Vancouver Film School (VFS)

If you're even slightly interested in being a professional storyteller, no matter the specific path you wanna take I highly encourage you to check out the VFS writing program, it's an intensive but rewarding program that will enrich your appreciation for storytelling in any medium while being immersed in a highly cooperative and accepting environment that'll fully prepare you to step into the industry, wether that's film, TV or Games. Personally, VFS gave my skills a huge boost, immersed me in the industry, allowed me to meet like-minded friends and make connections with the incredibly friendly professors and staff. I also commend them for supporting modest students like me with a generous amount of scholarships and financial support. In short, it's a very good time, check it out!

Really great program with an amazing staff and instructors that helped me to improve my writing skills. Easily one of the best years I've had.

Best decision I ever made was to spend a whole year focusing on my writing. Every good career opportunity I've had since is a direct result of my time at VFS.

I’m so happy I decided to follow my dreams and go to VFS. The instructors push you to your best potential and treat you like professionals. I had the most incredible experience ever! My Cohort became my family and I learned to be confident, to trust myself, make bold decisions, to trust my scene partner and most importantly to not be afraid of failure.

Next, right after my graduation I had the privilege to work on some awesome projects. Being on set was so easy because I knew exactly what to do/not do. I knew the terms and everything. AND THAT’s because of the VFS ACTING FOR FILM AND TELEVISION PROGRAM. I can’t thank them enough.

(If I could do the year all over again, I would!)

Thank You VFS!

The minute I stepped on campus for a tour, I knew it was the only school I wanted to apply to. If you’re looking for a fast-paced, concentrated environment to learn/hone your screenwriting skills and get ready for the industry, this is the place. I absolutely loved how we jumped in from day one, and there was always something new. The teachers were always so supportive of our writing, but never afraid to give us notes that would improve our writing — there could be 5 notes or 500 notes, but I never felt discouraged from writing, only excited to make the revisions and see what my teachers and classmates thought.
Keep in mind though, this is not the type of school where you can slack off, not show up, and not get work done. There may not be traditional “grades” (loved that, by the way), but you’ll quickly fall behind if you’re not ready to work your butt off, just like you would in the industry.
VFS was the best decision I could have made for college, and I’ll forever be grateful for the connections I made and all that I learned there!

FUTURE GAME DESIGNERS: SPEAK WITH ADMISSIONS AND ATTEND THE WEBINAR!

As a prospective student of the Game Design program, it behooves me to comment on VFS' hospitality, transparency and assistance when it comes to the admissions process, tuition, and program specifics.

ADMISSIONS

If you're like me, you probably took for granted this first point-of-contact with schools and/or businesses. Gija Williams, the Director of Admissions, went above and beyond to address my inquiries and concerns. She was direct about the program's rigour, reassuring when personal insecurities came up, and surprisingly blunt about the school's current challenges in creating the best ROI for students. Also, Gija is under no illusion that this is a pricey school in an expensive city. She was genuinely interested in exploring payment options with me to make the school for more affordable and flexible in its payment schedule. I felt like I was given information and options tailor-made for me, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all solution read from a script. She's an empathetic listener who's willing to get personal - that's a rare skill and an even rarer disposition in our post-COVID world, where more and more institutions and businesses have become a lot more greedy and a lot less transparent.

GAME DESIGN WEBINAR

The program overview webinar was hosted by Chris Mitchell, the head of the Game Design program - and it was, hands down, the best one I've ever attended. It helps that Chris is super down to earth, funny, transparent and passionate about the craft and industry. Actually, "overview" is a misnomer - you can get much of that off the site, and Chris knows it. Instead, he fills in the blanks and answers the questions you'd likely have after seeing the site and speaking with admissions. What are the employment numbers and which companies? What's the percentage of VFS grads at some of these companies? He goes further: the household brands founded by VFS grads, the capstone projects that have won awards and been featured in Unreal's Student Showcase. One highlight included VFS training students in service ops after several founders conveyed a desperate need for employees with that experience. The webinar was just the right length, with ample time to ask questions. Got follow up questions? Just email him. You're visiting campus? He makes a point of meeting every prospective student.

