Online Film Courses - Best Masterclass for Filmmaking
You’re tired of not having the tools to become a better filmmaker? The masterClass is a library of high-quality classes that teach you the tricks of the trade from the masters of cinema. MasterClass has a library of high-quality classes that teach you video production skills. Stop wasting money on classes that you can’t afford.
MasterClass is an online educational streaming platform that allows you to learn only from the very best. The MasterClass courses are well-produced and presented as online courses in many fields from the masters of those fields. In the film industry, they got perfect masters, and I’ll introduce here to the best courses, in my opinion, but there are much more. Full access for all classes ( more than 80 classes) costs 180$ a year (15$/a month). Each class is around 3 hours of video, and it also contains an in-depth workbook.
Each MasterClass comes with a workbook with an overview of each lesson and exercises that will help you understand the craft of each subject from the master’s unique perspective.
As said, there are many suitable MasterClass classes in the field of cinema, but I’ve put here the absolute musts to build your own private and perfect film school.
Learn from your favorite actor, director, producer or script writer
Martin Scorsese Teaches Filmmaking
Looking for movie directing lessons? Than This course is the most important one you’ll need to take! Martin Scorsese is the legendary director, that made a few of the most influential films like Mean Streets, The Wolf of Wall Street and more. In this 30 lessons course, you’ll enjoy the honour to be able to listen to Scorsese describe his process and his personal film journey, casting actors, shooting, producing a film with a low budget, and much more. This is a must course for every filmmaker and film lover.
This MasterClass is mainly for actors and actresses, but I truly believe that directors and writers can befit from it too. The Academy Award-winning actress, who started at the theatre as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK, will teach you how to chose the right role, how to train your voice, how to break down a script, hoe to find your character, how to prepare for rehearsal, acting techniques for film and much more. She also talks about how her love for acting was born, which was fascinating to me.
Natalie Portman Teaches Acting
Acting is an exercise in empathy – This is the main idea I took from this class. Natalie Portman started acting at 12 years old, and by the time she turned 30, she has already won an Oscar. In this class, she teaches her process and techniques for building great characters.
Even if you are not an actor or actress, you do not want to miss this fantastic opportunity of hearing Portman talk about her work as an actress and more.
Samuel L. Jackson Teaches Acting
Samuel.L. Jackson’s acting look is so natural, that you may not believe he can really teach you something. Well the Samuel L Jackson acting masterclass is all about theory. The best parts of the class, in my opinion, is Jackson’s rules of auditioning, the process of understanding the script and characterization in acting.
Spike Lee Teaches Filmmaking
Spike Lee has been nominated as Best Director for the film, BlacKkKlansman in 2019, and he is mostly known for films like Do the Right Thing and She’s Gotta Have It. The Spike Lee Masterclass course is a must for every independent filmmaker and in this 19 lessons course, you’ll learn:
- How to find and develop your ideas
- How to work with your cast effectively
- How to use Storyboard to tell your story
- The process behind the Spike Lee Visual Style
- How to use films to create political changes
- And all the practical side of directing, financing your film, editing and more.
Ron Howard Masterclass contains 31 lessons that go into almost 8 hours of video. This is a chance to take part in a directing class of the Oscar-winning director of Apollo 13nd many famous films. You are going to learn so much from this class even if you are an experienced director.
David Lynch Teaches Creativity and Film
David Lynch is one of my favourite directors and is known for his very avant-garde film styles. There is no better director to learn creativity from. David Lynch is such a unique storyteller that his films alone are a complete film school. He is known mostly from the cult horror film Eraserhead and from classics like The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. In this course, Lynch is teaching his process to find ideas and translating them into a story.
Judd Apatow Teaches Comedy
If you like comedy and storytelling, you will love this class. Director Judd Apatow, one of the most popular directors in the industry, who directed many award-winning comedies such as Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, brings you a practical course while covering every side of the film production. I took the course and I can promise you that what you’ll learn in this class can be easily applied in your work. If you want to write a comedy, this course is brakes down the writing and producing process of a comedy film, and what dose it means to write funny.
Werner Herzog Teaches Filmmaking
Werner Herzog is known for films like Fitzcarraldo, Even Dwarfs Started Small, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and many more. This course is an inspiring peek into his head and the process of bringing ideas to life through every step of filmmaking: storytelling, cinematography, location scouting, and documentary interview techniques. He also talks about self-financing, which I know is important to many of you.
Margaret Atwood Teaches Creative Writing
Margaret Atwood focuses on writing a book, but what what she will teach you, will work in every script. She teaches how to keep the audiance engaged through the middle of your story, how she to craft a compelling story. This is a chance to know Margaret’s creative process of developing ideas into stories with strong structure and wonderfull charachters.
Writer’s block is a major challenge, but hopefully, some inspiration from can bring you out of your funk. The Man Booker Prize-winner’s lesson delves into character development, point of view, structuring a novel, and more
Dan Brown Teaches Writing Thrillers
This not a scriptwriting class and it got nothing to do with filmmaking, but its such an important class for storytelling. Dan Brown gives you a step by step roadmap to turn every idea into a story. He focuses on thrillers, but what he teaches can work in all genres. You will learn how you build tension, how to build strong characters, how to write a good exposition and more, how do you if you have a good idea and much more. If you are thinking about writing or directing, this is the best writing course you’ll get. It’s fun and practical and I promise you, after this class, you will find yourself bursting with ideas.
Who is a better choice to take as your screenwriting instructor than The writer of A Few Good Men (starring Jack Nicholson) and the Academy Award-winning writer of The West Wing and The Social Network (which gave him his first Oscar)? This is the basic idea of this course. He is teaching all you need to know about writing a great script: Testing and recognizing good story ideas, developing characters, creating good dialogues, doing the research, rules of a story, writing a good scene, dealing with writer’s block, how to pitch an idea and much more.
