You don’t need to go to film school, but if you want to write scripts, it’s a lot less time consuming to take a couple of classes on the form, which is very specific, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel by yourself. I went through UCLA, hooked up with Bluecat workshops, then performed well with a script at a big film festival competition and started out as a reader that way. Books are fine, but there is no substitute for developing relationships with people who are starting out with you, and with people who are a few steps ahead of you and already making their own first films. How you do that is up to you, but doing PA work on your friends’ films is a huge education that’s absolutely free. 🙂
