Viral Video Production

PROF. FRANK CHINDAMO VFS BIO 2024

The founder of Virtual Film School, Prof. Frank Chindamo, is a former professor at various film schools including USC, UCLA, Chapman, Emerson and Pepperdine. Frank started his career in film and TV working on Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters. He also got to work as a production coordinator with Mother Teresa in her first documentary. Chindamo rose up the ladder in filmmaking from assistant to writer/producer, and went on to hold the world’s record for most short films produced. Of course that record has been shattered now, but back in the day he made films for HBO, Showtime, CBS, PBS, Comedy Central, etc. Frank pioneered the use of video on the Internet and premiered the first comedy series on the web at the Sundance “DigiDance” festival in 2001. Soon after, he would be featured on the covers of the LA Times and Forbes Magazine for launching the first comedy video channel on mobile phones in 2004 for Sprint. In New Media, he led the team awarded a $1,000,000 production grant from YouTube. While speaking around the world on this emerging medium, he was asked to revamp the short film program at USC where his students went on to great success, including Freddy Wong (FreddyW, with 9 million YouTube subscribers, 2 billion views, and 2 series on Netflix and 2 on Hulu) and www.5SecondFilms.com, who were featured in a cover story in Entertainment Weekly. Students from other schools include Nicki Baber, with 6 million TikTok followers, 180 million likes, and approximately 2 billion views, and Bernie Su from UCLA, who’s won 3 Emmy Awards so far. 

Chindamo excelled at teaming students New Media (YouTube, TikTok, etc.) He was awarded “Distinguished Lecturer” at USC and “Adjunct of the Year” at Chapman University. He was the top-rated professor in the media school at Chapman, see ratings here. However, Frank saw that traditional film schools were selling a false dream. For example, even though Chapman University was ranked the 4th best film school by the Hollywood Reporter, and they’ve graduated about 25,000 film/TV students, only 2 are working film directors. So along with (former) TV Academy Governor Lori H. Schwartz and branding guru/book author Lynn Speier, he created Virtual Film School Inc., where students could get a more advanced education in New Media production and monetization. (To quote a student, “All my other courses teach how to spend money I don’t have, but your courses is the only one that teaches me how to make money at this.”) Virtual Film School has launched in 6 countries so far, (US, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, and Finland) with pilot programs using Virtual Reality classrooms. Their best work includes a collaborated class with the Beijing Film Academy and the Beijing 2022 Olympic Committee, where the students created the first TikTok series for the Olympics. This is pioneering and so far, unique work because students can use VR to actually step onto a film stage and create scenes in the Metaverse that they then recreate in real life with greater learning, ease and speed. The results speak for themselves, as does the success of the students. Numerous other schools will be launching remote courses in 2024, from the Philippines to Mauritius, Africa.