10 Educational Resources Filmmakers Need to Know About

Become a life-long learner & stay on top of your game

You should be constantly educating yourself, then applying that knowledge. This is important if you want to stay on top of your game and remain competitive, or reach the heights of professionals you admire.

I thought I’d put together a few resources I’ve personally found helpful. Some of these are paid or offer paid options, but most offer free material or are completely free.

General Education

EdX. This site provides university-quality course content, completely free of charge. There are options, depending on the course, to pay for an official certificate, and some of the classes can be paid for and contribute to a professional certification. However, you are never required to pay in order to have access to the course and work through the material for your personal growth.

I think the trend of making educational resources more readily available for the public is a great one.

Personally, I took a course called “Contract Law: From Trust to Promise to Contract” by a professor at Harvard Law School. It was an incredibly interesting course. Each section consisted of video lectures that were quite well put together.

Skillshare. This site offers a handful of select free courses but is mostly a paid, subscription-based site, priced at a reasonable $15.00 month-to-month for unlimited course access.

While I haven’t yet made time to make use of it myself, I have browsed courses related to business, marketing, and video production and there seems to be a solid selection of quality, highly rated material.

There are also less-viewed and lower rated courses on the site, but that could simply be due to lack of views or low-quality material. While such a large site is bound to have some poor quality material, there is plenty of good material to balance it out.

Navigating the Industry

Rob Hardy – Filmmaker Freedom. As a filmmaker, Rob has struggled with the dichotomy between doing your art and supporting yourself. He understands the challenge of trying to be a filmmaker in our changing times, as do we all.

His personal experience with this struggle and the mindsets needed to find financial freedom as a filmmaker culminated in his site Filmmaker Freedom, where he shares helpful content on improving craft, but even more useful information on the mindsets you need to apply in order to tackle this industry successfully – by creating your own definition of success and paving a realistic path to it. I highly recommend it.

Noam Kroll – Show Don’t Tell. Noam is a commercial and film director based in California who publishes the podcast Show Don’t Tell, where he mostly shares information on being a successful producer and director of feature films (not unlike myself).

Though he does focus more on technical craft (such as color grading, which seems to be a passion of his) than I care for, his weekly articles share useful insights exclusive to his subscribers, while his newsletters and podcast and informing for those interested in creating commercially viable feature films.

Technical Tutorials

Moviola. This comprehensive filmmaking education resource was created by the folks who created one of the old school, original film editing systems. Now, they own and operate companies like FilmTools.com, a popular site for filmmaking equipment of all sorts.

This site is, in my opinion, one of the most unknown but helpful resources out there, especially if you are lacking in technical knowledge.

It covers every topic, from ‘Gripology’ to introductory and advanced visual effects techniques. It’s a treasure-trove of learning and I urge you to check it out. The crazy thing is that this use to be a subscription site offering 90 day free trials, but is now completely free.

I’ve used it to learn about topics I was ignorant about as well as brush up on some skills I hadn’t used in quite a long time. Go check it out and share it with anyone you know looking to get started in filmmaking.

Film Riot. Widely known, loved, and one of the first popular DIY/Indie filmmaking YouTube channels, Film Riot has grown with its creators, Ryan and Josh Connolly. For beginner-level filmmakers, their first few years of online content will provide many hours of educational material, while more advanced filmmakers will enjoy their newer material.

As they’ve learned, the techniques they try out and share with the world lean more advanced.

They also make some great assets for filmmakers which I have personally purchased and used often (including on my first feature film), such as their gun Foley sound pack, fighting sound effects pack, and gunshots sound pack.

Filmmaker IQ. This website and YouTube channel has a variety of thoroughly researched, in-depth material on a variety of topics, from the science of lenses, to the history of Hollywood, to the practice of blocking actors.

This resource provides a great overview for filmmakers, especially beginners. However, it goes in-depth enough that moderately experienced filmmakers can find real value in the content that Filmmaker IQ’s host, John Hess, presents for your pleasure and education.

Shane’s Inner Circle. I met Shane Hurlbut at NAB once, and I thought he was a pretty nice dude. He’s also a family man and dedicated, talented professional who works on Hollywood-level projects such as Into the Badlands and Terminator Salvation as a cinematographer. His work is wonderful and he is constantly innovating with his crews.

Though his Inner Circle site is a paid membership resource, if you can’t afford it, his blog is also a wealth of knowledge, for those willing to take the time to browse. I also recommend following him on social media, particularly his Facebook page, where he frequently shares behind-the-scenes snippets of his sets, providing a quick explanation of what they are doing and how they’ve set up for the scene. It’s a nice glimpse into his work that can be enlightening.

Video Essays & Analysis

Every Frame a Painting. Now (unfortunately) no longer producing content, despite having almost 1.5 million subscribers, Tony Zhou and his partner used their editing experience to delve deep into a variety of topics, mostly pertaining to visual storytelling and the arrangement of images. Their insights were cutting and the presentation flowed smoothly.

Though I personally found videos such as Editing Space and Time helpful, prompting me to question how I craft my own stories, at the very least, this content will get you fired up to go out and tell more stories and to grow as a filmmaker.

Nerdwriter. This gentleman analyzes films from a variety of perspectives, sometimes looking at the visuals of a film, sometimes story structure, sometimes why the performance of an actor works so well.

He presents the material very well and clearly does his homework. A couple of my favorite videos include ‘how to film a battle scene’ and ‘how to film thoughts’. As someone who greatly enjoys and plans to shoot both battles and get inside my characters’ heads visually in future projects, I found them particularly helpful.

Learn, but don’t learn too much?

So, here’s a disclaimer. I am advocating you go out and watch and read things on the internet. Soak it all in. Take notes if you have to.

For example, I love to read and think there’s a lot to be gained from doing so. There are bundles of fantastic books that directors should read. There are also many other online resources that I didn’t name.

That said, don’t be that guy sitting and watching video essays all the time and lie to yourself that you are getting a lot done. Remember that at some point, you need to suck it up, go out there, and actually make some films. Don’t substitute book learning for hands-on practice.

Best of luck to you – now get learning!