To those who'd object to all this by saying "well, it's a business.they'll do the song and dance for your money" - fair! But that song and dance doesn't get you the reputation they have. Look up "Game Designer VFS" on LinkedIn, and see how many grads there are working at triple AAA companies.

VFS' Game Design faculty and staff took all the right lessons from COVID - they lean into the need for empathy and clarity, and seek to cultivate it. Stay in touch with them after that initial call, and you'll see what I mean.

The best parts of my time at VFS were both the ability to try new things and find my voice among my peers and also meet my peers. I've stayed in touch with both professors and fellow students (my besties came to my wedding!) over the past DECADES. Excellent program and excellent connections which is what this industry and craft is often all about.

ACTORS BEWARE! When you work on a VFS set, expect to not get your footage at all. I've been waiting on a couple of mine since 2019.
We work to get footages and add them on our reels, showcase it to our agents, and to potentially work. But we can't even do that because the students don't reply to our emails any more once production has been done.

UPDATE: the VFS Heads has reached out to me regarding my concerns of the missing tape, and I would like to update every actor out there: When submitting, please ask if they are in Term 3 Short Story or Term 5 Final Project, as they are REQUIRED to complete their projects. It will help determine if it is best to move forward with the team, knowing that they will give you your demo reels. I thank them for reaching out to my agent and wanting to help resolve this, otherwise this issue would've stayed the same.

VFS is a great film school! I took the Writing for Film and Television program, which was an amazing year. You definitely get out of it what you put into it. The year can be intense, if you care about it. The biggest strength though, are the teachers who are all amazing industry professionals. Another big advantage of VFS is undoubtedly its focus on getting you in the industry, there's a number of courses specifically designed on pitching or launching your career.

I attended looking for a way to get a firm grasp of the base principles of good storytelling in a variety of mediums, and was very satisfied with the results. I personally thrived in this highly structured and intensive program.

The main criticism I'd have (graduated in 2020 so this may be outdated) was that that some of the industry specific information was rather outdated. The current, as of writing, strikes provide lots of good examples of how film and television have changed in the last decade, and games is an even younger and ever evolving industry. So this is a challenge I'd expect any program as ambitious and productive as this to encounter.

Vfs is a wonderful place. Is where dreams are made. I graduated from the writing for film and tv program and the projects I developed in class were the base of my professional career and the 30+ awards I won. Thank you VFS, you all are included in my oscar speech.

I attended the Writing for Film, TV and Games course at VFS in 2018. The course is fantastic, the instructors are brilliant and the environment is structured to help you, the student, learn as much as possible about the craft and the industry as you can. The principles of storytelling and screenwriting gave me a solid foundation, every class with my instructors gave me new insight and tools to make my writing better - and I was also just writing, writing, writing all the time! I also found the mentorship sessions to be incredibly helpful, getting a one-on-one slot to speak with mentors and get tailored advice, suggestions and help.

VFS has been the greatest experience of my life. I not only developed an amazing creative skill to tell stories but I learned how to work as a team player with other incredible writers. My native language is Spanish, so I also developed a sense of confidence while writing and working in another language. Actually, I shared my whole VFS experience for Spanish speakers through a YouTube channel. You can check it out there as "Letras Viajeras" in YouTube.

I graduated from the Writing for Film, TV and Games program in 2022, and this school changed my life. I always knew what I wanted to do, but it was VFS that gave me the skills and confidence to do it. The staff are kind, friendly and always willing to go the extra mile to help out.

While the course is intensive and can be high pressure at times, you will most definitely get out of it at least what you put in, probably more. I made friends for life at VFS, and I don't think I'll ever stop using what I learned here. I came to Vancouver a nerd with a dream and left a screenwriter.

If you are an international student looking for a quality, intensive screenwriting education, look no further. VFS offers an accelerated one-year diploma, meaning you will learn everything in twelve months other courses take 18 months to two years to teach. This is certainly very appealing for the international student on a tight budget. I came away from my twelve months at VFS with an impressive writing portfolio, including scripts for multiple short films, one feature-length screenplay, two TV pilot scripts, one TV spec, and multiple pitch documents. The program also teaches writers how to be producers, giving students hands-on experience producing and making short films. I cannot recommend this course highly enough.

