Administrative Meltdown

USC is a great school. Let me just point that out before I inch forward with what I’m going to say here. It really is a top-notch institution.

Nonetheless…

Being the first class in the brand-new building is something of a bureacratic nightmare. Let’s face it, these guys do not have the kinks worked out yet, so we kind of have to voyage forward together into a sea of insanity. It’s quite valuable, in a way, because I can already sense in myself and my classmates an instinctive understanding of the fact that we have to work this crap out for ourselves. The “grown ups” cannot be relied on to steer us through, the initiative must constantly be seized. At first, it was terrifying, but I think back then I was refusing to embrace what this school is really offering. I was expecting a study environment more or less like what I’ve been through before, and that’s not what you get in a really good film school.

In part, I think the fact that the professors can’t answer a lot of the questions you have, and the knowledge that the timetables for you to get things done are incredibly truncated, makes what we do at USC feel more like…ours. It’s so plainly obvious all the time that if we aren’t on top of our game, our Project Ones or Project Twos or whatever could just…not happen. And if that day arrived, we’d end up in front of our class with our pockets turned out and our professors shrugging at us. Just because we’re assigned these things doesn’t guarantee they will occur, that’s the part we have to endeavor for ourselves.

In this way, film school is unique, I think, not only from undergraduate study, but from other Master’s Degrees one might receive. You are always fixed on a product, a thing you are trying to fashion into cinematic reality, and most of your semester is an elaborate dance with that goal. This is why grades are such an afterthought, your professors all assume that if you got this far, you’re going to bleed into this thing and they won’t have to be concerned with affixing your performance to some kind of bar graph, whose Y-axis denotes your work. To be honest, our instructors spend much more of their time trying to get us to take it easy, spend less money, aim lower, and commit less. I have never once had anyone at this place tell me, “You’d better work hard or else!” This statement would be hilarious to us. What I witness instead is a group of highly trained professionals trying to gradually unleash a flood of creative energy, little bits at a time.

So yes, I will admit that different teachers tell us contradicting things and we have to sort them out. And certainly, there are bugs in the new facility and wrinkles in the semester’s design. But the experience of navigating this storm, learning who you should listen to, fighting to make sure you’re ahead of things, is incredibly valuable, and I can’t help but suspect that a little bit of pandemonium is built into the program. After all, if your educational experience taught you that film making is a smooth, refined process where you can expect few hiccups and tremendous ease, then your educational experience was worthless.

It’s refreshing, you don’t feel “forced” to do much of anything; you view your professors as delicious means to a better end for your project, and you intend to gobble them up and drain them of whatever precious resources and knowledge they may have. You show up for class because there’s something in it for you, and I don’t just mean the curriculum; these people will give you secrets you desperately want. Only an idiot would skip anything here, you’re learning stuff that is going to be the difference between a student film everyone envies and…a student film

It’s exciting, really. I don’t even think about grades, I think about movies. And every day, I get a little bit closer…