00:00and we're rolling sound okay what one quick question let's go once more one
00:08more time without the hi hi my name is Valerie wait I needed to do my last name
00:11right my name is ahila I'm a film production major
00:15speeding take it away okay so my name is Carla Luna Cantu my name is
00:19optin a Dari Jason Phillips I'm a film and television production major so
00:24Jason tell us how you got here
00:34in high school I was a really anxious student and I'd make comedic short films
00:40on a YouTube channel and over time I just used film to deal with my stress my
00:46whole life I wanted to tell stories when I was five years old I think the first
00:49thing I wanted to be is a writer when I was in eighth grade I realized that I
00:53wanted to be a filmmaker and that I wanted to study film when I was back in
00:57high school I went through like a slight identity crisis thinking whatever I
01:01wanted to pursue like a more traditional field which was in my case like a medical
01:06field I was really interested in biology at the time and then like sort of like
01:09halfway through junior year I realized that I wanted to do something a little
01:15bit more creative and I wanted to pursue like like a medium in which I could like
01:20express myself in I lied to my parents about what I was applying for they
01:25thought I was gonna be a lawyer and then I applied to USC film school secretly
01:28growing up I fell in love with acting and then my sophomore year of high school I
01:33decided to go behind the camera and that's kind of where I found myself click
01:36and where I feel like I was alive and for the first time I was like wow this
01:40doesn't make me uncomfortable this makes me excited the interesting thing I
01:43guess is just I decided that gaming was a good field to do that even though like to be
01:48honest making games you have to give a lot of the power over to the player
01:51growing up in Mexico I grew up in Monterrey Mexico none of the universities
01:55in the town I grew up had a film production program so I started doing a
01:59lot of research my high school didn't have a like a college counselor so I
02:03pretty much created my own instructions on how to apply to a school here and USC
02:09was my top choice eventually it happened and then also convincing my
02:12parents which was another whole ordeal when I got into the film school I told my
02:17dad and he was like wait a minute like why do you want to go to California and I
02:21kind of had to pop the question to him and be like will you let me come to
02:25California study film for the rest of my life and he thankfully said yes after a
02:29long period of convincing I decided to apply to a few film schools a lot of
02:33sociology departments because I wasn't sure what would pan then I came here and I
02:38was able to find my voice through filmmaking I applied with one of my films that I
02:43had made with my neighbor's camcorder and got in now I'm here
02:52the film in high school that really impacted me that made me want to come
02:56to film school was eternal sunshine of the spotless mind the way that film was
03:00able to create such a intimate portrait of like loss in a relationship using
03:04like techniques that can only be done in film just made me think that of like
03:08how storytelling can become much more evocative and expressive than what I've
03:12been used to up to that point the eternal sunshine was a huge inspiration for me
03:18but also Iñárritu Alfonso and del Toro which are the three big Mexican
03:24filmmakers really inspired me because seeing them doing great things gave me
03:29some hope that it was possible for me to come all the way here and be
03:33successful and have a voice that was heard Mean Girls I would say is is one of
03:38my favorite films and everything Tina Fey has done is super inspiring to me
03:45there's this really abstract small game that I played when I was a kid and it's
03:49called 30 flights of loving it's made by this local LA indie developer who is a
03:56basically a one-person development team and he makes all of his games himself he
04:01makes this like really short games but they're they're beautiful the interesting
04:05thing that he does is he does jump cuts in his games there's like this cardinal
04:09or this golden rule in gaming and then which is to never take away like the power
04:13of the player the way he managed to sort of like loop around that problem and
04:17present itself as you know something that's art was extremely fascinating to me
04:22and so I decided that this was the field I wanted to pursue back in when I was
04:28really young the first movie I remember seeing that really made me fall in love
04:31with filmmaking was Titanic I love the epic love story between Kate Winsight and
04:37Leonardo DiCaprio and it really inspired me to go out and make larger-than-life
04:40pictures and movies that can emotionally connect to an audience and change the
04:45way you view the world
04:53big part of like college experiences nowadays particularly to our mental health
04:57crisis is and I've certainly had my fair share where I felt overwhelmed and felt
05:01like I had no support here and I felt lonely and I felt and I felt difficult it
05:07felt difficult to try to keep like moving on and going to class and like being
05:11positive and like not like kind of breaking down at any moment there was some
05:18mental health issues with friends of mine and that made me really had I had a
05:25difficult time like my first couple years but the program was always my
05:30outlet and what made me the happiest I kind of learned how to have the strength
05:36and the coping mechanisms and also the positive coping mechanisms and also the
05:40support network to make me feel like not only welcome but remind me why I'm
05:44really here and why I want to keep pursuing this I came as such an insecure
05:50filmmaker who I didn't know what I was doing my first couple years and over
05:57time I became more confident and really into comedy and writing comedy and
06:04directing comedy and acting and so film school has just made me into a really
06:10like confident and self-assured person that I definitely wasn't before
06:20never stop writing never stop shooting films always be creating always write
06:24down all of your ideas my advice would be to follow your joy and to listen to the
06:30little bit inside of you that wants to be a director or writer when I was younger I
06:37would think I was not talented enough and that I wasn't good enough and
06:40whatever I did was not gonna get me into film school but I think the harder you
06:45work and the more you do the better you're gonna get the biggest misconception
06:50about film school is that it's glamorous and easy and it's really not it
06:53really does require it's just the first step and requires more hard work and
06:58more dedication and that's true even if you don't come to USC you go to any
07:02film school if you go to no film school it all requires dedication staying
07:05focused on your tasks a lot of my experiences come from the fact that like
07:08I've actively reached out to people and I'm like I want this and then therefore
07:12I try to like pursue it working hard is gonna take you further than anything else
07:18so if you're like persistent and you keep trying you're gonna get there and
07:22you're gonna yeah you're gonna you're gonna do it if you feel something inside of
07:27you that's telling you to go to film school go if you feel it trying to tell you
07:30to be in the film industry even if you don't get in pursue it because it's
07:34worth it people always tell you that it's not possible and people will try to
07:38limit you and most of all you will want to limit yourself but just know that
07:43there are no limits it's all in your head and you can do whatever you want
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