Better Than Film School: How a Chennai Student Found More Value in 5 Days Than a Full Academic Year
A Film School Student with Zero Expectations
Raghav Nikhil was already a film school student in Chennai when he stumbled across a LevelUp advertisement. He signed up for the Become a Filmmaker Program with, as he puts it, "zero expectations." He was, after all, already enrolled in formal film education. What could a five-day online program possibly offer that his institution hadn't already covered?
No Film School Could Teach in a Year What You Did in 5 Days
What happened next is the kind of endorsement that can't be manufactured: a film school student declaring that no film school could accomplish in an entire academic year what LevelUp's BFP managed in five days. The weight of his words comes from his position — he's not a starry-eyed beginner. He's someone who has been through the formal system and knows what good teaching looks like because he's experienced its absence.
Now Directing His Own Self-Produced Feature Film
Today, Raghav is directing a self-produced feature film — not a short film for class, but a full feature, funded and directed by himself. "My faith in film schools is restored," he wrote. The formal education system had let him down. Five days with LevelUp's Become a Filmmaker Program picked him back up. His story raises a question for traditional institutions: if a five-day intensive can outperform a year of formal education, it's clearly not about the duration — it's about the quality.
Raghav came from film school and still found the LevelUp Become a Filmmaker Program (BFP) transformative. Whether you're starting from scratch or supplementing your existing education, BFP is a comprehensive, multi-day deep dive into every aspect of filmmaking. See what five focused days can do.
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