Finch has been working as a film producer for over 20 years and knows that the education his filmmakers receive in the MFA program is needed if they want to sustain themselves in the industry. "I have suffered from this recent collapse. I was making my living from my work, my last 3 films were distributed by Miramax and I was happy to keep doing that. But when that model disappeared, I kept looking around telling myself 'we are just going through a dip,' but now it has dawned on me, it isn't coming back. I think a lot of the skeptics now are disillusioned with the old model, but it is all they can imagine going forward. The leap of faith they have to take, and I was a doubter too, is that we don't know what is going to happen going forward but there is huge opportunity and I am very positive."
When asked about the goal of the program, to create those who can teach (teaching at the university level is an advantage of a MFA degree) or to create successful filmmakers, Schlow replied "We would like to create a new league of filmmakers – a new way of thinking about film, film production and film distribution. Whether we can do this remains to be seen. The new technologies are already allowing for an expansion of filmmaking. Cameras are cheaper, you can have an edit suite on your laptop and everyone has always thought they could make a movie. We hope to prepare students so that they might make the films they want to make, find the audiences they can best serve, draw creative and entrepreneurial energy from the constant changes in production and distribution and in doing so make a comfortable living.
This is our evolving approach to the aesthetic choices and business skills the art requires and to the constant tensions that abide between the 'why' of making movies, ("I have something to say, I love doing it," etc.), the 'why' of seeing movies ("to be entertained; to be enriched; to be engaged in art," etc.) and the reasons movies get made (There is money to be made)."
In the entrepreneur track, students are required to take two courses in UCF's Business School: Entrepreneurship and Business Plan Formation. "Generally it's not their favorites. The paperwork they are required to submit to get their degree (after they've written, budgeted, scheduled, financed, insured, pre-produced, cast, crewed, directed, edited, and mixed their own microbudget feature) detailing everything they've done and how they now plan to release their film, always seems excessive. I tell them that we require less paperwork than the delivery requirements of most distribution companies, but it never seems to soothe them," said Finch in his TFF post.
Students also learn the ins and outs of film festival marketing through a course Finch has devised, mostly for his undergrads, where the class is divided into street teams to work at the Florida Film Festival. "It has been very successful with other filmmakers and distributors asking if we would have our kids market their films at the festival. So the students work with the professional marketers at the festival and I am trying to put together a website that will share all of the information I teach about doing this sort of thing."
