Hi guys,

I'd love your thoughts on student films and whether they are worth the time. Here are some specific questions to ponder. Please PM or email me or go ahead and post here. I plan to use responses in my printed column coming up in the next couple weeks, but I will ask your permission to do so.

If you have performed in student films, how was your experience? Did you fulfill your end of the agreement? If not, why? Did the students do what they promised? Did you get a copy and, if so, what did you think of the final project? Why do you think there is so much ill will between these groups (actors and student filmmakers) that clearly need each other so much?

Thanks for any input you want to share!
Jackie

My experiences with student films have truly run the gambit. I’ve done films that I’d consider to be great learning experience… but I’ve also done a couple that were a complete waste of my time. The finished quality of most of them has been mediocre in some way, weather it’s the writing, or the production values… one time it was the sound, another time it was the lighting. Vary rarely do all the elements come together and make a student film of true quality.

I always live up to my end of the agreement… my part is to act, and that’s what I do.

I’ve done somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty student films, and I have yet to not get a copy of one (except one I did when I was in college, but that was my fault). There are three I haven’t received, but I am in contact with all three directors. I have heard horror stories about people not getting them, but as I am a very easy actor to work with, they are more likely to get one to me…. To say nothing of the fact that I will call and harass them every day if they don’t… but I never had to.

I have scaled back on the number off student films I do this year; I have resolved to try and weed out those that are a waste of my time. My resume is already over-filled with names of films that no one has heard of, and my demo reel is pretty decent. So when I do a student film now, more then anything else, it’s because I want to act, and that’s what I’m going to do, even if they aren’t going to pay me.