Vancouver Film School

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**Vancouver Film School**

Established	1987
President	James Griffin
Location	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Website	Vancouver Film School

Vancouver Film School (VFS) is a private entertainment arts school located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 1987, it has achieved international recognition.^[1]

1 20th anniversary
2 Location
3 History
4 Programs
5 Notable Faculty
6 Highlights
7 Notable alumni
8 References
9 External links

[edit] 20th anniversary

As part of the school's upcoming 20th anniversary in 2007, in August 2006 one million dollars was set aside in scholarships for new students.^[2]

[edit] Location

Vancouver Film School's campus is spread across downtown Vancouver and comprises six buildings.^[3]

[edit] History

VFS opened its doors in April, 1987 to a class of six film students. As of 2006 the school graduates over 1100 students a year.

Timeline

April 1987: VFS launches the Film Production program
February 1994: Classical Animation program launches
February 1995: 3D Animation & Visual Effects launches
June 1998: Digital Character Animation launches
May 1999: Writing for Film, TV & Interactive Media launches
January 2000: Makeup Design for Film & Television launches
April 2002: Sound Design for Visual Media launches
May 2003: Foundation Visual Art & Design launches
August 2004: Digital Design launches
October 2004: Game Design launches
May 2005: Acting for Film & Television launches
February 2006: Entertainment Business Management program and Houdini Certification programs launch
August 2006: the VFS $1 Million Scholarship launch

[edit] Programs

Vancouver Film School offers fourteen full-time, one year programs for the entertainment arts. The programs incorporate theoretical instruction and hands-on production. Students finish a program with a demo reel, short animated or live-action film, or a professional portfolio of their work.

Film Production Campus

Film Production: Film students learn the disciplines of directing, producing, cinematography, art direction, and editing, as they collaborate on dramatic and documentary film projects in both the studio and on location.

Makeup Design & Acting for Film Campus

Makeup Design for Film & TV: Makeup students learn set etiquette, script breakdown, and film terminology, and a study of celebrity makeup, film and television makeup, and special effects makeup.

Acting for Film & TV: Acting students study in a studio environment how to perform in front of a camera. Students learn how to interpret stories, refine the use of their voices, and see their bodies as instruments of self expression.

Acting Essentials: Intended for beginners, this four month course prepares students to enter the full time Acting program. Students learn how to interpret stories creatively and how to use body and voice to communicate with other actors and with an audience.

Digital Design & Game Design Campus

Digital Design: Digital Design students work with live video, Flash, animation, graphic design, and numerous digital tools. Students use typography, colour, composition, motion, interactivity, and sound to build user experiences.

Game Design: Students train to be game designers, learning visual storytelling, to level design principles, to the production process, ultimately creating playable games themselves.

Writing For Film, TV & Interactive Media Campus

Writing for Film, TV, and Interactive Media: Writing students learn the screenwriter’s role in the film industry by writing, workshopping, and collaborating on a variety of storytelling forms, including feature and short film screenplays, episodic TV scripts and pilots, sketch comedy, and documentaries.

Classical Animation, 3D Animation, Digital Character Animation, Sound Design for Visual Media, Foundation Visual Art & Design, Entertainment Business Management and Houdini Certification Campus

3D Animation & Visual Effects: 3D Animation students learn classical forms of storytelling through a study of motion, life drawing, composition, character design, sculpture, storyboarding, lighting, and art direction in order to create a short animated movie, a modeling reel, or visual effects demo reel.

Digital Character Animation: This is a six month program for experienced classical animators, whereby students broaden their skill set by combining cinematic storytelling, classical animation techniques, and digital operating environments to create compelling 3D animated characters

Classical Animation: Students learn the entire animation process from concept development to finished product, including the cornerstones of animation technique – drawing, storyboarding, layout, background and character design.

Sound Design for Visual Media: Sound Design students learn to unite sound and image by using producing, editing, and engineering skills to create sound effects, ambient noises, and music to match images in film, animation, and video games.

Foundation Visual Art & Design: Foundation combines traditional theories of arts education with training in modern visual media, such as film, animation, and digital technologies. Students learn how to work with new mediums and develop as artists as they prepare for other VFS production programs.

Entertainment Business Management: Entertainment Business Management equips students to handle the business affairs of artists and entertainers by combining the study of economics, law, and communications. As part of the education, students work with professional artists from film & television, music, video games, and interactive media.

Houdini Certification: Film production facilities rely on Houdini to help them create feature film effects and character animation. In this intensive program, students train and become certified in this industry-standard software.

[edit] Notable Faculty

Larry Bafia, Head of Animation: Bafia began his career in stop motion and claymation before moving into CGI. 7-year tenure as Commercial Animation Director at PDI/Dreamworks, where he directed commercials for clients including Coca-Cola, Sega, Intel, Kraft, Circle K, and Saturn. Sequence Lead Animator for PDI/Dreamworkson on films including Antz, and Batman & Robin. Sequence Animation Supervisor for Mission Impossible II. Animation Supervisor for the Stop Motion Division on Tim Burton's feature Mars Attacks!.

Bill Marchant, Head of Acting for Film & Television and Acting Essentials: Actor, director, and writer on the feature film Everyone, which won Best Canadian Film at the Montreal World Film Festival (2004). Nominated for four Leo awards, the film has also just been released in the United States and Britain. Marchant played recurring roles on Canadian television shows Da Vinci's Inquest and as Adrian Conrad on the sci-fi series Stargate SG-1.

Sebastien de Castell, Head of Digital Design: de Castell is a certified PMI Project Management Professional, licensed fencing instructor, and fight choreographer. He worked with Apple's Research Partnership Program, a joint venture between Apple Canada and BC universities intended to foster innovative interactive projects in academia.

