I've always looked back at my time at Full
Sail with very mixed emotions. The equipment and hands on experience is
there and if you show initiative and interest with the lab specialists,
they'll take the extra time with you, as long as it doesn't interfere
with their breaks, when they're off the clock, or the other 9 hours of
classes they have to teach that day. The ratio of teachers that give a
shit vs those that don't is about as good as high school. It's very
fair to say the majority of the lab instructors, the one's that actually
teach you how to use the equipment, are Full Sail graduates themselves
who found themselves in a position that the only one who was going to
hire someone with their skill set and pay them enough to make those
$1500 a month payments to Wells Fargo, Discover, Great Lakes Borrowers
and Sally Mae was Full Sail.
In the end,
I've always taken the opinion that myself and the others in my class
got out of it what they put in, as long as you don't consider the
$120,000 I borrowed to attend. Full Sail knows they're an expensive
trade school, so they have this thing called Career Development. This
post is about my experience with Career Development.
My
first experience with Career Development is when a couple of their
representatives showed up in one of our post video production classes
about 6 months before we graduated. They told us about what they do
which sounded pretty standard to a person that had attended a public
land grant university prior to transferring to Full Sail. They told us
at this point we were welcome to come in at anytime and start discussing
their Full Sail exit strategy and start a fulfilling career in the
motion picture industry. Regardless though, he told us we would be
summoned into the Career Development Office in our last two months to
have a meeting with their department to start the relationship we can
expect from Career Development after graduation.
Myself
and several of my classmates tried to take him up on the offer. I
think one person in our entire class was actually able to secure a
meeting 6 months before graduation with Career Development. We'd show
up to the office and be told we would have to have an appointment for a
meeting and that we were four months early and that we'd be contacted
for our exit strategy meetings with Full Sail's Career Development
Department in the last two months of our program.
So
long story short, my class graduated and no one got summoned into the
Career Development office. I move to Las Vegas where I personally know
some people in the industry.
6 months
after graduating I received a call from a Career Development Adviser
telling me they don't have a current resume or my contact info on file
for me. So I explained to her about what was stated by her boss nearly a
year ago at this point and how it seemed my class fell through the
Career Development cracks. This is when I learned from her that the
Head of the Career Development that came into our class had quit shortly
after that and some staff was fired. That they cleaned house and were
finally up and running again. Naturally this excites me as a struggling
graduate so I participate and we talked for a couple hours about me and
what I felt I needed from her and the Career Development Department.
The most memorable thing I told her was that it would be huge if when
she decided to quit and move on with her career, that she bring the next
adviser up to speed before leaving. She understood and seemed to think
the idea was a good one.
4 months later
and I haven't heard from her. I'm contacted by a new adviser asking
for my current resume and contact info. I have the same conversation
with this guy and again seems to understand and commits to making sure
I'm not forsaken again by his department. He even gets me a two day gig
a couple months after this conversation that paid $250 a day as a 2nd
AC. Not bad, I finally feel like I'm getting what was promised out of
Career Development.
Unfortunately for my
class, I'm one of the half of my class that actually got contacted by
Career Development at all since graduating and 1 of 6 that actually got a
job from a lead. We're all pretty intelligent though and most of us
have persevered and made this career work. My class likes to remind me
I'm a Full Sail Career Development success story. When we were
recruited and all through college, Career Development BOASTED an 80%
success rate in placing students in jobs in their career within a year
of graduating. Not sure how they came up with that number when it
didn't apply to our class, or seem to apply to any other class I've met
that graduated around the same time.
About
a year goes by at this point before I hear from him again. I'm not
complaining though, my career took off because I busted my ass, I'm
living in Los Angeles at this point picking up work as a Camera
Assistant on some cool projects and I supplement my income by doing a
bit of Grip and Electric work on some other sets as well. I'm also
shooting ultra-low budget commercials and music videos at this point.
Just putting in the time and moving along and feeling pretty good about
where I'm at. So he calls me to get current and updated info. We talk
and I tell him the best thing they can do for me now is start throwing
my name into more camera operating and director of photography jobs,
that I'm doing just fine on my own at this point in my current circles
as a camera assistant. I feel like I've paid my dues and I'd appreciate
more opportunities to shoot. He tells me he thinks he can help me
there. So he helps me with a new resume and I got him a copy of my demo
reel.
The leads he then got me were
always copy and pasted from emails sent out by a Facebook group called
Production Notices. Production Notices has since changed names but at
the time they were a production leads service you had to pay for.
Career Development was copy and pasting Production Notices' emails and
sending the leads to their graduates. A paid service I was already
paying for at the time. And the amusing thing was the leads would
usually drop around 6am each morning from Production Notices, then my
Full Sail Career Development Adviser would forward me the same email
around 8am or 9am, probably depending on how soon he had coffee in him.
So after a few months of this I had to tell him to stop sending me
Production Notice's leads because I already got them before he sent them
my way anyway.
I was part of Full Sail
Film Production's Class of March 2011. It's now been 3 years since
graduation. My diploma was printed on printer paper by the way and half
of my class's names were printed crooked on the diploma. Everyone's
name that started after M we discovered was crooked. My Public High
School Diploma looks much more impressive than the "University" I spent
$120,000 to attend gave me. In the last year I've had two new Career
Development Advisers. They send me a lead about every 4-6 months and I
haven't had one come through since that $250 2nd AC gig my first adviser
got me. Today I got a lead from a new adviser asking if she can put my
name in the running for a $400 a week job as a Director of Photographer
for a production company. Now if you're a prospective student or a
parent of a prospective student, a typical week in this industry is 5 or
6 days and each day is between 10-12 hours. That's not even minimum
wage at $400 a week for a Director of Photography job. Curious what
they're paying the Camera Assistants and Lighting Crew, the support
staff a Director of Photographer needs to do his job.
