I remember that every time I told someone my senior year that I was going to NYU Film School, they always asked me that one question: “Oh, what made you decide you wanted to go into film?” I’d come up with some random answer each time - but looking back, I’m realizing all of that was a load of BS I’d come up with after interning at NBC29 for a few months. How long had I been really interested in film for? 1 year? 2 years? All things considered, that’s a very short time for me.
I’ve been slowly realizing over the past two months or so that NYU Film School may not be for me. I love NYU and doubt I would transfer to a different school, but I’m having to seriously consider whether to stick with the film program or not. When I originally searched for film schools, everyone always said that NYU was the school for directors - I should have believed them. The classes I’m in and the classes I’ll be taking next year seem very interesting and helpful to whatever area of film you end up going in to - but they still seem to be classes directed at the 1% of us that go on to be famous directors. Learning how to direct is important even if you’re not going to be a director - but do all of us really need to spend the majority of our four years on it? I may not know exactly what I would want to do in film, but it’s not direct.
And to be quite honest, I don’t even know if film is where I want to be five years from now. Most of my peers are excited for the sophomore and junior level intensive production courses and can’t wait to get theirs hands on a camera; meanwhile, I’m dreading those courses and am looking forward to the iPhone development elective in Computer Science. My favorite class? Computer Science. My favorite time of the week? At the newspaper doing web development. Dream internship this summer? Working at the web desk of a newspaper.
In fact, if I look at the activities that I’ve been consistently interested in, here’s how they stack up:
- 1.5/2 years film
- 4 years theater production
- 8 years computer science
- [and then like 12 years of acting, but I'm not going there]
How much time and money do I want to spend pursuing something that I’m coming to realize is low on my list of priorities?
