In order for education offered for the film industry to comply with the Europe 2020, ET 2020 and Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan, it has to go through various innovative and bold reforms.
While many film education institutions have tackled the broader issues of the curricular reforms, there are some quite specific problems that film education nowadays faces in terms of labor market compliance.
This project seeks to resolve three key problems:
- Film schools teach different specialities, but very often one school is unable to provide all needed specialities for realising a film, or there are schools that teach specific technical abilities, but they lack students from creative disciplines (e.g. directing, scriptwriting) to make their projects, both of which cause the lack of experiential learning which is a key for the education’s labour market compliance.The issue of lack of co-operation has been pointed out in a number of documents in the field of arts and film especially: The European League of Institutes of the Arts ELIA (The primary international network organization of major arts education institutions & universities) policy paper “ArtFutures: Working with Contradictions in higher Arts”, the International Association of Film and Television Schools CILECT Barcelona 2010 conference paper, joint research edition The Education of the Filmmaker in Europe, Australia, and Asia;
- Film schools’ graduates often have projects that are ready to go into professional production and lack contacts with professional film industry, esp. on the international level, which hinders the labour market compliance of their education. European film education needs to react to the changing environment. “Exploring the Future of Film and Media Education” – CILECT Conference 2011 Prague paper states the following: “When graduating film and TV students should understand the media landscape and be informed and responsible for the contribution they make to it.” In addition to understanding in terms of content provision there is also a need for understanding in order to have an entrepreneurial attitude needed for the real content production. Producing Creative Producers GEECT Conference 2012 Edinburgh paper states: “but once film and TV drama were interchangeable /…/ We seem to be moving back in that direction because there are so many new layers available to us – the new producer needs to know how to navigate this variety, this potential, have a view as to what might be the best format with which to exploit their idea.”;
- Film markets have become everyday form of working for professional film industry, but most film students don’t get any experience in this field during their studies, which is a great challenge when they enter labour market after graduation. A student film market at an A-category international film festival would be an effective instrument to meet these challenges, but currently the existing international film markets are designed for film professionals only ( overview of film markets). Therefore, film students lack a forum for presenting them and their films, an international event that could be attractive for professional film producers also. Many studies and EU documents refer to education and labour market non-compliance eg. Especially high is unemployment rate among young people up to age 25 in EU countries Unemployment statistics, Youth unemployment. There is a need for practical multilevel communication on a market for the different parties to match. At the same time, such student film market cannot be organised locally within one country only, as the quality of film production depends to a large extent on the variety of skills and knowledges of international teams.
In what way is the project innovative and/or complementary to other projects already carried out?
As described above, currently there is no suitable international format of film market, designed for film students – existing film markets are used to target professional film makers only, and students don’t have sufficient opportunities to present their own film projects there.
Therefore, current Project has a clear innovative approach, by developing a new film market model and a virtual film market in connection with an A-class international film festival, which will have a very concrete impact on students experience scalability in terms of the labour market, as opposed to traditional study practices which mainly serve for the fulfillment of the curricular needs.
The development of virtual international film market portal (the intellectual output 2 of the project) is a new tool for ensuring the continuous and sustainable development of contacts between film students and film industry, as it will join different players, by creating link between film students and film production, thus creating completely new, innovative solutions for existing problems.
Generally film festivals and markets are common practice for promoting films, but not so conventional in the field of student films. That gives the opportunity to develop the model for Student Film Market and the virtual Student Film Market in cooperation with A category film festival (Black Nights Film Festival) to enhance the attractiveness of the project outputs even more.
All above mentioned 3 challenges and possible solutions tested comply with the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: European film in the digital era – Bridging cultural diversity and competitiveness: “Creative cooperation should also be encouraged between the film sector and other sectors.
This should be not only with neighboring sectors (e.g. TV fiction, video games and cross media) or players in the digital environment (e.g. telecommunication operators or consumer electronics manufacturer), but also with other creative sectors or with education.”
What results are expected during the project and on its completion?
The goal is to develop an International Student Film Market Model and establish the Virtual International Student Film Market portal, providing the network for film students for establishing contacts with international film industry representatives, finding interested film companies for their films and networking with peers on international level.
The Virtual International Student Film Market portal (and future International Student Film Market events which are based on the developed model) will have a number of possible outcomes for the participants, for example:
- A film project from one school would find a crossmedia team from other school to do a crossmedia campaign for their film;
- A composer from one school would find a film project to compose for as his/her final thesis project;
- Students will learn how to compose short promotional materials;
- A graduation film project of feature film development would find a professional producer that would take the project into its slate and go into production. Films do not sell themselves;
- A film festival would find freshest films that have not started their festival cycle into its competition programme or find a school that would be suitable for a special programme;
- Film production students would get experience in networking with other film schools’ students, a mini-model of something that they will tackle in their future careers as filmmakers;
- Film school students would get information about other film schools to find opportunities for future studies;
- Film school students would be able to network in order to find contacts for their traineeship or professional practice and in longer terms it helps to enter to labour market. If successful student will have multiple offers to choose from;
- Contacts formed between film students during the International Student Film Market would later merge into professional collaboration and result in future international co-productions;
- Festival helps to create potential sales pipeline for students and cultivate new business relationships;
- Markets deliver best negotiated investments for all related parties and help to create tomorrows’ films.
