Towards the end of last year, someone asked if I wanted to be gifted an "all-access" pass to MasterClass. They had a deal where if one person bought a pass they could offer another pass to someone else at a reduced price (I forgot the details, but it seemed affordable). It's not like I was motivated by the names of the "instructors" because I hadn't consumed all their media or read their work; in fact, I'd only read one book out of all the blockbuster writers, and I'd pretty much watched none of the TV shows they'd written. I'd seen one movie that one of them had written, and I didn't like it. So overall, I wasn't buying in because I wanted to know the backstory of their creations that I'd consumed, because I was hardly familiar with their work; I wanted to know how people had done something that brought them incredible wealth and approval, and I'd figure I'd learn something.
Yes, I've learned things after watching several videos, but I feel like I've just been watching professionally produced videos instead of "taking a class." There are downloadable materials with exercises, but I could pretty much access such exercises anywhere; I have access to books, online articles, webinars, etc. that are all free. What I don't have access to are rich, successful, well-connected people who I can talk with, ask advice from, and who can actually give me feedback on my work.
Because I've been teaching for several years and have taken both credit and non-credit classes online, I know what a class is. Even in online classes, we always have access to the teacher if we have questions. Also, in an online class there are lessons (as there are "lessons" in MasterClass), but we submit our work for feedback, and subsequent discussions are with students *and* the teacher. We also have a substantial onlilne textbook or digital, multimedia package that we work with, so the online material is dynamic, as opposed to MasterClass, which is just videos and some PDFs to download.
In MasterClass, there are "discussions," but they're just posts from other students, and people aren't necessarily communicating with each other. They're just comments that people can like, reply to, or ignore, just like at YouTube or other social media. I've even seen questions in the discussions that were asked in MasterClass that went unanswered. So what's the point of discussions if no one is answering the questions? Also, the site expects students to communicate with each other. But they don't necessarily know a topic at the "master" level; that's why we're at the site, to learn from the masters. So while it's nice to see people from all over the world assembling, they aren't necessarily equipped to lead others; the pros should be facilitating instead of letting the students meander. Since the site is calling these "classes," why isn't the "instructor," or at least someone from their company/studio/etc. or even from the MasterClass site itself, interacting?
The only interaction I've seen are livestreams, which are infrequent. Basically, there are like a hundred "classes," but only a handful of "instructors" have bothered to communicate with "students," and they're only answering questions that are pre-approved by the site. When I joined, there were no livestreams, but I think because a lot of the world is at home, the site decided to offer them during this pandemic, so I don't know if they will continue that when people can go out again. After all, they convinced these uber-successful people to teach by paying them a mere six-figure amount, plus a percentage of sales of their classes, so I'm sure they don't want to make them work even more because they can probably make way more money from their real "jobs."
While some videos are very informative and insightful, I haven't been too thrilled with some of the writing ones. I won't name any names, but it seems like their advice isn't concrete. Some of them say they love what they do, rewriting is hard, etc., but it's really information I can get from a general interview or an article about writing, and I don't need a famous person to tell me that. All they're doing is sitting there and talking and reading from their work. What I've been impressed with are some of the non-writing pros: they literally take you through their process, whether it's showing you the software and equipment they use and taking you through their unique steps, or showing you their production meetings. They break it down for you. So even though I'm still critical of the lack of interaction, at least they're showing us instead of just talking at us like any video online.
I'm not saying my money was wasted, and I'm sure many people have enjoyed the site, but I'm being realistic when I say that I haven't been taking classes there, but rather just watching videos of very successful people who I'll never communicate with, who have created a bunch of handouts that I can read when the videos are over and my membership expires.
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