Start Your Career - New Opportunity For Young Filmmakers

Start Your Career - New Opportunity For Young Filmmakers

Posted on Tuesday February 5, 2013, 13:42 by Ian Freer in Empire States

So here's something that might be of interest to our younger readers. As you’ll know, many of the world’s great filmmakers from Martin Scorsese to George Lucas to Nick Park started their career at film school. Now, if you’re aged between 16-19, you can too.

In a BFI/Department for Education initiative, The National Film And Television School, whose alumni include Nick Park, David Yates and Skyfall cinematographer Roger Deakins, will be accepting applications from 16-19 year olds all over England to select 54 participants for a once in a lifetime educational opportunity. The BFI Film Academy Talent Campus is an intensive 13-day training course which will enable the UK’s most promising young film talent to develop a range and breadth of film disciplines.

“The NFTS has a commitment to educate the best creative talent to the highest professional standards for tomorrow’s screen industries,” says NFTS Director Nik Powell.” We are very excited to be able to open our doors to younger students and offer them tuition by some of Britain’s best film experts in our world-class studio facilities.”

Once admitted onto the campus, the students will choose a discipline such as Directing, Producing, Editing, Cinematography or Sound Recording, and form teams that will be tutored by film industry experts to make short films using the School’s film studios and teaching facilities.

Tutors include cinematographer Brian Tufano (Trainspotting, Billy Elliot), director Brian Gilbert (Wilde, Tom & Viv) and producer Michelle Eastwood (In Our Name). There will also be masterclasses from some of the country’s leading film-makers, tailored industry support from BAFTA and visits to the BFI National Archives and Pinewood Studios. It really is an amazing first step to a career in film production.

To be eligible, you’ll need to be aged between 16-19 years old — your birthday must be between 13th April 1993 and 18th February 1997 — be free on 9/10 March and from 2-12 April and be able to demonstrate your passion for film with scripts, treatments and/or online videos.

But you’ll have to hurry. The closing date for applications is Monday February 18, 2013. For full details go to the BFI Film Academy page and the NFTS Talent Campus page. Good luck!