Just curious, how many of you have gone to film school or had some kind of formal education in media/writing? If you have, what experience did you have both during school and after?

No school. Started writing here one and a half years ago for the OWC. I did take a screenwriting one day course about six months ago. After 1.5 years of learning and coaching, I've had two shorts produced and signed two options for features. Luck I guess. I owe it mostly to Kevin though...he's really really helped me through the years.

I went to film school. I concentrated mostly on production, post-production, and film history/theory. I took two screenwriting courses. One sucked and the other I enjoyed. The one that sucked was the standard lecture/lab format. Worthless. The one I enjoyed was a smaller group where we wrote short scripts then dedicated each class to discussing two of the scripts in an open forum sort of way. We had a good teacher and I think the structure was well suited for writing.

That said, I barely learned anything about screenwriting that I didn't learn here previously. I also learned infinitely more about production from actually working on sets than I did at film school though admittedly, I wasn't a very good student. Not a fan of school at all to be honest.

I think the merits of film school are that you have immediate access to equipment and facilities, are never at a loss of cast/crew as they're all your fellow students, and the deadlines and parameters for the projects enable you to learn the basics of the craft and creative process and since you have multiple assignments to work on, you're able to hone your skills overtime as well. On the other hand, school costs an arm and a leg (they'll probably want your other arm and leg too) and if your teacher isn't good, you're sunk. Period. I'd say almost every class I took in college period rested on the quality of the teacher and no matter what clout the school boasts on their behalf, some of them are just flat out no good.

I honestly wouldn't recommend it unless you're really passionate and committed to education. I prefer to go out and do and at this point, that's probably how I learned everything I know.

I took one class in screenwriting.

That's it.


Phil

Quoted from Grandma Bear I went to the Simply Scripts Hard Knocks school.

Despite that, she turned into a pretty good writer...  

I did a degree in Journalism if that counts haha.

Was actually one of my biggest regrets, the student experience was great - but I wish I'd done drama or creative writing. So if you're thinking of going to a school make sure its the
right one for what you want to do.

The best part of my course was radio, personally. Just a natural face for radio I guess!!

Mainly, I was curious what experiences you've had. Originally, I went to school for film but wound up in live TV production instead because I didn't want to study film for a semester in California. I worked in TV for four years after college and was kinda done with it after that. But since my degree didn't really teach me much else other than TV and film, my professional ambitions are shot at the moment.

About a month ago, my alma mater announced that they were starting a Masters program this fall for 'Digital Storytelling.' It'll cover several areas of communication not just film. I think there's a bit of public relations content that'll be covered, too.

The first time around, I sucked as a student, but my screenwriting classes really grounded me as a writer. Part of our class involved learning 'theory', but we also wrote on our own and spent class time reading each others' scripts. By the end of the semester, we had the first draft of a feature written. We also got a lot of exposure to using equipment and doing a lot of projects/shorts. I never really mastered the equipment, but I could probably get by using it until I get more comfortable with it.

Basically, I feel like for no more projects I do on my own time, going back to school and trying to get my career back on track seems wise. I enjoy learning, I just enjoyed my free time a lot more. Now that I'm older and have paid for my poor academic performance, I'm ready to settle down and make more of it. Hopefully this time it'll turn out better.