I had a fantastic experience at Met Film School. Having come from a small town with no film industry and no access to any of the facilities that the school provides, having that access is beyond useful. On top of that the friends I made and the relationships that I built with my tutors, that have remained even after graduating, are all invaluable. The network of people that I am now a part of is a constant motivator and thoroughly exciting to be a part of and that was all facilitated through Met Film School.

Met Film School’s facilities are very good. They have a decent number of adaptable classrooms, designed to cater to any need that students might have while studying it’s filmmaking courses. As the undergraduate courses cover every aspect from pre-production to post production, the spaces are designed to work as writers‘ rooms, shooting spaces and anything else students might need. There are also some more dedicated spaces, like post production classes with desktop set-ups, larger spaces for sound and cinematography exercises, a number of small edit suites for working on personal projects, a theatre room and a sound suite. The school also has access to one of Ealing Studios’ sound stages, which students can potentially use, I was fortunate enough to shoot a project I was working on in the sound stage. The school also has it’s own kitroom, where all the school’s equipment is processed, stored and maintained. The school owns a decent amount of cameras and industry standard lighting equipment, which is bolstered by a complement of equipment from a leading equipment rental company. This kit can be booked by students, for free, to take and work on personal projects. Students are able to take the kit to work on projects anywhere in the UK. For me, I found the facilities available to be excellent and was always able to secure any space or equipment necessary to school or personal projects with ease.

I think that the support that the school offers was ok while I was attending the university, but it wasn’t clear how to access that support. In terms of academic support, once we had completed a module, submitted our coursework and moved on to the next module, if we wanted further feedback on our work that was more than we got in the feedback for our coursework, it was very difficult to get that, as oftentimes the tutor who had taught us and marked the worked was working freelance with the school and had moved on to a job outside of the school, likely in the film and tv industry, and so getting the feedback desired is difficult. The personal support offered is superb, but again wasn’t completely clear to the students while I was studying at the university. The school did begin to make changes to its support structure as my peers and I were coming to the end of our course, however we didn’t get to see if these changes rectified the issues We had as students as we had graduated before these changes came into effect.

The university is in a great location in terms of distance to accommodation and local amenities, it’s 10 minutes walk from the local high street and shopping mall, with a number of shops and restaurants very close by. There is a private student accommodation 5 minutes walk away. A number of bus stops nearby, a number of which the free UWL bus stops at, which Met Film Students can use. The film school is also nestled right between two tube stations, Ealing Broadway and South Ealing, both 15 minutes walk away at most.

The thing I like the most about the way the course was taught is that it is incredibly practical, we are taught enough theory to be able to understand what and why we are being taught the practical exercises that we are being taught. Another thing I like is that everybody that conducts the teaching is or has been a professional within the film and tv industry and the practical knowledge that we are being given is applicable knowledge that gives us an edge when we enter the industry ourselves. What I liked the least was that some projects that are group projects can be experiences that are made more difficult for students that are fully engaged and committed to the project by students who do not have the same level of engagement. I recognise that this is an issue that is inherent with group projects in most universities and isn’t something unique to Met Film School, but it can impact Student’s learning.

18-30

The film and tv industry is incredibly competitive and the school teaches the practical aspects of each part of filmmaking, this inherently boosts our employability over students that graduate from other universities that provide more academic style courses. The school also has its own careers department of sorts, called Met Film Futures, that all students and graduates are automatically signed up for. Met Film Futures sends out a list of opportunities for work paid and unpaid, from a range of sources, be that the school itself, students at the school, filmmakers in need of crew or companies that reach out to the school looking to recruit graduates. I myself and a number of my peers have secured work, internships and other opportunities that we found through Met Film Futures.

It's been a great 2 years, and I've gone striaight into a job. Never thought that would happen when I started! Looking back, I think the best thing about the programme is that it mirrors real life, you get out what you put in. I'm surprised how much I know now. The students who didn't like it were the people who didn't really throw themselves into every film, every project. But mostly, you just get to do things you'd never get to do outside of here - be involved in making a feature film, a multicamera production, and lots of films and stuff. I had great tutors - some of them are really challenging, some pretty gentle, but they all seem to want the students to succeed as much as we do, and because they work in the industry, they really know their stuff. I'm glad I went there.