New Zealand Film Academy Plus

User Bio

We see ourselves not as an academic institution, but as a film industry training organization, and as such we aim to provide purely useful information to our students, delivered by trainers with a vested interest in the success of the students. Following are what we consider to be the most important points of difference for our Academy:

We have no full time tutors. Our tutors are active specialists within the local film industry, at the top of their game and ready to give real-world and up-to-date guidance. Not only do students respect tutors who have their own current careers, but we also believe that the up-to-the-minute anecdotal advice they receive is key to them leaving the academy as employable graduates. We have a comprehensive cross-section of people to call on as tutors, from various disciplines within the film and television industry. Check out our current list here.

Our classes are small. We are constantly able to assess the progress of each student, and tailor our classes to suit their needs. Every student is different, and they each come to nzfa with different goals in mind. Our students are individuals, and as such our course is flexible to their needs. We do not presume that one size fits all, and key to this is our policy of accepting a maximum of 16 students on each intake.

Our courses are short. We aim to train future crew members, not academics. Take the slow theoretical components out of most other film courses, and you are left with our 16 weeks of purely useful and practical learning. We understand that people learn fastest by doing, so that is how we provide our tuition. 16 weeks is just enough time to keep students busy, imitating the deadlines, long hours and, to some degree, the stress that they will experience when they enter the film industry.