posted
29/07/10
Many successful filmmakers will tell you that film school is a scam, and even of the Film Connection Scam. Many of them are also likely to tell you that the money it costs to attend film school would be better spent on making your first feature film. In many ways, they may be right.
There are of course very fine film schools that produce top level talents that do go on to succeed. So while film school is a scam, it’s definitely not for everyone.
Film Connection is not a scam either. Nor is it a film school. Film Connection is an apprenticeship program that places students in internship-like situations. Film Connection participants work in film production houses under the tutelage of professional filmmakers.
They learn first hand about writing, directing, shooting, producing and editing film. Film Connection offers no ironclad guarantee of success, but what film school does? If a program did offer such a guarantee than you’d know that was a scam, which means the Film Connection scam has no basis.
Obviously not everyone who attends film school becomes Robert Zemeckis or Quentin Tarantino. Nor does everyone who attends Film Connection. However many people who participate in Film Connection apprenticeships go on to enjoy professional careers working in the film and television industry.
Nearly everyone who embarks on a career in film starts out wanting to be a director. The fact is there just isn’t that much demand for directors. Only the very good, the very lucky or the well connected will succeed.
Many, many others discover another job in the business that suits them along the way.
Film Connection is a great program for someone who wants to find themselves in the film business. No, it can’t turn you into Jim Jarmusch or George Lucas. But if you’ve got talent, drive and ambition, it can help you learn the skills you need to make films. Beyond that it can also help you meet the people you need to meet to find work.
Some of the people who talk about the Film Connection scam had very unrealistic expectations about what the program could do for them in the first place. To succeed in any level of the film business takes talent and drive. If you lack those vital traits perhaps you ought to consider a different career path.
However taking the blame out on an apprenticeship program like Film Connection is a waste of time and energy. For those with talent and an eye for opportunity, Film Connection represents a golden opportunity. It is only the bitter, the naïve or the uninformed who would make up stories about a Film Connection scam.
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posted
20/07/10
Imagine if, as a student of filmmaking, you were scoping out film schools, observing the sometimes-astounding cost of tuition for those schools, and then you noticed another program claiming to give you a similar quality education (possibly even better) for a tiny fraction of the cost of the other film schools. Would you think it was a Film Connection scam—that it was too good to be true?
The Film Connection just happens to be in that predicament. Although they are a fully-accredited school, they offer a program that at first glance might seem too good to be true—leaving some people wondering if they are a scam.
However, there’s actually a very reasonable explanation as to why The Film Connection can charge this little and make these claims about their program. It has very little to do with the quality of the content, and almost everything to do with the method by which the student receives the education.
The Film Connection has recognized that filmmaking is part art form and part trade, and that both art and trade are essentially learned by doing. Through the centuries, both artists and artisans have learned their crafts not through formal education, but through mentorship and apprenticeship—by consistent hands-on experience under the tutelage of a professional who took the apprentice under his/her wing. The Film Connection has taken this ancient mentor-apprentice approach and built their entire educational program around it. Rather than remove the students into a separated school environment to learn the curriculum, they have taken their curriculum into the real-world environment, paying seasoned working professionals to mentor students through the curriculum. As you can imagine, this greatly reduces the cost of the education, all the while helping students learn filmmaking in the best way possible: by actually doing it.
It seems too good to be true, simply because it is a completely different approach than competing schools are using. However, it’s difficult to take a time-tested, ancient approach to learning, and label it a Film Connection scam.
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then the real test of whether The Film Connection works is in the many students who have come through the program. One film student says this: “A week after I joined the program, I was working on a famous music video which was a great experience. It was my first opportunity with the program and the week following that I was working on a Roger Corman movie which had a budget of about $200,000, and by the time that film was over, I was the second assistant director.”
The mentorship-apprentice approach has been used for centuries for this very reason: it works. If The Film Connection uses this approach so effectively for a fraction of the cost of other film schools, is it really too good to be true? Is it a Film Connection scam? That’s difficult to imagine.
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posted
17/07/10
The proper way to go about starting a career in the entertainment field, such as music production or film editing, is to have talent, good work ethic, hands-on experience, and connections. Four-year colleges do not prepare students with these skills that are needed to start their careers. The Entertainment Career Connection scam is that Entertainment Connection is not a scam at all, but probably the most worthwhile education to pursue for those looking to go into the entertainment field.
Many grow up wanted to work in the music field as a producer, technician, or even radio disk jockey. Others grow up wanting to become movie directors, film editors, and producers. The promise of your name in lights and life in Hollywood has been a tempting one, for more than half a century. In modern times, as those fields offer more fame and more money, a vast quantity of people have also decided to go into this career field.
