.....
I've never been to Full Sail, I've never seen the campus, I've looked at the curriculum, never taken classes there, .....
Full Sail gets
beat up because it is a school focused purely towards
theatre and.....
..... Personally I would say the experiences that can't be taught in a classroom that you get at a 4 year university are worth the extra money, but that's not what you asked.
.....
Okay, if you're looking for advice renegadeblack, I wouldn't listen to someone who's never been to Full Sail, seen the campus, or taken classes there. I on the other
hand, not only have been to Full Sail, seen the campus, and looked at the curriculum, but I have graduated from the Show Production and Touring program. I will do my best to answer your question, renegadeblack.
Full Sail
does not focus purely on
theatre. The main draw of the school is the Recording Arts program and that is what gives the school the bad rep it seems to have. A good amount of the people in that program are musicians that are thinking that if they learn how to run a studio and open their own, they can get their "big break". Half of the students are in the Recording Atrs program and the other half are in the several other programs. Show Production and Touring is the program that would be what you are looking at. Not even that program focuses purely on
theatre. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The
one course that has any chance of being
misconstrued as a
theatre class, is
Intro to Lighting. That course might be better named
Intro to Color. It deals mainly with colors, how they interact, how to use gels, and other related things. The focus of the program is live sound, lighting, and video. It is almost entirely on the side of concert touring and has very little to do with
theatre. Many of the principles of lighting are the same for both applications, but the program swings it towards concert events.
The structure of the program is about 55% classrom setting and 45% hands-on, do-it-yourself labs, in which the instructor is there just to answer your questions and make sure do don't
jack anything up to badly. They are totally okay with things getting messed up or broken as long as it happened because you were trying to learn what to do and what not to do. It is much closer to real life situations than a class room at a typical school, and that is what makes it great. They
want you to touch the gear,
play with stuff, and learn how things work and what they do by doing it yourself and not just watching intstructors or upperclassmen doing it.
With that said... If you are interested in live
show production and touring, than Full Sail is the place to go. If you are interested in
theatre, don't go to Full Sail. Find a school with a very good tech program that is going to teach you
theatre lighting, stagecraft, and everything else you need and go there.
Hope this helped renegadeblack.