Brooklyn College (CUNY) Reviews & Admissions Statistics

The Feirstein School is a huge up-and-comer, a nascent program that will come to rival the top schools in coming years. Their equipment inventory, soundstages, and range of production and post-production facilities, including construction shop, FOLEY studios, many editing bays, motion capture, professional sound studios, not only give filmmakers a wealth of tools to make professional films, there is also the necessary staff, faculty, courses, and students to make full use of the facilities. Many of the professors also teach at other top film schools, mainly NYU and Columbia, as well as Pratt and others, so you're getting the same professor for a fraction of the cost. Another super important thing is the culture at the school, which is very much built around community, collaboration, and support. The refreshing lack of ego and competitiveness makes it a particularly good environment to learn and practice the craft of filmmaking. They also offer screenings, Q&As, workshops, and other such events that bring in members of industry on a regular basis. In addition, the school has a solid advisory council with mentors for students' thesis projects, including such names as Stephen Soderbergh, Ethan Hawke, John Turturro, and Darren Aronofsky. Far and away, Feirstein is the best film school you might never have heard of. But in ten to fifteen years, they'll be talked about in the same breath as Columbia, Emerson, UT Austin, and UCLA.

If you're a director you will be treated like a brilliant golden child whose story must be told, and have to do very little actual work/labor. You'll watch criterion movies and wax poetic about meaning and probably get into heated arguments about race/class.

All the other tracks (Cinematography, writing, etc) are set up to serve the directors. Essentially you are paying to work for free on student films. If you're lucky, maybe it will be a good one. And you get some glorious demo reel footage.

When I was there, we had no actual head of the cinematography department, teachers would show up late, with no plan for the class session, and basically wing it. They'd ask us "well, what do you wanna do? Wanna play with some lights?" Other teachers were arrogant and worked on one movie like 30 years ago. A handful were actively working in the industry, and therefore, their time at feirstein is a side-gig. Not so important to them. Understandable.

Also, getting gear and using the studios are a massive hassle.

Some of the admins are fine, but most are, in a classic hollywood/film world fashion experts at talking but not doing. Evasive and not accountable.

For a film school it's cheap, but considering you leave with basically nothing, it's very expensive. If you have money and time to burn, or a supportive partner/family that funds your life, it can be a fine way to spend 3 years playing around.

If you don't have have money or support, as in, you are a real person who works and pays to live in NYC, it's much much more difficult to make this work. And you will go into a lot of debt for this dream. So it's not really a place for poor people, to put it bluntly. Despite what their marketing may lead you to think.

If you really want to work on film sets, you're better off just doing that, starting as a PA or camera assistant, etc. If you want to make movies, shoot them on your phone. Because that's what you will do after spending 3 years here anyway.

Illustrating everything that is wrong with this school would take over an hour, and I have neither the time nor patience for that. To avoid being redundant, I would read the other one star review for Feirstein, as it paints an accurate picture of the amount of chaos and the lack of clear communication that happens at the school every day.

Many of those problems existed before the covid-19 pandemic, and have since been amplified by it. Waiting to get a reply from the Feirstein admin for project approvals can take up to a week, often with projects being given a red light or canceled the night prior to a shoot (after considerable time and resources have been spent in pre-production). Furthermore, different faculty members will give different answers regarding to whether you’re allowed to film, which makes the whole Feirstein experience feel like a joke. I understand that the school is fairly new, but that doesn’t excuse the appalling level of miscommunication and lack of communication.

The price of tuition might seem alluring compared to other well known film schools, but the price does not justify the terrible experience, and in the end you’ll probably end up spending more money renting and acquiring gear because your shoot got cancelled last minute, or if they decide to withhold certain pieces of equipment they promised you for some reason.

It took me a while to write this review but when I saw there were none from current students I felt it was important to do so. I came to Feirstein two years ago because it was an exciting new program and it was half the price of most NY-based schools. I was looking forward to being part of a diverse group of students and being on a working studio lot. I had a background in the film industry but not in cinematography and was hopeful the next three years would prepare me for a career as a DP.

Firstly, I’d like to just say that the “only film school on a working lot” is a SCAM. You will never actually go on the lot. You will see all sorts of things happening beyond the gates but you will never be allowed through. The school does not facilitate any internships, tours, classes, mentorship programs, on the lot. Nobody from the lot comes to the school. So if that’s something that sounds enticing—it’s a literal scam.

Now, to the school itself: a few weeks into our first semester, the director of the school announced he was leaving. He had built the school up from the beginning and people were upset and surprised. He would only be replaced 2 years later, this past fall. So for two years our school did not have a director. It was a mess—nobody was handling larger issues at the institution and everyone in a leadership position constantly claimed it wasn’t their job to handle those issues.

As a DP in an MFA program, I, along with the rest of my cohort, was surprised to learn we weren’t taking any cinematography classes in the first semester. That got changed after we complained enough for the next year’s cohort.

