Will Online Education Transform Filmmaking?- Summer Steele (Part 2) #eLearner #Pi8 #PTW15 @Summer_Steele

Summer Steele addresses the question–what student needs is the traditional model of film school falling short of addressing?

Highlights: 

She begins by explaining the different between the artsy film school and the technical film school. In a two-year program, they don’t have the time to teach the student everything.  The schools have to choose a focus.  The advantage of online education is as a supplement to this single track approach.

No school is perfect in terms of teaching film education. If you go to the traditional artsy school your education is going to lack in terms of the technical part….

Film schools also do not usually address the business piece. For example, they don’t teach you how to set up an LLC or show you how to find a distributor or to get financing. But a lot of this knowledge is available on online learning sources.

Audience Member makes the point:

The artsy schools tend to create scholars, the technical schools make participants, [tradesman]..for both filmmakers and people doing Web 2.0 and make moving pictures.

Another audience member counters that traditional schools offer the opportunity to establish a network and develop a dialog between artists. Traditional education buys students time to experiment and to find their voice.

Conclusion: 

Maybe the opportunity here is for the school to recognize their limitations, and embrace these supplemental online filmmaking education sources, to partner with them and to promote them to become better and better because the ultimate goal is to develop great filmmakers.

Summer Steele is on the Digital Filmmaking & Video Production faculty at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. She earned an MA in Screen from the Drama Centre London. Her production experience includes directing, producing, and writing “Growing up Chevy” (shortlisted, New York Film Festival). She produced and directed “Peachy Delicious” (Film Directing 4 Women Int’l Film Festival, London). Most recently Summer has joined the Clean Slate Project as Co-Producer. A script-to-screen program that works with underprivileged children.

Part 3 will follow shortly and explores how online education for filmmaking falls short.

Will Online Education Transform Filmmaking?- Summary and Video (Part 1) #PIFF #PTW15 #elearner

This is the first of a 4 part collection of videos that captures the compelling panel discussion between filmmakers and film educators trying to understand the value of eLearning and best practices pertaining to the learning of the art and trade of filmmaking.

The discussion was part of the 8th annual, Philadelphia Independent Film Festival and 15th annual Philadelphia Tech Week.

The Introduction

This video explains how this event came about and sets out the objectives for the discussion.

Overview of Resources

The first section of the talk presented by the moderator, Scott Kramer, is an overview of a research resource published earlier at eLearning Review.  The resource includes links to the top traditional film schools,  completely web based degree programs, various free MOOCs and iTunes Education podcasts, and finally there are links to a number of valuable professional development websites.

All of these links can be accessed from this previous post.