March 6, 2005

What will become of all the young people who graduate with film studies degrees?

Here's a piece in the NYT called "Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.?"
"You sort of have this illusion coming out of film school that you'll work into this small circle of creatives, but you're actually more pigeonholed as a technician," said [Aaron Bell, who graduated as a film major from the University of Wisconsin in 1988].

For some next-generation students, however, the shot at a Hollywood job is no longer the goal. They'd rather make cinematic technique - newly democratized by digital equipment that reduces the cost of a picture to a few thousand dollars and renders the very word "film" an anachronism - the bedrock of careers as far afield as law and the military.

We are at a cusp now, aren't we? All these smart, interesting, creative people have flocked to film programs, in love with the films of the past, thinking they need to find a place in the film industry, which is ugly and uninspiring, and here is all the new digital equipment, and an entire world ready to receive communication in the visual form about which they have the expertise. What will these people do?

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