky you are. A lot of people seem to think that talent is the sole basis for making it in the arts and often talk about it as though it’s some rare, innate quality that materializes itself for a select few, but I would disagree. I think that talent is a combination of insanity/zeal + practice + reflective self-awareness, applied over a period of time. Try, fail, learn, repeat with a twist. A film degree can’t teach you that and it can’t pay the rent.
Still, I went to NYU for Undergrad, so I’m biased.
I’ve found that the vast majority of cats who studied film there, (especially in Undergrad) didn’t go on to pursue film later in life and understandably so. It’s one thing to come out of a university in a recession with a degree that isn’t likely to be able to help you land a job where you could potentially earn more than $30K/year within 5 years of graduation, but it’s another to have gotten that degree, accrued quite a lot of debt and asked favors of friends and family that border on the outrageous (monetary donations with no financial return, help, support, etc.) in good faith–the latter which I think is the experience of most film school grads.
I like to think that film school offers the opportunity of a sort of bubble in which one can be free enough to find themselves as an artist, to experiment and (hopefully) to make something that’s actually decent. It’s really all about the individual’s passion and determination, because the film game (it really is a game…full of the need for strategic thought at every turn) is hard for everybody. I know now from having been introduced to certain circles and having met different people that going to certain film schools and playing certain festivals can give you a leg-up on life. And there’s nothing wrong with having a leg-up in an industry where everyone is trying to climb.
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A Bit About My NYU Experience, The Post-Grad-Film-School Outlook
Me, I transferred into NYU’s undergrad Film and Television Production program after spending a year at the University of Maryland as an English major.
It was incredibly hard for me to acclimate myself to New York that first year…the city’s pace was faster than anything that I’d ever been accustomed to; this milieu of East-Coast, upper-echelon superficiality which was different from anything I’d ever encountered before.
By the time I’d gotten to NYU, most of my would-be classmates were already assembled into crews and cliques and people that they liked to work with. As a sophomore, I felt like I was a year behind. The social scene was daunting. And what was worse, I was pretty much the only Black person in every class. (It just ends up being awkward, no matter how you slice it. I don’t care how post-racial folks think we are).
It might be strange to think that there is a “social scene” at film school, but there is, especially at a place like NYU, which is so adept at courting its student body with so much talk about how prospective attendees are going to emerge as some of the industry’s finest, taking their rightful seats amongst other accomplished alumni such as (Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Scorsese and Cary Fukunaga [if they haven't begun to ride his coattails already] and so on).
As such, there are a huge amount of students that enter such programs (especially undergrad) thinking that because they’ve been accepted, that they are somehow better, more skilled and more talented than a lot of other aspiring filmmakers, only to be surprised 4 years later when they’re not doing anything remotely film-related and are instead working at some downtown Manhattan coffee shop, have moved back home, have given up, or whatever. This is due to a lot of different reasons, one of the foremost being that in undergrad, there are quite a lot of people that think that they want to get into film, but really aren’t sure that it’s something that they want to pursue. I would suggest that you try your best not to be one of those people. Like I said, you could do a lot better majoring in business and getting a finance degree, right now.
What people don’t understand about the film industry–is that a) it takes time to get ahead b) it takes a lot of fucking up to get ahead c) it will cause you to lose your fucking mind quite often as you realize more and more about how to get ahead. The trick is to be patient with yourself, but also to realize that the only way that you’re going to make it in any of those coveted roles — writing/directing, producing, etc., is to give yourself a chance to do it, to get good at it and to try to make a name for yourself. This business requires a lot of long hours, long nights, low pay, no pay, favor-exchanges, missing dates, being lonely, being poor, etc. I think the vast amount of people trying to get ahead (especially those that go to film school either lose sight of or never realize this) and become so disillusioned by the time that they do that they can think of nothing else but to go ahead and quit. And if they do, oh well.
At the same time, the nice thing about studying Film Production in college (in spite of whatever debt you might accrue) is the fact that you can really begin to get a sense of whether the art form is one that suits you and whether the industry is one in which you can thrive.
Why I Dug NYU’s Program
NYU (which had a program that focused heavily on the development of students’ technical skills, at least at the time) was cool because of the fact that there were so many craft classes that I could take (sound recording, sound design, cinematography, etc) and gain the opportunity to get around and work on different sets and find out what it was that I was actually interested in doing.
