Film School Online dot com - Good? Bad?
- Thread starter gophergrrrl
- Start date
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2005
- Messages
- 6,704
- Reaction score
- 1,318
- Location
- Far from the madding crowd
- Website
- www.victoriastrauss.com
Adding link: http://www.filmschoolonline.com/
I'm moving this to the Script Writing forum, where I think you're more likely to get helpful answers.
- Victoria
I'm moving this to the Script Writing forum, where I think you're more likely to get helpful answers.
- Victoria
Thanks Victoria... I almost posted it here but figured it would get moved to Bewares & Background checks. hehe ^_^
Teaching filmmaking via the Net? C'mon, gimme a break. Save your money. Pick up a camera and make a short film. Or sit yourself down and write a script. That's how you learn.
reading about using a camera and actually using a camera are two very different things, at least in my experience. learning the features hands-on is similar to gaining "muscle-memory" from working out.
Yeah and it's also totally ridiculous that they would teach it anywhere else, right? ;o]
No. Learning, no matter what it is, is a great thing. This is a dirt cheap deal. Whether they tell me what I already know or something that I never would have known otherwise, it's still a learning experience. I see nothing wrong with that.
And I have made short films, I've made long films, I've written several full length scripts, various shorts. I started in video editing, got into directing and then began focusing on screenplay writing.
I don't think they offer a course on opperating a camera, though for some high tech cams, that might not be a bad idea.
It's fifty bucks for seven courses and two year access to who knows what kind of information. Sounds like a swell deal to me! ^_^
I spend more than that a week on Virginia Slim Light 120s.
I think I'm just going to go for it anyway, whether it's scamtastic or completely authentic. Just wanted to know if anyone had tried it and found it to be useful.
I agree with everyone else, that there's no substitute for hands-on learning. However, I do think that there is still the potential to learn by taking a course like this. I did a 40-week program at a film school in Seattle and learned more picking up the odd PA or grip job here and there and by shooting my own films than I did in school, but there were things I never would have learned had I not picked up a good book or two. So, reading has its advantages, too.
The only thing, though, is that I enrolled in one of their standalone courses a few years ago, which was $9.99 at the time, and never heard anything. No confirmation that I enrolled, no access to the course, no info of any kind. Just a charge of $9.99 to my credit card. Not necessarily saying it's a scam, but that's something to consider.
If it's something you want to pursue, I say look into enrolling in a single course to see if it's worth it. They do offer a cinematography course (http://www.filmschoolonline.com/topics/topics_cinematography.htm). Or, just pick up a few books, do some 'volunteer' work on somebody else's film, and keep shooting your own.
The only thing, though, is that I enrolled in one of their standalone courses a few years ago, which was $9.99 at the time, and never heard anything. No confirmation that I enrolled, no access to the course, no info of any kind. Just a charge of $9.99 to my credit card. Not necessarily saying it's a scam, but that's something to consider.
If it's something you want to pursue, I say look into enrolling in a single course to see if it's worth it. They do offer a cinematography course (http://www.filmschoolonline.com/topics/topics_cinematography.htm). Or, just pick up a few books, do some 'volunteer' work on somebody else's film, and keep shooting your own.
From what I can see, the lessons are all one way. It's not really a school, in the sense of there being classes, interaction with a teacher, other students who can read and comment on your work. It's basically just the equivalent of a book on how to make movies, broken up into pieces and sent to you on-line.
Now, given the price of books these days, maybe it's worth it -- but that seems to be about what you're getting.
It certainly wouldn't be the equivalent of a real course of study at a real school somewhere where you're going to have a teacher who'd read your work and give you comments, or give you equipment and send you out to shoot and then comment on the results.
Even those old-fashioned correspondence courses involved sending your work back, having it graded and getting it back with comments from a teacher (even one you never met).
So, on some level, I think that it is kind of deceptive, because I think that a real school involves a student and a teacher, while, so far as I can tell, this really just involves a student and an on-line "text book."
NMS