Film & TV initiative by Monash

Monash is one of the top Universities in Australia, referred to as the Oxford of Australia, with campuses in many countries worldwide including London, Malaysia, Italy and Singapore. Thus, the unique offering of bringing professionals from all corners of the world to tutor at Monash, alongside highly revered South African experts delivering the content of these courses, has become the mainstay of Monash's unit.

What this means is that instead of paying huge amounts of money for a handful of individuals to train overseas at different film schools, many more participants can benefit from top international tutors right here on our doorstep.

Chait and Tilley are both determined to make the Film & TV unit at Monash a centre of excellence and to this end have achieved an enormous amount in only one year of operating. Word has spread rapidly from people who have attended courses, and now the unit is fielding requests from Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana as well as Europe and the United States.

The dynamic team is constantly finding new ways to implement training, create content and develop new platforms for the delivery. During this first learnership, students have been involved with Freedom Day live broadcasts, a music video production for a top Kwaito artist and thanks to The Bomb, were allowed to film and conduct interviews at the Yizo Yizo 3 launch.

Since the first course took place in May 2003 funding, sponsorships and contributions with a combined value of over R2 million have been secured. Up to 180 people will have benefited from this unique training by October this year, with fully sponsored courses ranging from Access Level Learnerships with Create South Africa, to the Protégé Project (City of Johannesburg), as well as five day intensive courses offered to independents and broadcasters alike, such as Scheduling, Production Accounting, Technical Directing, Audience Research, Business Skill Development, designed to meet skill shortages assessed from ongoing interaction with the industry.