6. Your Friends Are The People You Will Work With For The Rest Of Your Life
Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker. Christopher Nolan and Wally Pfister. John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and Brad Bird. What do all of these long-enduring filmmaking partnerships have in common? Why, they all began in film school, of course! One of the most exciting prospects of going to film school is that you have no idea which of your classmates is going to be the next big thing, but you know that it could be any of them. A career in film can be a very lonely and difficult endeavor if you try to achieve it on your own. But in film school, your friendships eventually become creative partnerships, and you are sent out into the world together with a tight-nit group of similar-minded individuals all working together to achieve a common goal. Most recently, two groups of filmmakers who went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts achieved a modicum of success on the indie film circuit - Sean Durkin and Antonio Campos with "Martha Marcy May Marlene," and Jake Schreier and Chris Ford with "Robot and Frank" (which was actually a feature-length version of their senior-year thesis film). They are as good a testament as any to the immense advantages and opportunities afforded by attending film school and meeting like-minded individuals and forging the type of long-lasting working relationships most filmmakers can only dream of.