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Vancouver Film School Fishes For YouTube Talent
Online video communities are emerging as ideal places for unknown and often untrained artists to display their work. The Vancouver Film School (VFS) took advantage of this pool of young talent by holding an online competition, in conjunction with YouTube, to award scholarships to three aspiring moviemakers. The winners—Christopher Harrell, Stefan Ramirez Pérez and Jorge Rolando Canedo Estrada—can look forward to a great year spent honing their skills under the direction of accomplished faculty at a school that prizes hands-on experience and produces artists who have the creative vision as well as the technical knowledge they need to gain a foothold in the industry.
MovieMaker spoke with VFS’ director of marketing, Stephen Webster, to find out more about the competition and the opportunities that await the three winners.
Jessica Wall (MM): You chose to partner with YouTube for your recent scholarship competition. What makes the company such a great partner for a school like VFS?
Stephen Webster (SW): We established the VFS channel on YouTube in 2006. Since then, it’s become the number one school channel on YouTube; the videos we’ve posted have combined for nearly 20 million views and 22,000 people have subscribed to the channel. The scholarship competition was very much about giving something back to that loyal, established fan base.
There is a lot of talent on YouTube, and those self-taught young artists and designers make great VFS students because we’re able to take that foundation, broaden their knowledge, hone their existing skills and give them the professional network they need to really succeed, online or off.
Over time, we’ve developed a great relationship with YouTube. They appreciate the quality and quantity of content we provide and have been very supportive along the way, so we really welcomed the chance to work together on providing this opportunity to our viewers.
MM: In your YouTube Scholarship Challenge, VFS was responsible for narrowing down hundreds of applicants to just 10 on which the YouTube community then voted. What specific qualities were you looking for in the winners?
SW: It was a monumental task selecting 10 finalists out of hundreds of entries. All submissions were graded on creativity, relevance to program—in this case, whichever VFS program the entrant chose—technical execution and overall impression. Most of all, we wanted 10 finalists who we’d be happy to have at VFS, because we knew that once we handed the reins over to the YouTube community, anything could happen.
As it turned out, we didn’t have anything to worry about. The high number of amazing submissions guaranteed we’d end up with three great scholarship students. The hard part was narrowing a very long “short list” down to just 10. It took a lot of sweat, debate and late nights, and it came down to the intangibles that a student needs to make the absolute most of a year at VFS: Passion, dedication and ingenuity. We can’t wait to see what the three winners will be able to do once they’re here.
MM: On your Website you say that VFS offers a one-year equivalent to a four-year education at other schools. What differences in its teaching philosophy account for this ability to teach students what they need to know in just one year?
SW: Our students work incredibly hard. That’s the reality of the industries they’re hoping to break into, and we attract a particularly driven kind of student.
Every program’s curriculum is very carefully crafted—and continually updated—to make the most of the year. Courses build off one another in a sequential and highly customized manner, unlike the mish-mash of electives you see in most four-year programs. And since instructors are working professionals, they know exactly what information students need, because they’re in the real world right now. Tenured academics don’t often have that advantage.
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- Comment by Suzanne on 7/19/08 at 8:00 pm
This is very interesting - YouTube is an excellent way for aspiring film makers and unknown actors to be discovered when they normally wouldn’t have been.
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