However, this is not an easy career field. It is very competitive, and most places will not hire someone unless those people already know what they are doing, are experienced in the field, used to working with the various equipment, and come highly recommended. For this reason, four-year colleges are useless to those who wish to work in this field.
The Entertainment Career Connection scam is that Entertainment Connection allows students to learn from teachers who are actually professionals in the field. This is one of the best benefits of the program. The mentor-apprentice program pairs students with a professional who works in the field, and the students will learn the field from them. The ‘mentor’ will take the students under his or her wing, take them to work, introduce them to people, teach them to work with equipment, and show them what the career is really like, once the student starts working.
This is what makes the education at Entertainment Connection superior to a college education. In college, most professors and teachers students will be receiving instruction from have never worked in the field, or else worked in the field in the past. Most professors do not know what the field is like, and cannot adequately teach their students about what to expect or prepare for in the future.
The Entertainment Career Connection scam is not a scam at all, the program pays those in the field to take on students to mentor. Plus, unlike other internships that most college students receive, they will not just be fetching coffee and taking out the trash. Instead, students have a set course, assignments, and a real class that takes place in the recording studio.
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posted
13/07/10
It’s very easy for people to label a new idea or something they don’t understand as a scam, such as the so-called Film Connection scam. Many people have lashed out at the Film Connection. However a great many of these people have no idea what they are talking about. Others have an axe to grind because they may be former students who failed to complete the program or take advantage of the opportunities it offers.
For others it could be that the Film Connection simply sounds too good to be true. They may have a point there. Learning to make films while working on a real movie set or in a production house? Being taught the business, not by a professor, but by a real director, producer, writer or cinematographer? It almost does sound too good to be true! But it isn’t.
The Film Connection is a very real mentor-apprentice program that offers career training for people who are serious about working in the movie business. If you have the talent and the drive to work hard and be the best at what you do, the Film Connection can provide you with opportunity.
Opportunity to lean your trade from professionals and opportunity to make industry connections while you learn. That doesn’t sound like a Film Connection scam, does it?
The unfortunate truth about film schools is that they cost tens of thousands of dollars and often take years to complete. Upon graduations many students find themselves with a degree, a mountain of debt and no industry connections bar their fellow unemployed film students and a few professors who may have never actually worked in the professional film industry. If that doesn’t sound like a scam, what does?
Film Connection offers students a direct pipeline into the business. This is not to say that everyone who signs up is guaranteed to be the next Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino, but if you are serious, talented and apply yourself you will very likely find work in the business through working with Film Connection. And who knows, if you are an exceptional talent, you very well could be the next Spielberg or Tarantino.
Film Connection may not be rocket science but it does provide good opportunities. Working with Film Connection can help you attain the skills and connections you need to be successful as a film industry professional. And it costs a fraction of what it costs to complete a film degree from a 4-year institution.
If you’re looking for an affordable, direct route to working in the film industry consider taking part in a Film Connection mentorship program. You may be pleasantly surprised by where it can lead you, just as long as you don’t believe the so-called Film Connection scam.
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posted
10/07/10
Internet message boards are an interesting by-product of the information age. They allow anyone to say just about anything about just about anyone. The Entertainment Connection, for instance, has been labeled an Entertainment Career Connection scam on more than one online message board.
The problem with message boards is that there is no screening process for the people who post on them or the content they post. This means that anyone literally can put up anything. Message boards have effectively taken “smack talking” into the 21st-Century.
Entertainment Connection and it’s affiliates, Music Connection, Radio Connection, Recording Connection and Film Connection are mentorship-apprentice programs that provide career training for individuals who are serious about working in the entertainment business.
The company has been praised in articles from Billboard Magazine, Spin Records.com, Music Connection Magazine and Newsweek.
Undoubtedly many of the people who allege about an Entertainment Career Connection scam have no idea what they are talking about. Others may have personal issues. Former students who dropped out of the program prematurely or failed to meet their own responsibilities within it. Or perhaps others who entered into the program with unrealistic expectations about what it would do for them.
The bottom line about Entertainment Connection and its affiliates is that it is a well-regarded, career-training program that has been praised by many industry publications. People who have worked with Entertainment Connection have gone on to successful careers in film, music, radio and broadcast. Many of these people will be happy to tell you that Entertainment Connection changed their lives for the better and helped them attain these careers.
