You Don’t Need a Film Degree to Become a Film Director
My son is considering switching his major at SCAD from filmmaking to dramatic scribbling, and instead of freaking out because he’s following my path to madness, I had this weird moment of recognition. Like, oh yeah, that’s a super smart move.
I’ve been in scribble rooms and on sets for twenty-plus years, and here’s what nobody tells you: most of the directors I’ve worked with didn’t go to film school. They came at it sideways, through theater or literature or just by being obsessed weirdos who watched way too many movies.
JJ Abrams? The guy I’ve probably logged the most hours making stuff with? Studied English and film theory at Sarah Lawrence. Not production. Theory. If memory serves double J applied to NYU film but wasn’t accepted. He eventually achieved his directing dream by scribbling his way there, one script at a time.
When I was working on Alias and Lost, we’d sit around talking story structure, and JJ would reference everything from Twilight Zone episodes to Graham Green novels and video games like Myst. That liberal arts background wasn’t a detour. It was his foundation.
Christopher Nolan studied English Literature. Wes Anderson did philosophy. Greta Gerwig double-majored in English and philosophy. These aren’t people who spent four years learning three-point lighting and C-stand placement. They spent it reading Kant and Shakespeare and figuring out what made their fave stories tick.
Even the technical wizards came through weird doors. James Cameron? Physics major who taught himself filmmaking while driving trucks. He build spaceship models and painted mattes for Roger Corman. Guillermo del Toro spent a decade doing special effects makeup like his hero Dick Smith before anyone let him near a director’s chair. Akira Kurosawa wanted to be a painter.
And then you’ve got the total outliers. Tarantino’s film school was the Westwood Bruin and video store where he worked. Peter Jackson learned everything from making splatter films in his backyard with his friends. The Phillippou Bros followed a similar path. Stanley Kubrick was just a photographer who got bored.
Sure, Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola were all film school peers. But maybe they’re the exception not the rule.
What inspires me is how many of my fave scribblers become directors. Alex Garland wrote novels, then boom, he’s directing Ex Machina and Dredd. Michael Crichton was a Harvard-trained doctor who wrote Jurassic Park, then decided to direct Westworld because why not? Thge late great, Nora Ephron went from essays to rom-coms like it was the most natural progression in the world.
Some of my personal favorites are the comedy guys who went dark. Jordan Peele studied puppetry and theater at Sarah Lawrence, my alma mater. Puppetry! Then he dropped out to pursue sketch comedy in Chicago for years before dropping Get Out. Zach Cregger from Whitest Kids U Know switches from film to computer art, does sketch comedy, then makes Barbarian, one of the most f-d up horror flicks I’ve seen in years.
Their backgrounds gave them something film school doesn’t always provide: a unique perspective, taste, and voice. They weren’t thinking about coverage and camera angles. They were thinking about character, theme, and how to mess with an audience’s head.
I remember being in the Hannibal room, and Bryan Fuller would reference everything from Dario Argento films, Renaissance paintings, and coture fashion. His background wasn’t high falutin’ cinema. One of TV’s great auteurs came up via Star Trek specs to create Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies. BF’s outsider perspective made Hannibal vibe like nothing else on television. I can’t wait to see Dust Bunny, his upcoming directorial debut.
When you study dramatic scribbling, you’re really learning the operating system that runs underneath every movie. You’re figuring out why the characters do what they do, how to build tension, when to reveal information.
I remember JJ asking Mike Nichols how he knew what lenses to use. The acclaimed director of The Graduate responded that he had no idea, that’s why you hire a DP. But you can’t hire someone to understand story for you.
Film school can teach you the technical vocabulary of production. But dramatic scribbling teaches you what to say with it. Some wise filmmaker said that directing is 70% casting and 20% knowing what story you’re telling. The other 10% is not screwing up what the actors and DP are already doing right.
Look at the rennaisance of peak TV, where the writer-producer was king. Guys like JJ, Vince Gilligan and Matthew Weiner directed their own episodes, not because they went to film school but because they understood their stories better than anyone else. They knew every character’s motivation, every thematic thread. The directing was just an extension of their scribbling.
Absolutely pursue film production programs for learning the nuts and bolts, and getting selfies for Instagram of you wearing a tape belt a film set. But if you want to develop a voice? If you want to build worlds that don’t feel like everything else? Maybe the best approach is coming at it with a fresh take from another discipline.
If my son decides to pull the trigger on switching his major to scribbling, he won’t be giving up on his directing fream. He’ll be learning to think like a storyteller. In an struggling industry drowning in flicks that are technically proficient but emotionally empty, he could be making precisely the right move.