In the spring semester, we finally got to take ONE practical cinematography course. This course ran concurrently with a workshop for directors in which the DPs from our class would shoot the scenes from the director’s workshop. But the classes were entirely separate so the DPs didn’t have any idea what we were shooting until pre-light the night before. During a pre-light session for one directing student’s class exercise shoot, a few DPs assigned to the camera crew for the exercise showed up one evening to see the student director and another student (a fellow director who was acting in the scene as a favor) blocking the scene. A few minutes into rehearsal, the male director told our classmate to remove her top and bra. She did. The camera team had no idea this was happening and immediately felt uncomfortable — however we were all under the impression that the director had cleared all this with the classmate, professor (who was not on the sound stage), and the administration. When a faculty member happened to walk in on the shoot, he shut it down and immediately reported it. The camera team was in shock to later find out none of it was sanctioned. The next day, I overheard the professor of the class making a joke about taking his clothes off. After bringing in the Dean of Brooklyn College for a meeting that week, we added a nudity and intimacy clause to the student safety rule book that hadn’t yet existed. The only reason this change was made was because a group of a few female students fought their asses off to get it done. The entire ordeal was traumatizing for the student and for the others who were present. These are the kinds of incidents that happen at a school that has no idea what the hell it’s doing.

In the second year, tension between the directors and the other disciplines were constantly being dealt with. The de-facto head of the cinematography department went on sabbatical that fall and nobody replaced her. So there was nobody looking out for the DPs. Due to the track system, a hierarchy exists at the school, in which directors rule all, and everyone else (screenwriters, DPs, editors) is there to “serve their vision.” The directors have incredible department heads that advocate for them. The DPs did not. Directors were continuously putting DPs in unsafe and uncomfortable situations and nobody had our back when we complained.

Due to no leadership at the school, the curriculum often made no sense. In the fall of our second year we had a new professor who kept teaching us basics we had already covered. When we reached out to him and politely informed him that we knew what he was teaching us already, he threw a tantrum. After that, he continued to behave inappropriately and immaturely in class and eventually, the entire cinematography cohort stopped attending class in protest. Finally, the interim director of the school promised us the professor would be fired. We showed up to the next class and he was there. When we asked the interim-director why, he said he was mistaken in how much power he had to fire professors.

In the 4 semesters I spent at Feirstein, I only had one class in which my work was critiqued. That was our first production class for our MOS films. At the end of the semester each 1st year student’s film is critiqued by faculty and although it’s a terrifying experience, it obviously makes you a better filmmaker. Since then, in all of my classes, I have never had my work critiqued. My classmates and I begged for it—we asked every professor for an end of the semester critique of our work and it never happened. What kind of film school doesn’t critique student’s work??

I’m only listing the most egregious issues that I faced in my two years at Feirstein. It has been a complete disaster from start to finish. I can tell you about a couple of great teachers and the incredible equipment room filled with the best gear. And I made friends who I know I can call on for help with any project I work on in the future. But honestly, none of those things were worth the constant stress of being a student there. The student body is incredibly diverse and hardworking and talented. However I can only speak for the cinematography track and that has been a train wreck of an experience for me, and I know that sentiment is shared by many in my cohort. We have not and did not get the attention and eduction we paid for. That’s why I’m leaving and starting over at NYU. I’m so lucky to have that opportunity and the resources to do so. I can only hope that Feirstein gets better with time.

I went on the official tour in October (there are several between Sept and Dec) before I decided to apply. You have to sign up and bring an ID to get past security because the whole grad school is on a working film lot in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

They started with a question and answer session (with some people skyping in). Pretty standard. Then there is the walking tour of the facilities. It doesn't feel like a college campus. It's a studio, in a massive industrial building with views of Manhattan and the East River, and Feirstein takes up the fifth and sixth floors. There are film studios on the floors above where a lot of TV shows are shot. The Feirstein's part of the building has numerous and varied big studios - I lost count. The equipment cage has all brand new equipment, including Arris and everything that I could think of (all digital - no Bolexes here). The classrooms and edit studios all feel like professional high end commercial facilities in NYC or LA.

There is a big communal kitchen, I think I remember that there are even bathrooms with showers.

A new Wegmans just opened at the other end of the Navy Yard, there is a good coffee shop across the street, but I don't think there are a lot of restaurant choices unless you walk two long blocks up to Myrtle Avenue. Pratt Institute is up on Myrtle, so there is a great art supply store and everything else that you would expect around an art school campus. (The actual Brooklyn College campus is far away, on the other side of Brooklyn.)

The proximity to the subway is a drag. I used to live in this neighborhood. Google says that it is a 15 minute walk to the G but it feels further than that, and then you are on the G train. You'll have to change trains to get anywhere. It sounds like there is parking, but I'm not sure how much.

Over all, I am pretty sure that I'm going to commit. As a NY resident, it's pretty inexpensive. I like my life living here in NYC and don't want to move to LA or anywhere else. Tisch is expensive.

The people that are teaching is always the most important thing. The people here, from what I've read so far, look like they are very talented. There are women in prominent positions here, and from the films that they've done, I'm hoping that will translate into a smarter, more introspective cinematic point of view.

I am hoping that Feirstein may be a place where there is more opportunity to build something great compared to a more established film school that may be more ridge and crowded.

I'll try to remember to report back in a year with what the reality turns out to be.

Photographs of their facilities:


"BUILT FROM THE GROUND UP
The Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema is housed in a brand-new 68,000-square-foot facility, purpose-built for a 21st-century film school. Our entirely digital production and post-production environment offers the most current and state-of-the-art workspaces, studios, stages and equipment, affording students the opportunity to create in a fully professional setting."