Whistling Woods to admit first batch by July next

Whistling Woods International, a film school project, will see its first batch of students joining only in July 2006.

"We spent a lot of time researching film schools across the world before deciding on how exactly we wanted to go about with Whistling Woods," says Meghna Ghai Puri, business development director, explaining the reasons for the delay. In the process, they ended up visiting close to 40 schools all over the world, before finalising the curriculum and even the architecture.

India, despite being the biggest producer of films globally, does not have a single private school to its credit. Promoted by Mukta Arts and set up in the heart of Film City, Mumbai, the school hopes to provide a holistic learning experience by enabling constant interaction with the industry.

The institute has been set up with an initial investment of over Rs 45 crore, of which Rs 20 crore came from the Mukta Arts IPO in 2000. Students can enroll either after the 12th grade or after graduation, depending upon the specialisation they opt for. The curriculum has been designed in collaboration with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, while the interiors are being done by Recording Architecture, London.

Initially, the school will offer courses in cinematography, direction, editing and business of film and television, sound recording and design, screenplay writing and acting as part of the two-year programme, but will also have short-term courses for still photography, animation etc.

Since there aren't many academicians in this field, the first few years will have a mix of Indian and international professionals and academicians teaching at the institute.

The institute has partnered with Digidesign Pro Tools to provide training in pre and post-production processes for audio recording, editing etc. The course is being offered as a value-proposition as compared to similar courses being offered across the world and the fees are expected to be close to Rs 5.5 lakh a year (compared with around Rs 20 lakh per year internationally).

Although the admission process will start only next year, more than 2,000 enrollment forms have already been downloaded from the website, said Puri.

So, just what does she expect from the institute? "What IIT did for technology, we want to do for films," she signs off with a smile.