Consider going to film school. Though it's totally not required, film school is great for three things: forced experience, access to crews, and networking. Plenty have made it who did not go to film school, but plenty more have made it who have. You'll have access to internships, workshops, and, most importantly, names, names, names. If you have a project, you can get a crew handed to you and you can network by helping others out, too. Although highly competitive, NYU, USC, University of California at Los Angeles, AFI (Los Angeles), and California Institute of the Arts are some of the top schools. Several well-known directors have attended these schools, such as Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, George Lucas, John Singleton, Amy Heckerling, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Francis Ford Coppola, and John Lasseter.
