First Think, THEN Ink.

I am the first person to have shown a completed film from New York Film Academy. In essence, that makes me the first graduate of that school. The year was 1992, when I wrote, storyboarded, cast, shot, edited and screened my film, "Somebody's Fool," at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Center, the location that NYFA occupied in its first couple of years, before moving to their own building, the former Tammany Hall on Union Square in 1994.

Since my class was the very first class, concessions were made. Tuition was a fraction of what it is today, but so was the curriculum: we had thirteen weeks from start to finish. Neither faculty nor students knew exactly how things were going to progress. And we all understood that going in. But the positive was that everyone in that inaugural class was offered the basics of how a film comes together and we all worked collectively as each other's support, from gaffers to actors. Why we didn't try to team up and create a production house of our own is one of many sad questions I will never be able to answer.

( Of course, we were shooting on... )