So, you’re thinking about going to film school. It’s a big choice and not something to be taken lightly. I’ve been asked this question so many times by young editors and filmmakers over the years.

What I have to say is pretty controversial, but I want to give my honest opinion after nearly 30 years in the industry. So… is it worth it?

My simple answer is no, and here’s why:

Three years, tens of thousands in debt, and a shiny degree that says you’re now a filmmaker. But here’s the truth that no one wants to say out loud:

• Most film school degrees won’t get you hired.

• They won’t make you a filmmaker.

• They’ll just make you broke, with decades of compounding debt suffocating you.

I see no correlation between a film school degree and a successful career in the film and television industry. None.

If you want to be a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, an architect, then 100% yes, a degree is essential. But a media degree? Definitely not.

There are lots of different factors at play with this subject, and so, in this essay, I’m going to go through all of them and give you an honest opinion. I may even save you a ton of money!

Let’s break down the issues. Firstly, who’s teaching you?

Film School Lecturers: Why Industry Experience Matters

If you’re absolutely decided on going to film school, then do this one bit of research beforehand:

Research the lecturers on the course. Look them up on the university’s website.

What you’ll find is that most film school lecturers haven’t worked in the industry, or if they have, it’s often on the periphery and not at a high level. Many are passionate film fans or individuals who tried, but failed, to break into the industry. Very few film schools or media universities have high-level professional filmmakers teaching their courses.

Most of these lecturers, passionate though they are, have never sat in an edit suite under a deadline with an exhausted director and problems with the footage. They've never got crazy edit notes back from the broadcaster they’re working for and had to interpret them extremely quickly. And they've never gone through the intense process of delivering a film, documentary, or TV show that millions of people watch, and the newspapers review and criticize the next morning, etc...

Instead, they’ve read all the books about editing or directing or cinematography. Maybe they’ve done a Masters or a PhD in filmmaking. Maybe they've made a short film that won a prize at a film festival you’ve never heard of.

If their bio begins with “X is passionate about cinema and has studied film for 20 years…” run away!

Think about this:
If you wanted to learn to sail across the Atlantic, would you pick the instructor who’s crossed oceans multiple times battling 50-foot waves?
Or the one who gives tourists rides around the local harbour?

Both can sail, but they are not the same thing.

You want people teaching you who’ve actually done it, not read books about doing it. You want people who’ve made long-form shows or films for the likes of Netflix or the BBC, who’ve worked for film studios, and have credits on IMDB for senior positions.

Because filmmaking is a craft, and you can’t learn a craft from an amateur critic. There are experienced filmmakers out there teaching, but they really are few and far between. If you're serious about going to film school, do your research and only go on a course that is taught by a pro filmmaker with pro credits. Low-budget indie films and film festivals do not count.

Why Film Schools' Promises Are Misleading

Film schools are great at selling dreams of a successful career. Big buildings, expensive camera kits, access to “the industry.” But cameras, studio edit suites, and the occasional guest lecture by a pro filmmaker won't make you employable.

Storytelling does. Repetitive scene construction does. And this is not taught on most media and film degrees.

No one hires you because you used an Alexa on your student short. But this is the hook that so many film schools use on their websites. You don’t need access to the latest tech. You need to know how to emotionally move an audience with raw footage.

And for that, an iPhone and a laptop will do just fine when you’re learning.

You’ll also see headlines in their marketing saying things like "80% of students working in the industry within 12 months of graduation." But this is so misleading. That means they're making coffee in a production company, not directing a TV drama, although that's the insinuation. Be extremely cautious about their promises.

The Hidden Costs of Film School: Debt and Disappointment

Let’s do the math. Most film degrees put you anywhere from $50,000–$100,000 in debt with a combination of course fees and living expenses. So, for that extremely large amount of money, are you guaranteed a job or even an interview somewhere? Absolutely not.

And at the end of those three years, you'll still have to start at the bottom.

Making tea and coffee in a post house or production company.

Every year thousands of film school grads enter the film and television market and send out thousands of CVs and student film links to all of the production companies, streamers, and broadcasters. And most don't even get a response. The industry does not have time to answer thousands of emails; they've got films to make.

Meanwhile, someone else skipped the degree, spent three years making 50 short films or promos, building a portfolio, working on real jobs, even if they were low-budget — and they walk into the same interview as you.

But they’ve got no debt, more experience, and real credits. Who do you think gets hired?

What the Film Industry Really Thinks About Film Degrees

Here’s something almost no one tells film and television students:

No one in the industry cares if you went to film school.

In fact, some are outright hostile. I once spoke with the head of post-production training at a major broadcaster. She told me:

“We have to spend a lot of time un-teaching what students learned in film school. It’s just not realistic or useful. It makes me so angry considering all that money they’ve spent.”

Let that sink in.

You spent three years being taught things that get in the way of real filmmaking.

The degree syllabus hasn’t changed in decades. They churn out the same old tired content year in, year out. They just do it with more expensive equipment.

The Reality Behind Film School Alumni Success Stories

Another thing you'll see that film schools love to shout about is their most successful graduates. The Oscar winners who went to their school 35 years ago. The festival darlings. But here’s what they don’t tell you:

Those talented filmmakers would have made it anyway.

