How Our Do It Yourself Film Course Works

The Film Academy, the online division of Academy of Photogenic Arts, brings you its Do It Yourself Film Course, a Series of eBooks which give you an in depth industry based training course suitable for many applications ranging from getting a job in the film and television industry, making films for festivals, producing films for your business, to making films which everyone will enjoy watching purely for pleasure.

We have made a FREE eBook for you called ‘A New Approach to Training - An Insight'. In it you can view a selection of video clips taken from Series 1 which will give you a good idea of Ian's training style and it also gives you an insight into how the course works.

Click here to get a copy.

As the "Making it Work for You" section of our website explains, our DIY Film Course is designed to suit the needs of a wide variety of ‘students' and once you have gone through that section you will know where you fit into the picture and what you can expect to get out of our course.

Our Do It Yourself Film Course has been divided into Four Series. It can best be explained by taking the first series, which is ‘Getting to Know and Use Your Equipment' as an example. This series is further divided into a number of Modules which cover the camera lens, camera operations, lighting, and sound. Each of these modules is made up of a number of eBooks covering a particular aspect of the module. For example, the first module considers The Lens and Its Image and it is made up of five eBooks dealing with focal length, aperture, focus, depth of field, the macro and back focus.

Each eBook consists of video tutorials, text, photos, graphics and sometimes Prompt Notes which contain such things as Check Sheets, extra notes and diagrams which have been referred to in the eBook.

We should mention here that in the video tutorials Ian usually refers to the eBooks by the filmic term, Clips, so please don't let that confuse you.

We chose "Getting to Know and Use your Equipment" as our first Series because you can't make a film without having these technical skills available to you. Within the eBooks you will find suggestions for exercises that will help you improve your skills and ideas for simple scripts to make the learning process more interesting.

If possible, we suggest you go through the eBooks in order but, if you have prior knowledge, you may prefer to purchase them according to your needs.

It's a good idea to go right through each eBook initially to get an overall picture of the content, and then to go through it again as many times as you want, stopping, starting, repeating, checking, and wherever you can, practising the demonstrations and examples with your own equipment. Once you are satisfied you understand the contents of each eBook, if you wish, you can use the final chapters to test yourself.

Answers to questions you may have

We hope that as technology develops it wont be too long before our Do It Yourself Film Course will become available on other distribution platforms. Watch our Production Diary for details.

Since film making is such a practical subject, probably one of the first questions you will want answered is how our Do It Yourself Film Course overcomes the potential problem of not being a face to face course where students have access to tutors, film and video equipment and other students.

Although you are not in a face to face situation, you do have your own industry mentor, Ian Ingram Young, Principal of APA International Film School, who has had over 30 years of experience training students for the film and television industry. He has designed many government accredited courses and training programmes and with his latest Do It Yourself Film Course he has made sure that the training is very detailed with easy to understand explanations in both video and text form.

When discussing equipment there are many examples that illustrate the subject being discussed which you will find really helpful, plus there are lots of video close ups of the relevant part of the equipment in question, making sure that it's easy to identify even the smallest part and relate it to your own equipment.

You don't need much equipment to get started and if you haven't got any gear yourself, you most probably know someone who has. The training is very generic so this means that you can adapt the knowledge to whatever equipment you have to use. For example, the training will be relevant whether you have an old analogue 4" x 3" camera that you picked up for a few dollars, a small camcorder or the most modern up to date HD digital camera. The same goes for lighting, sound and grips equipment as you will see as the Do It Yourself Film Course unfolds.

Next what about a crew? This sounds as if we are expecting that you want to be the Director ! Well, from APA International Film School's experience 80-90% of people who enrol in a film course initially do want to be a director. If this is not the case with you, then we're sure you'll find someone who would love to direct.

There are thousands of people who are interested in making films who would love to attend a film school, but either don't have the money or don't have the time. I'm sure you know some. The world abounds with potential crew. We want you to search them out. The beauty of the DIY Film Course is that you can share it with friends, colleagues or even family members. They are your potential crew and if they show interest and follow the DIY Film Course with you, you will be amazed at how skilled they will become.

Invite friends, colleagues and family members to join you as you go through the DIY Film Course.

Make a note of the equipment discussed in the eBooks and list all the equipment you, or if possible, your friends, family and colleagues have collectively so that you can arrange to use it. If you are studying together, on the second time you go through the eBook, ask everyone to bring along any equipment that is relevant to that particular eBook session and go through each video tutorial as many times as you need to become familiar with equipment and/or the process.

No knowledge is assumed, it's step by step all the way with easy to understand explanations of how everything works, how the equipment should be used and what everything means. There are tips on how to make up your own pieces of equipment. Pitfalls are also pointed out. Years of experience training film students means that Ian knows the most common mistakes and misunderstandings that film students make. This can save you money and sometimes embarrassing moments.

Finally, in a nutshell, How the Course Works is by you and your colleagues putting into practice what you have learned from the Course.

Have fun and make great films.