Columbia University
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Reality Checks: How Film Schools are Adapting to Entertainment Industry Changes
Scan the entertainment business press and everywhere you’ll see the phrase “the great contraction.” The aftermath of COVID shutdowns, labor strikes, the wind-down of zero-interest-rate policies, the end of peak TV, changes in the competitive streaming landscape, the rise of TikTok—all have conspired to make the ever-perilous path toward a career in feature film and television even more uncertain. The economic laws of supply and demand, as they pertain to the labor market, would indicate, then, that film schools must be feeling an enrollment pinch, but talking to various graduate and undergraduate chairs and professors from across the country, that’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 27, 2024 -
Class Review
When it came time for A.B. Shawky to make Yomeddine, a road movie about a leper trekking across Egypt in search of lost relatives, he turned to his NYU Tisch School of the Arts colleagues and faculty for advice. After all, the movie is both his first feature as well his NYU thesis film. Unlike many film schools, “NYU encourages you to do features for your thesis project,” Shawky told Filmmaker’s Tiffany Pritchard, explaining that the school granted him an extra year on top of the two normally allowed to complete the arduous production. The school also granted him key […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2018 -
Credit Risk: Student Debt’s Impact on Post-University Film Careers
“My credit isn’t what it used to be,” admits Fabian Euresti, who graduated from the film directing program at California Institute of the Arts in 2010. A child of farm laborers in the San Joaquin Valley, Euresti made shorts, including 2010’s Everybody’s Nuts, that have played at prestigious film festivals in Europe (Vienna, Oberhausen, Tampere) and the U.S. (Los Angeles, Full Frame), but he’s currently got more than $100,000 in student debt and remains without a steady job to pay it down. “Knowing what I know now,” says Euresti, “I would have been more diligent in procuring grants and scholarships […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jun 16, 2017 -
Film Schools in a Time of Disruption
At YouVisit Studios in midtown Manhattan, Ben Leonberg, Scott Riehs and Alice Shindelar, three recent graduates of the film MFA program at Columbia, bring their education to bear in rather unexpected ways. They are still, in a sense, filmmakers — Leonberg a creative director, Shindelar a writer/director and Riehs a creative producer, each aspiring to one day make a feature. But as their day job they practice filmmaking of a very different type: together they conceive, write and shoot commercial content that YouVisit calls “interactive virtual experiences.” They work in 360-degree video and with virtual-reality headsets. They experiment with new […]
by Calum Marsh on Jun 16, 2017 -
Convergent: Columbia DSL Live at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL) is launching a monthly live event and podcast on the changing nature of storytelling in partnership with New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center. “Convergent: Columbia DSL Live at the Film Society of Lincoln Center” will explore new forms and functions of storytelling and pull back the curtain on what’s required to tell stories in the digital age. The initial program, to be held at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center on Tuesday, Feb. 23, will celebrate the Lab’s first annual “Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling” with a line\up of speakers that includes New […]
by Lance Weiler on Feb 17, 2016 -
On Film School and Columbia’s 25th
In early May, with much hoopla, Columbia University’s graduate Film Program celebrated the 25th anniversary of its annual Film Festival at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The auditorium was nearly packed as tuxedo-attired Ira Deutchman, Columbia Film Program chair, took the podium to introduce both the evening, a weeklong series of events and screenings honoring Columbia’s film school, and, more particularly, the school’s maturation over the past quarter century. The opening night featured some of the best student films to come out of Columbia, including Adam Davidson’s superbly paced Academy Award-winning short The Lunch Date, and Greg Mottola’s charming Swingin’ […]
by Charles Lyons on Jul 19, 2012 -
Columbia U. Launches Screenplay Revision Workshop
Becoming a good writer is not just about writing well — it’s about rewriting well. I know plenty of promising writers who positively fail at that essential skill. They are unable to move beyond their first drafts, to process feedback, and to shape their own raw material into production-worthy scripts. This summer a resource for the self-aware among this set is being offered by Columbia University. Columbia’s Film School chair Ira Deutchman recently announced the Screenplay Revision Workshop, which is open to all. From Ira’s blog at Tribeca: In all my years in the film business and my travels around […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 17, 2012 -
IRA DEUTCHMAN CHAIRS COLUMBIA FILM SCHOOL
Producer, distributor, and longtime professor (24 years!) at Columbia Film School, Ira Deutchman has been appointed the division’s new chair. He takes over from the film school’s previous chair, Jamal Joseph. Well known in the independent community, Deutchman was a founder of indie distributor Cinecom, a former head of Fine Line Features, and is currently Managing Partner of Emerging Pictures. Film’s he’s worked on as either a distributor or marketer include The Player, An Angel at My Table, Hoop Dreams, Naked, and sex lies and videotape. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Deutchman commented, “I’ve been teaching at Columbia […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 29, 2011 -
ANDREW SARRIS AWARD WINNER SIMON KINBERG’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
“I can promise you that you are going to fail… but failure is not final.” That’s screenwriter Simon Kinberg in his speech accepting the Columbia University Film School Andrew Sarris award. For all the talk here and elsewhere about the struggles of DIY filmmakers, it’s useful to note that directors and writers targeting the studio system have it tough too. In recounting the five-year-long story of turning his thesis project, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, into the big Hollywood hit it became, Kinberg offers simple but solid inspirational advice for filmmakers of all stripes.
by Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2010
