Film schools may also include courses and training in such subjects as television production, broadcasting, audio engineering, and animation.
[1] Those seeking to learn the technical craft of filmmaking in the early days of cinema were largely self-taught engineers or still photographers who experimented with new film technology.
Filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean started in this way, beginning as a title card designer and clapperboard assistant, respectively, in the early 1920s.
[3] The tradition of apprenticing up through a hierarchical system continues to this day within film studios and in television in many technical positions such as gaffers, grips, camera operators, and even into post-production with editing and color correction.
Some institutions, both accredited and non-accredited, run shorter workshop and conservatory programs[5] concurrent to longer degree courses.
In recent years, online film schools of sorts have sprung up teaching filmmaking through articles, tutorial videos, and interactive forums.
Supporters argue that shooting films like these challenges students to creatively express their story without relying on dialog or other modern conventional devices.
Opponents question the practicality of having students invest a substantial amount of money using equipment that is no longer used in the industry and doing simple filmmaking exercises that could be recreated for much less.
Others, such as Stanley Kubrick, Frank Capra, Pedro Almodóvar, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, and Alfred Hitchcock had no formal college film training at all.