Here are ten great tips for Film Students. I can remember how bewildered I was back when I was attending film school and I wanted to impart a few basic tips that helped me. I just hope that I can afford to return to school and finish my film degree at some point.
Top Ten Tips for Film Students
1. Preparation is more important than the actual shooting. If you don’t have everything you need to film once the shoot starts, you are going to burn a lot of time and cash. Be sure to have all you equipment with you. You should also make sure that you have planned out the scenes that you intend to shoot that day. Shooting time is expensive and limited so you want to maximize every possible minute of it. An hour’s worth of planning and preparation can save half a day’s worth of lost or wasted shooting time.
2. Make friends with other film students. Don’t just gather up some of your drinking buddies and go off to start filming. Find some different people to work on your crew. You and your friends all have shared experiences. Branching out and working with other film students can add experiences, creativity and expertise to your film project that you might not have had otherwise.
3. Read The Major Film Theories: An Introduction. In my opinion it is the basis on which all filmmaking is founded upon.
4. Watch every Quentin Tarantino movie that you possibly can. He has a lot to teach you. That is not why I am giving you this tip, however. I am giving you this tip because film students have a hard-on for Quentin Tarantino. Film Students, at least when I was in school, can’t shut up about Quentin Tarantino. He is amazing but, my god; there ARE other filmmakers out there. Still, it’s good to know a lot about Tarantino and his films so that you can sound good at parties.
5. If you shooting on-location outside the movie studio, don’t forget your location permit. Forgetting your permit can cost you a lot of shooting time
6. Take a library research class or learn research techniques. This sounds like a completely unnecessary skill for filmmaking but it’s not. Proper research can add a level of authenticity and accuracy to your script. Plus it is a great source for ideas. I cannot tell you how many ideas for scripts I have come up with just by doing outside research. I learned this trick from a couple of friends who used Google Scholar to get through graduate school.
7. Watch behind the scenes footage and directory commentary on DVD’s I learned a lot of new things about CGI from listening to the director’s commentary of 300. Sometimes the director will share with you how he achieved a certain shot. This can help you conceptualize different scenes and filming options. Even professional directors come up with some pretty strange ideas to solve problems in filming sometimes. If you can learn to think outside the box, you can achieve some really cool shots.
8. Read a lot of scripts and watch a lot of films. This should be self-evident which is why it is number 8 on the list. You can tell that the tips are getting sillier the further we get down the list but I am actually very serious about this point. Think back to Quentin Tarantino. He has seen every movie ever made and that is ultimately what made him so successful. See what Quentin Tarantino knowledge can do for you? I’m telling you; you can drop his name anywhere and come across as an expert.
9. Don’t read your film textbooks while stoned. I have an associate who swears that he retains more knowledge when he’s high but he can’t remember half of the stuff we learned in film school. He’s a cinematography genius on a level I could never hope to achieve, but he also has a major case of CRS. That’s can’t-remember-shit shit-syndrome to you.
10. If you have to work a part time job, get jobs managing a Blockbuster or other video store. It’s the best possible job you could ever have during film school. You can’t complain about 5 free movies a night.
Bonus Tip: Feed your Production Crew. They tend to work better on a full stomach. Even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and 2 liters of coke are better than nothing.
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