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The end of the spring semester is upon us, and in just a short time, the first ever Creative Producing cohort will have successfully completed the first year of our program.

It’s amazing to consider how far we’ve come since that first day of Boot Camp last August.  Since then, we’ve been dumped head first into the world of producing, and while we still have much to learn, in the past year all of us have grown into producers that have a much keener understanding of storytelling and how to put projects together.

As the Creative Producing MFA is a two-year program, we have now made it halfway through our Columbia experience.  Our classes have been steeping us in knowledge for the past year.  As we continue at Columbia, we have much more to look forward to, including many more opportunities to practice our craft.

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Next semester, we will reconvene not in the familiar classrooms of 1104 S. Wabash but in Los Angeles, in the space Columbia maintains on the Raleigh studio lot.  We’ll be meeting Hollywood professionals (and working with them as well), dedicating time each day to following the trades and, for many of us, to making the connections that will help us transition to working in L.A. full time after graduation.  As graduate students, our access to the film industry in Hollywood will never be greater than it is next fall, and the potential for us to land real-world opportunities that could bolster our career will never be greater.

Following L.A., we will have one last semester to look forward to, and it will be tightly packed with our two thesis projects: a short, professional quality film that we will each produce, as well as a feature binder we will each create containing the plans for a feature film that we can go out and make once our time at Columbia has come to an end.

Sharing my Columbia experience through this blog has truly been a pleasure for me.  It has been wonderful to be able to give future applicants to the Creative Producing program what no one ever could offer me when I applied: a real life, behind-the-scenes view of what the program is like from the student perspective.

It has been an honor to be able to share my journey with you.  Thank you so much for reading.