African Perspective on African Commission

by Rio Flores on December 31st, 2005

I thought this was an interesting point of view from a Ugandan radio journalist on the results of the African Commission. I disagree with some of his notes, but will have to write about that later. The radio broadcast can be found here (real player needed - sorry).

Film Directors? Only Coming from Film School?

by Rio Flores on July 20th, 2005

While I don’t pretend to have any grasp whatsoever of the film world, our group creative director commented to me that he was reading a book about how it is becoming more difficult to be recognized and to grow your career based on raw, self-developed talent alone. He mentioned some famous director - I’ve forgotten who - and how his first movie’s total budget was $700.

With so many cheap gadgets to film and edit, one would think that the barriers to entry would drop. In this new marketplace, where so many can participate at least on some basic level, one would think that those most talented would become readily apparent. Perhaps the opposite would happen: It would become hard to see real talent among all the clutter.

After reading a snippet in Wired about some USC film school grad two years out of school starting to make it big, I wonder if film schools have anything to do with this trend. Have the film schools consolidated power in some way that the idea of first going to film school before pursuing your career has become so institutionalized that the alternative avenues to success became inaccessible?

…just my speculations..