FTII puts off admissions to animation course by a year
News — By The Desk on November 2, 2011 at 12:00 PMIndian Express: The admissions for the upcoming academic year for the animation course at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) will not be held. The reason: The course will be undergoing a “complete revitalisation” to keep it in sync with the current industry standards. The animation course that began in 2005 will have a complete overhaul of sorts with the work scheduled to begin in January next year.
FTII director D J Narain said, “We will not be admitting students for the next year. The main reason is we felt the animation department was lagging behind compared to the other courses. So there will be a complete change; right from the coursework, schedule, duration and the infrastructure.”
Narain, however, clarified the course admissions have not been stopped owing to the backlog of students at the institute. “The course restructuring committee that will be working on the entire animation course will meet in January next year. In fact, while they will be revamping the entire course work for the animation department, they will also be studying the coursework for the other courses such that the syllabus for all the courses comes up to the current standards.”
Narain said this was part of a major plan to revitalise the entire institute. “It is a three-pronged plan that will include not just working on the courses and their content but also on upgrading the existing infrastructure, and the equipment. We will seriously look at courses such as art direction production design, screenplay and script writing such that the institute becomes more modern. In fact, the course work-related changes that have to be done will be incorporated by 2013. Admissions to the animation course will happen in 2013 after the upgrade is done.”
Narain said only admissions to the animation course will be closed next year. “All the other courses will have their admissions as per schedule in the upcoming academic year. We will rope in industry experts, faculty members, alumni and students to devise a world-class coursework for the batches that will come in future.”
At present, there are two batches of a total of 24 students who are studying at the FTII in the animation course. The new course structure will aim at homogenising the duration of all the courses to avoid the backlog of students at the institute.
