Art Insititute of Salt Lake City UT.

If you really want to go to school for film, you should go to a real school not an art institute. You might learn some good stuff but when it comes to video/photo industries its more about who you know and your experience. Plenty of people do very well and never get film degrees. It would almost be wiser to attend a uni and take some generals, see if anything else catches your eye and if not transfer to a school with a good film program. Graduating with a film degree is going to get you about 10 steps out of your front door, its not like business or engineering where a degree is very valuable.

so you wouldnt recommend going for film? what would you do then like marketing? im looking at what to do in college and film seems awesome i just dont know if a film degree is really worth alot

a film degree itself isn't worth much. but you will learn stuff in school (although most of it is stuff you would learn in any film jobs as well), and you make a lot of connections, which is where a lot of the value lies imo.

thats what my mom has always told me hahaha, ah this is going to make finding a college so much harder.....

see thats where i think i fucked up. attending a "film school" in michigan got me no connections whatsoever. i swear to god i knew more than some of my professors

Hmm interesting. Why isn't a filming degree worth so much, not as much demand as a buisness degree? I was thinking going to a buisness school for mountain management to some degree but I don't think I would enjoy it as much and be as attentive as I would if I was studying filming

From what I can gather, 80% of film school is making connections. Personally, the thought of spending $40,000+ to blow smoke up random people's asses for self-gain under the guise of learning something I can't teach myself for free doesn't fare well with me. Being able to tolerate douchy L.A. people is helpful as well.

Another thing to consider is that video is such a rapidly evolving technology that a lot of schools are barely able to keep up. What I mean is that many art schools are essentially just your teachers getting their info from Google. The exception being if you go to a prestigious art school that stays on the forefront of things.

Here's how I see it:

A) You are willing to take chances and have the balls to put one of the biggest investments of your life towards a trade school that has zero de jure merit.

B) You play it safe and get a more applicable degree and pursue art on your own, which will make or break you. Another thing to consider is that once you graduate you can still go back and take courses, which is arguably beneficial because you will have more time to hone your craft since you won't be cramming credits to get a piece of paper.

Don't go to art institutes, they generally suck and are always overpriced for what you get out of it. the one in SLC is especially bad. Your friend is probably learning a lot because she didn't know anything. When you graduate from an art institute, people looking at your resume will instantly disregard the schooling because they aren't looked upon as schools that have real merit, they basically set you up to be a production dummy, or someone that holds mics.

If you do go the art institute route, you will have to either have a ton of natural talent or put in a ton of work outside of school to build up a good body of work to show people to get a job, or start at a shit job and build yourself up from there to make it. Or, put in a bunch of outside work to get freelance jobs - at which point nobody will care about if you even went to school.

I'm not saying that going to film school is a waste, like others might. Going to a decent school will push you to learn things (albeit many programs get preoccupied with technical things rather than creative things), and it will help you to further your skills.

Going to College (a real college) teaches you A LOT about life. I would say that 50 percent of the shit I learned in college was outside of my major (graphic design at the U of Utah). I definitely learned a lot in my program as well, and value the time I spent there. I had a scholarship, though - I might feel differently with a ton of loans on my back.

Besides that, unless you are naturally talented, work hard, have the ability to self-critique and recognize quality, and are good at making connections, art degrees can help A LOT.

As for connections - I made almost 0 connections in school, and I definitely tried. I currently am making 0 money from any connection I made in school.

I don't think that if you were applying to a job at any sort of a media firm or studio for a position as a creative, ANYONE would value a business degree over a film degree. They hire business people to take care of the business, they will want you focused on creative. The business degree route / teaching yourself the creative stuff is a path better suited for people that want to freelance.

BOTTOM LINE is that film school can be a good route for some people, and a waste of money for others. What matters is your work, and it's up to you to find the best path to help you produce it.

However, the Art Institutes will always be a waste of money.

I think this is worth emphasis. In my limited experience doing payroll work, employers MUCH prefer a guy with a random degree and work experience over a guy with little to no work experience with a relavent degree (quality of work notwithstanding). Should they hypothetically have the same amount of work experience, the deciding factor will then be the quality of their work, not their degree.

Are you guys not making contradicting points here?

I don't see how. My point is that your creative abilities are prioritized if you're in creative positions. I'm not saying an unrelated degree is more impressive to an employer; I'm saying that they aren't going to nitpick over your major as long as you have the ability to put out something good. If your work is great they aren't going to say "well we'd hire you but since you didn't major in film we can't. Instead we're going to hire the guy who isn't as good because he got a film degree."

