I'm struck that there are great sites for learning how to code and how to build a small business around software development. Nothing like this exists for the entertainment industry. We have BFAs and MFAs that are roughly equivalent to your terminal degrees. But, as in software, many of our superstars and journeymen emerge from an entrepreneurial path instead of academia.
Most people who learn-by-doing in entertainment do so without a clearly structured path or often even identifiable short-term goals. They meet and impress people, get on a gigs doing (relatively) menial labor and learn as they go. As their career grows, they learn both craft and business: how do what they like and where, with whom and on what they should be doing it.
Sound familiar?
As with software, folks who hit the ground running on their own without much skill or business knowledge generally fail quite a bit before they succeed, even if they are in the top 1% on smarts and ambition.
Sound familiar?
Boards like this one, the various VC blogs and services like Code Academy, StackOverflow and umpteen Rails training sites all help software entrepreneurs focus their early efforts and move through the learning-to-do-it phase of their careers as quickly as possible.
Where is this for entertainment? We need a Code Academy for people who want to tell stories and get paid to do it.
Start with the basics: What is a story? How does it work? How is something funny or sad?
Move to the specific: Write a story to be read. Tell a story to your friends. Tell a story in a video.
Cover the business: Where to tell your stories. What different audiences expect. How much money do people expect to pay.
Get Detailed: Editing, lighting, acting, advanced wordplay, making-sure-every-single-thing-in-frame-is-perfect.
For the startup-makers:
The absurd proliferation of MFA programs in every discipline of entertainment suggests that there is a large market for a service that caters to people who want to learn to entertain people professionally.
And for the user-students:
1. The emerging industry of professional YouTubers suggests that there is a viable marketplace for entrepreneurs with the skill to make small-scale entertainment people want see.
2. The value that smart, well-trained MFAs bring to the "big entertainment" world suggests to those of us on the inside that some training is totally worth it. We would love to see a way for people to come to us a little less green and with a lot less debt.
From an insider's perspective, this would be hugely disruptive.
Disclosures: I work in commercial theater, not in film. I have an MFA.