Welcome to No Film School, a community of filmmakers helping other filmmakers. This page contains information about registration and how reputation works on our site. In order to foster a supportive environment, we also have a few do's and don'ts.

The short version is: use your real name. Be nice!

Registration

Real Names

No Film School is a community of filmmakers, video producers, writers, students, and working creatives — it is not a place for made-up identities. The conversation is more valuable when we talk about real-world experiences with real-world people. 

A general guideline is to register with your real full name. The content you share on your profile page — your work, your social networks, your web site — should confirm your identity.

Why tell us your location?

No Film School is an online place where filmmakers can meet real-world collaborators. In order to do so, it’s very helpful to know where someone is in the world. Sharing which city or town you’re in is most helpful — you don’t need to be more precise than that.

In the future we may be able to further customize a user’s news feed if, for example, there’s an event near them. No Film School is a global community and we don’t want to alert you to a workshop if it's on the other side of the planet.

General Guidelines

Do:

Remember why we’re here. We’re all here to share what we’ve learned, to learn new techniques, to hone our craft, and to give constructive feedback. Filmmaking is a difficult career — this is the place to make it better for each other.

Be civil. Deal with disagreements the the way you would in a professional environment, face-to-face — not the way you would through an anonymous rectangle on the internet. There’s a real human being on the other side. They might be having a bad day.

Vote. The community is stronger when we upvote helpful content, and downvote content that doesn’t add anything to the conversation. We all contribute to this filtering. Please read someone’s post before you vote on it — if you agree or disagree with someone’s headline, make sure you understand their reasons before making your feelings felt.

Use topics and tags. We organize everything on the site with two methods: Topics and Tags. You should always choose one (or more) main topic for your discussion or question. Tags allow you to be more specific. For example, a topic is something broad like "Editing & Post-Production" whereas a tag is more detailed, like "After Effects" or "Rotoscoping." Click on a tag to find other content on the site with the same tag.

Use existing tags. When you start typing a tag, the site will try to suggest an existing one. So if you start typing "Kubrick" and it suggests "Stanley Kubrick," please use the existing tag. Spaces are allowed; commas separate tags. 

Search before posting. There’s a big search box at the top of the page. Tip: after typing in your search terms, hit “enter” on your keyboard and then click “View All” next to the specific content type you're looking for — e.g. Articles or Boards. Try to make sure your question hasn’t already been asked. If it has, add to the thread rather than starting a new one.

Review your post before submitting. Give it a once over for grammar, spelling, tone, and violations of our guidelines.

Be helpful. If someone helped you along the way, be that person for someone new. If no one helped you along the way, be the person you wish had made things easier for you.

Don’t:

Make it personal. Trolling, attacking, and insulting each other makes it worse for everyone. No flame wars.

Discriminate. Attacking or defaming anyone because of racism, sexism, or other discrimination is grounds for immediate removal.

Spam. Spam is when you promote the same thing over and over again, or post the same content repeatedly to multiple places.

Game the system. This includes asking for votes or trying to manipulate the points system, either for your own gain, or to the detriment of others (always downvoting everything someone says simply because you don’t like them, for example).

Break the law. Linking to illegal downloads, or sharing ways to steal services, is not acceptable.

Create throwaway or impersonating accounts. You may not create accounts with throwaway email addresses, or accounts designed to impersonate someone else. We don't allow multiple accounts per user, unless, for example, you have a personal account under your own name and also one for your production company, which is established and verifiable in the real world.

Post vulgar material. NSFW material is acceptable, within reason, as movies can be NSFW sometimes — but do not use overly vile language or share pornographic material. Always label any material with “NSFW” and use common sense. Absolutely no child pornography or sexually suggestive content featuring minors.

Share personal information. Text, links, or photos that may violate your privacy — or someone else’s — should not be shared. This could include real-world street addresses, links to unshared social networks, pictures, phone numbers, etc.

Write in ALL CAPS or use other hard-to-read syntaxes. Don’t shout or use a bunch of special characters.

Create content that adds nothing, post fake/deceptive links, or repost existing links. Comments like “LOL,” “this,” etc. add nothing to the discussion. Neither does reposting someone else’s content, or posting deceptive links that go somewhere unexpected.

Pass off someone else’s work as your own. It’s fine if you haven’t made many — or any — films. There are filmmakers of all experience levels here and everyone’s input is valuable.

Reputation

Points

No Film School has a point system for rewarding good behavior (see “Do” above) and for penalizing bad behavior (see “Don’t”). Of the different types of content you can create on the site — comments on articles, posts in discussions, and questions and answers — we award the most points for upvoted answers (this encourages you to answer questions).  Here is how points are gained and lost.

You gain points when:

+25 Your answer is upvoted by the original question asker

+10 Your answer is upvoted

+5 Your discussion post or article comment is upvoted

+2 You upvote something

You lose points when:

-1 You downvote something

-2 Your post/comment/answer is downvoted

-10 Your answer is downvoted by the original question asker

-75 Your post/comment/answer receives 10 downvotes or is moderated by staff

Levels

Users attain new levels upon achieving point score thresholds. Because we are No Film “School,” we are using class years from school as our nomenclature (there is no freshman hazing here, though!). Think of it like “leveling up” in a video game.

+1 Freshman

+100Sophomore

+500Junior

+1,500Senior

+5,000 Bachelor of Arts

+10,000 Master of Arts

+25,000Ph.D

Please note we may tweak these algorithms/levels over time.

Violations

Violations of any of our Community Guidelines may lead to suspension or deletion of your No Film School account. We also reserve the right to delete or edit individual comments. Editors and moderators work hard to keep the conversation useful and informative, and they have the final say on whether content fits our community guidelines.

We’ll try to be tolerant, but repeated violations are the easiest way to signal that you’re not adding anything to the community. We are all in this together. Help each other out. 

Last updated March 5, 2021