No-rules, no-budget student filmmaking

You’re gearing up for years of student loans, those secure career paths have been thrown up for a whirl, and you want to make movies?!

It’s a common reaction. But this skepticism is par for the course, especially at Columbia, which has no undergraduate film production major. Student films, and particularly undergraduate films made outside of a formal film program, have always been examples of no-budget filmmaking.

And yet, people like Ray Tintori, Josh Safdie, and Ry Russo-Young—all New York filmmakers—made successful films as undergraduates and have gone on to film festivals like Sundance and even Cannes. With the rise of undergraduate degrees in filmmaking, as well as cheap new digital filmmaking technology, undergraduate students are becoming a tour de force within the independent film industry.

The student film “industry” is full of films that exhibit the utmost experimentation and freshness. These are the movies that will become the future of American filmmaking. And not to be left behind, Columbia’s campus is accordingly home to a slew of budding talent.

However, as an aspiring filmmaker at Columbia, the aforementioned reaction to, “Ma, Pa, I want to make movies,” is only the smallest of your problems—often, movie-making at Columbia can feel like running into a brick wall.

Repeatedly.

With a knife buried in your chest.

The Columbia undergraduate film studies program emphasizes theory and history, meaning that making films is relegated to an extracurricular activity. In addition to those double or triple majors—plus all the clubs you’re in, your meager attempts at a social life, and that time spent worrying about loans and career paths—the intricate complications of making a film can feel like the final straw.

But Columbia students like a challenge, right?

If you want start crafting a name for yourself while you still can, without relying on exorbitant equipment rental prices, you had better start now.

The film program is all think and no play, yes, but the things you will learn in the major occupy a candy shop of filmic ideas and experiments. Furthermore, the production classes, most notably the one at Barnard, will give you access to up-to-date equipment for an entire semester. And as if that’s not enough, it’s mostly in these film classes that you’ll meet the film enthusiasts who can give you a pan and not a tilt when you ask for one. However, this is not to say that it’s only within the film program that you’ll find fellow filmmakers.

In an environment where people are thinking so critically about everything in the world, you may feel like making films is an abominable indulgence. But the fact that you can see this means that you are thinking critically—and incorporating this realization into your films is indispensable. How many people read a popular academic article? And how many people watch an unpopular film?

You have picked a medium that can reach millions. So don’t let the whole self-aware, self-deprecating Columbia student schtick hold you back. As a student filmmaker, especially with Columbia’s resources at your fingertips, the best thing to do is, well, DO! Write a feasible five-minute script and gather friends to help film it. Make myriad mistakes and write to me about them. This semester, my plan is to show you how to make movies as a student—from funding to equipment to the new opportunities arising every day.

Frances Bodomo is a Columbia College senior majoring in film studies. Campus Cuts runs on alternate Thursdays. She can be reached at fnb2108@columbia.edu.