I actually went to film school and was making experimental films for a short time, so it wasn’t such a leap.
I was happy when I got into film school. I’d simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in – nothing else – although I do believe they shouldn’t have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can’t understand why they took me. Probably because I’d tried three times.
I sort of jumped out of movies and into the lifeboat of comics. I loved it right away. It was the opposite of film school. Whatever was in my imagination could end up in the finished product. There were just no limitations.
I studied screenwriting at film school and was constantly learning how to construct three-act dramas.
I didn’t go to film school, I went to acting school.
I knew from early on I would go to film school and try to work behind the camera.
I’d like to go to NYU business school and then go on to film school.
Back in ’98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station. Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part.
I went to film school; I went to NYU film school.
I studied economics. I studied industrial engineering. It wasn’t until later, when I was around 26, that I really decided to go to film school.
I remember when I was in film school. It was my second year, and some kid did – had this really over-religious symbolism; like, it said ‘John 3:16’ and had angels falling over, and it was just this insane – it wasn’t that great.
You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, ‘We’re not the place for you to make films,’ so you decide you have to make a film yourself.
As an ardent supporter of the Nietzschean conception of the eternal recurrence, I firmly believe that one cannot validate the totality of a life unless one accepts and embraces all the experiences that comprise it. That said, I sometimes wish I’d gone to film school.
And it’s just my opinion that I don’t think film school is necessary for filmmakers. But I don’t want to discourage someone who really wants to learn that way.
I never liked ‘Donnie Darko’ quite as much as my film school peers.
I’m not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, ‘Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?’
When it was time to go to college, I was going to apply to Boston University for journalism, and dad said, ‘Why not apply to NYU film school, because you love telling stories and taking pictures?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I can do that for a job? Cool!’
I just remember when I came out of film school – and I loved film school – that the industry was such a mystery. How to break in, and once you are in, how to make a film; that is such a large undertaking. There are thousands of pitfalls.
The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that’s what will take you from film school to professional – the idea. That’s what is original to you.
I didn’t go to film school. My Grampa always says just watch a lot of movies. He didn’t go to film school; he went to theatre school. It’s interesting to learn about the technical side of it, but I think it’s more important to learn about writing and working with actors.
Going to school in San Francisco, you’re not going to meet as many people that are making films as you would if you went to film school in New York or L.A.
Film school didn’t prepare me for the fact that you have to manage so many different personalities at every stage, and I learned nothing about what to do when a movie was finished.
I was out in L.A. and I had gone to film school and I was out here for a couple of years. For a lot of years, I was bartending and having a good time.
My M.F.A was in directing, and all the films I’ve made, for film school and after, I’ve written, directed and shot.
So I just came out here to Los Angeles with a bunch of buddies I had gone to film school with. You know, for better or worse, we just tried to slug it out here.
I wrote the screenplay for ‘Water Lilies’ while I was studying screenwriting at La Femis film school in Paris, and the director Xavier Beauvois, who was on the graduation committee, told me I had to make the film myself.
I was always writing scripts, and I had made several shorts, before and after film school. But I worked a variety of temp positions over the years.
In film, I don’t think I’d try directing. Maybe one day, but I’d certainly want to go to film school or something before I tried to do something like that. That would be quite scary.
I really learned a lot when I worked on my grandpa’s film ‘Twixt’ and got to be with him start to finish and sit next to him every day. That was my film school.
I was always screwing around with music, but I really wanted to go to film school when I was in high school. I guess what happened was that I didn’t get into Tisch, that’s what happened. I got deferred. And I went to Hampsire and ended up making music like everybody else there.
I was at film school when I made ‘Small Debts’ and I was a cinematographer, so I didn’t actually study to be a director.
I knew when I was about 14 that I wanted to be a director and that I wanted to go to NYU for film school.
It was the beginning of film for television. So we had all of these great opportunities. Northwestern was probably the only major film school of its kind at the time that was graduating anybody important.
There’s a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.
When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.
I went to film school to make films just because you’re in control of the story.
I was a kid who went to film school and fell into acting.
When I was in film school, I was learning more theory than practice.
‘Lord of the Rings’ was going on; like, my college years were the years of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ an awesome time to be in film school.
I didn’t go to film school. I had been an actor in movies, I had been in plays, and then I just sort of jumped into it.
When I entered the film school at the Prague Academy in the ’50s, it was the hardest time in the Communist countries. The ideological control of the society was almost absolute.
I was in my 30s when I finally went to film school. It was kind of always going to happen, but I did try to keep it suppressed for awhile.
I thought about going to NYU film school – that was this ideal to me. But I didn’t make any kind of grades in high school.
A lot of the guys that work for Warners and make these big films there all come from the same film school. Like Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Tarsem Singh – they all went to Art Center in the College of Design. And there’s a certain expectation when these guys graduate.
There’s a great deal of women in film school. I was not the only woman in my class at UCLA. When I went through the Sundance program, it was half women and half men.
I even went to film school at School of Visual Arts in New York City. And then, after that, I got a day job at Universal publicity department, then moved over to Disney publicity department. So I had this day job, and at night I would study music.
It’s been a twisty-turny path for me. I was studying to be a history professor, and then I left that, went to film school, and tried to be like my heroes, like, Spike Lee and Hal Hartly.
I took an internship at Focus Features while I was in film school. I was really interested in how specialty movies were marketed and found their audience despite being about topics that were outside of the mainstream.
I went to film school, trained as a director, have made a lot of movies, and taken a lot of photographs, so I tend to envision things spatially. As I’m working, I need to have a map of the space. I need to know what’s happening in all corners simultaneously.
I think I’ve always wanted to direct, but I didn’t go to film school. I was lucky enough to work in movies, and I think those became my film school in terms of acting and watching directors work and also writing and co-writing and producing.
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