Jeff Young, Head of Entertainment Business Management: A 17-year legal career and post-secondary educator in the fields of Film Law, New Media Law, and Music Industry Deal-Making. Young is a member of the Law Society of British Columbia, and served Young negotiated with Virgin Records, BMG, Disney, Sony and Warner/Chappell, Fox Family Channel, and Shavick Entertainment. Young produced and composed film and television music for Warner, Universal, CBC, CTV, NBC, Global, and the Knowledge Network. He has also engineered mixes for three major video games in surround sound: Dark Angel, The Hulk, and The Simpsons’ Hit and Run.

David Hauka, Head of Film Production: Feature-film Impolite earned Hauka a nomination as Best Director of a First Feature Film from the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television in 1993. Other directing credits include the half hour film Solus and music videos for Sarah McLachlan, Hilt, Consolidated, and Lava Hay. Hauka's producing credits include the Canadian film Whale Music which premiered at both the Vancouver and Toronto International Film Festivals in 1994.

Ted Jones, Head of Foundation Visual Art & Design: Jones is a voting member of The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television in the Television Director Division.

Dave Warfield, Head of Game Design: With fifteen years of experience, Warfield worked at Electronic Arts as a senior producer for NHL 2005, and 24 other published video game titles including EA's NBA Live and Skitchin' , Konami's NFL, Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Danger Zone, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and NEC's Champions Forever Boxing.

Charles Porlier , Head of Makeup Design for Film & Television: Awards and nominations - Emmy for prosthetic makeup work on actor William H. Macy in TNT's Door to Door. Emmy for makeup on TNT's Kissinger and Nixon. Canadian Network of Makeup Artists award for Door to Door. Saturn award nomination (Science Fiction Academy Award) for his work on The Sixth Day. Nominated for Best Makeup in the feature film category for his work on Tim Allen in The Santa Clause 2. Nominated for an Emmy when he worked on the Spielberg/DreamWorks mini-series Taken. Porlier has a 25-year career in makeup departments for films such as Thirteen Ghosts, Mission to Mars, Double Jeopardy, Jumanji. As a Key Makeup Effects Artist on X-Men II, Porlier designed the character Night Crawler.

Robert Grieve , Head of Sound Design for Visual Media: Won an Emmy for his work on the HBO film 61*, a Genie Award for The Changeling, two Golden Reel awards for Wolfen and Wyatt Earp, an Oscar nomination for Best Sound on Silverado, and two Golden Reel nominations for Dreamcatcher and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Grieve has worked with many Hollywood studios including DreamWorks, Universal Pictures, Paramount, and MGM.

Maria Jacquemetton , Head of Writing for Film, Television & Interactive Media: Graduated with an M.S. in Film Production from Boston University College of Communication. Jacquemetton has worked at Hollywood studios including Paramount, Universal, and Sony. She won the ABC/Walt Disney Company Writing Fellowship. Her screenplay, Billboard Dad, was the first Fellowship project produced. Jacquemetton has written for Star Trek: Enterprise, Baywatch, Relic Hunter, and Highlander.

[edit] Highlights

Enrollment

• Rolling start dates throughout the year.

Facilities

• Motion Capture studio • Bluescreen studio • Multiple film and video editing suites • Four ProTools sound editing studios • Dolby 5.1 multi-track sound theatre • 24-hour access to all studios • 620 desktop computers across multiple labs • Two full Makeup Design studios featuring customized makeup stations.

Production and Student Materials

• All production and material costs, books and supplies, are included in the tuition. • Regularly upgraded software suites for animation, film, sound, and video games. • Makeup kit valued at $10,000 (Canadian) • High-end digital video camcorders and film cameras. • Lifetime registration for a VFS student email address.

[edit] Notable alumni

Neill Blomkamp, director of Halo: The Movie (3D Animation); In November 2006, the film was officially put on hold^[4]
Chad Moffitt, Academy Award–winning animator on The Lord of the Rings^[5] (Digital Character Animation)
Aubrey Nealon, director, writer, and producer of A Simple Curve
Janelle Henderson, makeup for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (Makeup for Film & Television)
Scott Weber, director of Desolation Sound (Film Production)
Jovanna Huguet, actor in Supernatural and Blade: The Series^[6] (Acting for Film & Television)
Miles Nurse, producer at Riptown^[7] (Digital Design)
Ivan Mosquera, Senior Editor at Mucha Música (Digital Design)
Paul Parsons, Assistant Game Designer at Propaganda Games' (Game Design)
Chris Abbas, Designer at Lightroom FX (Foundation Visual Art & Design; Digital Design)
Clifton Murray, co-star of She's The Man (Acting for Film & Television)
Ernesto Bottger, character animator for Ant Bully^[8] (3D Animation & Visual Effects)
Tamara Knoss, Lead Animator at Amaze Entertainment^[9] (Classical Animation)
Jaidene Veda, award-winning musician and sound designer (Sound Design)
Daniel Osaki, nominated for an Emmy for modeling and designing spaceships, robots, and props for Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)^[10] (3D Animation & Visual Effects)
Mark Shirra’s short film A Great Big Robot from Outer Space Ate My Homework[1] was an official selection at Siggraph and won Best Student Production at the Leo Awards. Shirra is now at work for Pixar. (3D Animation & Visual Effects)
Cesar Montero’s commercial Sex and the Socket[2] won Gold in the Best Student Marketing category at the MI6 Advertising Awards.^[11] (Digital Design)
Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and Chasing Amy (dropped out of Film Production)
Scott Mosier, producer and actor (Film Production)
Tara Spencer-Nairn, actor in Corner Gas (Acting)
Holly Dignard, actor in Whistler
Jewel Staite, actor in Firefly and Serenity