Q&A: How can I be a movie director? details included.?

Question by oceanview: How can I be a movie director? details included.?
I live in maryland and want to know what universities, if any, offer majors in film or movies. I wanna be a movie director one day. Do i have to go to a special type of school? What courses do I need to take. Also, how can i get jobs in movies. I know I need to start from the bottom and work my way up, so how can I work with movies and or on a movie set. maybe become an asistant director or something. I wanna make big movies, not independent ones too. I have connections with an actor who is my uncle’s best friend also. Please help! This is my dream.

P.S. If i take braodcast engineering in college will that help me to become a movie director?

Thanks everyone who answers!

Best answer:

Answer by anonymous
im with you on this…i want to do this if at all possible

schools not necessarily the way to go…tarantino dropped out pretty early and made it through connections…as for knowing an actor, thats not too much of a connection, as most of them have trouble getting jobs let alone getting other people jobs (unless hes an Alister which i doubt)

majoring in film is wayyy to risky as its not a likely field….im a senior now, most schools have a minor in film studies (i got a pretty decent amount of money to go to UCONN-as a CT resident, and im gonna major w/ a minor)
but if your dead set, i would say go to a big school so you could opt out if need be, i beleive UCLA (maybe usc) has an entire seperate school for theater and film–i would advise against going to a specialized little school though , as its hard to turn back and hard to get forward…i would say go to a reg. school and pursue film as a hobby and see where it leads

my plan is to write a script that knocks the socks off some exec. in my free time..you gotta have your own niche and really blow them away as scripts are a dime a dozen–it seems going straight for director is even harder, unless you wanna start extremely low in which case its hard to move up–i reccomend writing first

ive also considered trying to get into cinematography (hey, anything with film, right?-at least just to start off with) but i have no idea how to get started

anyways good luck man…maybe well both be working together on a movie someday

edit::::::if your a junior–im definately minoring in film at least to start with—if you leave a contact or something, ill let you know how it is and if its worth while (as what im afraid of is it might just be like film analysis and ultimately lead nowhere close to making movies)

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