Wednesday, April 06, 2005

A reader asks if it's worth going to the Canadian Film Centre, and a friend of mine I asked responds:

Does he want to go to the Canadian Film Centre because he wants to go back to the USA or because he wants to stay here?

If he wants to go back to the USA, having gone to a Canadian film school will do him no good whatsoever... If on the other hand he's thinking of staying, the CFC is kind of like the mafia. You don't go there to learn necessarily - although you probably will -- you go there to "join the club" and meet contacts.

The moment I went to the CFC, the people at [network] who routinely dismissed me were forced to see me as "one of the elite."

It's the price of living in a parochial country that has a "toy" TV industry that's really a club. You gotta learn the handshake.

The same is also partly true for film schools in the States. You may not learn that much there -- you learn more actually working in the biz, even for free -- but you can get to know people at USC or NYU or UCLA who will prove useful later. On the other hand in the States, no one gives a damn about a film school degree, or any kind of degree at all.

Labels: school

12:16 PM

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