I attended and completed the courses at Full Sail and was one of the top ten students in my class. I completed the courses and thought I was ready to begin my life in the film industry.

I moved to California and found gainful employment at a large, well known editing firm. I was only there about two weeks when I realized I had no clue what actual film editing was about and how the so called 'real life experiences' that they teach you at Full Sail was bogus. I sat down with my mentor (an experienced editor from the company) and explained how I felt. After about an hour of going over what I learned at Full Sail, it was apparent that they left me hanging.

We came to the conclusion that Full Sail was just in the business for the money and I could have learned just as much at any two year college or four year university offering a degree in film editing/production. Sure they have cutting edge equipment at Full Sail, but short of camera equipment, they do not offer any more than any other educational institution that can afford a computer and the right software.

I cannot stress enough, if you are into editing/production/directing, etc... skip Full Sail and save yourself a ton of money and wasted time in your life. Spend your $65,000 of tuition money on a local school, buy a nice macbook pro and final cut pro and learn how to edit. Full Sail doesn't teach you anymore about editing/producing/directing or setting up shots and cropping and how to have an eye for film making than any other school. They just have newer equipment, and lets face it, if you can run an old camera and make a nice film then you can do it with a new camera. The industry is updating all the time, but may of the studio's out here (California) are still using 10-15 year old equipment because it works and that is the bottom line.

First off, I'll say that I graduated Full Sail in November of 1998 and I hated every minute of it. You have to struggle to be creative there, and I actually made a lot of stuff on my own, outside of classes using the then-new digital capture cards that were available.

Anyway, if you want to learn Avid and FCP, the best place is the manhattan edit workshop. I just did their six-week intensive in January and it was one of the best learning experiences I've ever had. It's a full-on technical and aesthetic experience and its often very tough, but also very rewarding. I have been doing this for many years and I felt like I learned more in that six weeks than in the six years previous, at least when it comes to editing. I had a bit of a leg up because I already kind of knew final cut pro and had worked as an editor here and there, but it definitely upped my game with FCP too, learning all of the shortcuts and the ins and outs of the program.

Their website is mewshop.com. If you want to see the reel that I made there, just search "Frank Perrotto" on youtube. This user generated apple ad that I directed and edited will also come up, along with my reel from mewshop, and a trailer for a feature that I recently wrote, directed, and am now editing, called 'Timid'. So I'm not some amateur or a salesman for the school, I've done enough to know what a great program it is.

The school also provides you with a wealth of material to choose from in order to build your reel, and it's raw footage that you actually have permission to use for the reel that you make in the class. On my reel, Mug Shot was done two years prior to attending the workshop, but the Chainsaw bit and the Astor Cuts pieces were done footage that mewshop provided.

I already had some connections in the industry when the program was over, so I've been working as an avid loader/assistant editor pretty steadily since the program ended for me this February. But I had those same connections before and couldn't get work, whereas now, I know the avid and FCP well enough to edit very quickly. Let's face it, time is money, you get paid pretty well in post-production, and even if you are aesthetically a good editor, it means very little when you start out as you're just expected to be up to a certain technical skill level and speed right at the beginning, and mewshop and the guy who owns it and runs it, Josh Apter, will do everything in his power to make sure that you leave their program satisfied. I can't recommend it enough!