I should also note that production houses are very diverse. Some are more rigid and traditional while others have a more "freelance" aura. So if you want to work on a Hollywood film set making narratives, then a film degree will be more vital than it will if you're, say, doing advertising work at a firm that does everything in-house.

I thought Trevor was saying that if you want to work on the production side of things for a big company, you're better off going to school for film and getting a film degree, which is a little different than what you're saying. maybe I'm misinterpreting his tone, idk

hmm intresting points here...i still wanta filming degree, doesn't mean i have to film skiing, filming any kind of movie or tv show on a hollywood set would be really fun and i wouldn't mind doing that. so maybe a filming degree is good for me. i would do business, but im not good with numbers so it wouldn't be well for me, maybe marketing advertising would be good also

I should point out that I go to school at loyola marymount university in LA and i'm majoring in film production

do you think its worth it, you like it?

"Business" at its core isn't numbers, its the philosophy of wealth and exchange. If you're not good with numbers you can still be a good businessman, though having a working knowledge of finance and accounting will give you a monumental advantage. An analogy: think of business as composition and accounting as the camera. You don't need to know how to operate a camera in order to be a good theoretical artist, though it certainly helps.

Not that I'm trying to sway you one way or another, it's just that my first reaction upon entering the finance program was how many misconceptions I had about what business actually is. I thought it was all math and drafting reports but so far it's more philosophy than anything.

The only downside is that unless you're doing accounting, you aren't learning a trade. You're learning theory, not that its a bad thing.

I left out a word or two in there - my point is that if you're applying for a job in a studio / firm, the person hiring you WILL ALWAYS value a film degree over a business degree. They don't give a shit about your business savvy, you're going to be a computer dummy doing production work. They want to know that you have (probably) had some technical training.

If you have a business degree applying for a job as creative director, and then have an awesome portfolio, that MIGHT be taken into consideration then, but the work experience and portfolio will still matter loads more.

The most important thing is your portfolio though. If you have good work I promise nobody will care where you went to school.

The point of my whole post is that not everyone has the ability to build that portfolio on their own, without guidance, to even get an entry level production job. In that case, school is very valid.

Counterpoint would be that you could probably intern for 4 years and end up in a position where you could get the same job you would have after 4 years of college, but you would have to be much more self guided.

Due to a long stream of awful employees where I work resumes from art institute graduates are pretty much blacklisted, overlooked and tossed in the trash

hmm.. i like this thread alot of good vaild points. whats coool about the art institutes they have so much gear you can use that you dont have to "buy" and own it, you can simply borrow anything and go out and use it, they have 40,00$ cameras we can use. but i dont know about a good fit in buisness .

Dude.... pretty much every school with a film department has gear for you to use.

I'm going to say it once again, DON'T WASTE TIME + MONEY at Art Institues. It's like an overpriced community college for art.

haha okay, what college would reccomend in colorado or utah for what im looking for?

If you're going to go to school for film, don't do it in colorado or utah. either go to school there for a more normal degree and pursue filming on the side, or commit and major in film at a school in LA or NYC.


i'm having a great time in college and i enjoy film school, but if i were paying my own way through college i would probably be pursuing a business or econ degree. luckily my parents are helping and LMU is also pretty generous with scholarships.

1) Using gear is such a small part of being an artist. Any program worth doing will have you spend your first two years studying classical art more than anything. The camera is simply a tool, and while you are taught the ins and outs of using tools, what you're ultimately making has nothing to do with them.

2) Don't limit yourself to two states. A college education should be the most valuable thing you make in your life, and picking a school for petty reasons (skiing, social scene, etc.) won't yield as much benefit as picking a school that truly suits you. Don't compromise your intellectual environment/growth just so you can go screw around with your friends because you're too shortsighted to man up and live somewhere you don't or might not like.

That, and going to film school outside of NY or LA is pretty much a utilitarian waste.

Don't focus on what other people want from you...

Focus on what you want. Focus on making great videos and developing your craft to your satisfaction. Get clients, do filming gigs, even lame ones that you don't want (example: weddings or whatever). Meet people that are interested in the same things and do the same kinds of things that you do. Network. If you make good work, people will want you. Portfolio/Reel is everything. A degree is a piece of paper

this is what i like to hear man! thanks!