It seems that everybody says that they want to be a director when they first start out, but I think that there’s a serious value in being able to have a wide array of knowledge in terms of other skills that are required on set. In fact, I think that you are severely handicapping yourself as a director by not looking into some of those other, necessary skills. All the kids that came in and said that they only wanted to direct and did nothing else from a technical standpoint while in school, I feel like those were usually the kids that dropped out of “directing,” the fastest. As a director, you need to have a sense of how the overall monster-that-is-production combines to form Voltron, is edited down, exported to tape and sent out to terrorize audiences everywhere.
Case in point…the things that I always liked to do on film school sets were sound recording, and assistant directing.
Why sound record? Because I hated crewing, but I wanted to be close to the action. Sound recordists are like mercenaries. They’re the last to dip in and the first to pull out whenever a take is being prepared, but they’re one of the most important crewmembers on set (responsible for all the film’s on-screen dialogue recording), they get close to the action and in spite of their comparably small size, are able to have a considerable amount of authority over what it is that they do. Not to mention the fact that when you learn sound recording, you can often glance over at the position of other recordists’ mics and have a good sense of whether or not they’re likely to be screwing up your recording on the next take to come.
A.D.’ing on student sets is always cool (although it’s nothing like doing it on a feature) because you get a sense of how all the production pieces come together. You serve as the intermediary between this person and that person and you figure out who needs what and when–you get a sense of the flow of the production, overall, and that’s something that’s really important. You know when directors aren’t prepared and what pitfalls they deal with, you get familiar with directors of photography and what it is that they need to pull off shots, you get familiar with everyone on set.
This is one of the benefits that I see being particular to film school, as (ideally) you’re learning in a program that has access to state of the art facilities, with some really skilled teachers that are able to supervise you and shepherd you through to make sure that you’re learning all of the real-world skills that they’ve learned from years of being on set.
Some of the best teachers at NYU taught in sound and in camera.
Yes, you can crew on set, yes you can always buy equipment, buy books and screw around with having rented/bought your own equipment, but for me, the ability to be able to operate in this regimented, supervised program was invaluable, and taught me a lot of the things that I don’t think that I would have been able to learn otherwise in such a short amount of time.
Networking is Key, Even In Film School.
Another added benefit is the (often) extensive network of skilled craftspeople with whom you’ll have built relationships by the time you graduate. As many people as there are that drop off the face of the earth after film school’s over, there are quite a lot of people that seem to remain, people that have decided, “I think I’m good at producing,” or “I think I’m going to shoot (do cinematography) on every single student film of graduating class of 2011.” These people, dedicated craftspeople, are some of the best people to know if you’re going to end up trying to develop your own projects, whether producing, directing, or whatever. The benefit in going to school (and working on set) with these people, honestly, is that there’s an opportunity to meet and network with people before they get really big, start getting a lot of calls from folks and act like they don’t have time to deal with the lowly up-and-coming director, anymore.
It’s true, but it happens.
Again, as lame as it might seem, this business is also very much about networking. As much as one might hope that it’s based on merit and the quality of one’s work, it is also very much about who you can impress, who you have relationships with, who likes you/believes in you and sometimes, whose kid you are.
(Not to be cynical, but the more you’re aware of that, the better off you’ll be, especially as an aspiring writer-director or producer. Coming into undergrad with so many wealthy peers, I was constantly musing about how to hustle and try to get a leg up on the folks I was in class with, constantly searching to figure out how it was that people actually managed to make a career in this industry and not just graduate from NYU with a degree and $140,000-$200,000 worth of debt before the age of 22.)
So again, I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I could be where I am today without having gone to NYU, in fact, I know that I couldn’t be.
So Is It Worth Taking on That Much Debt? (A Reprise)
In one sense, no. Some might say, “with all the money you could have used on college, you could have gone out and done your own feature.”
True, but how many people do that, fail miserably, can never recover and are never heard from again? How many people ever have access to that money?
Why Trying to Work Your Way into Hollywood Features/Studio Pictures/Network Shows (From the Absolute Bottom) Often Blows — (I’m sure many may take issue with this, but if I’m wrong, please let me know)
The way I see it, the way that a film set functions (at least in the way of occupational hierarchy) works much a bit like a corporation. A production assistant (P.A.) (one of the roles that you’re liable to get on a Hollywood set starting out unless you’re some producer’s beloved nephew) is the equivalent of the office mailroom guy.
