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You want to be a Tarantino, an independent film maker, or just a film maker who is making
a living as a director? Make a great movie. How do you make a great movie? First of all,
you need to have talent, God-given talent. Second, you need to get educated on how to
do it. What I am saying is you do that by self-educating yourself, by watching a whole
mess of movies, lots of DVD commentary, and reading a lot of books, and secondly, get
yourself a mentor. Someone who can take you by the hand, so to speak, stand over your
shoulder and show you how to set up a shop properly, show you what good production designing
is, and show you how to work with actors. In the music producing, audio engineering
example, show you how to get the right mix.
Get yourself educated the smart way, one-on-one, with a professional that is a real music producer.
Stand next to him; ask him or her all the questions you want to know the answers to.
On your spare time, you are reading, and then you go back to the mentor. You are studying,
reading, trying your own records, or you are trying to make your own movies. If you have
some talent, tenacity, and ambition, eventually, you will make a great film, hopefully, or
you will make a great record. Someone, if it is great, it will get discovered.
You do need an education in this. I very strongly vouch for a structured curriculum of some
sort, of a really strong foundational knowledge in the industry is very important, and the
gear and everything you know, because it gives you that confidence. It gives you that confidence
to go talk to people and tell them you know stuff, because you know you do. If you are
lying, you do not know you do; you know you do not, and it is going to show. People are
going to catch onto it and you are not going to get anywhere. Definitely, the knowledge,
combined with the networking, is what you need to know.
You will do the theory. You will read 100 pages or so a week and you will do written
assignments, just like school. The nice thing about it is, you do not do the written assignment
and then just hand it in and they give you back grades. The difference with this is you
go in and sit down with your mentor.
Your mentor has course curriculum, as well. He has got the answers to your assignments.
He has got the mentor version, if you will, of the accredited curriculum. He sits with
you one-on-one and goes over it; ‘Jerry, you missed number 5. Let me tell you what
number 5 is all about.’ Again, you take that structured course curriculum, and you
make it work by getting one-on-one, individual attention.