The formal teaching of film began with
theory rather than practical technical training starting soon after the development of the filmmaking process in the 1890s. Early film theorists were more interested in writing essays on film theory than in teaching students in a classroom environment. The
Moscow Film School was founded in 1919 with Russian filmmakers including
Sergei Eisenstein,
Vsevolod Pudovkin, and
Lev Kuleshov serving as faculty to disseminate their very distinct viewpoints on the purpose of film. 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. With the rise of commercial filmmaking in the 1920s, most notably the Hollywood
studio system, those seeking to learn the technical skills of filmmaking most often started at the bottom of a hierarchical system and apprenticed under a more experienced person to learn the trade. 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. The
USC School of Cinematic Arts was founded in the midst of this Hollywood system in 1929, and continues to be widely recognized as one of the most prestigious film schools in the world. The
University of Southern California was the first university in the country to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in film. 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. Independent lower budget filmmaking in the post-war period using portable 16mm film cameras allowed filmmakers like
John Cassavetes in the United States, along with members of the
French New Wave and
Italian Neorealism in Europe, to circumvent the classical system. The notion of a granting a four-year college degree in film grew more popular in the 1960s with the founding of prestigious film departments like the
New York University Tisch School of the Arts (1965),
Walt Disney founded
California Institute of the Arts (1961), the
University of Texas department of
Radio-Television-Film (1965) and the
Columbia University School of the Arts (1965). Over the years competition for admissions to these programs has steadily increased with many undergraduate programs accepting less than 10% of applicants, and with even more stringent selection for graduate programs. In the 1990s and 2000s, the increased difficulties in getting into and the financial costs of attending these programs have caused many to spend their money self-financing their own features or attending a shorter trade school program for around the same costs. Film trade schools however rarely offer more than technical knowledge, and often cost more than a degree from a
public university without providing the security of a four-year
college degree to fall back on. ==Types of film schools==