Though I studied film in college, I'd trade that all just for the one year I did at VFS! The writing program, specifically, was such a great opportunity because in our classes we had a chance to replicate writer's rooms and workshop which I left with very valuable feedback on projects that I continue to work on. Additionally, I made life long friendships and have used those relationships to continue to meet weekly and workshop our work even months after graduation. I am so fortunate to have made the connections I did at VFS and the year I spent there was one of the best of my life! Not to mention Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world that I am happy to call home now after loving it so much during the school year.

I took the Writing for TV, Film, & Video Games Diploma back in 2018/19 and it was one of the best moves in my educational and professional career. I love how in-depth the courses are and the instructors are FANTASTIC! I highly recommend VFS!

I decided to take this program knowing I wanted to write in the games industry, but had no idea how to get started on a portfolio. I was only interested in writing for games, but studying film and television as well actually turned out to be a great asset in both my personal development and for my portfolio. It's truly the only time I've enjoyed being in school. The instructors here really do want to help you get where you want to go in your career. They're realistic, but still encouraging. The one thing I think they can improve on is having more diversity in their faculty.

This is a program where you will get out what you put in. Do your research beforehand, make sure that it's right for you, and if it is, you will have an excellent time at VFS.

When I changed careers from journalism to screenwriting, VFS gave me the strong foundation I needed to pursue this new path professionally. I took every class, gaining a well-rounded understanding of craft, genre and the business of screenwriting. I even learned how to do my taxes as a screenwriter (thank you, Kat Montagu).

One of my biggest regret was attending this school for Game Design and now I'm paying the price for it (figuratively and literally).

Why pay tens of thousands for a one year tuition when there's already plenty of great resources about game development available for free online? There is absolutely no knowledge that they teach that isn't already available on the web.

Attending this course will not guarantee employment in the industry at all. Please don't be fooled by their misleading marketing statistics.

I don't mean to discourage anyone from pursuing a career in game design, I'm just saying there's much better alternatives than this diploma-mill school.

Just keep in mind: most of the people who created your favorite games didn't go to these types of schools for game design, they went to schools that specialized on art or programming specifically.

I have a few criticisms to make as someone who graduated from the acting program. VFS is a program that is set up in such a way that basically anyone who was already poised to successfully make it in the industry before graduating will be the ones who actually make a career in acting. As someone who was in the acting department I feel as though there probably wasn't enough criticism on people's acting abilities so people who maybe needed it wouldn't grow in the ways they need to. It's structured in a way where everyone is a loving family and when you're there you'll feel like everyone is your best friend but In the cutthroat competitive world of acting this "everyone loves eachother and is best friends" mentality isn't how people get roles. There isn't really much collaboration with other departments aside from film production and the projects you work on when you collaborate with them are not used as demo reel footage when you graduate. There's also virtually no collaboration with the animation department which I feel like would be detrimental in learning about the world of voice acting and again that doesn't go into your demo reel either. Instead your demo reel is a cut of you standing against a black wall re enacting scenes from movies and tv shows and your voice acting demo reel is comprised of you writing a character to act and reading off of material that already exists and already has a voice actor so again you're not really bringing anything unique to your demo reel. Having certain classes and teachers be on your resume certainly is helpful when contacting agents but I feel like there's not enough collaboration that can be used to showcase your growth and ability as an actor and I hope VFS can recognize this and adjust their curriculum to not just "encourage" collaboration (and by encourage I mean sort of off handedly saying "oh yeah animation students sometimes need voice actors for projects you can do that I guess") it would be significantly better if these collaboration were baked into the learning experience and were part of the curriculum so that 1- you can learn about networking in a way that allows you to actually learn about what collaboration with different people on projects is like and 2- you could then use that project as a part of your demo reel. I feel like if this were adjusted and we didn't spend so much time on making other students read a monologue about other students traumas in front of them we might see a higher rate of successful actors who graduate from this program.