The trick in "talent" is taste, self-criticism, or however you want to characterize the idea of being able to recognize everything you do is crap for a while. It's that ability to pick up on what you're doing wrong and how it can be done better next time that provides the lift from running in circles to a helix with an upwards vector of improvement. (sorry, obtuse spatial metaphor)

I was film school adjacent. My concentration was in "New Media" which the school kind of realized was bullshit, and dissolved it the next semester into Interactive Arts/Web Design/Post-production or whatever. The high level classes were really cool, helped shape the idea of what the media landscape would probably be like for the rest of our careers. My thesis was on how the last century of centralized media industry as an unfortunate consequence of the investment required to operate the technology, and with that diminishing, culture, communication and all that moving into the future will look a lot more like any other century than the 20th.

My college was known largely as a film school, and my diploma says the same thing as all the film majors - Something like Bachelor of Media Arts. All of my friends were film, tv, audio, writing, and performance majors, and a lot of us had the same classes for the first couple years. Joke in the Media History/Criticism classes were that our diplomas was a very expensive license to laugh at Birth of a Nation jokes for the rest of our lives. I found the liberal arts part of the education was just as important as the vocational side.

What you guys were indirectly touching on in the episode was a huge debate within the faculty when I was in college, the departments were all trying to reconcile the academic with the vocational – frankly if they should give a highly detailed extremely through education focusing on one side or the other, or a middling lukewarm education of both.

Could be totally wrong, but I *think* their stopgap solution was to tune the classes towards the academic and liberal arts aspects of film/media, lighten the course load slightly, and encourage students to go nuts with their clubs and extracurriculars by giving them a shitload of money and resources. Actually worked out pretty well, since people that didn't have the drive to learn and make stuff were out of the way. Grade school analogy would be cutting PE in half, doubling recess, and installing a shit load of shiny new playground parts.

Which was awesome, and worked for me. I could go run around on any piece of equipment I wanted, explore and watch films from a vast, well curated media library, realized this shit is the best, moved to LA and made it my job.

I did Media Studies then Communications......

So- 'meh'.

Broadcast. Wow, how didn't that come up. Broadcast degrees might actually be more useful.

I'm still getting my degree, Switch how much overlap with film does yours have?

For MFA programs I'd recommend finding and talking to a bunch of graduates (and drop outs) of the program and just asking them what they thought of it and if they thought it was worth it. Strike up a rapport and hey, instant contacts whether you decide to go or not.

Graduate school is a really, really expensive way to find people to make movies. Especially when you can help out on sets your find on Craigslist for free, then theoretically start getting paid to learn on jobs rather than paying crazy dollars with loans.

But hey everyone's different.

Paulou, while I'm sure there are some very talented people on Craigslist, I imagine it's like picking up day laborers at Home Depot.  It'd be silly to expect more than someone who can wield a hammer and has an idea of how to space drywall screws.  Not interested in a diamond-in-the-rough-craigslist-hunt.  And from my experience, DiF is a rarity.  This place is loaded with smart, talented folks who have real-world sensibilities.   Have you met the internet?  Most places aren't like this.

Basically, I'm looking to find and work with a core group of like-minded, driven people who don't have their head in the clouds.  A school environment seems like the fastest way to weed through people.  I'll post listings when I need a gaffer.

EDIT: "Graduate school is a really, really expensive way to find people to make movies."  Troof.  But I also get the benefit of working with optical printers and whatnot.

Important to remember that they aren't mutually exclusive endeavors. A professor I had recommended working for five years in a field, and then pursuing grad school in that field only if you feel limited by your lack of higher education or compelled into years of expensive and heavy research.

Alternately, you can do something so cool and impressive with that time that you end up with a scholarship or something. At the very least enough field experience to really get something out of it.

Why is this Full Sail place so heavily represented here? Just curious.

Oh, and non-traditional places like fxphd can't go unmentioned, especially when talking about practical film education and visual effects production. Like a year after just doing those classes in my free time I was running circles around people that ostensibly paid for a traditional education in the same subjects.