“Why pay for training when you can get it for free on YouTube?” is a common question in just about any discipline these days. It’s not a bad question either—with 7.5 billion people living on the planet, the collective consciousness is bound to kick up quality training once in a while. The real questions to ask? Is there enough quality training of the film school ilk on YouTube and if so, how do you actually find it?

As you may be aware, moviola.com hosts a comprehensive set of filmmaking courses (for free) covering everything from cinematography through to post-production visual effects. What you may not be aware of is that we’ve included a techniques section that compiles the best content from YouTube and around the web. Why recreate training on a topic when someone else has already done a great job of it and posted it on YouTube for the world to access? That’s simply a waste of resource; we prefer to focus on creating training that fills a unique need.

With the Techniques section of the site, we’re attempting to address the issue of quality and discoverability in free web training. By leveraging the experience of both the moviola.com staff and that of the staff from our sister company Filmtools, we’ve actually vetted and curated content from sites like YouTube and Vimeo. What that means is that instead of searching through 150 videos shot by 13 year-olds on webcams to find the one video on the subject someone who knows what they’re talking about, you can simply head to the curated list of videos on moviola.com and know that if it’s included there, it’s worth watching. It’s a step towards compiling a comprehensive “film school” out of the morass of content out there.

In terms of discoverability, we’ve broken down techniques into helpful master categories (Story & Biz, Cinematography, Lighting, Post-Production, Sound & Music, and VFX & Graphics) and additional sub-categories, making it easy to find a specific technique, or simply browse your favorite subject matter.

We’re constantly adding entries as we discover new, quality training (feel free to add suggestions to the comments section of this article if you see something we’re missing). And of course be sure to check out the extensive but concise library of training courses produced exclusively by moviola.com.

Check out entries from the curated Techniques section of moviola.com