[And I'm not talking an Office P.A. (who as I understand it, often go on to do other important, organizational things, like payroll and this and that), I'm talking lock-up P.A. Crossing-guard duty. You got on set by the skin of your teeth, don't have a friend in the A.D./Producer Squad, and as such, should just feel lucky to be there. (Shout out to Gabby)]
You’re not promoting the mailroom guy to have a meeting with the CEO’s at the end of the year, you’re keeping that guy right in the mailroom, where (you think) he belongs, doing his simple-ass mailroom job. You’re not even thinking about promoting that person. It’s not even a flake of a crumb of an idea. People that are production assistants sometimes stay production assistants for years, or sometimes move up to become assistant directors, or what have you, but it takes time and it’s competitive as hell. The smaller/more independent the set, however, the more likely you might be able to move up in the food chain. At the same time, I think there’s a lot to be said for being able to move up in the food chain by going to school and networking with talented people before they end up becoming __________ (name an indie director/producer).
[Why P.A.'ing on Hollywood Features/Studio Pictures/Network Shows Blows (At Least for the Long-Term)
(Though the food is good on Hollywood/Network TV's Union Sets, P.A. work will always be bitch-work and nothing more. You're often the furthest away from set at any time that anything remotely interesting or serious is going on and you're probably one of the most expendable workers on set in the minds of those that are actually running the show. There's nothing quite like standing around near Wall Street and pleading with Manhattanites, "excuse me, we're about to do a stunt sequence in a few seconds, so could you kindly move out of the way," only to have them sidestep you or, more brazenly, tell you to "get the fuck out of my face."
That's not the whole P.A.'ing experience, but P.A.'ing sucks, as far as what I can tell. It's good to do it so that you learn how to treat folks on the lower end of the production-factory totem pole, but you don't ever want to stay a P.A.)]
The Industry is an “Old Boys Club,”
One thing that I’ve very quickly realized about this industry is that it’s an old-boys’ club. At Sundance, all I heard was about who studied where. USC, NYU, the Ivies. That’s all I heard. People seemed as quick to pipe up about their alma maters as they were their first and last names. ”Oh, NYU? Oh, yeah, me too.” ”…USC, right? Oh yeah, of course. Do you know…”
As far as schools go, from what I’ve heard about what’s good:
For NYC — NYU or Columbia. For LA - USC and UCLA, Cal Arts
As far as I know, USC and NYU are still the top two best in the country, overall…Columbia from what I understand, is pretty good, too, although to my knowledge, they seem to focus a lot on writing and less production. (At least their mascot isn’t a bloody violet). I don’t actually know too much about UCLA or Cal Arts.
Of course, nothing about where you’ve studied matters if the film you just directed has, by some good fortune, grossed heavily at the box office.
Grad Film vs. Undergrad
I know for a fact that these prestigious universities nurture their grad-students a lot more than they do their undergraduate students. Why? Smaller class sizes, the fact that their applicants have a lot more life experience and the fact that, if you’re of the age to go to grad school and you decide to spend money on getting a Master’s in Fine Arts, you’re more than likely putting your eggs into a basket whose contents you want to hatch into a thriving, sustainable career.
With undergrad film, it’s a different story. Undergrad film programs are kind of like…they’re like where universities go to harvest large sums of money. They sell a lot of dreams, tell you a lot of things, but then when you look at who the college is really cultivating and grooming to become successful, it’s the Grad film students more than the undergrads.
Patience, Persistence and Luck (Preparation Meeting Opportunity) Trump Everything
One thing that is going to help you make it no matter you choose is the fact that you have to have this hunger that will drive you to do whatever it takes to complete your task, whether it’s in production, whether it’s in finishing script, whatever. Whether you go to film school or not, that hunger will drive you to finish your work and to keep going.
At Sundance, earlier this year, actor/director/producer Robert Redford remarked, in so many words, “you really have to want this career more than anything.” It’s a marathon.
Speaking from the standpoint of someone trying to be a writer-director, you have to have a huge ego, and that ego has to push you through the period of time in which, frankly, your work will suck. One of the biggest things that no one tells you when they talk about all the film greats–(whoever’s cited, at the time), is that they once sucked, and did so horribly. Why? Because no one is born knowing how to write a script, to direct or to edit a film. Look at Scorsese’s student film “The Big Shave” or something like it. Look at Spike’s “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop” if you can ever get your hands on it. Look at Christopher Nolan’s “The Following” (which I still haven’t seen) but I bet sucked a lot more than, say, “Memento” and his other consecutive projects. Sure, a lot of these people were able to practice their craft and get access to bigger budgets, etc., but they all had the opportunity to practice and to keep going. The most important thing is to keep practicing and to hone your skills.
The only reason I think that I ever made it as an undergrad at NYU was because I was determined to find out who was successful and to try to replicate the results that they’d had. I crewed my ass off on different sets to find out what I liked, I met as many people as I could who were doing different things over the years, I did a work-study program in the film’s equipment center (The Production Center), where I got to meet pretty much every student that was working any production, ever, I found mentors amongst the faculty and staff, many whom I would come to to get the skinny on what life was really like after graduating, what mistakes they’d made and what they wish they’d have done differently, and I started trying to hang out with the grad students because, well, in many cases, these were the folks that actually seemed to be coming out of school with films that were playing big festivals, getting signed to agencies, and actually seemed to be having some semblance of career development upon graduation.
