Complaint / Review
TV Film Connection - Jim Petulla
This company mislead consumers and did not deliver on the services it promised

The Film-Connection program I paid $5950 for a few years ago required that I buy several books, which I did, because students were required to do homework. The letter from Film-Connection that accompanied the books had typos in it, and one paragraph was accidentally repeated twice. That seemed very unprofessional to me.

The program pushed an apprenticeship with a director who would be a "mentor." When I met the director, he did not know anything about homework or the books I was required to buy. This director gave me telephone numbers of people involved with films that were being shot in the area. And I would need to go and interview with those people. This was the "one-on-one" time I received from him.

Often I would show up on the set where a first time director was shooting a spec commercial, music video or short film, and my first assignments were to run errands or help the caterer.

I eventually worked my way up to script supervisor, but I could have easily have done this on my own by contacting filmmakers themselves through a film newsletter. Paying $5950 was totally unnecessary.
Today the film-connection program is $7750.

Petulla said the reason the film section is more expensive is because the studio time is expensive, but I never was in a film studio. Another classmate who signed up for the program told me her boyfriend was in the music recording program, and he DID get homework.

Also, it cost me about $20 per day in travel expenses (train and subway) every day to show up at the film locations, much of which was never reimbursed. On the one film I did sign a contract to get paid for, the producer stopped payment on all the checks, and pulled out, so nobody got paid. This was a film that my mentor director led me to.

The "career development" segment of the program consisted only of the director telling me how to put together my film resume.

So in other words, with film-connection, you are paying $7750 for a director to give you the names of people he knows who are working on films, and then you have to call these people yourself. Why spend $7750 when you can do that yourself anyway?