CaptainJZH
New Member
Hey all, I'm a 3rd-year MFA student at Brooklyn College's Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema (its a 3-year program, so this is my last semester!) and since I'm one of those people who likes to look up what people online are saying about their school, I came across a few threads here about Feirstein that are a bit out of date and wanna give any prospective applicants a heads-up about changes the school's been going through.
Originally (and currently, as of my writing this), Feirstein had its MFA program separated into tracks of specialization: Directing, Screenwriting, Cinematography, Post-Production, and Producing. Then they added some additional tracks that are mostly separate but still collaborate with the main ones: Digital Animation/VFX, Media Scoring, Sonic Arts. I'm a post-production student (editor/colorist/some occasional composite work).
When I entered Feirstein in Fall 2021, a problem quickly emerged: Including myself, there were only 3 post-production students. And yet, much of our curriculum was designed with the expectation that the editing classes would be filled primarily with editors, resulting in some classes literally only having the 3 of us. And it was the same for the cinematography, producing and screenwriting tracks, they all had basically a handful of students. Meanwhile, the directing track had 20+ students!
This trend continued with Fall 2022 and Fall 2023's incoming classes, and so this past semester they announced at a "town hall" between students and faculty that the current tracks, with the exception of Digital Animation, Media Scoring, and Sonic Arts, would be eliminated in favor of a single "Live-Action Filmmaking" track, with an emphasis on giving students interested in directing (as those have proven to be the majority of applicants) a broader range of skills that might lead them to pursue a non-directing film career.
This is reflected on the Brooklyn College website (Cinema Arts, M.F.A. (2024–25) - Brooklyn College) which has separated out the 2024-25 academic requirements from the 2023-24 page.
That said, is it a good school? Despite my own desires for the post-production track to continue on, I would say yes, absolutely! I'll probably write a review on the post-production MFA's page at some point but to put it short, the school has really high-quality professors and great facilities, but the curriculum specifically has had to undergo some growing pains — which I think is actually going to be for the better because then people don't feel "locked in" to a particular role and can experiment more.
But yeah, thought I would share since anyone scrolling through here wanting advice for their 2024-25 application should know what came before and why it is the way it is
Originally (and currently, as of my writing this), Feirstein had its MFA program separated into tracks of specialization: Directing, Screenwriting, Cinematography, Post-Production, and Producing. Then they added some additional tracks that are mostly separate but still collaborate with the main ones: Digital Animation/VFX, Media Scoring, Sonic Arts. I'm a post-production student (editor/colorist/some occasional composite work).
When I entered Feirstein in Fall 2021, a problem quickly emerged: Including myself, there were only 3 post-production students. And yet, much of our curriculum was designed with the expectation that the editing classes would be filled primarily with editors, resulting in some classes literally only having the 3 of us. And it was the same for the cinematography, producing and screenwriting tracks, they all had basically a handful of students. Meanwhile, the directing track had 20+ students!
This trend continued with Fall 2022 and Fall 2023's incoming classes, and so this past semester they announced at a "town hall" between students and faculty that the current tracks, with the exception of Digital Animation, Media Scoring, and Sonic Arts, would be eliminated in favor of a single "Live-Action Filmmaking" track, with an emphasis on giving students interested in directing (as those have proven to be the majority of applicants) a broader range of skills that might lead them to pursue a non-directing film career.
This is reflected on the Brooklyn College website (Cinema Arts, M.F.A. (2024–25) - Brooklyn College) which has separated out the 2024-25 academic requirements from the 2023-24 page.
That said, is it a good school? Despite my own desires for the post-production track to continue on, I would say yes, absolutely! I'll probably write a review on the post-production MFA's page at some point but to put it short, the school has really high-quality professors and great facilities, but the curriculum specifically has had to undergo some growing pains — which I think is actually going to be for the better because then people don't feel "locked in" to a particular role and can experiment more.
But yeah, thought I would share since anyone scrolling through here wanting advice for their 2024-25 application should know what came before and why it is the way it is
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