I NTERV I EW | SET- UP
short courses and they are very practical.
6. YOU HAVE TO BUILD UP A TRACK RECORD The fact is that you’re never going to get given the gig of shooting a high-end TV drama or a feature unless you’ve done it before, so you have to build a portfolio and track record as a DOP, which is different to being an assistant in the camera department. You need a slate of work where you’ve made the choices. By coming to film school you get to do that, and a lot of our students come because they’ve tried to work their way up. They might have finished their undergraduate degree at 21 and worked for a couple of years in the industry, but they can’t seem to make that jump to the next level of their career; they come here and spend two years building a portfolio. 7. EXPANSION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS My mission is to build on the national element of the school’s name and to do more in the nations and regions. We’ve already opened a base in Glasgow and are thinking about where else we might operate from. We are also considering the outreach work that we do, and what we might do to support people at a lower entry point as we do with the BFI Film Academy, which is aimed at 16 to 19-year-olds. All in all, it’s an exciting moment in time for the School.
job because he focused.
animations, fictions and documentaries. The teaching and the workshops wrap around that rather than workshops running separately. Every course has great exposure to the industry so, on screenwriting for example, they don’t do work experience but spend a lot of time with production companies interfacing with development people; on the ProductionManagement Diploma, students do month-long placements, so it depends on the discipline. 5. YOU CAN ALWAYS LEARN SOMETHING We’re probably the biggest provider of short courses for the film and television industry in the UK and have a reputation for being able to support people at an early or mid-career stage. The short courses are not for people who know nothing: they are for people who are already working but want to expand their skill set. For example, someone may have been working in development for some time but they want to understand production more so they go on a short course to expand their horizons. We work with about 700 people a year on
3. BE CLEAR IN WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE
We also run diplomas, which are typically a year long, in particular in areas such as production management, because there would be diminishing returns in areas like that if students were here for two years. A one-year Production Management diploma is just as valuable as a two-year MA in many ways because graduates are going to join at a junior level anyway, whereas with directing you’re using the second year to create a set of original films and work which becomes a way of getting hired on top shows. I always say at open days: “Only come here if you’re really clear where you want to be as we can help you achieve that.” 4. EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING WORK TOGETHER The whole philosophy of how the courses are taught is learning by doing. Students learn how to be a production manager by production managing multiple films. They learn how to be a composer by doing the music for games,
ABOVE Students working on-set for their graduating film Blood Type .
DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 8 09
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