Learn to spot a star

Updated on: Monday, July 13, 2009

There has been an increasing interest among students in film-making as a career, what with the process of producing films becoming cheaper and accessible. And what better place than the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, to learn the basics of any of the several careers associated with film-making.

Founded in 1960 by the Central Government, FTII was the first of its kind to offering training in aspects of film- making.

“The idea in setting up the institute in Pune was its proximity to Bombay and the thinking was that the faculty could be sourced from Bombay,” said Suresh Chabria, professor of Film Appreciation at FTII, who has been teaching since 1985. The land for the institute was bought from the legendary Prabhat Film Studio that was responsible for making some of India’s earliest well-known Marathi films including Sant Tukaram and Manoos. Prabhat Studio still lies extant in the campus and symbolises the rich history of Indian cinema.

One of the early directors of the institute was Ritwik Ghatak (director of the acclaimed Bengali film “Meghe Dhaka Tara”) whose stature, many historians of Indian cinema would argue, was equal to that of Satyajit Ray. His stint at the institute served a useful role in defining the direction in which FTII would head. According to Prof. Chabria, many students who passed out of FTII till the late Eighties went on to make avant garde and independent cinema (what began to be popularly known as art cinema) due to the support that this sort of cinema received from the government through institutions such as the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC). After this financial support started declining with the NFDC itself in dire straits, there has been a gradual change in the kind of films that students of FTII made.
12 courses

FTII has 12 courses on offer (eight in Film and TV and four only in the TV medium) but its flagship courses are its three- year post-graduate diplomas in Direction; Cinematography; Editing; and Sound Recording and Sound Design. It offers shorter courses in Acting; Art Direction and Production Design; Animation and Computer Graphics; and Feature Film Screenplay Writing. Its PG diplomas are most sought after. While there are 12 seats in each course, the number of applicants is huge. Rough estimates say that more than 600 people apply for the course in Direction.

Cinematography and Editing comes next with 400-500 people applying for the 12 seats on offer. With such intense competition for the few seats available, FTII is assured of admitting some of the brightest students from across India.

“These four courses are heavily subsidised by the government. To do a similar course at a private institute would cost at least 10-15 times more and the students will have to buy their own film stock in private institutions whereas it is provided free of cost for us here,” said Ajay Yadav, a first year student of Editing. Students in these four courses have a common syllabus in their first year after which they branch out to specialise in their respective disciplines.
Liberal help

The first year provides them with a knowledge of all the diverse aspects involved in film-making. After a brief introduction to the theory of film-making, the rest of the training is hands-on with the students given liberal amounts of expensive 35 mm film stock to work with. Students are also provided liberal logistical support from the institute when they set out to make their diploma films with several of these films going on to win national awards.

Several graduates of FTII keep coming back to the institute to deliver guest lectures and indulge in fervent debates with the current students, leading to an awareness of the trends in the industry.

Learn to spot a star

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