The short answer is we do, but I wish more. It’s probably my single biggest area of improvement for SCA. We have a few mixers, like one a semester, designed for that. In some classes there can be a little overlap. There are group chats going where production students post looking for crew and stuff for various films they’re working on. There’s also a major competition, 546, where 25 scripts are chosen as finalists to be produced by a team of grad students and you can mingle with director and producers who were also chosen and then you pick a script pitch your vision for it. 3 are chosen and given a $12,000 budget and lots of time and help to make it. Very cool, but can’t bank on winning that.
I’ve met probably a dozen or so production students and about 5 I’m in touch with. I could be a little more proactive but honestly I’ve been more proactive than most of my cohort about it. There is a little divide. Part of it is that we’re both so busy. There are also a lot of production students and they’re all constantly doing things and shuffling about and it’s hard to even keep track of from the outside to be honest. I think most people are like me, trying and open to more mingling but in general looking for a handful that are your go-to people if we need something.
Also, a lot of production students also want to write. So they write their own scripts more often than they really reach out to us looking for new material to make.
Production people do take at least one life-altering script analysis class, 516, but not with us. Overlap in actual classes is mostly electives.
