Welcome to Coffee and Celluloid, a blog dedicated to the fine craft of filmmaking from the point of view of a film school student. I realize I just jumped into the action, so it’s about time for a recap of the story so far.
I’m a first year in film school — one of thirty. Though I’m a first year, I’m technically a sophomore. The first year of college is spent getting the liberal arts requirements out of the way. So we basically get to be freshmen twice.
The school is also probably the best bargain you can get. It’s a state school, so the tuition is already cheap, not to mention most students are Florida residents with Bright Futures, so it’s basically film school for free. All of our projects are fully funded by the school, but that’s why there’s only a class of thirty.
According to their statistics, about 300 apply. Previously it used to be 15 freshmen and 15 transfers per class, but they’re fading the transfers out. Our class is 24 freshmen / 6 transfers (one freshman dropped out in spring).
We started in fall and will graduate at the end of fall 2008, but we have class year round, even during summer. The two and a half years basically revolve around a series of short film projects. The F1, a digital short; F2, an exercise to get used to shooting on film; a documentary, shot digitally; the F3, first real short shot on film, and thesis. These terms will get mentioned a lot, since that’s what our lives revolve around. When we’re not working on our own film, we’re crewing on someone else’s.
I believe that about covers it. Of course more detail will be given as time goes on, and this post works in conjunction with the About page, but I believe you know enough to follow along. Welcome.