One thing Entertainment Connection does not do is guarantee that if you take part in the program you will become a huge sensation or an international celebrity. This is not to say that you won’t. You very well might. However no school, academy, college or training program can really offer such a guarantee. If ever one does, you’ll know that’s a scam straightaway.
When it comes to Entertainment Connection don’t believe the negative hype. Take the time to do the research and you’ll see Entertainment Connection has far more good press than bad press. And the good press comes from legitimate sources like Newsweek and Billboard while the bad press generally comes from people with screen names like “Audiobully05” who are basically talking trash online.
If you are serious about a career in the entertainment business Entertainment Connection can provide you with good training, connections and one of the fastest, most affordable and direct routes to success there is. Now ask yourself, where is the Entertainment Career Connection scam in that?
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posted
08/07/10
Reading that a short apprenticeship program can help a student break into the film industry faster and farther than expensive four-year degrees or technical schools that have famous spokespersons might make some folks suspicious but any rumors of a Film Connection scam that you may have heard are entirely false.
Film Connection, one of the options offered by Entertainment Career Connection’s Mentor-Apprentice which has similar programs for people who want to break into radio or music recording, will not make you Steven Spielberg or get you a ten picture deal with Disney but it does offer the opportunity to anyone willing to put in the work to break into one of the toughest industries.
Unlike attending a typical film school, “students” are not confined to small classrooms and forced to listen to professors still shopping around the romantic comedy script they wrote in college. In fact, Film Connection is not even a school; it is a program that pairs those who wish to pursue a career in film with mentors that are working in the industry.
Considering that the film connection program is centered around students learning and making connections while working in the real world with real professionals and real equipment, it would be hard to call the program a “Film Connection scam.” The mentor-apprentice program gives people the opportunity to learn in a real film studio or set setting rather than out of a text book while also giving you access to countless individuals who could be the key to landing jobs in film in the future.
Anyone willing to put in the work and apply themselves to learning the craft and using all of the resources at their disposal would thrive in such an environment. For much less than the cost of one year of college, film connection gives students to learn all they need about the theory and practice of filmmaking, meet people that work in film, work on real film sets or studios, and get access to Film Connection’s excellent job placement assistance as well as the help of your mentor and any connections you made during your time in the program.
In summary, the talk of a “Film Connection scam” just does not make sense considering that the company does not promise you a job or a successful future. Film Connection’s goal is to give their apprentices access to the best possible real world education in filmmaking and access to the industry and industry players themselves. Anyone who wants to work in film but needs to catch a break to get into the industry ought to jump on the chance offered by Film Connection and not believe farfetched stories of a Film Connection scam.
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posted
01/07/10
There are people out there who are spreading stories about a Film Connection scam. Many of them are undoubtedly offering a knee-jerk reaction towards something they know almost nothing about. Others perhaps are former students who failed to complete the program, didn’t make the most of it or had completely unrealistic expectations going into it in the first place.
Film Connection is a mentorship-apprentice program that provides career training for people who are serious about working in the movie business. Unlike college there are no lectures on film history or film theory. There are no tests, papers or grades. This is because Film Connection is not a school. It is a six to eight month program designed to provide participants with real world experience in the professional film industry.
With the Film Connection your classroom is a film set and your teacher is a professional filmmaker.
Films schools cost tens of thousands of dollars to attend and can take up years of your life. That money and time could arguably be better spent on making your first film. Film Connection can provide you with not only the tools you need to make that film but also the contacts and connections you will need once you have completed it.
And Film Connection mentorship-apprentice programs are available for a fraction of the cost of traditional film school. Does that sound like a Film Connection scam to you?
Film Connection obviously makes no guarantees that if you complete the program you will become the next superstar director. No school or training program, especially where the film industry is concerned, can offer a guarantee that all of its students will become successful.
But Film Connection can provide you with opportunities. Opportunities to learn the craft and business of filmmaking as well as opportunities to make the connections you need to apply that craft professionally.
Whether you aspire to be a director, writer, producer, editor or cinematographer, Film Connection can give you the skills you need while exposing you to the professional environment of the film industry.
If you are serious about working in the film industry college could be a big waste of time and an even bigger waste of money. The Film Connection can provide you with a more direct and affordable route to success.
Once you have completed a Film Connection program you will have the skills and experience you need to start working in the industry. And equally importantly, you will know the people you need to know to make it happen. There’s no Film Connection scam there!
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Many successful filmmakers will tell you that film school is a scam, and even of the Film Connection Scam. Many of them are also likely to tell you that the money it costs to attend film school would be better spent on making your first feature film. In many ways, they may be right.
