Another big reason I have taken to posting these posts on AILV is because of the only class I was really looking forward to in the last year: Short Form Media Production.
Over a year ago, I took a class called Short Form Scriptwriting. In this class, we wrote 15 page scripts. These scripts were to be reviewed by the faculty and one would be chosen to be produced by the Short Form Media Production class.
Short Form Media Production, I was told, was a class reserved to shoot one short film as a class. The script would be totally broken down by the class and produced. I was also told that there possibly could have been a budget that the school would provide.
I also was under the assumption that the class would have a few other majors in it other than film – audio could do the audio, visual effects majors could add titles/effects to the project, etc since it takes all of them to make a higher-quality film. A class reserved to give students the most realistic experience shooting a short film would be stellar.
And nope. I have been left extremely disappointed.
The class had just film students in it. No offense to us film students, but we aren’t the best at everything. It would’ve be nice to have students in other majors with some stake in the class to care to be a part of a project. Instead, if we want better quality anything, we had to somehow convince outside students to help. Not to mention we had no budget (but that honestly wasn’t a surprise).
Also, we didn’t use scripts that were written in Short Form Scriptwriting. Instead of a 15 page script for the whole class to work on, we each had a 3-5 page script that we had to write. On top of that, each student had to shoot his or her short film, and instead of having the whole quarter to shoot, each student was designated a certain week to shoot it. The whole class didn’t work together – there were two groups of about 8 students each. Each student originally was to have only one day to shoot his/her film, but the instructor was convinced to give us more time.
The vast majority of this class was just working on projects.
Now, how was this class justified?
Defense: Who gets to take credit for the project? Everyone will try to show it in their reels for portfolio and try to claim it as their own.
Rebuttal: Why is everything about trying to make it for portfolio? There is already every-single-other-class that encourages to make things for portfolio. How about we experience something real for once? If someone goes to the Art Institute solely to make a reel, s/he is straight up either ignorant and/or dumb. $86,000+ in tuition alone and 3+ years for 2 minutes of work?
We were told on our last day that we can use these projects when we take the class Post-Production Workshop to do visual effects, audio work, etc. However, if a student has already taken Post-Production Workshop, then the student would just have to come in on his/her own time and work on the project IF there is no other work for the students in class. This issue can’t be resolved at this school unless the school offers the correct progression of classes, which would be almost impossible to achieve to fit every students’ individual schedules…not to mention the 3 year graduation.
There were two main things we were taught / received in this class:
1. Some preproduction/production paperwork. Part of it was useless to us anyways because they were for film studios in Hollywood and The Art Institute of Las Vegas’s equipment cage was nothing compared to what was listed on the equipment sheet.
2. A casting call, although I say this loosely. It wasn’t held during class time, so only those of us who volunteered to work it worked it. I honestly can’t tell you why it wasn’t held during class time. We received a PowerPoint that was literally the same PowerPoint presentation from another class. Then, when the casting call happened, there was no instructor around assisting / coaching us. I (and as far as I know anyone else who helped) never even received a “Thanks” from anyone for doing the casting call. We had a handful of mistakes that we were able to correct pretty quickly so we didn’t look too messed up, thankfully.
As far as I know, this was the first casting call the school partially took part in for the whole 2.75 years I was there.
There were 13 of us who finished that class (I think there were originally 15). If the class was about $1,400, that is at least $18,200 the school made on that class.
This class was also needed to be able to check out from the equipment cage the Canon 5D Mark III. I don’t understand this because we didn’t learn anything about that camera in class.
Ultimately, this class devolved into every other class – each student shoots his/her own project, except this time, other students are essentially forced to help for a grade. At least it’s one project and not two or three I guess.
Not to mention this was over $1,400 for a class that I would have rather put in to my short film.
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