Overall, I had a wonderful experience at the Indiana University film program. While it was at the very beginning of the BFA program when I arrived, I was very happy to see them taking stances and believing in their filmmakers. It was often that professors would give us their personal gear when we couldn’t get it from the rental officers, or reach out to live event programmers to get us on field experience for basketball and football televised games. There was a very heavy influence in narrative filmmaking for the local independent student community, and even when classes didn’t have project assignments, there were always students making commercials, music, videos, and short films for themselves or for other entrepreneurial students. There was so much opportunity for collaboration at Indiana, and with so much help. It was very easy if you were a go-getter. The semester in LA internship program really opened my eyes to what I was capable of and Isabella Madejski continues to be a strong supporter of the alumni in LA community. While I had lots of setbacks in Film at IU; issues with renting gear personal projects and not being able to get certain equipment due to not being enrolled in classes, these are all issues that I would run into at exceptionally performing Film schools all over the country. What IU has that others don’t, is the natural and raw beauty of Indiana. I never ran into a single experience where homeowners, farm owners, restaurant owners of Bloomington, or the school ever gave pushback on locations for filming or trouble when it came to insurance policies. We shot in national forests, local farms ,and on campus restaurants with ease every time. I do feel that they missed out on teaching me necessary things like how to get insurance how to make a production company or other legal issues that you deal with when films get bigger budgets - like unions. The program pushed creativity and innovation as a director or cinematographer, over it being a business, which I understand is very important and necessary. After graduation me and over 15 students in my class, all moved to LA. Every year more and more students come and see the possibility that just because we are from Indiana, it does not mean we cannot thrive in the Film world. We’re such a tight knit community, everyone knows everyone and we all love working on each other’s projects. A beautiful film scene with a Midwest heart. I would not be where I am without this program.