In closing, be prepared to go the distance, no matter what you choose, and don’t be ashamed to hop on that EBT line until you get there.
“Stay low and keep firing.” – Keith Davis
I Take Back Everything I Said About Webseries.
…
realizing that that last post may have made me appear much more jaded than I am, in actuality.
Trust me, I’m not.
Just ruminating on reality.
I’ve a lot of blind faith to keep me afloat.
Won’t talk very much about it until it’s time, but let’s just say it’s a thing that I’ve been wanting to get done for some time.
It’s another short…and…I don’t know. At least two people in addition to an entire department of one purportedly elite university have, at times, tried to dissuade me from doing this project thus far and for different reasons.
The two people that I’ve spoken to most recently, whose opinions I actually respect, they advise against it because it’s a so-called genre piece (a crime drama), it’s going to cost some dough, and…I don’t know. One, a friend (who’s actually read it) mentioned that he doesn’t feel like the story is especially dissimilar or unique with regard to other films of the same style. (Not going at your neck, playa…if you’re reading this)
Of course, I’m biased.
I feel like:
1. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make a genre piece. I grew up on them…I like them…they make me happy and they are cool.
2. I have grown severely tired of (what I feel) is pressure to adhere to the independent aesthetic ever since I’ve come out of NYU. It’s in the air in New York, being goaded to do these small, meek, character-driven films, with these floaty cameras and these cathartic endings…
…I have no desire to make the quintessential gay coming-out-drama, the quintessential identity politics story (not in short form, at least), the story of the awkward immigrant attempting assimilation, the tragic rape-abortion-pregnancy story, yadda yadda yadda yadda–the small film that is shot in two people’s apartments over the course of a day, replete with handheld close-ups with a necessarily shallow depth of field.
3. That’s not to say that you can’t just do an original, non-genre independent short that’s atypical of the New York aesthetic–of course you can. And I have loads of other ideas. But you know what? I don’t want to keep making shorts. I actually hate short films, a lot. Why? Because at the end of the day, they’re more likely than not just going to end up going on YouTube. That’s right. $500-$10,000, months of your time, e-mails upon e-mails and all of this staying up at night, cloistering yourself in your apartment so that your shit can end up on YouTube.
That is the reality, now.
So why even bother?
Because we (as aspiring directors) need practice, they’re good for press and exposure and you really can’t go on to doing longer-format stuff until you can demonstrate that you’re capable of handling something in short-form.
So with that in mind, you just suck it up and go ahead and make another.
Maybe. Or like, as a producer I was hobnobbing with briefly at a networking brunch remarked to me, “you know, you end up spending so much damn time working on shorts, why not just go ahead and write a feature?”
And you know what? In principle, that lady was right. [More on this below. ]
But back to the issue of this short, in particular–there comes a point where you kind of have to go with your gut in terms of the work you want to do and the kind of stories that you want to tell. This piece that I’m working on–I wouldn’t be so adamant about attempting it if I didn’t actually feel that it had the potential to be good.
Now, whether people will end up feeling like it compares to something that’s aired on HBO or on a major network, who knows. Whether people compare it to that…that’s not really something that I can control, no matter what I do. I don’t have the major network budget and I may not ever have access to it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to puss out and not do the story that I want to do just because of the possibility that some folks might feel like it doesn’t do justice to a certain genre (as people have been used to observing works typical of such genres on major networks, with all of their production-heavy glory).
[Now, back to what the wise-producer said:]
Let’s be real. All anyone in the industry cares about these days is whether you’ve made a feature film, (that’s right, not whether you’ve written it, but whether you’ve actually made it) its return on investment/box-office performance and (sometimes) whether it was good/critical acclaim.
Film schools (to my knowledge) still teach students about how to progress through the industry with accord to the old, now severely outdated model: “you do a short + have terrific feature script prepared > you get into a great film festival > someone else produces that terrific feature script for you > you make money > you get a deal.”) ….Not quite. Maybe, but not always.
The internet is messing things up for everyone, name actors are retreating back into television, and the film business as it was once known is shrinking, changing and fast becoming the Wild, Wild West of the entertainment world.
(One might ask, “well, isn’t there another way to break in?”)
