Our Story

The technical aspects of the movie business have become more and more fascinating. Skill and experience are essential to finding a job. Neal Bennett, founder of the Industry Film School offers an excellent approach to students wishing to make filmmaking and video production a career.

Bennett who is a professional filmmaker, editor and videographer has worked on Kevin Smith’s “Chasing Amy”, “Judy Berlin” with Edie Falco, “Trading Spaces” for TLC, HBO features, NFL, ESPN, Discovery and YES network programming to name a few. His freelance experiences has created a network to help open doors for his students. The educating for real world skills concept was born 6 years ago when, as a teacher at Communications High School in Wall, he received a grant from Abel CineTech to work on a documentary. The project was a documentary about surfing. This award winning film called “ “Locals Only” depicted the cultural mores associated with the sport. The enthusiastic response of his students and encouragement from Pete Abel of Abel CineTech motivated his decision to strike out on his own and start the school.

Classes meet after school and for summer sessions beginning with just a handful of students. Industry Film School catered to the individual students by giving them lessons on their specific needs and interests in a workshop atmosphere.   Bennett soon realized students also needed real life experiences to help them reach their full potential as industry professionals so students are now included on professional and local shoots.

Recently students were part of the production crew for the documentary series, “Dream Camp,” in association with Joe Patane of Joe’s World foundation. A variety of celebrities are involved in the series including Drew Carey, James Cameron, Steve Wozniak and Patane himself is a former cast member of the Real World Miami season five.

The Industry Film School has been recognized for its excellence in multiple ways from Telly Awards to Student Television Network National Awards to Best Student Film Awards at the Garden Film Festival.

Now that the film school is growing, we’ve begun the accreditation process and will expand to offer classes for continuing education and certification programs. Most recently we’ve become an Avid Learning Partner and offer Avid Media Composer Certified User classes for students of all ages.