It wasn’t the degree that made them great. It was their obsession. Their practice. Their hustle. Their talent.

I once had drinks in Vegas during NAB with an Oscar-winning editor. He told me that he got rejected from a “very prestigious and well-known” film school on the south coast of England.

At the time it crushed him.

But now? He fantasises about walking into their office and putting the Oscar on the lecturer’s desk.

Why Employers Value Experience More Than Film School Degrees

I know agents who won’t even sign film school graduates. Why? Because too many come out entitled, high maintenance, unwilling to do the entry-level work we all did for years coming up.

They’ve been told for the last three years by lecturers they’re paying a huge amount of money to that they’re going to be the next Tarantino and expect to walk into a high-paying TV or film job straight away.

They’ve got some theory — but no practice. And it’s the practice that makes you employable.

You get good at editing by doing it over and over again hundreds of times, not by writing essays about Eisenstein and shot structure that’s 100 years old. You learn to shape emotion, pace, rhythm, story, tension — on the timeline, not in the lecture hall.

That’s what production companies want. That’s what gets you hired. That’s what makes you valuable.

What You Should Be Doing Instead: Gaining Experience and Building Your Reel

You don’t need a campus. You need repetition. You should be cutting scenes daily. Learning structure. Dialogue editing. Music timing. Learning to feel an edit. That’s what makes you employable.

And you can start now — debt free — with nothing but a 4K camera phone and a laptop with Premiere Pro, Resolve, or Media Composer.

The Real Cost-Benefit Analysis of Film School

If we’re being fair, there are a few upsides. You may meet people. Collaborators. Lifelong friends.

But, in my opinion, you can do that anyway — online, on set, at festivals, by volunteering, or just putting your work out there and trying to meet other filmmakers.

Is a potentially six-figure debt worth that?

I don’t think Film School is completely without value, I just think it’s vastly overpriced. It’s not worth the amount of money they charge when you do a cost-benefit analysis:

• The amount of time it takes

• The amount of debt you’ll be in (potentially decades)

• The skill level of the lecturers (not A or even B list)

• The level of practical work (one-shot film a year or sometimes less)

• Heavy on film theory, which is not an employable skill

• The level of experience and employable skills you’ll have at the end

• The percentage of success stories (extremely low)

For some crazy reason, degrees in general have shot up in price massively since I started in the industry. Nowhere near aligned with inflation. So, the key questions are around a return on your investment. Are you going to come out of it with employable skills that you couldn't have got anywhere else? Definitely not.

If film schools were half as expensive, I think they'd be worth doing. Especially if you're unsure of which role within the industry you'd like to do.

So many film degrees are just expensive guided tours of the different roles within the industry. You get to experience "mock set-ups" of real-world productions as a director or editor or producer or shooter.

You get the illusion that you've learned some employable skills. But you didn’t. Certainly, nothing that a production company would pay you for. No one goes from film school straight to directing or shooting a TV drama or editing a cinema documentary. That’s unheard of.

Is Creative Confidence the Key to Success in Filmmaking?

I've heard this argument before. Again, I don't think so. Many people have not gone down the film school road and been just fine with their careers. The list of filmmaking geniuses who either never went to film school or dropped out is incredibly long.

Here’s a few you may have heard of. Many of them are vocally anti-film school:

• Christopher Nolan

• David Fincher

• James Cameron

• Quentin Tarantino

• Ridley Scott

• Stanley Kubrick

• Steven Soderbergh

• Thelma Schoonmaker

• Werner Herzog

• Wes Anderson

• Sally Menke

Filmmakers Who Succeeded Without Film School

Some people say film school is a waste of time. Others say it’s a mafia-like system — preying on young people who don’t know better, selling dreams they can’t deliver, and saddling them with crippling debt they won’t be able to pay off until they’re middle-aged.

Here’s the truth:

If you want to be a filmmaker, start making films, start directing, start shooting, start editing. Tech is cheap, there are zero barriers in today’s world. And zero excuses.

Get together with a couple of friends and film a feature-length documentary for a couple of grand. It's the cheapest long-form genre there is and will teach you an enormous amount about how to tell stories. You’ll learn more in one year of real practice in the evenings and at weekends around your day job than three years of film school theory.

That’s exactly what Christopher Nolan and countless others did.

"When people ask me if I went to film school. I tell them, 'No, I went to films.' Trying to make a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do."
— Quentin Tarantino

"There's no school for being a filmmaker. You just learn by doing it."
— David Fincher

"Don't go to film school. Go make a movie. The film is your teacher."
— Robert Rodriguez

"I went to film school for four months. Then I dropped out and spent the tuition money on making Clerks."
— Kevin Smith

"I didn't go to film school. I learned by making skateboard videos."
— Spike Jonze

"Film school isn't necessary. If you want to make a film, just make it."
— Richard Linklater

And when you finally walk into that job interview, you won’t just have a degree — You’ll have a body of work.

And that is what gets you the job.

Don’t fall for the greatest con in the film and television industry. You can do it by yourself. You just need passion, drive, and a relentless will.

Start… right… NOW!

Paddy