SELECT COURSE -------------------------- --MA COURSES Animation Direction Cinematography Composing For Film and Television Digital Post Production Directing Fiction Documentary Direction Editing Producing Producing and Directing Television Entertainment Production Design Screenwriting SFX/VFX Sound Design for Film and Television --------------------- --DIPLOMA COURSES Production Management Script Development Sound Recording for Film and Television ---------------------- --OCCASIONAL COURSES Summerdocs: A Summer School in Documentary Direction --------------------- --SHORT COURSES Documentary Drama Business Skills Camera & Sound Editing Craft & Technical Multiplatform

NEWS

The Shock of the True

18 September 2007: London’s Cinè Lumiere was packed last night for the inaugural Colin Young Emeritus Lecture, delivered by NFTS Founding Director, Professor Colin Young himself.

Speaking on documentary filmmaking, and the importance of the relationship built between the filmmaker and their subject, Young entertained and enthralled his audience in equal measure.

Before the lecture, James Woodburn, of the Royal Anthropological Institute, presented Colin with a gift in recognition of his contribution to the field of Visual Anthropology. Colin was a pioneer of the observational documentary - in which the filmmaker takes a back seat so as to allow the subjects to speak for themselves - during his time as Dean of Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles in the 1960s and later, at the NFTS.

Colin Young was appointed to set up the School in 1970 and led it until his retirement in 1992. He saw the annual intake grow from 25 students in 1971 to over 60 in the early ‘90s, by which time the original four departments he had established in production, camera, editing and sound had been joined by directing, documentary, animation, screenwriting, composing and production design. Today the School takes over 100 students a year in 16 departments, always building on the foundations Colin laid. He has had an enormous influence, and inspired great affection, amongst young filmmakers over the years, helping to launch the careers of, amongst others, documentary luminaries Nick Broomfield, Molly Dineen and Kim Longinotto.

The Colin Young Emeritus Lecture will be an annual event devoted to the exploration of current issues in film and television, and is open to the public.

“The details of our films must be a substitute for dramatic tension, and the film’s authenticity must be a substitute for artificial excitement. This does not rule out the possibility that a film’s events will have the weight of general metaphor, but first and foremost they will have meaning within their own context. The task is to break down into details the constituents of drama and find these cues in human behaviour."
Colin Young – Observational Cinema
[Paul Hockings (ed.) Principles of Visual Anthropology, 1976]

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