I Had to Go to Art School to Go to Film School—Here’s What That Was Like

When I tell people I went to film school, I don’t think they always realize that I also kind of went to art school. I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a degree in Film and Digital Media, but to get that film degree, I had to take a whole bunch of art classes too.

Some of them ended up being really valuable. I took design courses where we learned about the fundamentals of layout, form, and balance. I also took color theory classes that went surprisingly deep into color schemes, emotional tone, how different hues interact, all that stuff. At the time, I wasn’t necessarily chasing a career in design, but I think those classes helped shape the way I look at visual storytelling. Understanding why certain colors and compositions feel right is something that definitely stuck with me and shows up in how I frame shots today.

But then there were the drawing classes. So many drawing classes.

I’m not a good illustrator. I never have been. Yet somehow, I still had to take Drawing I, Drawing II, and Life Drawing. Life Drawing, by the way, is where you sit in a classroom and draw naked people. I’ll never forget one class where a fully nude man stood in front of us playing a flute. That image is burned into my brain forever.

To this day, I don’t understand why drawing was such a big requirement for film students. Unlike design, which connects pretty directly to cinematography and visual planning, drawing just felt like a weird detour for me. It wasn’t a productive use of my time, and honestly, I barely scraped by. You should see some of the stuff I drew. I still have a few of them, and they’re hilarious.

But who knows? Maybe those classes did something in the background. Maybe struggling through figure drawing helped me think about perspective and framing in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. I’m super tuned in to what makes a shot look good now, and for all I know, I have those awkward, pencil-in-hand art school moments to thank for that.

Savanah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA