G. Dhananjayan was recently guest lecturer at a prominent city-based film academy, and was astonished to find students imploring him to come back. He realised that they wanted to be taught by people from the industry rather than just academicians. When he also discovered that actor Nasser was planning an acting academy, that director Mahendran wanted a direction school, and director Bhagyaraj was planning a series of books on screenplay… “Well, all these legends seemed to want to pass on their talent to the next generation. It was then just a simple matter of getting them all together under one umbrella — a film academy.”
December was the ‘breakthrough’ month. The who’s who of Tamil cinema — Karthik Subbaraj, Vijay (director), Venkat Prabhu, Nasser, Lenin, Bhagyaraj and Vishnuvardhan signed up with Blue Ocean Film and Television Academy (BOFTA). They will spend at least two days a week teaching, and should their shooting schedules not allow it, “we have a buffer of two additional people in all eight departments (Direction, Screenplay, Acting, Film Production, Editing, etc.).”
Dhananjayan is also very kicked with the course in production. “We will teach the art of choosing scripts to suit budgets, a complicated calculation called the viability index, which will show if a film will be viable, plus marketing, distribution and revenue realisation techniques. We will have popular producers share experiences from life, such as I and Kaththi .”
Interestingly, the medium of instruction will be Tanglish (Tamil and English), with lessons imparted in a casual, informal way. The emphasis will be on practicals, with each course having two theory and three practical exams.
The long-term plan is for BOFTA to fund at least two films that use its alumni. Another great motivation is the promise from directors like Vishnuvardhan and Venket Prabhu that they will choose assistants from the institute. Meanwhile, veteran cinematographer Madhu Ambat, head of cinematography, has promised to take students to real shooting spots on assignments.
BOFTA will be formally inaugurated at Kodambakkam on March 4 by Kamal Haasan. Applications will be available then. For now, Dhananjayan is revelling in the number of enquiries he has been getting — from entrepreneurs, teenagers, even real estate owners.
For more details, e-mail boftaindia@gmail.com