I would answer: not to my knowledge. Music videos: so so so not worth it, anymore. If an artist asks you to do a music video, as a director, run, don’t walk. It’s not worth your time. (imo). Webseries: no one really cares about these…in my view, they’re a sort of novelty which once fascinated many industry futurists (especially as an alternative to making shorts), but have really failed to captivate popular audiences, at large. After all, who wants to sit and watch a 3-7 minute episode of a comparatively poorly produced show with actors they’ve never heard of when Breaking Bad and Mad Men are coming back, Modern Family’s on, HBO has all of these great original series, and all of these things are beginning to be available online? Commercials: can someone please tell me how to break into these? Shit. Television: is this even possible for up-and-coming directors? Are there any fellowships that still exist where people get cultivated and groomed for these careers in this field? Feature Films: Make your own feature-film first, and good fucking luck.)
That said, I still keep telling myself that this is what I want to do. So the way I figure it, I’m going to make the joint that I want to make.
What else is there to do?
Write these features, of course.
Trust me, I’m working on some.
#staytuned
–Updates–Ramblings
Having decided to stay in New York (Brooklyn), I’ve found May to be a month for scrambling.
The hustle is back on.
There’s a lot of pressure to blog and do all this other stuff in order to pub what one’s doing, but a) you can’t pub if you have little work to show and b) who has time to write about what they’re doing when they’re trying to find the time to (get money) and (create more work)?
Oh, and by the way, New York City is not a joke. It is not a city where one without a trust fund has the privilege of just idling and pissing the day away.
And even if you have a day job (“freelancing”), as I think most “artists” do (or would like to), then you have find time in the remaining 40 hrs/week to do your art. Either that or you become a slave to your day job. And there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re making a certain amount of dough, but these corporations today aren’t trying to give folks benefits.
[But who wants to sit around, holed up in a room somewhere, writing scripts in the summer, especially in New York City? Oh, how you've waited for it. The weather. The women. The parties. Brooklyn. It's the season that makes shivering through the cold winter worth it, even in spite of all the humidity in the air.]
Anyway, it has to be done. Looking to shoot another short, “A Reasonable Doubt,” in September–going to have to raise some money for this–more on this soon…
Trying to get some feature-length scripts under the belt. And not just one, but a few.
“It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall until something finally sticks.”
This industry is hard enough to get into without you short-changing yourself by just having one idea available at a time. Don’t be fooled. You need to have like, a catalog. A pipeline. A pipeline whose contents are able to be shifted into flux at any given point in time.
Otherwise, you really have nothing to talk about.
–
On Staying in New York City
This was originally a much longer post, but in the interest of being concise and not giving too much information about some really personal things, I thought it best to truncate things a bit.
Let’s just say that with the expiration of each annual apartment lease term, one has to, on some level, re-evaluate the merits of staying in a city that’s as horrible as New York. If you’re below a certain tax-bracket, this has to be, by far, the worst city to live in in the entire country. But that’s fine. I could have been a finance major.
Since I graduated in 2009, it’s been nothing but a terrific uphill battle. But uphill battles are terrific for pushing you to make strides in ways you probably wouldn’t if you were living elsewhere and more comfortably.
That being said, I’ve come to realize that it really is best for me to either stay here (Brooklyn) or move to LA for what it is that I want to do. And I’m not sending myself out into the sprawling mess that is LA when New York is so much more convenient and accessible.
Also, (probably) more importantly, I’ve found this network of really dope, talented people that are dedicated to making good work and are looking to crack this film game wide open.
With that, I’m renewing my lease and looking to get down to business, now more than ever.
#thatisall
#moreforthcoming
Getting Busy, Again.
And it feels so good.
Screenings of “Close.”
April 16-21 - Nashville Film Festival – Nashville, TN
April 28 – ActNow Short Film Collective – Brooklyn, NYC
May 5th – Nuyorican Poets Cafe – New York, NYC
More to come.
Updates…
I’m going to have to make some sort of fundraising pitch video for my next short. I can feel it. I really don’t want to, as I find them a little ridiculous, but how else can one raise large sums of money in this day and age?
Indiegogo. Tax-deductions. Closed mouths don’t get fed.
Stay Tuned.
I Need to Find a Location. (Any Suggestions?)
I need to find a creepy intersection in the greater NYC area.
Specifics: desolated, preferably in an industrial district, with very little traffic, pretty much the last place you would ever want to find yourself alone and lost after hours.
Anyone have any specific suggestions for places like this in the greater NYC-New Jersey area?
Biutiful.
It’s movies like this that make you not want to see 90-95% of what is coming out of American studios today. Javier should have won the Oscar this year. Homeboy got robbed. Pretty much a must-see.
