Page 30 - Fujifilm Exposure_25 Jean Francois Robin_ok

Academy: a grand, sprawling, austere place, where people go to excel, grow and pre- pare for the real world.
The London Film Academy? Excel, sure. Prepare and grow, without
doubt. But grand and sprawling? A converted church just off the Fulham Road, adjacent to a bingo hall sug- gests otherwise.
Yet the thing that immediately smacks you in the face as soon as you walk through its once-hallowed doors is a tangible sense of creativity and positivity.
and about Vittorio Storaro, but you feel like those at the Academy would be able to convince a local shopkeeper that his store frontage would be per- fect for the shot... and that he really doesn’t need any money for it.
Which, let’s face it, is really what British filmmaking is all about these days. “I’ve been here since Day One,” says Daisy Gili, the willowy, pretty and
astoundingly young-looking Principal.
Studies Lou Spain and the financial support of David Game, chairman of the David Game College Group.
“I’d done a number of film courses and was unsatisfied,” she remembers. “They’d have tutors that would turn up and say, ‘how am I going to fill the next two hours?’ And I thought, why am I paying you hard-earned cash for you to tell me this? So she decided started her own film school. “The idea
So, from January 2002 – yes, it’s that new – she created a diploma course costing £12,500 per year, which includes all material costs, for two intakes of sixteen students per year.
There are two Arriflex 16mm cam- eras, a bank of Avid Xpress DV machines, some Steenbecks and a small collection of lights. Each set of sixteen makes eight films during their time there, four five-minuters and four
“It forces you to think,” says stu- dent Khaldoon Ahmed, a 27-year-old who gave up a career as a doctor to attend the school. “The lack of space makes you creative.”
Students at other more famous film schools may have read every book by
With a little coaxing from Deputy Head of Studies Lincoln Ascott, she even manages to admit that this entire thing was her idea.
But, she quickly adds, that she couldn’t have done it without her co- principal Anna MacDonald, Head of
behind it was to have a school that was one year and not as expensive as some of the others and for which you didn’t need a showreel. University courses are three years, very theoreti- cal and often taught by someone not working in the industry.”
at ten minutes. Budgets are £2000 and £3000 respectively.
This does mean that not everyone gets to direct a final film and “that’s made a hundred per cent clear before they start,” she says. So, there’s a degree of natural selection that takes place, as egos
28 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video
film school focus