Prasad Group to open film academy

Chennai, May 11 (IANS): The Prasad Group, known for its post-production laboratories, is setting up a film and TV academy here that will offer courses in direction and cinematography among other things.

The L.V. Prasad Film and TV Academy will come up at a cost about Rs.50 million and have a 60,000 sq ft complex. Prasad's Studio III, a 220 ft by 180 ft by 40 ft studio, the size of a football field, will be made available to the academy's students.

The academy, being set up in the Prasad Studio's golden jubilee year, will begin functioning from Aug 15 and have about 40 students in the first batch. It plans to scale up to a 100 students per batch in a couple of years.

Director K. Hariharan, who won the national award for his film "Ezhavathu Manithan", and is known for avant-garde films like "Ghasiram Kotwal", will be the director of the academy.

The institute will be a "global university producing trained filmmakers and television producers with technical skills and expertise", Hariharan said.

The four courses offered from this year will be in direction, cinematography, sound recording and editing. A two-year course will cost Rs.400,000. By 2007, the academy hopes to offer six courses.

"Every student will, in the first year, get acquainted with all the four skills of filmmaking," Hariharan said. In the second year, each student will have a mentor, and will learn and work under a practicing filmmaker, cinematographer or sound expert.

Noted cinematographer Sunny Joseph will head the department of cinematography. Arun Bose, who has mixed sounds for 400-odd films, will head the sound department, while Ashwin Ramanathan will be in charge of teaching editing.

Teachers will also be flown in from the US and Singapore.

With hundreds of television channels starting, there is also great scarcity of trained television filming units. "The Prasad Academy will train five-member TV crew teams who can do live telecasts as a 25-minute exercise."

"Western countries have great expertise in live shows, which are becoming very popular. Their production teams are flawless," Hariharan said. India does not yet have this expertise, and the academy hopes to meet this need.

"We will focus on developing complete production teams at the academy," Hariharan said.

A film library of 1,000 DVDs will be available to the students.

The last date for filing applications is May 30. The forms are available at all Prasad group facilities throughout the country and online.

Supporting the endeavour will be the Brooklyn University and the Arcadia University, US.