Being a student filmmaker comes with plenty of challenges

Challenges. Challenges come with everything in life. Whether it be financial, scholarly, or creative, challenges obstruct people from attaining the goals that they want to accomplish. They are also obstacles that are satisfying to overcome.

Being a student filmmaker is a challenge within itself. Not only do student filmmakers have to worry about school, but they also may have to juggle many aspects of film production that they may or may not be involved with.

In a profile story that I wrote last year, I interviewed Dani Rabinowitz. Dani is a Charlotte local who is currently in the postproduction of his film Milk Money. When talking about making his independent film, Milk Money, he exclaimed that having a production crew that consisted of mostly undergraduate students was a hassle during filming. Dani himself was working on the film at the same time that he was attending UNC Wilmington.

Being a college student myself, I already tend to find myself being stretched very thin when it comes to my obligations inside and outside of school. For me, that consists of work, class, and an internship. Some student filmmakers could have a combination of those three as well as being responsible for the production of a film. It is a lot of pressure to put on someone.

Although a student filmmaker’s passion could be filmmaking, they are also a student (it’s in the name). As a student, they have many more responsibilities than they would have if they were just a filmmaker. It is crazy to think that there are many people out there that are student filmmakers due to the mounting pressure that it may bring. There is an outlier to this issue, which would be a student who is going to school for film.

While UNC Wilmington and UNC School of the Arts have film programs in which students can major in, most of the schools in the UNC system do not. This includes UNC Charlotte.

There is a wide array of majors at UNC Charlotte, but a film major is not one of them. The film program at UNC Charlotte only applies as a minor. So essentially, student filmmakers at UNC Charlotte cannot make film their only focus in school. This mounts a lot of pressure on UNC Charlotte filmmakers as they have to major in something that may or may not be related to film if they want to pursue it at school.

This is not to say that being a student filmmaker is impossible. It all depends on the student’s ability to juggle multiple obligations, and many can. It all comes down to the student.

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