Greetings, I seem to have deleted the message of the high school student seeking advice and don't recall your name. Sorry. Your request for ideas about film schools to look into inspired me to jot down the following thoughts, thoughts you probably won't hear elsewhere, but will hopefully be of some use. First of all, good for you for getting real world experience, and learning what it is really like in the field. Continue this approach in looking for a school by not just taking the official tour, but finding out where the students hang out, and talking to them. Also seek out the equipment room manager if at all possible and befriend him or her. Why? Because, while the official tour will show you impressive equipment the students and equipment room manager might be able to give you a different picture. State of the art equipment will be useless to you if: it is broken all the time because there is no money for maintenance, a certain professor takes it for his personal business and keeps it all semester, only seniors can use it etc. There might be exciting professors on staff, but you might end up with the instructor with no previous experience, the ones who have only been given a week's notice that they will be teaching that semester etc. Sit in on several classes if possible. Lookout for a schism between professors who teach theory and those who teach the actual craft of filmmaking. Everybody will pay lip service to the need to integrate the two, but in my experience they are often in separate worlds. My honors advisor, in urging me to focus more on (his brand of) theory actually told me that production was "monkey stuff" that could easily be picked up after school. Bad advice. I don't regret getting a BA, but I must tell you that I have found it pretty irrelevant in getting a job. I used to work at a public access cable station; my husband works at a national cable network. We both had colleagues who only had AAs from their local community college or an unrelated degree who wanted to get into something "more fun". My degree being an honors one probably served as more of a hinderance then a help in getting a job. It is still a worthwhile endeavor to get an honors degree, but be careful of falling too much under the influence of a single professor who will focus you so much towards his particular critical view that you will end up with a paper that is unpublishable. Sorry if I seem negative about film school so far. I don't regret doing it. People who don't the history of film usually tend to end up trying to just copy the latest hit. Learning the history of film, seeing films that you don't normally see, and discussing them critically in a way that you won't often outside of school all were invaluable in shaping my approach to filmmaking. I hope my thoughts are of some help. Best of luck, Simone Fary ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]