Film and Television media has expanded exponentially specially after the introduction of a number of TV channels in Hindi, English and regional languages. Film media has come a long way from earlier days. Today the quality of films in India is as good as anywhere in the World and the number of films made here is more than anywhere in the World.
Annual production of films in all the Indian languages put together exceeds 750. Further, a large number of software is produced for Television channels. With such a huge requirement for software production, the demand for the trained personnel in Film and TV productions is increasing by day. Demand will multiply manifold with the advent of mobile broadcasting and IPTV.
Sometimes it is argued that the students trained in one discipline (Mass Communication) can switch to the other (Film Production) without any difficulty. It is not true with both media adopting a very high technology, style and sophistication. For example television is progressing to adopt high definition and large projection systems, not to mention sophisticated and affordable home theatre systems in the near future. IPTV and mobile broadcasting is also around the corner. Film production on the other hand uses very high technology in image processing, special effects and multi-channel stereo sounds.
Therefore film and television industry will require more and more trained personnel to cater to the needs of software production. Trained personnel are also preferred to understand and handle sophisticated technology.
As of now there are only two major Central Government supported Film and TV schools. One is Film and Television Institute of India, set up in 1960, in Pune and the other Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute set up in 1999 in Kolkotta. Similarly, Film and TV Institute at Adyar, Chennai is functioning under the Tamil Nadu State Government. Beside these, some training institutes have been set up under Polytechnics. All these Institutes put together are not able to meet the demands of the Film and TV industry. Moreover, no institution ever in India is offering an organised and recognised degree course in Television & Film Production. Many of the polytechnics Mass Communication Schools do not lay emphasis on qualitative training and detailed production techniques, rather they focus on Management of TV Channels.
The three major schools for film production take only a small number of students, 10 to 12 in each discipline of film making. This is surely a small number to cater to the demands of more than 700 films a year.
This is the background in which KIIT has embarked upon setting up of a School of Film & Media Sciences to offer a Bachelor Degree Course. |
